Pesher – Peter and Paul

The Cambrian Pesher*

Day of St. Peter & St. Paul (June 29th), 2020

Beloved Friends,

In our Pentecost Pesher, I introduced Saint Peter’s prediction of a fiery end to the world. This can be found in his Second Epistle, chapter three. While some scholars will point out that the Greek terminology allows for a social destruction rather than a cosmic one, I think the Apostle’s association of this future event with the Flood of Noah suggests that he is describing more than a crisis of civilization. He is describing a natural disaster in which it might be impossible for human life to survive.

Survival Requires Salvation

In Peter’s First Epistle he offers a unique nuance, that the judgment itself is salvation:

When once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us . . . by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 3:20-21 (emphasis added)

The Flood was the thing which saved Noah and his family from an evil society which, likewise, baptism saves us today from an evil society “by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” So, then, we see that salvation is first and foremost a moral deliverance.

The question naturally follows: What is the thing that saves us from the thing that saves us? Meaning, in Noah’s case, what saved him from drowning in the Flood and in our case, from being incinerated in the Conflagration to come? The Apostle anticipates our question and reassures us in his second epistle:

The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.

– 2 Peter 2:9

In Noah’s case, he was commanded to build a life-pod in the form of a boat. But we should not forget that someone else was saved from the Deluge by a different mode:

And Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him.

– Genesis 5:24

General consensus among the Church Fathers is that Enoch, Noah’s great-grandfather, was translated and taken to heaven without experiencing death – a rapture of sorts. But in either case – whether by boat or by rapture – a moral transformation was required.

This interpretation is further supported in the verses which immediately follow in which Peter closes with this admonition:

Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.
And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;
As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

– 1 Peter 3:14-16

Notice how he says that the delay of this event extends the opportunity for “salvation.” While in contrast, he suggests that a misuse of these prophetic warnings can result in personal “destruction.”

The general tone and emphasis in this Epistle is that personal salvation as it is taught in traditional Christian doctrine is what is in view here: the finding of immortality in a spiritual rebirth resulting in a resurrection or translation, which like Enoch, makes us immune or sheltered from the harsh realities of a terrestrial cataclysm. Theologians envision that the resurrected body of Jesus was immortal and thus immune to the otherwise deadly environment of space, the Sun, and so forth. Christians, too, will someday have such bodies. There is no call to build a shelter or an ark, like Noah, because it does not appear that a Conflagration of this kind can be physically survived. The implication is that it can only be survived spiritually.

The Apostle invites us to compare this apocalyptic scenario just iterated in the previous verses with that of Saint Paul’s, noting that it is not an obscure teaching in the Bible. The end of the world is referenced in some way in “all” of Paul’s epistles, yet is also “hard to be understood” as commentators are given to misinterpretation. Evidently, there must be something unique about Paul’s teaching on Bible prophecy, which, like Peter’s, requires “wisdom” to understand. This danger for misinterpretation should give Bible scholars reason to pause; it might be that their hastily formed views on what they perceive as an obviously “literal” interpretation has a faulty premise. It might be that more is required of us than merely praying “the sinner’s prayer” and “accepting Jesus as our personal savior.” Let’s unpack this passage a little more.

“All Things New”

What are “the things” to which Peter is referring as an antecedent in his discussion and which can be found in “all” of Paul’s Epistles?

It is the description of the events which unfold in “the day of God” which result in a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth:

Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

verse 13

At first, we are tempted to find Paul’s correlative teachings in the easy “rapture-and-resurrection” texts he wrote in First and Second Thessalonians and others, like First Corinthians 15. But as I will show shortly, none of these references to personal salvation and resurrection can alone be identified as the antecedents of Peter’s “things” discussed earlier in the chapter:

Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water perished.
But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of evil men.

2 Peter 3:6-7

So, then, it is useful to know that according to Peter – and presumably Paul – the “heavens and earth” which we live in now are not the same “heavens and earth” which existed prior to the Deluge (v. 5) – it having been a world created for the habitation of Adam and his descendants.

The heaven and earth we live in now – post-Flood – is a creation that was made for Noah and his descendants. It is a different world from the one to come, which, as we suggest in Grail theology, is reserved for Jesus and His descendants:

Behold I and the children you have given unto me. . .
who shall be the heirs of salvation.

Hebrews 2:13 cf. 1:14

Consequently, “the things” are cosmic in scale and societal, not merely personal. They encompass “the heavens and the earth,” not just the human race.

Once and Done?

The best Pauline text to Peter’s subject of conversation here – the idea of a new heaven and a new earth – is found in the Epistle to the Hebrews:

And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands:
They shall perish, but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment;
And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed, but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.

Hebrews 1:10-12 (emphasis added)

We have here an interesting analogy which in some ways contradicts the choice of terms used by the translator. Paul argues that the world is like the use and caring of clothes. Clothes get soiled and fade, but can be revived through washing and dying: a normal activity in the ancient world. Modern man washes, bleaches and sometimes presses his clothes, but ancient man also re-dyed his clothes, as the making of clothes was expensive and time consuming.

So, the word “perish” in the text does not fit the analogy (and our Greek scholars will note that the original word – apollumi – here does not always denote a destruction of the thing that we normally associate with the word “perish”). In this case, the Earth and Sky are destroyed to the exclusion of “the foundation of the earth” which presumably remains. Further, we cannot imagine that the term “heavens” includes the heaven where God dwells, as it would imply the destruction of the angelic and raptured hosts and even of God Himself!

The Apostle says the cosmos will be renewed like a change of clothes through a process of rejuvenation. Clothes are not worn and then discarded. They, too, are re-used after a process of rejuvenation. It is important to understand what the Apostle is inferring here: a rejuvenation of the “foundations” by a removal of Earth and Sky replaced with a new Earth and Sky.

He is arguing that to live in this rejuvenated world of the future we must be rejuvenated men. So, personal salvation is important to us individually who want to fit into God’s great cosmic plan.

To summarize, biblical revelation specifically refers to four creations in which a recreation in this sense has and will occur: the world which pre-existed the Genesis Creation story and is alluded to in Genesis 1:2. We know of no survivors from that period, unless perhaps, somehow, the angelic hosts are representative of those survivors.

Second, the world of the Patriarchal Age began with Adam and ended with the Flood of Noah in Genesis 1 through 8. Noah, his family and presumably Enoch are the only survivors of that age.

Third, the world of the National Age following the Flood which we live in today. The progenitors of these 70 nations are identified in Genesis chapter 11.

And finally, there is the world to come following the cataclysm of the Apostles’ warnings and of prophetic literature. This will be the great Age of the Messianic Church.

We believe that the first world perished and was renewed following a solar nova. The world of our time which followed the Great Flood of Genesis was the result of an interim renovation from a lesser nova event. The life-pod for its survivors was Noah’s Ark.

The future cataclysm which appears to be imminent will be a greater nova. What will be our “life-pod” or is a “Rapture” the only way out? That question will be explored in future Peshers.

Scientists believe they have found many extinction-level-events recorded in the Earth’s crust. These ELE’s were accompanied by magnetic field reversals and ice ages. Biblical revelation spans only four of them.

In each case, the new worlds occur on the same terra firma of Earth. The physical realities of space, the sky and the plain remain. As Paul tells us in the text above, the notion of a world which “perishes” really means the process of “changing,” not annihilation.

The Gnosis

Today is the festal day for St. Peter and St. Paul, who according to tradition, were matryred at the hand of the Emperor Nero, both dying in Rome in the same year.

Unlike the Gnostics of later times who taught the acquisition of knowledge and power through psychic and/or intellectual pursuits, the Apostles taught a knowledge acquired through virtue and a true power through wisdom. The Gnostics avoided the demands of our physical existence and held in contempt its needs and wants. In contrast the Apostles taught a wisdom that can only come through embracing the sufferings of our condition: sufferings which teach virtue and wisdom. They proved its value by fearlessly embracing the ultimate test of God’s gauntlet: death itself.

Take heart from their courage.

A servant of Jesus,
James

Collect for the Day
Almighty God, whose blessed apostles Peter and Paul glorified you by their martyrdom: Grant that your Church, instructed by their teaching and example, and knit together in unity by your Spirit, may ever stand firm upon the one foundation, which is Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

*Cambrian Pesher is the pastoral epistle of the Cambrian Episcopal Church of the Grail, a fellowship and abbey adhering to a spiritual tradition from ancient Wales. We use the Authorized Version of the Bible (King James Version) as our default translation and the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopalian Church for liturgical guidance.
Copyright is reserved to the Cambrian Episcopal Church of the Grail