Aliens in Your Native Land: 1 Peter and the Formation of Christian Identity

By Warner M. Bailey and Stephen V. Sprinkle

Living as an alien in one's native land is a familiar reality to marginalized communities. Cultural, economic, and political shifts can cause people to become alienated by a system of greed, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and media manipulation.
How can Christians persist under a sustained threat within a social order diametrically opposed to them? This question drives Warner Bailey's investigation of 1 Peter. The mature Christology of 1 Peter yields a profile of Christian identity. This picture is funded by texts from the Book of the Twelve (Hosea-Malachi) and is counter-intuitive, in that it is able to create new initiatives for behavior that offer hope for redemption in the midst of oppression.
Bailey explores how 1 Peter has been used in shaping the life of modern "aliens," such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, living in his own country under the oppression of Nazism, and feminist, black, immigrant, and LGBTQIA+ readers. Placing 1 Peter within the crisis in U.S. political and economic life opens up fresh implications for faithful ecclesiastical practice and personal witness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Jul 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781725268500

Warner M. Bailey

Warner M. Bailey is director of Presbyterian Studies at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University, and theologian-in-residence at St. Stephen Presbyterian Church, Fort Worth, Texas.

Book preview

Introduction

The challenges of living as an alien in one’s native land are all too well known to marginalized communities. As is becoming clearer every day, these communities of outliers are being joined by people of every stripe who, because of cultural, economic, and political shifts, are finding themselves strangers in their own land, up against a system of greed, hubris, racism, sexism xenophobia, media manipulation, and self-centeredness. The list is interminable.

This book asks the question: what does it mean to live as an alien in your own country? We take up what many feel today as a general sense of homelessness. For example, Arlie Russell Hochschild’s book Strangers in Their Own Land documents the lived experience of a group of staunchly conservative residents of southwest Louisiana who sense that their way of life is being choked off by a circle of threats, ranging from environmental disaster to being looked down upon by liberal elites. Others make the same point: David Brooks writes often of a growing sense of political, cultural, and economic homelessness.¹ Leonard Pitts, Jr. cautions, Fascism: It CAN Happen Here.²

However, this book asks the question with a particular slant: What does it mean to live as an alien in your own country when the cause of your being an alien is your obedience to Jesus Christ as Lord? How can a Christian witness persist under a sustained threat within a social order diametrically opposed to it? This is the question 1 Peter asks which drives the investigation presented here. The implications of its answer are meant to give guidance to faithful ecclesiastical practice and personal witness. We will arrive at our answer by investigating the way the author funds the epistles’ message from the Book of the Twelve (Hosea-Malachi). The arc of our investigation travels from canonical exegesis through theological reflection to implications for the continued use of 1 Peter to nurture faithfulness. To guide the reader, here is a summary of the way our study proceeds.

In chapter 1 various approaches currently in play to answering the question of why this epistle was written are considered. All have in common a desire to break out beyond the impasse in Petrine studies created by the opposing options set out by the pioneering work of John Elliott and David Balche. We critically examine the contributions of Kelly D. Liebengood, Paul A. Holloway, Steven R. Bechtler, and David G. Horrell. The insights of Holloway and Horrell become the basis for our constructive proposal. From Holloway we affirm his description of 1 Peter as a type of consolation literature common to the Greek-speaking world. Horrell supplies the insightful perspective that the addressees are largely native born rather than forced immigrants who have converted to Christianity.

We contend that 1 Peter is a letter of consolation/comfort written to Christian communities, composed largely of native born believers, in Asia Minor in the turn of the first century CE. These people are experiencing localized persecution because of the political implications of confessing Jesus Christ as Lord. While the author’s use of the Old Testament is well documented, what has not been examined carefully is the particular use made of the Book of the Twelve in formulating the content of the comfort the epistle extends to suffering communities. We show that because the Twelve was a long recognized document communicating comfort to the Jewish diaspora, it is very well suited to contribute to the aim of the epistle.

This aim, stated briefly, is to impress on its readers that they will be able to cope with whatever fiery trials they may face and remain faithful to their confession because God is undergirding their endurance with God’s faithfulness to them. The epistle puts forward Jesus as the one who committed his life to God through the shame and abandonment of the cross, and God vindicated God’s faithfulness to him through his resurrection. The epistle claims that the crucified-resurrected Lord embraces within his suffering his persecuted believers in their suffering so that this Lord can share with believers the power that resides in his resurrection. This gives those made subordinate by suffering a new sense of agency, stamina and verve. This behavior even holds promise of converting the oppressors.

Chapter 2 pursues the funding of these claims from the Twelve. We point out hermeneutical strategies which give the author access to the rich deposit of images and narratives in the Twelve. These support crucial aspects of 1 Peter’s message of comfort: being born anew (Jonah), sired by the Word (Hosea), a people for his possession (Malachi), not being put to shame (Joel), and fiery trial (Zechariah). Considering the aggregate of these textual linkages begins to suggest a profile of counter-intuitive identity founded on the life and destiny of Jesus Christ.

Chapter 3 widens the influence of the Twelve on the development of the counter-intuitive identity espoused by 1 Peter by examining three texts in Habakkuk, Micah, and Malachi where counter-intuitive identity is being practiced. We suggest the likelihood of the influence of these texts due to the familiarity of the author of 1 Peter over the wide range of the Twelve. Special attention is paid to the experience of worship, shared both by 1 Peter and the Twelve, as the setting for the nurture and shaping of the counter-intuitive identity. Again, the new, counter-intuitive agency which flows from the new identity is part of the presentation of the Twelve as well as 1 Peter. The chapter closes with an examination of the climax of the epistle in 4:13–16 where a densely packed statement of counter-intuitive identity and behavior is located.

Chapter 4 asks the question: Where in the modern world has 1 Peter been accessed by aliens in their native land? We investigate the role 1 Peter played in the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, giving particular attention to his opposition against Nazism. We discovered nine examples of Bonhoeffer’s use of 1 Peter beginning from the persecution of German Jews and concluding with his death. He clearly thought of himself as an alien in his native land. First Peter provides much needed comfort and encouragement to Bonhoeffer. It also supplies the source texts for the theological development of his Christology and soteriology. These are key supports to his exposition of worldly Christianity practiced by an alien in his native land. We note that while working almost 100 years before Horrell’s breakthrough, nevertheless, Bonhoeffer anticipates his position.

In chapter 5 we continue our exploration of the use communities under threat have made of 1 Peter into the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The models of Elliott, Balch, and Horrell are tested for their ability to guide aliens in their own lands to access 1 Peter in ways that nurture faithfulness. We look at how these models play out within immigrant communities and communities of women, queers, and blacks. In addition, we introduce a group of international interpreters who write under the stress of being native born aliens. These scholars illustrate the enduring importance of 1 Peter as a tool to describe their present crisis and to offer counsel to their communities for the sake of strengthening their faithfulness. We offer observations as to whether the counsel offered by Elliott, Balch, and Horrell helps threatened communities engage openly with oppressive social and political orders or supports seeing themselves as a sect concerned more for self-protection. The chapter concludes with a critical appraisal of the seminal work of Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens, Life in the Christian Colony.

In chapter 6 we bring this investigation to a close by taking up the difficulties 1 Peter presents to certain groups made to feel themselves as native-born aliens through discrimination. We engage feminist, queer, and black critics and their concerns over the counsel 1 Peter gives to slaves and wives and the model of Jesus as a suffering alien. We describe the use these critics make of various strategies of interpretation to circumvent their concerns, and we evaluate how these strategies impinge on the integrity of the letter. We bring forward the notion of an eschatological qualifier as an apt way of 1 Peter’s talking about the indestructible power of Jesus as Lord to uphold those who come into his life against the threats leveled at their faithfulness.

Our book concludes with an attempt to identify what it means to be an alien in contemporary America for two large groups of citizens who are keenly aware of their being marginalized: fundamentalist evangelicals and the OK-boomer cohort. Their shared marginalization springs from a common conviction that the trajectory of their lives is on an irreversible decline.

Against interlocking systems of power that are bent on self-aggrandizement to the negligence of those who are left behind and left out, the pressure is immense on the marginalized either to capitulate or to retreat into silence. Increasingly, those who attempt to resist are pushed to the margins where they suffer the consequences for confronting the powerful. 1 Peter is meant in our time for persons and communities who struggle to find the insight to respond to overwhelming odds with energy and new alternatives. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you (5:7).

I express my gratitude to a group of colleagues who have offered valuable advice and counsel in the writing of this book. David J. Gouwens and Thomas W. Currie read earlier drafts of the chapter on Bonhoeffer and made important suggestions in perfecting it. Timothy Sandoval and Ariel Feldman assisted in pointing out possible connections between the Book of the Twelve and communities who read it in the Jewish Diaspora. Timothy Lee introduced me to the use of 1 Peter by Asian immigrant groups in the United States. Charles Bellinger supplied the guidance into the analysis of the collected works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Conversations with Gary Dorrien and Will Wilson prompted me to pursue fresh lines of inquiry. I value greatly the conversations with my wife, Mary, about the pastoral implications of the epistle’s message.

Finally, I dedicate this book to the congregation of First Presbyterian Church in Columbus, Indiana, and to the congregations of Ridglea Presbyterian Church and St. Stephen Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth, Texas. They have generously supported me over the course of forty-six years of being Minister of Word and Sacrament. Working together, I took on the responsibility and joy of helping to shape these congregations to be temples of living stones linked together by the One in whose trust they will not be put to shame.

1

. See for example, Will Gen-Z Save the World? and A New Center Being Born.

2

. Fort Worth StarTelegram, October

14

,

2019

.

1

The Authorial Intent of 1 Peter

Why was 1 Peter composed and sent to the churches in Anatolia¹ in the waning years of the first century of the common era? Although the question is perennial, in the last fifty years it has been pursued vigorously down diverse trajectories. The path-breaking parallel investigations of John Elliott² and David Balch³ gave interpreters a choice between two strikingly different alternatives.⁴

Broadly speaking, Elliott’s answer claims that the letter is directed to Christians forcibly removed from their homelands and relocated in diaspora. The letter’s purpose is to foster internal cohesion among the community of believers in order to build as exiles a distinctive communal identity and resist external pressures to conform. The readers of the letter are to think of themselves as a sect of converts that resists, as much as possible, contact with the social world in which they live. The world is an evil and hostile place to this sect, but nonetheless, the sect considers itself to have a missionary task to save individuals from this wicked world through conversion.

In Balch’s view, the letter counsels Christians to engage positively, as much as possible, with non-Christian neighbors. The purpose of 1 Peter, and specifically its domestic code, was to lessen the hostility and antagonism suffered by Christians by urging them to demonstrate their conformity to conventional social expectations. The church, in other words, was to accommodate to the world, in order to reduce the tensions between them.⁵

Both options assume in common that the addressees largely come from populations that are not native to Anatolia. They are in Asia Minor as a result of imperial, forced migration. However, recently this assumption has been under increasing challenge. David Horrell, among others, has pointed out "converts seem to be mostly Gentiles and have previously been well accustomed to the way of life of their wider society, a way of life from which they now are urged to distance themselves. These are not, then, people for whom the wider culture is alien and strange, but people whose conversion to Christianity has created an alienation, the consequences of which need to be worked out."⁶ Faced with this challenge, scholarly attention has been drawn to whether the models of assimilation/acculturation (Balch) or sectarian withdrawal (Elliott) are appropriate to describe the letter’s idea of how Christians should negotiate their place in society.

A major breakthrough of this impasse was mounted by Horrell who noticed that what is most obviously missing from both these social-scientific approaches—and from most other attempts to move beyond the Balch-Elliott debate—is explicit attention to the structures of (imperial) domination with which the addresses of 1 Peter must negotiate their conformity and/or their resistance to the world. Horrell grasped that at the heart of the letter is the believer’s coming to grips with the criminalization of confessing Christ.⁷ He pinpointed that in order to develop and sustain Christian character in the context of criminalization a re-valuing of this name into an honorable badge of new identity was required.

Horrell and others took note of how the sustained use of the Old Testament in 1 Peter contributes to the strategy of revaluation necessary to maintaining stamina and verve in the face of potential persecution. Because Jesus Christ so identified with Israel’s story, those who follow him can draw from Israel’s story of the faithfulness of God. Israel’s story, therefore, becomes a major factor supporting Christian identity under threat.⁸ This study focuses on how that portion of Israel’s scripture, Hosea through Malachi, which taken together in a canonical way are called The Book of the Twelve,⁹ is used by 1 Peter in the strategy of revaluation.

Horrell’s work has created subsequent investigations into the authorial intent, or the driving question, of 1 Peter. A discussion and evaluation of three examples of divergent answers which have been offered in the last ten years will provide the context for our constructive proposal.

1 Peter as an Explanation of Suffering

Kelly Liebengood mounts the case that "the precise issue with which Peter and his addresses are struggling [is] if Jesus is in the fact the Christ, the agent appointed to bring about restoration, then why are we suffering after his coming?"¹⁰ The characterization in 1 Peter of this suffering as a period of fiery trials (4:12) alerts Liebengood to the allusion being made to Zech 13:9 (And I will put this third into the fire and refine them as on refines silver and test them as gold is tested). The resonating of Zech 13:9 in 1 Peter suggests to Liebengood that the author of 1 Peter may have drawn more extensively from the eschatological program of Zech 9–14 to help Christians know why they are still suffering after Jesus’ resurrection. In his discussion of the Zechariahan material, Liebengood demonstrates a significant impulse to the shaping of 1 Peter.

The basic contours of the distinctive eschatological program of Zechariah 9–14 are: YHWH’s shepherd will suffer a death that will serve to cleanse ‘the house of God’ upon which the Spirit now rests; (4:14) and bring back the scattered sheep to God, while also placing them in a period of fiery trials that they must endure until final consummation.¹¹ Through a sensitive and far-reaching program of exegesis, Liebengood describes how major points of Zechariah’s eschatological program form the substructure of 1 Peter, even though there is no explicit mention of Zechariah in 1 Peter. Against this inconsistency, he argues that reflective discourse, such as the kind we find in 1 Peter, can at times be governed by a foundational narrative that may find only allusive fragmentary expression within the discourse itself.¹²

First Peter’s Christology, for example, draws upon significant Zechariahan texts 10:2 (LXX); 11:4–17; 12:10; and 13:7 to present the work of Jesus as causational.

Jesus Christ has caused something to happen—as a result of his sacrificial death, the addressees have been relationally restored to God and presently are awaiting an inheritance, which will be awarded at the return of Jesus Christ. In the meantime, as the renewed people of God, they now find themselves living in a transition period characterized both as fiery trials in which their fidelity to God will be rested as well as a wilderness/second exodus journey towards their prepared inheritance.¹³

Liebengood’s position is that 1 Peter counsels that suffering can be endured when the Christian recognizes that it is a part of the plan of God’s will, written in the scriptures of the prophets: Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry (1:10) and For it stands in scripture (2:6).¹⁴ Anatolian Christians are called to trust in the outworking of the plan as the foundation for negotiating their allegiance to Jesus in a social context that, for a number of reasons, is antagonistic to such a commitment.¹⁵

Liebengood offers a fresh reading of 1 Peter that addresses explicitly the context of oppression being