1 & 2 Peter and Jude

The epistles of 1 & 2 Peter and Jude provide Christians with guidance on how to rightly respond to suffering, trials and persecution; provide instruction to church leaders on how to shepherd the congregations under their care; offer inspired teaching regarding God's intended consummation of history; and respond to those teachers who criticize the Christian doctrine presented by Jesus and His apostles.  In fact, it has been said of 2 Peter that few documents in theological literature contain such a depth of the Christian message and its ramification for history as does 2 Peter:  the source of “true knowledge;” inspiration, revelation, and inerrancy; creation, fall, restoration, and redemption; Christ as lord and the authority of His chosen apostles; and the three “ages” – or epochs – of earth’s history.

The Introductory Studies work through key issues unique to these epistles.  Should 2 Peter even be in our New Testaments given its relatively weak external support versus its quite strong internal support, and given the pronounced contrast in style to 1 Peter?  What is the relationship of 2 Peter to Jude given their strongly overlapping topics and language and content?  Does Jude make use of extra-Biblical, apocryphal literature?  If so, what does that say about the early church’s attitude toward and acceptance of such works?  And in the case of 1 Peter, do the disciplines of Form Criticism or Social Science Criticism help us with understanding this epistle and its content?

It is clear that Peter wants his readers to be confident that Christianity is the only genuine religion whereby the grace of God can be experienced.  Because of this, he extols the glories of our salvation, the exalted position of the church as the living temple of God, and the spiritual blessings that can accrue from sufferings.  Throughout his first epistle, Peter bases his exhortations on his own eyewitness testimony to Jesus’ own life, teaching, and example; throughout his first epistle, it often seems that Peter is recalling his own “Great Days with Jesus,” and points to those days as the basis for the doctrine and exhortations he pens.  And in his second epistle, Peter provides his readers with an extended description of the overt evidences by which his readers can positively know of their calling and salvation, of their participation in the grace of Christ, and by which they can be assured that the “entrance into the eternal kingdom will be abundantly supplied” to them (2 Peter 1:11).

The epistles of Peter and Jude can play a key role in the 21^st century church's attempt to correct the cultural drift and to arrest the slide into Gnostic-like New Age ideas that have become part of the average Christian's worldview.  The religion taught by Jesus and His apostles is still the "grace of God" - "stand firm in it!" and "contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints!"