This Viewpoint blog post is a companion to the May 26 episode of the Theologically Speaking podcast featuring recent Seminary DMin graduate, Dr. Michael Carlyle, and hosted by professor Billy Gotcher.
Takeaways:
- Applicable to all Scripture is the core hermeneutical principle of respecting authorial intent: understanding what a Scripture writer was trying to convey in the context of his culture.
- This hermeneutical principle is best pursued by “exegeting the culture:” engaging in anthropological study to help relate how biblical writers thought and communicated to how various people do today.
- Applying these principles to 1 Peter 2 and the honor/shame culture of the time allows us to understand the apostle’s purpose of lifting up a rejected church experiencing “fiery trials” by identifying them as honored members of God’s family and associating them with a revered priesthood and a resplendent temple.
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As discussed in the last blog, my dissertation was designed to leverage lessons learned on the Cambodian mission field about cultural context to provide a resource for American pastors struggling today to relate the truths of God’s Word to an increasingly lost culture. In so doing, I chose 1 Peter 2:4-10 as an illustration—but I could have selected almost any text in the Bible to demonstrate how its truths are presented from an ancient Mediterranean, agrarian, collectivist perspective as opposed to our modern, egalitarian, individualist culture.
From Shamed Exiles to Honored Family Members and a Revered Royal Priesthood
In the previous blog, I encouraged pastors to work to span the gap between ancient societies and our own. This is first accomplished by applying the core hermeneutical principle of respecting authorial intent—understanding what a Scripture writer was trying to convey in the context of his culture. Second, we can accomplish it by in essence “exegeting the culture”—adding anthropological study to their research repertoire to relate how biblical writers thought and communicated to how various people do today. As we apply those principles to the passage in question, we find that the characteristics of the “honor/shame” culture of the ancient Mediterranean world—and rural Cambodia today—are core to the text and central to the author’s intent for the epistle as a whole.
In v. 2:4, we see the church described as “a living stone rejected by men” but “chosen in the sight of God.” The words “rejected” and “chosen” fly right by us, but in an honor/shame culture, to be chosen elevates a person’s “value” in society, while being “rejected” does the exact opposite. In the very opening verse of the epistle, the apostle refers to the church members as “elect exiles.” They are foreigners and outsiders in society.
It’s critical to understand that these early Christians have been rejected by their own families. People in our society may say “family is everything to me.” But its importance is multiplied in the culture of Bible times—and in many places around the world today. Most village dwellers were and are related by blood or marriage, with perhaps four or five family names among 200 people. Rejection in such a situation is of a magnitude that Westerners with our more dispersed families, impersonal communities, and relative freedom of religion, cannot fully conceive, even with our emerging concerns about “cancelation.”
Related to that shame is the repudiation of Christ, who is also a “stone”—the one the builders rejected. Westerners focus on the pain and anguish of His torture and execution, but Bible writers don’t use that term. Instead, Peter and other authors—including Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 and the author of Hebrews in 12:2—focus on the shame of the cross, intentionally not only the most agonizing but also the most humiliating death imaginable. Yet, through the cross and resurrection (1 Peter 1:3), these believers are deemed worthy of an honor of unimaginable magnitude—having become connected to the highest Being in the universe as His children and members of the family of God.
Peter then doubles down on that immeasurably elevated status through the extended metaphor of readers as members not just of “a chosen race,” “a holy nation,” and “a people for God’s own possession,” but also “a royal priesthood.” While Americans have viewed the priesthood more in terms of functionality, especially in the context of overseeing the sacrificial system, Peter never mentions that role—because his point relates, again, to the elevated status of the priesthood.
Exacerbating the outsider position of Peter’s audience is their abandonment of their culture’s religion and their household gods, which rendered them an actual threat to society. On the mission field, I learned that those who left the Buddhist religion were no longer even considered Cambodian.
In contrast, priests stood out in ancient Jewish culture, as monks do in Asian culture today. Both enjoyed enormous respect and reverence. Whereas most people wore drab, utilitarian clothing, priests were attired in brilliant white with woven-in colored and even gold threads. In Southeast Asia, monks are garbed in saffron-dyed reddish-orange robes. Moreover, as “living stones…being built into a spiritual house,” believers are analogized to the resplendent Jewish temple, which also glimmered among brownish wood and stone structures, as do the ornate Buddhist architectural marvels of today.
Peter’s purpose is to enormously lift up his outcast and downcast brethren, undergoing in some cases literally “fiery trials” (in verse 4:12), by shockingly associating them with the most fantastic, visually spectacular and honorable building in the whole city, not to mention the most culturally revered personage. It’s a dual metaphor to which “rejected” Cambodian Christians can readily relate—but difficult for the Western church to glean reading modern translation through the lens of our 21st-century American worldviews.
Which brings us back to the key: pastors must commit themselves to honoring authorial intent and allowing our congregations to see the text through the writer’s eyes and see and relate his purpose to our own situations.
What an inspiration today’s despairing church, which our sense of cultural isolation and “cancellation,” can draw from the apostle who invites us to look beyond our cultural isolation and recognize our elevated position in Christ. We are members of God’s family, the building blocks of a magnificent “spiritual house” and an exalted “royal priesthood” chosen for the privilege to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
