Our Forthcoming Life Group Study of Peter

Before the Life group which my wife and I are part of began its summer break, I distributed copies of the following to its members:

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On Ray’s suggestion, we’re going to study the apostle Peter next. Peter was a leader among the twelve disciples and in the early church and, according to Roman Catholics, the first pope.

In preparing for our study of Peter, I’ve been guided by chapter 5, “The Biographical Method of Bible Study,” of Rick Warren’s Dynamic Study Methods, Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1981. Warren recommends using these steps in studying a Biblical person:
1. Select the Bible personage you want to study.
2. Make a list of all the references about that person.
3. Write down first impressions (first reading).
4. Make a chronological outline (second reading).
5. Get some insights into the person (third reading).
6. Identify some character qualities (fourth reading).
7. Show how some other Bible truths are illustrated in his life.
8. Summarize the main lesson(s).
9. Write out a personal application.
10. Make your study transferable.
Instead of asking you to do steps 2 and 4, I’ve prepared a list of the key events in Peter’s life. We’ll devote a week to each of the events listed except the last two, considering what the event shows about Peter (steps 5 and 6) and how it applies to us (step 9). After we complete our study of the life of Peter, we’ll study 1 and 2 Peter.

Some Key Events in Peter’s life:
– He was called to be a disciple (Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11; John 1:35-42) and appointed to be an apostle (Matthew 10:1-4; Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16).
– He walked on water (Matthew 14:22-33; Mark 6:45-51).
– He confessed Jesus to be the Christ (Matthew 16:13-19; Mark 8:27-29; Luke 9:18-20).
– He witnessed the transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-8; Mark 9:2-8; Luke 9:28-36).
– He denied that he knew Jesus (Matthew 26:69-75; Mark 14:66-72; Luke 22:54-62; John 18:15-18, 25-27).
– He was reinstated by Jesus (John 21).
– He spoke to the crowd on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-41).
– He healed a lame beggar and spoke to the people and to the Sanhedrin (Acts 3:1-4:21).
– He denounced Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11).
– He encountered Simon the sorcerer in Samaria (Acts 8:14-15).
– He healed Aeneas and raised Dorcas from the dead (Acts 9:32-43).
– He preached in the house of Cornelius and defended his doing so (Acts 10:1-11:18).
– He was arrested and escaped from prison miraculously (Acts 12:1-19).
– He was confronted by Paul in Antioch of Syria (Galatians 2:11-14) and appeared in the conference at Jerusalem (Acts 15:1-29)
– He wrote 1 and 2 Peter, probably from Rome (see 1 Peter 5:13).
– He was martyred in Rome (tradition).

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Since then I’ve compiled this list of articles and books which I plan to consult besides Bible commentaries in preparing for our study of the life and writings of Simon Peter:
– Brigham Young University’s Religious Studies Center, “Simon Peter”
(https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/peter-and-popes/simon-peter)
– Encyclopedia Britannica, “St. Peter the Apostle”
(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Peter-the-Apostle)
– Wikipedia, “Saint Peter” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Peter)
– The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, “Peter” (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986)
– The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, “Peter” (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1962)
– Bockmuehl, Markus, Simon Peter in Scripture and Memory (Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2012)
– Helyer, Larry R. The Life and Witness of Peter (IVP Academic, Downer’s Grove, Illinois, 2012)
– Hengel, Martin, Saint Peter: The Underestimated Apostle (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2010)
I would appreciate suggestions of other articles and books which might be helpful to me in preparing for the study.

While our Life group is studying the life and writings of Peter, I’ll post reports on our study at Bob’s Corner. However even before we begin the study I plan to post articles on two topics which are relevant to the life and writings of Simon Peter but which our group won’t likely study, one on the claim of the Roman Catholic Church that Peter was its first pope and the other on the authorship of 1 Peter and 2 Peter. I intend to post them on August 10 and 24.

On the other Fridays before our Life group begins its study and in weeks in which the group doesn’t meet, I’ll continue posting articles on my readings from Great Books of the Western World. I hope to post in August the following on readings assigned in Foundations of Science and Mathematics, volume 3 of The Great Ideas Program:
August 3 – Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
August 17 – Kepler’s Epitome of Copernican Astronomy
August 31 – Galileo’s The Two New Sciences

8. Hobbes’s Leviathan

In an earlier article, https://opentheism.wordpress.com/2017/05/15/hobbess-leviathan/, I presented Thomas Hobbes’s view that a nation’s sovereign should have absolute power. In this article I’ll consider how he applies that view when civil law and religious belief are in conflict, guided by Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain in the eighth reading of volume 4, Religion and Theology, of The Great Ideas Program (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1961). The reading is on Chapter 12, “Of Religion”; Chapter 31, “Of the Kingdom of God by Nature”; and Part III (Chapters 32-43), “Of a Christian Commonwealth,” of Hobbes’s Leviathan. I’ll just share and comment on two of the quotations which Adler and Cain make from Leviathan and one of the questions which they raise at the end of the reading.

“I define a Church to be: a company of men professing Christian religion, united in the person of one sovereign: at whose command they ought to assemble, and without whose authority they ought not to assemble.… [A] Church … is the same thing with a civil Commonwealth consisting of Christian men; and is called a civil state, for that the subjects of it are all men; and a Church, for that the subjects thereof are Christians. Temporal and spiritual government are but two words brought into the world to make men see double and mistake their lawful sovereign.” (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, in volume 23 of Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952).

Hobbes viewed Christian sovereigns to be descendants of Abraham, Moses, the high priests (whom Hobbes claimed on the basis of Numbers 27:21 were sovereigns over Israel between Moses and Saul), and the kings who governed Israel by means of a covenant between God and the people of Israel. Thus he argued that Christians should obey them in both civil and religious matters, claiming that the role of the clergy is just to prepare people for the heavenly kingdom. He also argued that Christians should obey non-Christian sovereigns in the same way. How far he went is illustrated in this passage in which he considers what Christians should do if their sovereign forbids them to believe in Christ.

“To this I answer that such forbidding is of no effect; because belief and unbelief never follow men’s commands. Faith is a gift of God which man can never give nor take away by promises of rewards or menaces of torture. And … what if we were commanded by our lawful prince to say with our tongue we believe not; must we obey such command? Profession with the tongue is but an external thing, and no more than any other gesture whereby we signify our obedience; … whatsoever a subject … is compelled to in obedience to his sovereign, and doth it not in order to his own mind, but in order to the laws of his country, that action is not his, but his sovereign’s; nor is it he that in this case denieth Christ before men, but his governor, and the law of his country.” (Hobbes, Leviathan, pages 245-246)

Adler and Cain ask, “Do Scriptures support Hobbes’s contention that the civil authority should rule in religious affairs?” (Adler and Cain, Religion and Theology, page 138) They point out that in the Old Testament there were prophets who struggled against kings whom they condemned as godless men. They also refer to Jesus’s injunction, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21, ESV; all Scriptural quotations are from the ESV) and observe that in the early church staunch believers chose civil disobedience and possible martyrdom when imperial edicts conflicted with Christian faith. I agree with Adler and Cain that the Bible doesn’t support Hobbes’s contention. Moreover I think that the context of a Scriptural passage which he cited in support of it, Numbers 27:21 (see above), indicates otherwise, God’s telling Moses to “invest [Joshua] with some of your authority, that all the congregation of the people of Israel may obey” (Numbers 27:20). Thus God ordained that Joshua (and the judges) would have power in Israel as well as the high priest.

7. Dante’s The Divine Comedy

At rare moments in a cultural tradition, great works are created which sum up all the strands of thought and imagination that have gone into the making of that tradition. Such a unifying work is usually the work of a poetic genius. In the case of Western Christendom, that moment comes in the early part of the 14th century; the work is The Divine Comedy, and the poet is Dante Alighieri. (Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain, Religion and Theology, volume 4 of The Great Ideas Program, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1961, page 109)

Thus Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain introduce their guide to Dante’s The Divine Comedy, which I’ve now reached in my rereading of selections from Great Books of the Western World guided by The Great Ideas Program. They conclude their introduction to The Divine Comedy with this claim regarding it, “The result is both a literary masterpiece and an unforgettable view of man’s spiritual nature and destiny” (Adler and Wolff, page 110).

Adler and Wolff go on to: (I) consider the purpose and subject of The Divine Comedy; (II) survey its first two sections, “Hell” and “Purgatory;” (III) introduce the assigned reading, “Paradise;” (IV) identify and explain the significance of the figures that Dante meets in his ascent through Paradise; and (V) discuss three questions which they ask on Dante and The Divine Comedy. Here I’ll sketch the life of Dante, note what Adler and Wolff say about the purpose and subject of The Divine Comedy, and pose the three questions asked by Adler and Wolff.

Dante
Dante was born in Florence, Italy, in 1265. He received a rich education in classical and religious subjects. His idealized love for a beautiful girl, Beatrice Portinari, provided much inspiration for his writings. However, although grief-stricken by her early death, shortly afterwards he married Gemma Donati and they had at least three children.
Dante was active in the political and military life of Florence. He became involved in a political dispute between two groups, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. A group within the Guelphs that was hostile to Dante gained control of Florence about 1300 and banished Dante. He spent the last few years of his exile in Ravenna, where he died in 1321.
Dante began working on The Divine Comedy in about 1308 and completed it in 1321. It was his masterpiece, but his other works also “hold an important place in the history of Italian literature and make their essential contribution to the formation of a literary awareness and tradition, establishing new literary forms and new aims of thought” (The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1974, volume 5, page 481).

The Purpose and Subject of The Divine Comedy
The original title of the work was The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, with “comedy” referring to its happy ending at the throne of God. “Divine” was added in the 16th century, expressing admiration for its high quality as well as indicating its sacred theme. Dante’s aim was to affect human character and action. In a letter to his patron he wrote: “The subject of the whole work, taken merely in its literal sense, is the state of souls after death, considered simply as a fact. But if the work is understood in its allegorical intention, the subject of it is man, according as, by his deserts and demerits in the use of his free will, he is justly open to rewards and punishments.” (Adler and Wolff, page 111)

Questions asked by Adler and Wolff:
1. Are we to take Dante’s story as an imaginative fiction or as an allegory of religious truth?
2. Who was Beatrice? What does she represent in the poem?
3. What are Dante’s theological views?