“DIVINE NATURE” IN 2 PET 1,4 WITHIN ITS ESCHATOLOGICAL CONTEXT 83 Wolters correctly construes κοινωνός in 1,4 as a reference to a person who shares rather than to the act of sharing itself. When employed with a personal noun in the genitive case, κοινωνός generally means “part- ner”; otherwise it means “partaker”. The former meaning is likewise sig- nified when the thing in view represents a person, as φύσις does here. This is illustrated in 1 Cor 10,18, where the reference to κοινωνοὶ τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου refers not to being a “partaker” of the altar itself, but to being a “partner” with the altar, which here functions as a metonomy for God. Read in this way, θεία φύσις is a “reverential periphrasis” for “God” (so Bigg), as part of 2 Peter’s “grand style” (Watson) or “baroque Asian- ism” (Reicke, Bauckham, E. M. Green), which employs elaborate con- structions, unusual terms, and periphrastic descriptions 11. Over against Wolters’ reading however, the parallel designations in 1,3 and 1,17, rather than being substitute designations for the “Deity” or references to God’s “being” (οuvσi,α), refer to specific characteristics of God, which are expressed in divine actions 12. As the use of αὐτοῦ in 2 Peter 1,3 indicates, θεία δύναµις αὐτοῦ refers to the power of God displayed in accordance with his promises, while µεγαλοπρεπὴς δόξα in 1,17 refers in context to the presence of God that establishes the royal and judicial status of Jesus as the Son. In contrast, if θεία φύσις in 1,4 were intended to be a reveren- tial substitution for God’s name, it would function merely as a rhetorically “empty” periphrasis for God himself (the “Deity”), ironically continuing the abstract interpretation Wolters rightly re- jects. Rather than being a periphrasis for God, the designation in 1,4, like the designations of 1,3 and 1,17, is significant as such and should be read as a further reference to God. Indeed, the meaning of φύσις itself in 1,4 calls into question the attempt to read θεία φύσις either as a statement of the ontological being of God or sim- ply as another “name” for God himself. So WOLTERS, “Partners”, 30-31, 34, 38, 40, who points out that κοινωνός is 11 always used, with only one exception from Euripides, as a noun (“sharer”, “par- taker”, “companion”, “partner”), not as an adjective (cf. 1 Cor 10,20; 2 Cor 1,7; 1 Pet 5,1; Luke 5,10; Heb 10,33, etc.), and, following Watson, lists eight examples of this periphrastic style in chapter one alone, esp. when speaking of God. Cf., e.g., Philo, Fug. 97, which speaks of God as “the creative power” (ἡ 12 ποιητικὴ δύναµις) in line with the play on words between θεός and the verb τίθηµι, since Philo wants to emphasize that “God” established and ordered the universe: θεός ἐπειδὴ δι᾽ αὐτῆς [i.e., ἡ δύναµις] ἐτέθη καὶ διεκοσµήθη τὰ σύµπαντα. In Fug. 164 God is described as “the cosmos-maker” (ὁ κοσµοποιός). © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati