If our spiritual growth comes through knowledge of God, where do we get that knowledge? Peter now points us toward the only reliable source of information about God—what he has revealed about himself.
In Peter’s day the Apostles were still living, and they were those to whom the Spirit was uniquely given to recall Jesus’ teaching perfectly and relay it inerrantly (Jn 14.26). So Peter points his readers first to this unique authority while it was still available. He says he’s going to be diligent to follow Christ’s command by reporting to them what the Savior has said, and to do so repeatedly (2P 1.12-13), through whatever time he has left (2P 1.14); and even after that, he leaves them these letters to keep their memory fresh (2P 1.15).
Did Peter know that he was writing Scripture? Good question. Not everything the apostles wrote was inspired and preserved by God (1Co 5.9), and even though what they preached was protected from error (1Th 2.13), it wasn’t all preserved as Scripture either. So Peter writes with authority and assumes inerrancy, whether or not he realizes that God will preserve this particular epistle.
As evidence of his Spirit-empowered accuracy of recall, he gives his readers a glimpse of the Transfiguration, the event that Matthew, in his Gospel, places at the center and the summit of his account of Jesus’ role as Messiah (Mt 17.1-8). Peter’s account is of course consistent with Matthew’s (2P 1.16-18); while the Spirit could have given Matthew, who was not at the Transfiguration, an accurate record of the event without need of consultation with eyewitnesses, there’s no reason Matthew couldn’t have received his knowledge of it directly from James, or John, or even Peter.
And now Peter turns to the Scripture more formally. It’s clear that when Peter, or any other New Testament writer, refers to “the Scripture,” he’s thinking of the Hebrew Scripture, what we call the Old Testament. He calls it a “more sure word of prophecy”—more sure, apparently, than Peter’s own Spirit-empowered recollection of his own personal experience with Jesus.
But there’s disagreement about what this statement means. If you’ll consult several English translations, as I often recommend that my students do, you’ll note some differences in meaning:
- KJV: “We have a more sure word of prophecy.”
- NASB 95: “We have the prophetic word made more sure.”
- ESV: “We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed.”
- CSB: “We … have the prophetic word strongly confirmed.”
- NIV: “We … have the prophetic message as something completely reliable.”
I see two different shades of meaning here:
- The Scripture is more reliable than personal experience (KJV).
- Peter’s experience at the Transfiguration confirms the accuracy of OT Scripture (modern versions).
The Greek reads literally, “We have more secure the prophetic word.” I think either nuance is possible, and in the end the significance is essentially the same: We can count on the Scripture to be accurate, whether or not Peter is claiming that his experience increases his (and our) confidence.
Peter ends this section with one of the two classic NT statements of inspiration. The writers of the Hebrew Scripture, he says, weren’t just jotting down their own thoughts (2P 1.20); rather, they were being blown along by the Holy Wind (2P 1.21).
That wording may surprise you. I’m not suggesting that Peter is not writing about the Holy Spirit here. But there is a wordplay in his mind that adds depth to our understanding of the biblical doctrine of inspiration.
In Greek, as in Hebrew, the word spirit can also mean wind or breath; context tells the reader how it’s being used. Here Peter uses a verb—moved (Greek phero)—that is used commonly elsewhere to speak of carrying, and a few times of the wind propelling a sailing ship. In fact, Luke uses it of the great storm, the “nor-easter” (Ac 27.14), that drove Paul’s ship across the Mediterranean before depositing it, with no loss of life, in a bay on the island of Malta. “We let her drive [lit. giving over, we were carried]” (Ac 27.15); “and so were driven [lit. thus they were being carried]” (Ac 27.17).
That’s quite an illustration.
The writers of OT Scripture were not writing down just whatever they thought; they were driven by the wind of the Spirit to write what he wanted them to write.
I’m out of space here, and this doctrine requires more complete explanation. So in the next post we’ll have more to say about the biblical evidence on how the Spirit and the biblical authors worked together to produce the Scripture.
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