2 Peter 1:3 : "His divine power...."

"... has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness" verse 3a (RSV)

This is an interesting beginning to an interesting and complex section of the Bible.

"Divine power" is "theios dunamis" in the original Greek. This is an echo to Romans 1:20 which speaks of "His eternal power and Godhead" where we have the Greek words "dunamis" and "Theiotes" where it speaks of these things being "clearly seen" in Creation and "understood".

All true "seeing" and "understanding" involves some acknowledgement of the Deity or "divine power" or at the very least we see that they are closely linked. That connection should become more open as we look further in the passage which continues as follows "

"... through the knowledge of Him who called us by his own glory and excellence" verse 3b (RSV)

It is a knowledge of Him who works in glory and excellence as we see in the Creation. We will see in 2 Peter 1 the explanation that a right alignment of the person to that knowledge of God (sensus divinitatis) leads to certain consequences or outcomes.

In Romans 1, we see the converse, namely that the failure to be rightly aligned to that knowledge also leads to a different set of consequences and outcomes which are enumerated in Romans 1:21-32.

Just as that list in Romans 1 is a catalogue of "ungodliness" so in 2 Peter 1 being rightly related to the knowledge of God leads to "all things that pertain to life and godliness".

For this and other reasons which I will be touching on I find comparing and contrasting Romans 1 and 2 Peter 1 so compelling and powerful.

Let us continue with our comparing and contrasting these two sections of God's word.

Of course, in 2 Peter it's not just "godliness" but "life and godliness". It's not just about knowledge. We don't need another religion. What we need is LIFE and that is exactly what " Peter 1 is about. Echos of it are in Romans 1:17, the introductory verse to the rest of the chapter and indeed the whole of Romans, where the Gospel is not just information, knowledge, but is LIFE giving.

Romans 1:17 is also significant in that here the Apostle is quoting from Habakkuk 2:4. Why that is so will become clearer when we come to consider 2 Peter 1:6.

Sensus Divinitatis (1)

I went to the Technorati web site and did a blog search on the words "sensus divinitatis".

I actually also set up RSS feeds to come to my Yahoo feed reader anytime a blog post appeared in the blogosphere which contained this tag.

And so recently the RSS feeder served me up the following little gem on the subject.

It from a chap called Felipe Fontes who is no doubt a Christian and lives in Brazil (nice place).

Therefore the post was naturally enough in Portuguese.

Having fed the link through Google Language tools here it is in the Queen's English :

I believe in God, sovereign not servant, perfect in all His ways, transcendent, totally other, but One who becomes related in a pact of love with His creation.

I believe that God created all the existing, visible and invisible things, in the land and skies, and that when creating all the things God meant its perfect intention in accordance with them.

I believe that to the man this meant that God has endowed man with His image and similarity, and this implies that man can know God and the reality that encircles him.

It also implies that we are endowed with the knowledge of the divine - "sensus divinitatis", and that all rationalizations and lies against reality are nothing more than the attempt to suppress and to refuse the knowledge of God who requires devotion.

I believe that the knowledge of God and of ourselves is determinative for all and any type of knowledge, and that the fullness of the truth only can come after the tried and true knowledge of God and of ourselves.

Therefore, there enters a clear antithesis : the wisdom of the world, and the wisdom of God.

I believe that the only safe source of knowledge is the Holy Bible, inerrant and autoritative revelation of God to man.

I believe that my knowledge is achieved by the correspondence with the meaning determined by God for something at its creation, when found through the special revelation of the Bible, and the general revelation actually experienced in my heart “coram Deo”.

Being thus, I know!

Thanks Felipe.

There are a number of things I like about Felipe's formulation.

First, I like his first paragraph and particularly the expression where he speaks of God as "One who becomes related in a pact of love with His creation". This really says a lot not least of which that God's relation to us as His creation is, if I may say it without wishing in any way to be irreverent, maintained by means of that same glue that holds the Trinity together - love.

Second, he speaks of God as One who "requires our devotion" . Nothing is added to Him by our devotion, of course. Devotion is our right and proper response as the created and dependent beings that we are.

Finally, almost in a throw away fashion he seems to have identified the ontology of that dichotomy which has come to be known in New Testament revelation as the "wisdom of the world" versus the "wisdom of God" (see 1 Corinthians 1:18-31).