The first portion of this article was based on the fact that Peter, in writing his epistle at the close of his life, was drawing on the past with its unique experience of association with his Master, which coloured all his reminiscences and made Jesus Christ the dominant factor in his life.

Foundation Of The Ecclesia

Much has been written and said about the statement of Jesus to Peter : “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”¹⁴ The Roman Catholic Church finds in it an interpretation suitable to itself, for it claims that Jesus made Peter the foundation on which his Church was to be built. They affirm that Peter was the first bishop of Rome, and so they claim that the Ecclesia of Christ and the Church of Rome are one and the same. But we find nothing in the Epistle of Peter to justify such an assumption.

In turning to the incident in Matt. 16, we find that Peter, when asked by Jesus, “Whom say ye that I?” replies, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In his reply, Jesus follows the pattern of Peter’s confession, “Thou art Christ”, by using the words, “Thou art Peter.” By spiritual insight, which was a gift from God, Peter perceived the identity of Jesus—by the same spiritual insight Jesus perceived and proclaimed the hidden qualities of Simon Barjona. Jesus had prophetically seen those qualities when he had first met him, for he had then told him, “Thou art Simon the son of Jona : thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone.”¹⁵ The confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi showed the change that was taking place in the development of Simon into Peter, a process which even then was a long way from completion. Only a short while after this flash of insight, the natural impulses of affection blinded Peter to the fact that the Christ of God was destined to bear a cross, that the “sufferings of Christ” must precede “the glory that shall follow.” ¹⁶ We read in Matthew 16. 22 :

“Then Peter took (literally : took hold of) him and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord : this shall not be unto thee. But he (Jesus) turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me Satan : thou art an offence unto me : for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”

Now it is not the newly awakened Peter who speaks, but a satan (or adversary) of Christ. In contrast to the, “Thou art Peter” of the previous commendation, Jesus says, “Thou art an offence (or stumbling block) unto me.- The Greek word Petros, from which the name Peter is derived, means a “stone or piece of rock”, and here Jesus is telling him that, instead of being a stone which might be used in building up God’s Ecclesia, he had become a stone of stumbling in the path of Jesus, by trying to dissuade him from the path of suffering which God had decreed he should traverse.

When Peter was writing his epistle many years afterwards, there was no trace of the suggestion that he had been singled out from all other disciples to be the rock foundation of the Church. In his mind, the centre of the whole purpose of God was Jesus Christ,

“to whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God precious. Ye also as lively (R.V. living) stones are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious ; and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.”¹⁷

Jesus is the chief corner stone, the key-stone from which the lines of God’s house follow its length, breadth and height. If that stone is true and symmetrical, then the design of the completed house will be a joy to look upon. As the apostle Paul wrote to the Ecclesia at Corinth, “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”¹⁸

Spirits In Prison (1 Pet. 3. 18-22)

Much has been said and written about this difficult passage. The orthodox christian interpretation is that it refers to a special mission carried out by Jesus between his death and resurrection, when he (according to the Apostle’s Creed) “des­cended into hell” to preach to the souls (or spirits) of those who were disobedient to the preaching of Noah. But if this is so, we may ask why were those people singled out to the exclusion of all others, for this excep­tional work, and it implies that they would be kept in hell apart from all others.

To support this view of the passage, orthodox believers quote :

“For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh but live according to God in the spirit.” ¹⁹

Our interpretation must be influenced by the meaning of the word “hell”. The Hebrew word “shear and the Greek word “hades” are interchangeable, and the word “sheol” is usually translated as “grave” or “hell”.

“In the grave who shall give thee thanks ?”²⁰ “There is no work, nor device nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest.”²¹ “The grave cannot praise thee ; death cannot celebrate thee : they that go down the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day.”²²

From these quotations, and many more which might be cited, “the grave” and “hell” are synonymous : the word refers to the condition of death as opposed to the con­dition of life, and is a state of not-being.

It is significant in the passage in question that no mention is made of “hell”. The idea is imported into it by those who claim that it teaches it. In their minds, “spirits in prison” is equivalent to “souls in hell”.

There is another explanation of the passage, held by Luther and other commen­tators. Since the following verse reads, “which sometimes were disobedient, when once the longsuffcring of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water,” the time of preaching must have been “in the days of Noah”.

Can this interpretation be justified?

We have given negative proof why the orthodox explanation is not acceptable. Is there any positive evidence for the alterna­tive interpretation ? First, let us deal with the passage—”the gospel (was) preached to them are dead.” gospel (was) preached to them that are dead.” Like so many passages used by Peter in his epistle, we can hear an echo of the voice of Jesus. On one occasion, he had said, “Let the dead bury their dead”,²³ while on another occasion he said, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God : and they that hear shall live.”²⁴ In both these instances Jesus is speaking of people living normal, mortal lives, and the word “dead” is used, not in a physical sense, but in the sense of their relationship to God. The apostle Paul, in his epistle to the Ephesians, writes of the members of the Ephesian ecclesia “who were dead in trespasses and sins.”²⁵ It is of these “dead” that Peter is thinking when he writes of them in his epistle.

What does the expression, “spirits in prison”, mean? There is a significant passage in Isaiah 61. 1 which appears to have a direct bearing on our question.

“The spirit of God is upon me ; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken ­hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”

Here the “prison” is the condition of sin and death into which all human beings are born and it shows how Jesus is the only liberator from this state of captivity. The expression “spirits in prison” refers, not to a special section of humanity, but to all human beings, and Peter is writing about the human beings who, in the time of Noah, were offered a way of escape and refused to accept it.

But the difficulty remains that we are told that “he ( Jesus) preached to the spirits in prison”. How do we understand this? Does this mean that Jesus pre-existed and specially appeared and preached to the antidiluvian world?

Let us look at the following sentence:

“For Christ once suffered for sins, tho just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but quickened by the spirit, by (or in) which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison.” Earlier in his epistle Peter writes, “Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you : searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.”²⁶

The Spirit of Christ was therefore present in all those who spoke in the name of God about the coming Christ, and in that sense Christ was speaking in them.

Again, in the second epistle, Peter wrote that God “spared not the old world but saved Noah, the eigth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly.”²⁷

From these passages in the epistle of Peter, we can find a consistency of thought that Christ preached to the spirits in prison in the sense that Noah preached by the Spirit of Christ to those around him, offering to them the opportunity of repentance and salvation.

Conclusion

These epistles reveal Peter as the disciple who has learnt much from his Master. Humility is the key-note to the epistles—a quality which was unknown to Simon Barjona. The living stone which Jesus had perceived in him had been shaped by the chisels of human experience ; many rough edges had been chipped away, and the stone was becoming straight and true, so that it might fit perfectly into the building of the Temple of God.

In the gospels, the figure of Peter is portrayed in strong contrast to the personality of Jesus Christ. His weaknesses, his impulses, reveal in him all the mixture of the average human life, while his Master isrevealed as the man among men. And as we look into the gospels and see this figure of Peter, we see ourselves. As we turn and look at his reflection in his epistles, we see one who has grown in stature, who is more tolerant, more patient, more humble than the man he had been : one who had indeed learnt much from the example of Jesus—who had followed and would follow him into the gates of death.

References

14—Matt. 16. 18

15—John 1. 42

16-I Peter 1. 11

17—I Peter 2. 4.6

18—I Cor. 3. 11

19—I Peter 4. 6

20—Psalm 6. 5

21—Ecclesiastes 9. 10

22—Isaiah 38. 18-19

23—Luke 9. 60

24—John 5. 25

25—Ephesians 2. 1

26-I Peter 1. 10-11

27-11 Peter 2. 5