THESE MEN ARE springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. 18For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. 19They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him. 20If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.”
Original Meaning
PETER’S DESCRIPTION OF the false teachers runs from verse 10 to the end of the chapter. Most commentators and translations rightly put a paragraph break between verses 16 and 17, recognizing a pause for breath at this point. One also detects a shift of emphasis. In 2:10–16, Peter has focused on the false character of these heretics: arrogant, sensuous, and greedy. Only in one passing allusion—“they seduce the unstable” (v. 14)—did he say anything about the “teaching” part of their profile. But now, in verses 17–22, their impact on other people takes center stage.
Their teaching, Peter claims, is hollow, arrogant, and deceitful (vv. 17–19). At the same time, he returns to the theme of verses 4–10a as he warns these false teachers about the terrible judgment awaiting them.1 Indeed, because they have known the way of righteousness but have deliberately turned from it, their fate will be all the worse (vv. 20–22). By ending his polemic on the same note of judgment with which he began, Peter again exhibits the “ring composition” we have noted elsewhere in the letter.
Hollow and Deceptive Teaching (vv. 17–19)
PETER’S COMPARISON OF the false teachers to the ignorant and greedy Balaam (vv. 15–16) ends his first round of critical comment. He marks the beginning of his second round with an abrupt return: “These men….”2 The two opening metaphors in verse 17 vividly capture the hollow and insubstantial nature of the false teachers’ message. In the dry climate of the East, a spring of water is a marvelous blessing, giving—and sometimes even saving—life. Imagine the weary traveler’s chagrin, then, when he or she finds the spring to be dry. So is the false teachers’ message: It disappoints the spiritual pilgrim by promising spiritual vitality but not delivering it. Like the people of Israel, the followers of these impostors “have forsaken me [the Lord], the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jer. 2:13).
We might at first think that the second metaphor, “mists driven by a storm,” has a different meaning—perhaps indicating the false teachers’ instability, blown hither and yon by any breeze of doctrine. But the word “mist” can also denote the haze left after the condensation of a cloud into rain. But rather than producing life-giving rain, it could dissipate and, indeed, served as a harbinger of dry weather to come.3 The two metaphors, therefore, combine to characterize the message of the false teachers as hollow and therefore disillusioning.
In language reminiscent of his earlier condemnation (see esp. vv. 4b, 10), Peter adds at the end of the verse a quick sentence of judgment: “Blackest darkness is reserved for them.” Some commentators have criticized the sequence of imagery here, noting that it is awkward to think of springs of water and mists being confined to darkness. But authors often shift metaphors without connecting their images; and the image of darkness may, in fact, fit quite well with the accusation that the false teachers are “mists”: “In place of the momentary darkness which they now cast, there is prepared for them a much thicker and eternal one.”4
The “for” at the beginning of verse 18 connects both this verse and the next to verse 17. In these two verses, Peter explains why the false teachers are consigned to the darkness of hell (cf. v. 17b) and how they disillusion and harm people with their doctrine and practice (cf. v. 17a). Peter has already chastised them for their arrogance (v. 10), and he returns to that theme here. The false teachers “mouth empty, boastful words.” Peter indulges in some irony here, using the same Greek word for the false teachers’ speech (phthengomai) as he has used to describe the speech of Balaam’s donkey in verse 16. Even a donkey “mouthed” better doctrine than these false teachers do!
And this doctrine, while presented with a great show of power and persuasiveness is, in fact, “empty.” This word suggests the idea of futility or frustration—of something that can never quite attain its goal. Paul, for instance, uses the word to describe the “futility” to which creation was subjected as a result of the fall of humanity into sin (Rom. 8:20). And words from this same root are used to describe the folly and inherent powerlessness of idolatry and the life of paganism (Acts 14:15; 1 Peter 1:18). The false teachers’ words, while superficially attractive, cannot produce the spiritual fulfillment that they promise. Moreover, while the NIV does not preserve the connection, this first clause in verse 18 is linked to what is the main assertion in the verse: The false teachers entice people “by mouthing empty, boastful words.”5
Peter then goes on to add a second clause to this main verb: The false teachers also entice “by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature.” The NIV is a rather free paraphrase of a difficult sequence of words in the Greek, which can be literally translated “in desires of the flesh, acts of sensuality.” The NIV “by appealing” is a fair and accurate addition. Not so happy is their rendering of the Greek word for “flesh” (sarx) with “sinful human nature.” As I have argued elsewhere (see the “Bridging Contexts” section after 1:3–11), the use of the word “nature” to translate this phrase can imply a view of the constitution of human beings that is only questionably biblical.
The word “lustful” represents the Greek word aselgeia, which Peter has already used twice in the chapter—once of the “shameful ways” of the false teachers generally (v. 2) and once of the “filthy” lifestyle of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 7). It denotes licentiousness, sensuality, a pleasure-focused lifestyle of sexual promiscuity, gluttony, and drunkenness. The word is plural here and is awkwardly tacked on to the end of the phrase (see our literal rendering above). Commentaries and translations are not certain what to do with this word. Some see it as restating the “desires of the flesh” (cf. NASB, “by fleshy desires, by sensuality”). Others, such as the REB, think it is a second, parallel term: “sensual lusts and debauchery.” Most, however (cf. the NIV), take the word as a modifier of “desires.” A decision among these alternatives is impossible to make. The idea, in any case, is clear: The false teachers appeal to the sinful and licentious desires of people to entice them away from the truth. Thus Peter lists two means that the false teachers use to attract people to their brand of heresy; as Bigg puts it, “Grandiose sophistry is the hook, filthy lust the bait.”6
But the false teachers, Peter suggests, do not go after just anybody. Clever in picking their targets, they dangle their lure in front of “people who are just escaping from those who live in error.” A significant textual variant is found in the Greek that underlies this clause. Some manuscripts read ontos apophygontes, others have oligos apopheugontas. Even without knowing any Greek, one can note how similar these two phrases are and how easy it would be for a scribe to change one of them to the other. If we accept the first alternative, the people whom the false teachers are enticing are those who have “fully escaped” from “those who live in error.” The KJV adopts this reading, translating “those that were clean escaped from them who live in error.”7
But the second reading is adopted by all the contemporary major English translations and should be accepted. It identifies the false teachers’ targets as people who had only “recently” or “barely”8 escaped from “those who live in error”; in fact, the present tense of the participle in this reading suggests that they are still in the process of escaping the entanglements of their past lives. It makes excellent sense to think that the heretics would go after new converts. The word “error” (plane) is regularly used in the Bible to describe paganism (see, e.g., Rom. 1:27; Titus 3:3). In other words, Peter pictures these new converts as still in the process of distancing themselves from the values and lifestyle of the pagan society to which they recently belonged and in the midst of which they continue to live.
In verse 19 Peter continues to describe the false teachers’ mode of operation. Another tactic to entice recent converts from their faith is to promise them freedom. This is about the only place in the chapter that Peter touches on the false teachers’ doctrinal program. Unfortunately, he is not specific: freedom from what? When one considers the evidence from the letter itself, three possibilities deserve to be considered. (1) The false teachers may have been promising freedom from fear of evil spiritual beings. Peter has criticized the heretics earlier in the chapter for their arrogance and unconcern with these beings (vv. 10b–12). (2) The false teachers may have been promising freedom from eschatological judgment.9 As both 1:16–21 and 3:3–12 show, the false teachers’ basic doctrinal plank was skepticism about the return of Christ and the judgment associated with his return. (3) They may have been advocating freedom from any external moral constraint.10 Peter has dwelt repeatedly on the false teachers’ libertine lifestyle (vv. 13–16, 18). And we have evidence from elsewhere in the New Testament of a tendency to abuse the free grace available in the gospel by turning it into a license to sin (see the warnings in Rom. 6; Gal. 5:13–14; 1 Peter 2:16).
Since any of these views fits well into the broader context of 2 Peter 2, we must ask which fits best in the immediate context. Here the rest of verse 19 helps. Peter points out the irony in the false teachers’ situation: While promising others freedom, “they themselves are slaves of depravity.” The emphatic “themselves” suggests that the “depravity” to which they are enslaved is closely related to the freedom they promise. But what is this “depravity”? The NIV makes a definite interpretive decision in rendering the Greek word phthora with “depravity.” A more neutral translation would be “corruption” (found in most English versions). The corruption may be moral in nature (in which case depravity is a fair rendering) or it may be physical.
Peter has used phthora twice before in this letter, once with each meaning. In 1:4, I argued it has a moral flavor; in 2:12, it refers to eschatological destruction. Neither definition fits very well with the idea that the false teachers promise freedom from evil spiritual beings, so this option should be eliminated. But if the reference is to eschatological destruction, the second option works well: While promising people freedom from judgment, the false teachers themselves are destined for judgment. And if moral corruption is intended, the third also makes good sense: The false teachers reveal the futility of their promise of freedom from moral requirements by living lives enslaved to immorality themselves. I think this last interpretation is slightly better than the other. The language of slavery in this verse and the focus on immorality in verse 20 suggests that Peter is thinking along these lines rather than in terms of eschatological judgment. As Green puts it, “In their quest for self-expression, they fell into bondage to self.”11
Peter reinforces the point by quoting a proverb: “A man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.” Since the proverb originated from the practice of enslaving enemies captured in wartime, some commentators think that it should be given a personal reference: “A person is enslaved to whoever has mastered him.”12 But it is in the nature of a proverb to shift its referents depending on the situation to which it is applied. Here, Peter applies it to the impersonal force of sin; thus, the neuter rendering (found in almost all English versions) is better.
The Serious Plight of the False Teachers (vv. 20–22)
THE NIV PRESERVES the ambiguity of the original by translating simply “they” at the beginning of this verse. What is unclear is the antecedent of this pronoun. We could go back to the end of verse 18: “people who are just escaping from those who live in error.” The repetition of the idea of “escape” in verse 20 may point to this connection. In this case, all of verses 20–22 refer to the new converts whom the false teachers have been making the target of their propaganda. The point of these verses, then, would be a warning to these impressionable believers against this false teaching by pointing out the serious consequences that follow any declension from the truth they had been taught.13
But the closest antecedent is found in the subject of the immediately preceding verse: the false teachers. And it is these false teachers who have been Peter’s focus throughout the chapter.14 A decision is difficult here, but I lean slightly to this second interpretation. We would expect the chapter to end with a final denunciation of the false teachers; a warning to recent converts seems somewhat out of place.
Peter, then, continues his description of the false teachers. As Bauckham notes, the apostle uses some of the same language that he used early in the letter to characterize Christians. In 1:4, he said that Christians have “escaped the corruption [phthora] in the world”; in 1:3, he claimed that they have come to know our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The false teachers, he now notes, have also “escaped the corruption [miasmata15] of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”16 As I noted in commenting on 1:2 and 3, Peter is fond of the language of “knowledge” (in the biblical sense of experiential knowledge) to describe Christian existence. From his perspective at least, then, these false teachers gave every evidence of being Christians.
Yet they run the risk of becoming “entangled” in the corruption of the world again and, indeed, of being “overcome” by it. Green thinks that “entangled” may preserve the fishing imagery Peter has been using to describe the false teachers’ strategy (“seduce,” “entice,” or “lure” in vv. 14 and 18).17 Setting lures for others, they become entangled in their own nets. Whether or not this is the case, Peter’s point is that such a return to the corrupt lifestyle of the world will bring disaster to them: “They are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.” Peter is almost certainly quoting Jesus’ saying at the end of his story about the evil spirit in Matthew 12:43–45:
When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, “I will return to the house I left.” When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.
So it is with people who embrace Christ but then abandon him for the world again: Because they have knowingly and openly rejected the truth, their judgment will be worse than it would otherwise have been.
This is what Peter explains in verse 21. He again uses “way” language to describe Christianity (see the comments on 2:15). Following Christ means to walk the road of right behavior (“righteousness”) that he demands of his disciples. It would be better, Peter warns, not even to enter that road than to walk it for a time and then abandon it. Peter’s focus on the moral failings of the false teachers surfaces here again. Not only does he use “righteousness” (in a moral sense) to describe the “way” of Christianity, but he also singles out “the sacred command that was passed on to them” as that which they have abandoned. Peter does not have a single “command” in mind here. He uses the singular to summarize the totality of Christian instruction, a traditional body of teaching that was taught (and thus “passed on”) to converts. Paul, similarly, refers to “the form of teaching to which you were entrusted” (Rom. 6:17) and “the good deposit that was entrusted to you [Timothy]” (2 Tim. 1:14).
As Bauckham has noted, Peter has composed verses 20–22 almost entirely out of traditional material: a saying of Jesus in verse 20, a “better for them” warning in verse 21 (such as we find elsewhere in the New Testament), and now, in verse 22, two extrabiblical proverbs.18 In fact, the NIV plural “proverbs” is a bit of a liberty. The Greek word is singular; Peter perhaps uses it because he views the two proverbs as functioning together to make the same point. And combining proverbs that speak of both dogs and pigs also makes good sense. Jews viewed both animals negatively. Dogs in the ancient Near East were not “man’s best friend.” They were not mild-mannered house pets but wild and savage beasts that often stole food and preyed on weak people. And, of course, pigs were anathema, declared “unclean” in the Old Testament and avoided by pious Jews. Dogs and pigs were thus often grouped together as despised animals.19
The meaning of the first proverb is clear enough: Returning to the corruption of the world is like a dog returning to eat its own vomit. But the saying about the pig (NIV “sow”) can be taken in two different senses, depending on how we put together the Greek syntax. One possibility is to translate, “A sow that washes itself by wallowing in the mire.” Peter would then be suggesting that the false teachers, having gotten a taste for depravity, come to enjoy it; they are like pigs who, it is well known, love to wash in mud.20 But all the major English translations and most commentators opt for the reading represented in the NIV: “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.” This proverb fits precisely the situation of the false teachers as Peter has depicted it in verses 20–21: Having been washed clean by the blood of Christ, they are nevertheless anxious to return again to the filth of the world.21
Bridging Contexts
IN THE LAST “Bridging Contexts” section, I argued that “mirror-reading” a New Testament book can force its message into a mold that the original author would never have recognized. The problem, I argued, is that scholars tend to seize on one particular historical, cultural, or philosophical situation and to insist that everything in a given book be explained in light of it. As Samuel Sandmel put it in a famous essay on the general problem, too many scholars assume that ideas in the ancient world flowed in pipelines—passed down pure and intact and independent of any other ideas. In fact, ideas never remain isolated. They are modified in various ways over time, becoming mixed in various degrees with many other ideas that are rattling around.
The ancient world in this respect is no different than ours. How many people do you know hold to any “pure” form of belief? Do the Democrats you know consistently toe the party line at every point, never entertaining an idea that might be dubbed Republican or socialist? How many pure “existentialists” do you know? People, including professors and theorists, hold and propagate ideas that are always a mixture, to some degree, of many different, and sometimes conflicting, sources.
Cultural context of the false teachers. As we compile our profile of the false teachers from 2 Peter, then, we would do well to ask about some of the different cultural influences that may have led to their particular brand of heresy. In the commentary thus far, I have focused on specific points of their false teaching. But it is worth at least asking whether we can identify any larger ideological movements of the first-century period that may have fed into their particular brew of erroneous ideas.
Peter’s claim that the false teachers were “promising freedom” (v. 19) provides us with a good entry point into this question. I have noted how hard it is for us to know just what kind of freedom the false teachers were promising. But Jerome Neyrey has suggested that this promise is best explained as the product of Epicurean thinking. In fact, he argues that all the distinguishing marks of the false teaching, as we can reconstruct them from 2 Peter, fit nicely into the Epicurean mold.22 I think Neyrey’s reconstruction of the situation is well worth considering—not necessarily because I agree with it in toto, but because it reminds us of the impact that broader first-century ideologies may at least indirectly have had on the specific beliefs of people like the false teachers in 2 Peter.
Many of us will remember the Epicureans as one of the major philosophical “schools” of the first-century world. And because the word has passed into common parlance, we often associate Epicureans with the idea of the pursuit of pleasure—with unbridled sexual behavior, good eating, and drinking, or the “high life.” Here is where the popular conception goes astray. Epicurus (who lived from 341–270 B.C.) and his followers did, indeed, make the pursuit of “pleasure” their goal in life. But they defined pleasure not as the indulgence of the flesh but as the avoidance of pain and distress. They sought mental peace (ataraxia); and certain pleasures of life, far from contributing to that peace, would, in fact, disturb it.
But most significant for our purposes was Epicurus’s denial of providence. Epicureans believed in the existence of gods but held that they had nothing to do with life on earth. Human beings, made up of a chance combination of atoms, go their own way in this world without interference from the gods. And when they die, the atoms simply disperse again. Epicureans did not believe in the afterlife or in any kind of divine judgment. “Death is nothing to us; for the body, when it has been resolved into its elements, has no feeling; and that which has no feeling is nothing to us.”23 Any interference from the gods or threat of punishment in the afterlife would constitute an affront to human freedom.24
We can readily understand how certain elements in this brief and inadequate description of the Epicureans might fit the profile of the false teachers in 2 Peter. The false teachers’ skepticism about the coming of Christ in glory and future judgment (1:16–21; 3:3–12) may well reflect Epicurean attacks on the idea of divine providence. The false teachers’ promise of freedom may reflect Epicurean concern about the threat to human integrity from any divine interference. And even the false teachers’ licentiousness might be rooted in Epicurean ideas. For while the Epicureans prized a restrained and temperate lifestyle, their doctrine could easily provide the perfect basis for a wild and profligate manner of life. One need not fear divine judgment or punishment in the afterlife. And since the body was “nothing” (see the quotation above), one could do with it whatever one wanted. In fact, as Neyrey points out, critics of the Epicureans scolded them for opening the door for just such immorality. Lactantius, a Roman moralist, claimed:
If any chieftain or pirates or leaders of robbers were exhorting his men to acts of violence, what other language could he employ than to say the same things which Epicurus says: that the gods take no notice; that they are not affected with anger or kind feeling; that the punishment of a future state is not to be dreaded, because the souls die after death, and there is no future state of punishment at all.25
Neyrey himself is careful about identifying the false teachers of 2 Peter as Epicureans. He thinks they may have been but is more concerned to argue that the kind of skepticism associated with Epicurus and his followers is an important component of the false teachers’ arguments. I am a bit more skeptical than Neyrey about a direct relationship between the false teachers and Epicureans. But I think that he is correct to posit this Epicurean-related skepticism about divine providence as an indirect influence on the false teachers. The problem, of course (as Neyrey admits), is to figure out how indirect the influence may have been. While perhaps originating with Epicurus, the skepticism he advocated had by the first century A.D. filtered its way to various degrees into a variety of strands of teaching and belief. We may say, as it were, that it was one of those ideas that was “in the air” and that the false teachers picked up as an important component of their heretical notions about Christianity.
Theological context of understanding the false teachers. As I have repeatedly emphasized, bringing the message of 2 Peter into the contemporary world requires careful attention to context. But “context” is multifaceted. We use the word most often to denote the literary context: the biblical book, or the immediate section of that book, in which the text we are studying is found. But we must also reckon with the historical context, or what we often call the “background” of the text—all those circumstances that form part of the original author’s world and that have a bearing on what he wrote.
Scholars of any theological persuasion recognize the importance of these two contexts in their interpretation. In fact, the two combine to form the “grammatical-historical” method, the interpretive approach that has become enshrined in modern biblical studies. But evangelicals have always insisted a third context must be added to these first two: the theological context. Evangelicals, unlike many other interpreters, believe the Bible is ultimately a single book, speaking with a single voice. This means that any part of the Bible must be interpreted in light of the teaching of the whole Bible. Nonevangelical interpreters can rest content with the interpretation of a passage that brings it into contradiction with other passages of the Bible. Not so evangelical interpreters. Having done our best to exegete a text according to its literary and historical context, we must then move to the next step and ask how our results square with the teaching of the Bible elsewhere on the same topic.
We may conclude that our results fit nicely with what we think the Bible says elsewhere on the matter, and our exegesis may then be at an end. But we may also find that our conclusions on a given text do not immediately match with what we thought Scripture was teaching in other places. We then have further work to do, going back to our exegesis to see if we may have made a mistake. Perhaps we conclude we have not. It may be, then, that our ideas about what the Bible was teaching elsewhere on the subject is in error. Thus we must turn to these other biblical texts to see if we may be mistaken about what they say. This process (what some have called the “spiral of interpretation”) is a necessary corollary of an evangelical belief about the unity of the Bible. Evangelical interpretation should always be marked by attention to this theological context. But it is vital to keep listening to the text, so that it can correct our theology as we go.
Any accurate application of 2 Peter 2:20–22 must grapple with this larger theological context. As I have noted, Peter here uses language to describe the false teachers that he elsewhere uses to depict conversion to Christianity. They have “escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (v. 20). Yet in the same verse Peter claims that if they persist in the heretical path they have chosen, “they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.” What being “worse off” means becomes clear when we compare what Peter says about their fate in 2:4–10a: They will suffer eschatological condemnation. A first “reading” of these verses, then, seems to teach that genuine Christians can permanently fall away from their faith if they persist in holding heretical ideas and/or in pursuing a sinful lifestyle.
When one reads the commentaries on this passage, one finds different reactions to this reading of these verses. Michael Green, for instance, dismissing a textual variant that adds “away backwards” after “turn” in verse 21, says, “This is small comfort to those who would dogmatically deny the possibility of a Christian apostatizing.” He goes on,
One must still face the fact that these men are said to have known … the way of righteousness and to have escaped, once upon a time, from the world’s defilements. The parallels with Hebrews iii. 12–18, vi. 6, x. 26, 38f., 1 Corinthians x. 1–12, Jude 4–6, are clear and unmistakable. Apostasy would seem to be a real and awful possibility.26
Edwin A. Blum’s comments on the same text are an instructive contrast:
Is it possible, then, for Christians to lose their salvation? Many would answer affirmatively on the basis of this and similar texts (e.g., Heb 6:4–6; 10:26). But this verse asserts only that false teachers who have for a time escaped from world corruption through knowing Christ and then turn away from the light of the Christian faith are worse off than they were before knowing Christ. It uses no terminology affirming that they were Christians in reality…. The NT makes a distinction between those who are in the churches and those who are regenerate…. So when Peter says, “They are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning,” the reference is to a lost apostate.27
Both authors would probably agree with D. A. Carson’s general definition of apostasy: “the decisive turning away from a religious position and stance once firmly held.”28 But for Green, the apostasy is from full and genuine Christian salvation, and this text makes clear that it can happen. For Blum, on the other hand, “apostatize” means to fall away from whatever (nonsaving) knowledge of Christ one might have had—losing one’s salvation, he implies, cannot happen. Neither commentator seeks to justify his reading of the text against the broader sweep of biblical teaching (although both refer to other “warning” passages). I am not criticizing them for this; no commentator can justify every point he or she makes with a full-blown systematic exploration. But what I think is clear is that these two scholars approach 2 Peter 2:20–22 from quite different understandings of what Scripture says elsewhere about “eternal security.” That is, they understand the theological context of the passage differently.
My first purpose in raising this issue is simply to point out the necessary role that theological context plays in interpretation. I sometimes hear students at the seminary where I teach express a bias against “systematic theology.” “All I want to do,” they piously proclaim, “is to study the text and let it lead me wherever it goes.”
“Well and good,” I respond. “But do you believe that the Bible is true?”
“Of course,” they say.
“Can the Bible be true if it contradicts itself?”
“No.”
“What happens, then, if your conclusions about one text contradict your conclusions about another text?”
“Then I must harmonize them,” they assert.
“And how do you do that without a broad framework of biblical teaching to work from—in a word, systematic theology?”
So I am not criticizing Green and Blum for reading this text in light of their theology. What I do criticize, however, is the interpreter who fails to let the text contribute to his or her “spiral” of theological growth. None of us has anchored securely in Scripture everything we believe. And the danger we run is to impose an unexamined theological predilection on a text, for we then prevent that text from speaking to us. And this leads me to my second purpose in the discussion: to shed light on the theological significance of such warning passages by describing the process I have gone through in grappling with this text.
I bring to this passage a generally Calvinist theological perspective. I was taught eternal security in seminary, and I have since that time found many texts that seem to me to confirm its truthfulness. In addition to the well-known passages from the Gospel of John (especially John 6:39–40; 10:28), I am particularly impressed by Paul’s argument in Romans 5–8, where Paul mounts an argument for Christian assurance. Those who have been justified, he teaches, will be saved on the last day (5:9–10). Those who have been predestined, called, and justified are glorified (8:30).29 He asserts what seems to me to be an unbreakable connection between initial justification and final salvation; indeed, his doctrine of justification is itself eschatological, the ultimate verdict of God being rendered over the believer at the moment of conversion.
But then I move to other passages in the New Testament, particularly the many “warning passages.” And I don’t even have to leave Romans to find them. In chapter 11, Paul warns boastful Gentile Christians: You “wild branches” who have been grafted into the olive tree (the people of God) can be “cut off” again. Here Paul seems to tell genuine believers (they have been grafted into the people of God) that they are in danger of losing their status among the people of God, of forfeiting the salvation they once enjoyed. Many other passages sound the same note of warning, the most famous, of course, being the ones in Hebrews (especially 6:4–6; 10:26–31). And 2 Peter 2:20–22 fits exactly this mold.30
I am therefore faced with a series of texts that appears to conflict with my belief in eternal security. What do I do? Because my belief about eternal security rests on serious study of the text, I first seek ways of explaining these texts in a way that can fit my “theological context.” Three options come to mind. (1) Perhaps the warnings are only hypothetical. Peter, for instance, says, “If they have escaped the corruption of the world … and are again … overcome, they are worse off.” He does not say that they have actually taken this step. On this view, the biblical authors warn true believers of what the consequences of their persistent apostasy will be—knowing all the time that such apostasy is not possible.
(2) Perhaps the people are not really being warned about eschatological condemnation. Peter, again, for instance, says that these false teachers will be “worse off,” that they will end up “wallowing in the mud” again. He may mean simply that the false teachers will experience serious problems in this life and maybe “loss of reward” in the next.
(3) Perhaps the people being warned are not really Christians at all. Peter says that the false teachers have a “knowledge” of Christ, but this may be no more than head knowledge. They may be people who have participated in the life of the church, have given every indication of being Christian, but have never actually experienced God’s regenerative work.
Most Calvinist scholars take this last tack; note, for instance, Blum’s comments above. And I think this approach is far superior to the other two. A hypothetical warning is not of much use. In moments of incoherent anger, when I had to wade for yet another time through oceans of toys to get to my office, I used to warn my children, “If you don’t clean up all these toys right now, I am going to give them all away to other kids.” I knew very well that I would never do this; and, more important, they knew as well that basically soft-hearted Daddy would never do it. So of what value was the warning? Neither is it satisfactory to think that these warning passages hold out only temporal penalties. In 2 Peter 2:20–22, for instance, being in a worse position than before conversion can only refer to eschatological condemnation.
Thus I turn to the third option, that the false teachers were never really Christians at all. But I find a problem here as well: Peter uses “conversion” language (“knowing” Christ) to describe them. True, he may be using the language differently here than he did elsewhere in his letter, where genuine conversion seemed to be indicated. And we must recognize also that the New Testament authors necessarily describe people on the basis of their appearance/profession. As D. A. Carson has shown, the New Testament consistently recognizes a class of people who are not simply pagans (that is, they are part of the church and have come to experience the blessings of Christ), but who are not yet regenerate Christians either (that is, the Holy Spirit has not yet brought them to faith). Such people are difficult to recognize, and they may, indeed, only be known by their perseverance to the end.31 In other words, New Testament writers sometimes use the language of Christian conversion for such people on the basis of their appearance.
Even this alternative, however, does not ultimately satisfy me at the exegetical level. Peter in the text we are looking at, and even more clearly the author to the Hebrews, gives every indication of describing these people as they really are, not just as they appear to be. At this point, then, I have failed to come up with a natural and convincing interpretation of 2 Peter 2:20–22 that harmonizes it with my “eternal security” theological context. And so I need to go back and reexamine that context; am I sure about those passages that I think teach this doctrine? Yes, I have to say—trying to make every allowance for the effect of tradition and habit—I think they do validly teach eternal security.
Where, then, does all this leave me? I have, I think, three options. (1) I can abandon my evangelical conviction about the unity of Scripture. But this, for me, is a “nonnegotiable,” taught so clearly and brought home to my heart so often that it cannot be contested.
(2) I can admit that I face on this point a biblical “antinomy”: a situation in which the Bible asserts two things that appear to be contradictory. I may have to admit that I cannot yet understand (and may never be able to understand) how these two strands of teaching—genuine Christians cannot lose their salvation; genuine Christians can lose their salvation forever—can be harmonized. My responsibility is not to question or to force the texts into unnatural configurations, but simply to believe that both are true. I think we have to live with antinomies in the Bible—though we must be careful not to entertain outright contradictions, for to do so is to forfeit any intelligent and defensible view of the Bible’s truth. And believing both ends of the antimony discussed here looks to be just such a flat contradiction.
(3) Thus, I come to the third alternative: that the false teachers of 2 Peter 2:20–22 are not really genuine Christians. I admit that this is not the most natural reading of the text. Or, perhaps I need to say, not the most natural reading of the text in its immediate context. But my point is that the larger context of the passage is the entire Bible. And when that context is considered, my hesitant conclusion is that the best interpretation I can now discover is that Peter is not talking about truly regenerate believers. But I will honestly admit that I am not finally satisfied with this conclusion, and I keep coming across warning passages that I struggle to do exegetical justice to. Finally, I certainly do not accord “eternal security” the kind of nonnegotiable status that I attributed above to my view of Scripture. I am in process on this issue, still convinced that eternal security is a biblical doctrine, but less convinced of it than I used to be.
Contemporary Significance
CONSEQUENCES OF TURNING away from the truth. My first point of application stems directly from the issue that I just discussed under “Bridging Contexts”: Peter’s warning about the consequences of turning away from truth (vv. 20–22). I noted in the “Original Meaning” section how difficult it is to decide whether Peter directs his warning to the false teachers or to new converts whom the false teachers are trying to influence. Whichever it might be, however, and whatever view we finally take on the question of eternal security, one point is clear: Willfully turning back from the truth brings terrible consequences.
Peter implies in his warning a point that Scripture makes clear in many places: that the more we know of God when we reject his truth, the greater will be our punishment. When Jesus distinguishes the “blasphemy against the Spirit” from other sins and claims that it cannot be forgiven (Matt. 12:31–32 and parallels), he is probably thinking of the Pharisees’ open-eyed refusal to accept the evidence of Jesus’ miracles. It was the abundance of evidence available to them that made their rejection so serious and final. John may be thinking of the same kind of willful rejection when he mentions a “sin that leads to death,” for which prayers should not be offered (1 John 5:16). The most famous of such warnings, of course, come in the letter to the Hebrews, where the author warns that people who have come to understand who Jesus Christ is and experienced many of the blessings he has to offer and then turn away from the truth will have no opportunity to repent again (Heb. 6:4–6); their doom is sealed (cf. also 10:26–31).
The “rigorism” expressed in these texts became an important and debated point in the first centuries of the church. Many early Christian teachers went to the extreme of arguing that any sin committed after baptism could not receive forgiveness.32 It was for this reason that some early Christians, such as the Emperor Constantine, waited to be baptized until they were on their deathbeds. Other early theologians insisted that it was only certain sins that could not be forgiven after baptism.33 But the position of Hebrews and other New Testament writings is clear: Only the sin of willful apostasy cannot be forgiven. Peter agrees: The dire consequences he warns about here are for those who have come to know Christ and then turned away from him.
Sensitive believers and even unbelievers are often disturbed by this denial of the possibility of forgiveness. I recently received a telephone call from a man who was in great distress because he thought he had committed the “unpardonable sin.” Some years ago, he had been exposed to the gospel. He had begun to sense the Lord’s reality and goodness, but he decided to reject the message. He now found himself unable to believe and feared that God would never accept him. I responded with Calvin’s wise comfort: The very fact that someone is worried about having committed the unpardonable sin shows that he or she has not. Such concern and desire to believe suggests that the Holy Spirit, far from abandoning this person, is still at work in his or her life. And so we must exercise extreme caution in accusing a person of having committed this sin. Many people refuse to respond to the gospel, sometimes many times. Only God ultimately knows whether those refusals fall into the category of willful apostasy that Peter and the other New Testament writers are talking about.
But these passages do warn about a serious possibility, and we must not err on the other side and ignore the dire warnings they issue. The principle assumed in these warnings is that greater knowledge brings greater responsibility. “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded” (Luke 12:48). The principle lends new urgency to our proclamation of the gospel and people’s response to it. We must warn those who have begun to understand and appreciate the gospel that they may never have another opportunity of becoming saved. Their rejection could be final and eternal.
Concern about holiness in life. But we must not limit the principle of “greater responsibility” to non-Christians. To be sure, I am inclined to think that eternal damnation is not a real threat for the Christian. But the danger is that such a theological position will lead to smug satisfaction, a presumption on God’s grace. Belief in eternal security must not lead to unconcern about holiness of life. We may believe that God promises to preserve his saints to the end, but we must also recognize that it is in that very perseverance that the saints are recognized (see Heb. 3:6, 14). Thus we Christians are called to respond to the truth about God that we learn and are warned about the consequences if we fail to do so.
Those, like myself, who labor in a Christian academic environment are perhaps most prone to the danger of “barren learning.” Fascination with the Greek verbal system can blind us to what the Greek text is saying about God and his ways with us. Concern to organize and present coherently biblical material can eviscerate the text of its passion and practical significance as professors present it.
But this is not a problem confined to academia. “Cheap grace” is endemic among contemporary evangelicals. We constantly hear that God loves us, that Christ’s blood covers our sins, that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9)—precious promises, not to be toned down for a minute. The problem is that we don’t often enough hear that God is holy and terrible in his majesty, that he is just and cannot abide sin, that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body” (2 Cor. 5:10). The litmus test of our Christianity is not how much we know but the degree to which what we know affects our attitudes and actions. We Calvinists must be extremely careful that we do not allow our belief in or teaching about eternal security to remove or lessen the responsibility that God places on our shoulders to grow in the grace he so richly makes available.
Freedom and servitude. Another point of application emerges from the other side of this tragic “turn” that Peter warns against in these verses. If Christian truth is what these people are turning from, what are they turning toward? “Freedom,” they would apparently respond. And here we find a word that resonates positively with most people today. Political freedom is, in most of the world at least, viewed not only as desirable but as worth fighting for. Perhaps more relevantly, modern humanity also prizes freedom from external constraint. Few have gone as far as advocating anarchy, recognizing that society requires at least a minimum of rules and organization. But since the Enlightenment, it has been assumed that to be genuinely human is to be free to make up one’s own mind, to decide for oneself what is right and wrong, guided by conscience alone.
The false teachers in Peter’s day were apparently promising something like this. Yet, as Peter implies, such “freedom” is an illusion. Scripture makes clear that no person is autonomous in the strict sense. Every person is subject to someone or something; as Paul put it, “You are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness” (Rom. 6:16; cf. also John 8:31–36). The false teachers, as Peter points out, have exchanged one master for another: Exulting in their liberation from God’s holy requirements, they “are slaves of depravity.” This depravity or corruption is, since the Fall, endemic in human beings. It is that tendency to “be curved in our ourselves,” as the theologians used to put it, to make as our goal in life the satisfaction of our own desires. Without divine hindrance, this preoccupation with self rules people, determining their ways of thinking and their actions. In the gospel, God provides the only escape from this servitude of self: servitude of Jesus the Lord.
The question we must therefore insistently bring before the people of our generation is this: Which servitude is preferable? Many, attracted by the pleasures of power or of money or of sex, and swayed by the perverse imagery of the media, answer unhesitatingly: of self. These same people sometimes come face-to-face with the destructive results of their catering to self. I think of a woman who continued the pursuit of the “good life” after her marriage. One weekend she got drunk and had sex with two of her friends. When she confessed what had happened to her husband, her marriage was effectively at an end. She came to her counselor on Monday morning, sobbing uncontrollably over the husband and two children she had lost through her catering to the pleasures of self.
Though not a Christian, the Roman moralist Seneca put it well: “To be enslaved to oneself is the heaviest of all servitudes.” The indulgence of the flesh leads inexorably to enslavement to the flesh. As Peter puts it, “A man is a slave to whatever has mastered him” (v. 19). In a similar vein, Paul warns the Corinthians, whose watchword was, “Everything is permissible for me,” with this maxim, “I will not be mastered by anything” (1 Cor. 6:12).
As stewards of the gospel, we need to be bolder in warning about the terrible consequences of the self-indulgence that rules our culture. Peter minces few words here. He compares sinful self-indulgence to vomit and mud. Many of us probably shy away from such graphic characterizations of sin, fearing that we will be labeled extremists or unloving. But the increasing tendency for people in our churches to dabble in various forms of self-indulgence requires that we use fairly extreme language to help them see the modern promise of free expression for just what it is.
Modern false teachers. Finally, as I have throughout this chapter, I want to suggest some parallels between the false teachers and their modern counterparts. The images Peter uses in verse 17—“springs without water and mists driven by a storm”—make clear that the false teachers were impressive on the outside but hollow on the inside. They gave the appearance of being insightful spiritual mentors but did not have the reality.
We don’t know how these false teachers presented themselves or what stratagems they used to convince their listeners they were worth listening to. But we can imagine that they would do whatever was appropriate in that culture to give themselves an aura of authority and reliability. Similarly in our culture, if a person today wants to gain a following, he does not put on a robe and go out into the streets carrying a sign warning about the end of the world. Rather, he buys a closetful of expensive suits, learns to speak with a rhetorical flourish, rents big arenas or builds big churches, and charges people big bucks for getting in on the show. And many people are swept off their feet by such an impressive appearance of affluence and power.
Paul had to battle this problem in Corinth. False teachers, better looking than Paul, better dressed than Paul, and rhetorically more skilled than Paul, had invaded the church. Unlike him, they charged the people for their ministry. They seemed to be “strong”; Paul appeared “weak.” From the standpoint of the world, so it was, Paul admits. But what Paul urges the Corinthians to do is not to judge by appearance but by spiritual reality. Indeed, Paul claims, it was through his worldly weakness that God’s power could be more fully manifested (see 2 Cor. 10–13).
We must not make the same mistake as the Corinthians. We must not judge Christian leaders, teachers, and pastors by their appearance. We must not judge a Christian conference or seminar on the basis of the slickness of the advertising or the impressiveness of the facilities rented for it. We must not judge the content of a book by the artistry of its cover. God continues today to do his work through people and institutions that are not always the most impressive from the outside. His power is often “made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). We need to judge ministries by the truth they present and by the spiritual reality seen in the lives of the ministers and people who sit under those ministries.