Harink makes an all important point in wrapping up. This apocalyptic-transformational Christology and eschatology that animates 2 Peter lends itself, not to any sort of resignation or passivity, but rather to action: “Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire?” (3:11-12).
The transfiguring apocalypse of Jesus is not merely a linearly future event, but a past object of faith (“We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain”) and a present object of experience (“participants of the divine nature”). Thus we do not simply wait for the coming of the apocalypse, we hasten it by giving ourselves over, in the Spirit, to Christ’s own mode of action and living (and here we see a connection with 2 Peter’s list of virtues: 2 Pet 1:5-7).
Because of Christ’s transfiguration, we are called, not to passivity, but to radical apocalyptic action, which, in summary means to subject all our actions to the lens of Christ’s own agape, the radical love that gives itself away for others, even to death.
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