New Testament

Week 28: The Epistles of Peter & Jude

1 Peter, 2 Peter, Jude

11 May 2023

• 1 Peter 3:18–20 describes Christ’s descent into Hades, the abode of the spirits of the dead, a doctrine Christians throughout the centuries have affirmed. For more on this subject, see David L. Paulsen, Roger D. Cook, and Kendel J. Christensen, “The Harrowing of Hell: Salvation for the Dead in Early Christianity,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 19, no. 1 (2010): 56–77.

• 2 Peter 1:4 speaks of believers in Christ becoming “partakers of the divine nature,” meaning becoming like God is. In 1998, Jordan Vajda, who was at the time a Dominican priest in the Roman Catholic Church, completed his masters degree at the Graduate Theological Union at the University of California, Berkeley, in which he compared the similarities and differences between Latter-day Saint teachings on exaltation with those held by Roman Catholics and other early Christian traditions. His thesis was published by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies in 2002 as “‘Partakers of the Divine Nature’: A Comparative Analysis of Patristic and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization.”

• 2 Peter 2:1–3:3 and the Epistle of Jude share a common base text; one popular belief is that the author of 2 Peter copied this material from Jude’s Epistle. See Terrance Callan, “Use of the Letter of Jude by the Second Letter of Peter,” Biblica 85 (2004): 42–64.