THE NAMING OF NAMES D. It is difficult not to feel sorry when, after his brief moment of glory, Peter suddenly finds himself dashed from the pinnacle. The Lord has been speaking of his future passion, death and resurrection, and Peter taking hold of him (προσλαβομενος αυτον) begins to rebuke or criticise him. It is difficult to know what to make of this: the idea of taking hold of the Saviour is a somewhat shocking, as is the idea of rebuking or censuring him. To this reader it suggests not simply an inappropriate degree of familiarity, but very nearly an assumption of authority. What Peter actually says Ιλεως σοι, Κυριε, μη ου εσται σοι τουτο ῏It is a strange, formulaic phrase - emphatically negative it falls between between an imprecation, an expression of horror, and an apotropaic: No, never - far be it that this fate should befall you, Lord! Peters physical act of restraint is picked up by a participle which has Jesus rounding on him, and saying, vehemently, Get the behind me Satan! you are a stumbling block to me, because your thinking is not the thinking of God, but the thinking of men. The first words are shocking: Peter, is suddenly identified as Satan; no longer the rock, he has become a kind of snare - it stems from the fact that his thinking is is on a mortal plane - it is utterly divorced from the reality. Satan we identify immediately as the archfiend who attempted to seduce Jesus in the wilderness with earthly wealth, power and prestige (Matt.4:1-12). and whom Jesus there dismissed using the same verb as he uses her (Υπαγε), following it with the same insistence on the primacy of the divine: Worship the Lord thy God alone, and serve only him (Matt 4.10). These words and the words addressed to Peter remind us of two other scriptural passages - first, the great commandment that thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might (Deut.6.5); and second, the passage in Isaiah For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, says the Lord (is.55.8). Not for the last time, Peter becomes emblematic of mans propensity to misread the divine, and even to attempt to bend the divine to a human conception of what is good. Peters rejection of Our Lords statement of his future passion, death and resurrection is completely understandable in human terms, but it also represents a potential test, or trap (σκανδαλον), consistent with Satans earlier manifestation as a spirit whose function is to test the resolve of an otherwise god-centred person, such as Job. After all, if Our Lord is not to follow the course which he knows to be that which is ordained for Him, what is he to do? What would Peter have him do, other than what a steward appointed in terms employed by Isaiah to describe the role of master of the Kings household to do? And what King could this possibly be, other than the Messiah and the Son of the Living God whom the Jews had come to expect in precisely the role set before Jesus in the wilderness for his temptation?
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 22:06:45 +0000
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