The New Community
Gramps49
Shipmate
in Kerygmania
1 Peter 1:17-23 describes the new community established by the Lord.
Since we have a number of faith traditions on this board a question: what does it mean to be born anew through the living and enduring word of God (v23)?
Is Peter echoing the Johannine new birth language?
How do you think the early Christians understood spiritual rebirth?
Since we have a number of faith traditions on this board a question: what does it mean to be born anew through the living and enduring word of God (v23)?
Is Peter echoing the Johannine new birth language?
How do you think the early Christians understood spiritual rebirth?
Comments
When I checked the verses in the NLT, it even has born again (which would have made me more likely to lock into that even I hadn't anyway).
The writer rockets through his metaphors. And many of them are not unique.
I guess there's 4 and a bit options:
'Peter'* just had a similar idea
'Peter' is echoing John consciousnessly.
(Or even "Peter"** was first)
Peter*** is directly thinking of the actual challenge of Jesus.
There's an old testament or Jewish tradition all three refer to.
All seem plausible to me, at first sight.
*The basic principle works with the writer being Peter, and works with anonymous writer. You decide.
** Works better with the writer not being Peter.
*** Works better with the writer being Peter
--
In this passage there definitely seems a theme if a new start (more so than I. John). Leaning from scratch. Craving spiritual milk.
How old would he have been when he was 'born again.'
It now looks to me that the early Church believed in 'baptismal regeneration'.
These days, though, I tend not to get too hung up on the precise 'point' when someone is 'regenerated' or 'converted' or 'born again' or whatever term we use to describe it.
'By their fruits ye shall know them.'
And, 'The Lord knows who are his.'
We are all work in progress.
I hasten to add that I wouldn't consider Salvationists and others who don't practice baptism as not being Christians.
But I think it's pretty clear from what I understand of the Patristic witness that baptism was seen as regenerative back in the early days.
Whoops! Yes, it was Polycarp I had in mind.
I remember my mind doing somersaults when I first read that back in my credo-baptist days.
Not that I object to credo-baptism for people who haven't already been baptised.
But that's another issue and one well-worn on these boards.
@Gramps49 yes, indeed although the communal aspect doesn't necessarily obviate the personal and the individual.
It's another of these both/and things. We are baptised or initiated in community - in whatever way that happens in our respective traditions, but we have to 'own' our faith for ourselves.
'God has no grandchildren.'
This sounds balanced, but it quietly smuggles in an assumption that isn't actual in the text or in most historic Christian understandings of community.
The statement implies that the goal of communal initiation is eventually to arrive at a private, self owned faith. But in 1Peter the new birth is into a people, not into a personal interior state. The community is not the starting point you grow out of--it's the ongoing habitat of faith.
To me, your statement treats community as scaffolding rather than the building.
Second, It assumes “owning your faith” is the mature endpoint
This is a very modern, Western, post‑Enlightenment idea: maturity = autonomy.
But biblically and historically, maturity is interdependence, not independence. Faith is something we practice together, not something we possess privately. It risks turning Christian formation into a self‑help project rather than a shared life.
Third, your statement tries to be both/and, but it still frames the two as separate layers. First the community does something, then the individual must do something to make it real. But, to me, in Scripture and the early church the community's faith and the individual's faith are woven together, not sequential. It suggests that communal belonging is insufficient unless ratified by private experience — which mirrors evangelical conversionism more than Petrine theology.
Maybe this is a healthier understanding:
We are reborn into a community whose shared life shapes our faith, and within that community each person grows into their own mature participation.
What you are saying is thoroughly orthodox/Orthodox.
I probably needed to spend more time crafting the wording of my response.
Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that everyone has to have some kind of pietistic evangelical conversion. What I'm saying that we don't lose our personality or 'us-ness' by being in community.
Fr John Zizoulas wrote a book called Being In Communion. Perhaps I ought to re-read it.
But I think we are talking at cross-purposes to some extent.
Human beings are going to be who and what they are, no matter what is their confession of faith. My general experience of human beings in "community" has led me to an avoidant attachment style with faith communities, organizations and groups.
I sometimes wonder what it would feel like to be embraced, appreciated and accepted by a group of faithful humans but if I was I would probably look around and ask myself if I were being assimilated by a cult.
AFF
I think you are right though to emphasise the communal aspect, and my impression is that this aspect has been 'breaking down' for some considerable time both in the USA and the 'Western world' more generally.
'Open and affirming' is an ideal but harder to achieve in practice.
We had a bloke with some very strong right-wing views who came along to our church for a while. He left and went looking for something less 'liberal' as he saw it. Other people wouldn't think we were particularly 'liberal' at all. It all depends on your starting point.
What might appear 'open and affirming' to some people may not appear so to someone else.