Christogenea Commentary on the Epistles of James, Peter and Jude

James Chapters 4 and 5 - Christogenea on Talkshoe 01-20-2012

Here, because of its importance, and because of the ways in which the chapter is abused, I thought to repeat James chapter 3, and to present it in a manner a little more pointed than how it was presented last week.

III 1 You must not produce many teachers, my brethren, knowing that we shall receive a greater judgment. 2 For we all fail often! If anyone does not fail in word, he is a perfect man able to guide with a bridle even the whole body. 3 Even if the bridles of horses are put into their mouths for which to persuade them for us, then we maneuver their whole body. 4 Behold also, there are such great ships, and being driven by severe winds, maneuvered by the smallest rudder, being driven straight where impulse desires. 5 Thusly also the tongue is a small body-part and boasts loudly. Behold how small a fire ignites so great a forest! 6 And the tongue is a fire, an ornament of injustice. The tongue sits among our body-parts soiling the whole body and setting ablaze the course of existence, and being burned by Gehenna!

Gehenna, the destruction caused by the fiery trials of this life, the wars and strife caused by the tongue. All of these things are of course true, but we must consider how and what kind of speech causes men to slip. And in whose perception do men slip? One man may think that you have erred when he does not like what you say. But what is sin, to slip in the eyes of man? Or to slip in the eyes of God? It may well be that man's pride which causes him to think badly about you. Therefore we have only one Judge: Yahshua Christ, and one Guide, which is His Word.

1 Peter Chapter 2 - Christogenea on Talkshoe 03-09-2012

Discussing the first chapter of 1 Peter we saw that Peter was indeed addressing the uncircumcision, who were Israelites of the Old Kingdom that were dispersed in ancient times, which Peter by this time had fully understood, even though he had not understood it at the time of the events which were described in Acts chapter 10, which actually occurred some years before the writing of this epistle. We also saw how Peter directly connected the Old Testament and the New where he wrote of things such as the “foreknowledge of Father Yahweh in a sanctification of the Spirit in obedience and a sprinkling of the blood of Yahshua Christ”, which we see in the opening lines of this epistle.

Many universalists take the famous vision of Peter found in Acts chapter 10 and insist upon applying it to everyone on the face of the earth, although some numbskulls would instead insist that it applies to the eating of ham sandwiches. The primary key to understanding what Yahweh intended in His vision to Peter is at Acts 10:15 where it is recorded that He says to Peter: “The things which Yahweh has cleansed, you do not deem profane!” Yahweh told us in the Old Testament precisely what it was that He would cleanse. Any imagining of man as to what the object of the cleansing could be, which does not explicitly come from Scripture, is a false gospel. Among many other promises of that cleansing and its pertinence to Israel alone, we have these from Jeremiah and Ezekiel:

Jeremiah 33:8: “And I will cleanse them [Israel] from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me.”

Ezekiel 36:25 “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.”

2 Peter Chapters 1 through 3 - Christogenea on Talkshoe 03-23-2012

Here are the comments of Eusebius on 2 Peter, from his Ecclesiastical History, Book 3: Chapter III. The Epistles of the Apostles.

“1 One epistle of Peter, that called the first, is acknowledged as genuine. And this the ancient elders used freely in their own writings as an undisputed work. But we have learned that his extant second Epistle does not belong to the canon; yet, as it has appeared profitable to many, it has been used with the other Scriptures. 2 The so-called Acts of Peter, however, and the Gospel which bears his name, and the Preaching and the Apocalypse, as they are called, we know have not been universally accepted, because no ecclesiastical writer, ancient or modern, has made use of testimonies drawn from them. 3 But in the course of my history I shall be careful to show, in addition to the official succession, what ecclesiastical writers have from time to time made use of any of the disputed works, and what they have said in regard to the canonical and accepted writings, as well as in regard to those which are not of this class.” From a footnote (20): “Although disputed by many, as already remarked, and consequently not looked upon as certainly canonical until the end of the fourth century, the epistle was yet used, as Eusebius says, quite widely from the time of Origen on, e.g. by Origen, Firmilian, Cyprian, Hippolytus, Methodius, etc. The same is true, however, of other writings, which the Church afterward placed among the Apocrypha.”

Translated by Arthur Cushman McGiffert. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 1. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890.)

So Eusebius doubted the legitimacy of the Second Epistle of Peter, but Cyprian and Hippolytus and other later Christian writers quoted from it. Eusebius was not, in my perception, a bad man. He wrote a lot of good things which we can certainly find to be agreeable. This is even in spite of the fact that his attitudes in many instances were very Roman Catholic, before there were any Roman Catholics as we know them, and therefore to me he was a proto-Catholic, in the later and perverted sense of the word. I would not necessarily expect all of the earliest Christian writers to even know of an epistle which Peter had written to only a few of the assemblies of Anatolia, and imagine that it may well have taken some time to get around. Especially since Eusebius claimed only that “we have learned that his extant second Epistle does not belong to the canon”, yet Eusebius does not ever state how such a thing had actually been learned, and therefore his statement amounts to hearsay against those writers earlier than he was, namely Cyprian and Hippolytus, who did accept the epistle as genuine. There are further allusions to the epistle, or so it seems, in the writings of Clement and Justin.

2 Peter Chapter 3 - Christogenea on Talkshoe 04-06-2012

Peter wrote his first epistle to the Israelites of the ancient Assyrian and earlier dispersions, who were dwelling in western Anatolia, mostly as Greeks, Romans, Scythians and Galatians. People of other Adamic, but non-Israelite, origins also lived in western Anatolia at this time, such as Ionian Greeks and Lydians. The context of his first epistle also demonstrates that these people were already established in Christ, and that Peter was only edifying that establishment. Presenting Peter's first epistle here several weeks ago, certain statements from that first letter were illustrated in order to demonstrate just who his intended audience was. Among them were 1 Peter 2:10, 2:25 and 4:3 which all prove that Peter was not writing to Judaeans, but to the dispersion of Israel from the Assyrian deportations and beforetime, because the things which Peter cites could only refer to them, and could never refer to the Judaeans of the remnant 70-weeks' Kingdom, nor could they ever refer to people who were not descended from the ancient Israelites in the first place.