The Late, Great Planet Jerusalem: A Historical, Canonical Reading of II Peter 3 (Part III)

Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. (II Peter 3:11-13)
Again, in this passage, λύω is translated “dissolved”, however, this can again be read as “loosed”. This has implications later in verse 11, where Peter asks, “what sort of persons ought you to be…waiting for and hastening the coming (parousia) of the day of God…” In this passage, “hastening” is translated from the Greek σεύδω (speudo) which means “to speed”. σεύδω comes from πούς (pous) which means “foot” or “footstool”. This could be seen as alluding to I Corinthians 15:22-28, Psalms 110, and Psalms 8:6 which refer to placing all things under Christ’s feet. The reader’s of II Peter, the Church, the Body of Christ, are to hasten the parousia of the Lord, by putting all things under Christ’s feet. The reader’s of II Peter would have understood that Christ is sitting at the right hand of God as articulated in Mark 16:19, “After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.” However, they would have also understood that the Church is the Body of Christ. Colossians 1:17-18 reads, “He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church…” Likewise, in Ephesians 1:22-23, Paul writes, “And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” As Ansell writes, “Paul, in describing Christ as ‘head’ of the body in Ephesians 1:22 (and Colossians 1:18), echoes the idea of Nebuchadnezzar as the head of gold in Daniel 2:38 whose rule is to be continued by others.”[1] The Church is to both embody and continue, or “flesh out”[2] what Christ began. The Church, therefore, is to place everything under Christ’s feet. The readers of II Peter are to “hasten” the parousia; the parousia of which Peter is referring to commenced at the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D.[3]
In verse 13, Peter uses the phrase “new heavens and a new earth”, an obvious allusion to Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22 but the connection of II Peter 3 and the passages in Isaiah is not so obvious from our contemporary perspective. Again we must return to a study on Isaiah to understand the meaning Peter is attempting to convey. As argued above, when Isaiah is discussing the “earth”, he is referring to the Jerusalem which is viewed by his contemporary audience “as a microcosm of the whole world”[4]. Also, as posited above, Isaiah does not redirect his focus from the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple of which he prophesizes to some still future, eschatological event. This also applies to when Isaiah discusses the “the new heavens and the new earth” in 65:17 and 66:22. Here, in Isaiah, “the new heavens and the new earth” is referring to the return of the scattered inhabitants of 24:1 from exile in Babylon to Jerusalem, and the subsequent reconstruction of a “New Jerusalem”. As Brueggemann writes, “It is Jerusalem that is imagined healed, restored, ransomed, forgiven (65:18-19).”[5] This “healed, restored, ransomed, forgiven” Jerusalem has again degraded and is the “present heavens and earth” found in II Peter 3:7.
Returning to II Peter 3, Peter writes of “new heavens and a new earth” which is connected to “the new heavens and the new earth” of Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22, not in referring to the same future event, but simply as an allusion to a similar historical and canonical event. Isaiah is referring to the reconstruction of Jerusalem and the Temple[6] following their destruction at the hands of the Babylonians in 587-586 B.C.E., and Peter is referring to the construction of the “New Jerusalem” (Revelation 21:2) and a New World Order following the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Roman Empire in 70 A.D. and the end of the Old World Order.
[1] Nicholas John Ansell, “Commentary: Genesis 1:27f, Daniel 2:35 and Ephesians 1:22f”, Third Way, Vol. 25/1, February 2002, 24.
[2] Ansell, “Commentary: Genesis 1:27f, Daniel 2:35 and Ephesians 1:22f”,24. “ In Ephesians 1, the fullness of the divine presence that is concentrated in Christ is extended to (and through) his followers, who embody and further ‘flesh out’ this messianic reality. This is what that all too familiar phrase ‘the body of Christ’ means.”
[3] The Church today, however, is still called to “embody and further ‘flesh out’” the Body of Christ, placing all things under Christ’s feet until God is “all in all”. I Corinthians 15:28 reads, “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.” When the Church has put everything under Christ’s feet, the Kingdom will be fully realized and God will be “all in all”; “all the earth shall be filled with the glory of Jehovah" (Numbers 14:21).
[4] Ansell, “An Apocalyptic Appendix”, 413.
[5] Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39, 2 and Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66, 2. Emphasis Brueggemann’s.
[6] This reconstruction began in approximately 539 B.C.E. when Babylon was conquered by Cyrus who “subsequently issued a decree that provided for the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple (Ezra 1:1-11).” Shanks, ed., Ancient Israel, 218.