2 Peter & Jude (TNTC) by Michael Green

Author:Michael Green [Green, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Books & Bibles, Bible Study & Reference, Bible Study, New Testament, Religion & Spirituality, New Testament Study
ISBN: 9781783593415
Amazon: B00V8DX6SQ
Publisher: IVP
Published: 2009-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

e. The emptiness of the false teachers (2:17–22)

17. After his excursus on Balaam, Peter returns to the attack. The seducers are described in two brilliant metaphors.

They are springs without water. This describes the unsatisfactory nature of the false teaching. You come to it as to an exciting new spring—and find it has no water to offer.18 It is only the man in touch with Christ, the water of life (John 4:13–14), who will find lasting satisfaction, and, indeed, will pour out of his inner being water that will satisfy the thirsty round about (John 7:38). Heterodoxy is all very novel in the classroom; it is extremely unsatisfying in the parish.

They are also mists driven by a storm. Aristotle (Meteor. 1.34b) tells us that the homichlē is the haze which heralds dry weather, but is so easily dispersed by a sharp gust of wind. This describes the instability of the false teachers and the ephemeral nature of their teachings. You have only to visit a second-hand theological bookshop, with its piles of unsaleable rubbish, once the latest thing in theological audacity, to see the force of this. As for the darkness reserved for the heretics, Calvin writes, ‘In place of the momentary darkness which they now cast, there is prepared for them a much thicker and eternal one.’ Surely he has understood the link between the errorists’ crime and punishment, which has escaped most commentators, who complain that darkness is a very inappropriate doom for mists or springs!

The phraseology in this verse is poetic and grandiose. It is interesting to see how many Homeric and tragic words like zophos (‘darkness’), phthengomai (‘to utter’), homichlai (‘mists’) passed into common use in koinē Greek and, indeed, have reappeared in modern Greek. The rareness of homichlai in the New Testament and the reading of nephelai in the parallel passage, Jude 12, has induced the insertion of nephelai for homichlai here in some MSS—wrongly.

18. They mouth big, ponderous words (hyperonka, swelling, means ‘unnaturally swollen’, can also mean ‘bombastic, haughty’) in their discourses (this is the nuance of phthengomenoi); but they are words which amount to nothing of significance (mataiotētos is a descriptive genitive, empty). Ostentatious verbosity was their weapon to ensnare the unwary, and licentiousness was the bait on their hook, i.e. by appealing to the lustful desires of human nature, they entice …’. For deleazō (‘ensnare’, entice) see on verse 14. Aselgeiais is extremely difficult syntactically. Is it in apposition to ‘the desires of the flesh’? Or is it an instrumental dative, ‘by shameless immorality’? At all events ‘grandiose sophistry is the hook, filthy lust is the bait’ (Bigg).

No doubt these teachers maintained that the salvation of the immortal soul was all that mattered. Once that was secured through the knowledge (gnōsis) which they themselves could impart to disciples, then it mattered little what a man did with his body. They may have suggested that the deeply spiritual should express their religion sexually, as some second-century heretics did. Paul had to face similar false

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