Themes of subversion in 1 Peter: Background and introduction
Living out the living hope
May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
Over the last couple years, I’ve started to fall in love with the Petrine epistles—especially 1 Peter, for its beautiful message on suffering, set-apartness (holiness), authority, and the ideal of Christian culture, all tied together with threads of hope and knotted with what Peter’s coworker Paul might call “the compelling love Jesus has for us.” Passages that used to confound me and seemed contrary to the Bible’s overall message are now great sources of comfort to me, though I’m definitely no expert on any of this.
There are multiple themes and elements of 1 Peter one could study indefinitely, but I want to focus on one that doesn’t get a lot of press despite Christians of all sorts pointing it out for thousands of years. I’ve enjoyed exploring the anarchic, or generally politically radical bent to the Bible in bits and pieces, but at the end of the day “anarchism” doesn’t cut it as a descriptor. There’s too much baggage with the word, it’s a human invention, and the word itself is an anachronism Peter never would have identified with.
So one of the words I like for this biblical theme is “subversion,” or “subversiveness.” I am far from the first to apply this word to books like 1 Peter (for a few examples, see my old post on Romans 13). For Peter, Paul, and other New Testament authors, our answer to this world’s problems must be unique. It doesn’t look like revolt, or pacifism, or Epicureanism, or Stoicism, or anarchism, or triumphalism, or a giving-up on physical life in favor of a future heavenly one, although in some senses it is all of those things.
What is “subversion”?
In the technical sense, subversion is an undermining—in this case of the status quo, of the human condition, of the state of the world—and this is exactly what Peter prescribes in his letter for the Christians in Asia Minor in the 60s AD. Certain things are wrong with the world, things that are still wrong with it some 2,000 years later, and a response is necessary from the body of people who claim to know the ultimate Good News of all good news. However, things aren’t going great in Asia Minor for Christians, and history reveals that it would only get worse before it got better. How are these people supposed to not just tell, but be the good news, be the body of Christ that is sent to the world?
So Peter describes a response that is unintuitive, backwards, and subversive. It’s a comeback to the world’s claims cleverly elucidated in a manner that subverts cultural expectations on the part of his readers and trips them up, and gives them tools of serpentlike shrewdness and dovelike innocence that turn their lives into what we could equally call “stumbling blocks” (in the vein of 1 Cor 1:23) for their witnesses. It’s a reaction that can be lived out by even those in the most humble circumstances, like slaves or wives of unbelievers, as long as they keep the “living hope” they have been reborn into in their mind. Not only can the lowest live it out, but in so doing they provide living examples for those in more privileged circumstances, and effectively rebuke, or even reject, the actions of those who oppress. The kicker, or one of them, is that it works even when it doesn’t work. But more on that later.
A brief introduction to 1 Peter
Disclaimer: I’m a layman. If you want a scholarly introduction to the letter, I’m partial to the NICNT 1 Peter commentary by Peter H. Davids.1 But anyway, 1 Peter is the first of two recorded letters in the Bible by Peter (also known as Cephas), likely written around 62 AD to the Christians scattered around the northern part of the Roman province of Asia, what we call Asia Minor or Anatolia today (1:12). The intense persecution of Christians at the hands of Emperor Nero, during which Peter would be martyred, was either just beginning or yet to come. The letter reveals Peter’s perspective in his more mature, latter days, perhaps less impulsive (John 18:10) and more humble (Gal 2:11) than he once was.
The letter would have been passed around and read throughout the church congregations in Asia Minor to which it was addressed, congregations likely mostly made up of Jewish Christians scattered from the Diaspora, although some non-Jewish (Gentile) Christians were certainly in the congregations as well. Although history reveals that things were going to get pretty bad during Nero’s reign, Peter’s language suggests that suffering was already a familiar idea for the Asian Christians (1:6, 3:14-17, 4:1, 4:12-19).
The letter deals with a few topics that receive plenty of attention in Christianity present and past, such as how to take care of church members (“pastoral care”), baptism (3:213), eschatology (the end times), apocalypse (in the sense of divine revelation), and suffering. Let’s briefly consider Peter’s perspective on suffering, since that’s directly relevant to understanding how to apply the letter to our own lives today. What kind of suffering is Peter talking about, and do we experience it?
Suffering in 1 Peter
Although the churches in Asia certainly experienced typical human suffering—disease, death, oppression, hurts and losses—the language of the letter suggests that things are a little worse off than normal. In addition to normal human life, the Christians face the threat of growing persecution and the suffering it brings: increasing poverty, destruction of family units, uprooting of communities, and, on its way, torture and execution. Peter doesn’t seem surprised by this. If they have called the Master of the house a liar, how much more will they malign His household! (Matt 10:25).
Peter almost takes it for granted that followers of Christ will get a little taste of what Christ experienced, a kind of suffering Peter saw firsthand (5:1). It should probably be obvious to most of us that we can’t place ourselves in that context. I simply don’t face the same levels of suffering; I guess I can’t speak for you. So what do I do? What do we do? It’s important to ask this question!
We can’t throw the letter out because this aspect of the letter isn’t relevant to the modern western reader. Instead, it should be a wake-up call for those of us who are so intertwined with the fallen world that even the world does not know to antagonize us. Though we shouldn’t actively seek suffering, we should at minimum recognize the important place it takes in 1 Peter and perhaps even seek to eliminate the compromises we currently make with the world that reduce our own hardship.
“A pressing concern for the entire sweep of church history has been to answer the question: ‘How should we then live?’ Is it to be the activist form taken by Martin Luther King Jr., who led the famous boycotts and marches for civil rights? Is it to be the Utopian communitarianism of the Hutterites? Is it to be the aggressive action of the Moral Majority of the 1980s? Just how should Christians interact with society? To the shame of many modern Christians, this kind of question is simply not being asked[.]” — Scot McKnight4
Well, what did Peter do? What did he write? He expresses deep concern for his Christian brothers and sisters in the face of this great threat Rome, which he cleverly calls Babylon (5:13). He encourages the flock (1:2-12, 2:9-10), exhorts others to do the same (5:1-5), and lifts up the lowly as an example to the rest of the flock (2:18-3:6).
This last point is one of the big sticking points in my mind. We often say that since our context is different, our responses must also, and on some level that’s true. However, Peter exalts a certain kind of example for us to imitate, a certain kind of example that is itself an imitation of Christ. It’s no coincidence Peter first uses slaves as a pattern for the Christian code of conduct: they’re a perfect platform on which the subversive nature of Christianity can be performed for the world.
Wrapping it up
We may not live in the same context, but there are still the lowly among us who call us higher by their lives. And maybe, just maybe, when we follow their example we will find ourselves a little more in their shoes, and, without conflating the two, a little more in the shoes of Christ.
Because some things are still the same. Believers still cannot compromise on their faith by bowing down to Rome or its idols, and Rome, or Babylon, is still here. We equally cannot violently tear Rome down to institute “Christian” powers that lord it over others in their stead. We cannot quit, or bow down, and we cannot defeat it. It is only God who earns victory, for human help is worthless.5
So Peter’s examples of the lowly, who are perhaps less liable to suffer the delusions of the more privileged who think they actually have the power to change the world, shine like cities on a hill. For Peter, the biblical response to Babylon is a radically subversive one of voluntary subordination, always forcing the agents of evil to recognize their position through the unrelenting and upright love of the believer, thereby shaming and subverting their hold. Where more freedom can be attained, attain it, for the Christian is freed from this world; but always remember that it cannot come at the cost of your neighbor’s freedom, for the Christian’s true freedom can be fulfilled even in submission.
Another one I’ve gotten some mileage out of is Wayne Grudem’s TNTC 1 Peter commentary.
Verse addresses without a book reference are for 1 Peter. Also, I’ll just refer to the region addressed to by the letter as “Asia” for simplicity’s sake, although it’s not really what we think of as Asia.
Cf. 1:3, 1:12, 1:18, 1:22-23, 2:2, some of which may be allusions to the rite.
Scot McKnight, 1 Peter, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), 18.
Cf. Psa 37:39-40, 60:9-12, 62:1, Ecc 2:14-16.