Acknowledging the Divine Benefactor: The Second Letter of Peter

Acknowledging the Divine Benefactor is a sociorhetorical interpretation of the Second Letter of Peter. Using multiple interpretive perspectives and emphasizing the pictorial dimensions of 2 Peter Terrance Callan understands the letter as making the following argument: since Jesus Christ has given his followers benefits including the promise of sharing in divine nature they need to make a proper return for these benefits by living virtuously; and this in turn will enable them to receive the fulfillment of the promise. The occasion of the letter is that Peters death is near. He writes so the addressees can remember his teaching after his death. The author expounds this teaching because some people do not await the future fulfillment of Christs promises and so do not emphasize the need for virtuous living. This book uses the new form of socio-rhetorical commentary that the Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity Project is refining in the Society of Biblical Literature. Following the new format Callan presents work in progress on 2 Peter that expands socio-rhetorical interpretation beyond its earlier emphasis on the texture of texts by framing his commentary with sections on the rhetography and rhetorical force of the text. This preview points positively forward toward the potential of fully-developed commentary on texts using this format. --Vernon K Robbins Emory University Atlanta GA People have wondered whether socio-rhetorical interpretation as practiced by Vernon K. Robbins had much other than technical terminology to add to biblical interpretation. In his work Acknowledging the Divine Benefactor Terrance Callan brilliantly shows just how much this methodology has to contribute. He has written a refreshingly new commentary on 2 Peter utilizing this perspective and whether readers agree or disagree with this or that interpretation they will surely be stimulated to new and deeper thinking about this letter. The work is readable full of good scholarship theological and delightfully candid. It is a contribution to the field that no serious interpreter of this letter should pass up. --Peter H. Davids Houston Baptist University Houston TX Terrance Callan is Professor of Biblical Studies at The Athenaeum of Ohio in Cincinnati. He is the author of several articles on 2 Peter and the commentary on 2 Peter in First and Second Peter (2012). He is also the author of Dying and Rising with Christ: The Theology of Paul the Apostle (2006).