The second letter of Peter on God’s patience

Sources

• 2 Peter 3:9 (NASB) (opens in a new tab)

  2 Peter 3:9, NASB

Objections & responses

2 Peter is the most doubted book in the New Testament; most scholars think it was written in the second century precisely to explain away the delay of the second coming. Isn’t this citing the excuse as if it were the plan?

The critical consensus on 2 Peter’s date and authorship is as stated, and it should be acknowledged. That does not settle whether its explanation is true. Even if 2 Peter was written after the delay became noticeable, its answer, that God’s timescale is not ours and that delay serves repentance, is consistent with Jesus’s own parables of delayed return and with Paul’s earlier statement that God’s kindness is meant to lead to repentance (Romans 2:4). Romans 2:4 is the earlier witness; 2 Peter is the fuller statement of the same idea.

Patience “so that all may reach repentance” is undercut if most people never do. Two thousand years of delay have produced billions of deaths without conversion. Isn’t the delay just extending the suffering?

This is a serious objection, and it depends on what one believes about the fate of those who never hear or never believe, a question on which Christians are divided. 2 Peter’s stated purpose for the delay is what it is. The objection is really an objection to the doctrine of hell, or to the view that only explicit believers are saved, and neither can be settled in a sentence here. What can be said is that the text presents the delay as mercy toward the living, not indifference to the dead.

Appears under 1 claim in this case

• Scripture presents evil as running through every person, and God’s delay in ending it as patience that leaves room for people to turn back.