When Did Divine Revelation End?

[Ziggamafu]

Does anybody know if it is considered dogma that Divine Revelation ended with the death of the last apostle? The reason I ask is, among other things, inspired by the late dating of 2 Peter. It seems that a moderate estimate of 2 Peter's date is 120AD, though some date it later and a few date it earlier (though not much earlier).

[Resurrexi]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' date='10 March 2010 - 05:24 PM' timestamp='1268259852' post='2070578']
Does anybody know if it is considered dogma that Divine Revelation ended with the death of the last apostle? The reason I ask is, among other things, inspired by the late dating of 2 Peter. It seems that a moderate estimate of 2 Peter's date is 120AD, though some date it later and a few date it earlier (though not much earlier).
[/quote]

Pope St. Pius X* condemned as an error the statement "Revelatio, objectum fidei catholicae constituens, non fuit cum Apostolis completa."--"Revelation, constituting the object of the Catholic faith, was not completed with the Apostles." (Pope St. Pius X, Lamentabili Sane, 21: Denzinger-Schonmetzer 3421)

Anyone, therefore, who states that 2 Peter was written after the death of the last apostle, would be supporting an error condemned by the Magisterium of the Church.

*The decree was actually a decree of the Holy Office, but it was approved by the Holy Father [i]in forma specifica[/i] which gave it the force and authority of a papal document.

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' date='10 March 2010 - 06:24 PM' timestamp='1268259852' post='2070578']
Does anybody know if it is considered dogma that Divine Revelation ended with the death of the last apostle? The reason I ask is, among other things, inspired by the late dating of 2 Peter. It seems that a moderate estimate of 2 Peter's date is 120AD, though some date it later and a few date it earlier (though not much earlier).
[/quote]
Dating for 2 Peter ranges from AD60 to 120, but more importantly the Church accepted it into the canon. Divine Revelation does end with the death of the last Apostle, commonly thought to be St John, somewhere after AD 100.

[Ziggamafu]

I only just now thought of the conflict between the majority of biblical scholars on the 2nd century authorship of 2 Peter and the traditional belief that revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. Hmm.

Here is an example (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/2peter.html):

[quote]The external evidence points most strongly to the inauthenticity of II Peter. If II Peter is authentic, then both epistles are authentic and both addressed themselves to the same church and were sent at approximately the same time (Peter's stay in Rome). Thus, it is most reasonable to assume that the two authentic epistles of Peter would have circulated together. However, the external evidence reveals that several early writers have knowledge only of I Peter, and this tells against the authenticity of II Peter.

The epistle known as Polycarp to the Phillipians has numerous allusions to NT epistles, making it likely that the author had some kind of collection available to him. There is a list of NT parallels available online. But the one epistle that the author seemed to have liked to use most was First Peter. The use is clearly evident, as shown in these examples.

"Therefore, girding your loins, serve God in fear" (Polyc 2:1 / I Pet 1:13)
"believing on him who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead and gave him glory" (Polyc 2:1 / I Pet 1:21)
"not returning evil for evil or abuse for abuse" (Polyc 2:2 / I Pet 3:9)
"every passion of the flesh wages war against the Spirit" (Polyc 5:3 / I Pet 2:11)
"who bore our sins in his own body on the tree, who committed no sin, neither was guile found on his lips" (Polyc 8:1 / I Pet 2:24)

Yet despite his fondness for I Peter, the author does not provide the slightest allusion to II Peter. While I should not like to declare this argument to be insuperable, it does provide a consideration which isn't to be dismissed.

Irenaeus of Lyons obviously had a collection of canonical works that he quoted. Among these works were I Peter.

Adv. Haer. 4.9.2
"...and Peter says in his Epistle: 'Whom, not seeing, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, ye have believed, ye shall rejoice with joy unspeakable;'..." (quoted of I Pet 1:8)

Adv. Haer 4.16.5
"And for this reason Peter says 'that we have not liberty as a cloak of maliciousness,' but as the means of testing and evidencing faith." (quoted of I Pet 2:16)

Yet nowhere does Irenaeus quote or mention a second epistle of Peter, which is quite odd if Irenaeus' collection included this epistle, for it has so much juicy material that Irenaeus would not hesitate to use against his heretical opponents. Irenaeus would have many occasions to use II Peter in his extensive refutations, and he very likely would have done so if it were an authentic letter of Peter.

I will briefly discuss Wallace's points. Despite the hopeful allusion-hunting of Picirilli, Polycarp and Irenaeus show that II Peter wasn't known in the second century church although I Peter was. The self-identification of the author as "Symeon Peter" provides no evidence one way or the other. II Peter does indeed show signs of hellenization as mentioned by Kummel above, and in any case Jewish Christians were not obliterated c. 70 CE. The construal of "our God and Savior Jesus Christ" as presenting a significantly lower christology than "our Savior and God Jesus Christ" borders on the absurd. Both expressions refer to Christ with the terms Savior and God, and thus the christological expressions are equivalent. Indeed, critical scholarship recognizes the appelation of Jesus as Savior or as God to be a second century phenomenon, and thus this lends further weight to the case that II Peter is to be dated firmly in the second century. Wallace sees "a humility, a pathos" in the statement that there are things in the collection of Paul's letters that the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction. If there really is such, it is the affectation of the pseudipigraphist. Wallace relies on the supposition that the apostle Peter was actually informed of his martyrdom by the risen Christ as described by the redactor of John 21 in order to explain the comment in II Pet 1:14. Wallace even proposes that the guidance of the Holy Spirit in selecting the books of the canon lends support to the authenticity of II Peter. It is clear, then, that any scientific approach to the NT demands that II Peter be regarded as spurious.

As to dating, Perrin suggests (The New Testament: An Introduction, p. 262): "He is probably the latest of all the New Testament writers, and a date about A.D. 140 would be appropriate." Nearly all scholars would agree with a date sometime in the second century, probably in the second quarter.

The author of II Peter knew the epistle of Jude, I Peter, the synoptic account of the transfiguration, the Johannine appendix wherein Christ predicts the martyrdom of Peter, and a collection of Pauline letters. Finally, there seems to be a literary relationship of II Peter with the Apocalypse of Peter. Loisy judged II Peter to be dependent upon the Apocalypse, while some scholars today would judge the dependence to be in the reverse direction. I do not know of any data that would resolve this issue one way or the other.[/quote]

I think Raymond Brown dated it to 120, off the top of my head.

[Resurrexi]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' date='10 March 2010 - 08:50 PM' timestamp='1268272232' post='2070670']
I only just now thought of the conflict between the majority of biblical scholars on the 2nd century authorship of 2 Peter and the traditional belief that revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. Hmm.

Here is an example (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/2peter.html):



I think Raymond Brown dated it to 120, off the top of my head.
[/quote]

Raymond Brown is not someone whose ideas I'd be advocating.

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='Resurrexi' date='10 March 2010 - 08:59 PM' timestamp='1268272782' post='2070675']
Raymond Brown is not someone whose ideas I'd be advocating.
[/quote]

Regardless of troubling suggestions made by Brown, he was considered one of the most (if not the most) knowledgeable scholar of objective historical/textual data regarding Scripture. Besides, I am not advocating anything. I am bringing up the disconnect between the opinion of what appears to be the vast majority of biblical scholars (and even from a lay observation of the data, it appears that this opinion is the commonsense conclusion) and a teaching of the Church. If the teaching is formal dogma, obviously there is no wiggle room for those of us who do not wish to call into question the infallibility of the Church. I'm fairly certain that it was the opinion of the Fathers that revelation ended with the death of the last apostle, though, which would "amount" to formal dogma. Perhaps 2 Peter was written in the last month of St. John's life and was only copied and circulated a decade or more later.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

I'd like to point out that there is no inconsistency between saying that Divine Revelation ended and saying that this or that book or gospel was written after the death of the Last Apostle. It is possible that a scribe knew the spoken Gospel of this or that Apostle (say, St. Matthew) and wrote it all out in his name. The Revelation is still through the Apostle (and therefore does not contradict Lamentabili), but was written down by a scribe. The same way that we attribute the Torah to Moses but that doesn't mean he personally wrote it all out.

Of course, this is all speculative and I actually don't support the theory that the apostles didn't write the documents themselves.

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='Raphael' date='11 March 2010 - 09:39 AM' timestamp='1268318386' post='2070913']
I'd like to point out that there is no inconsistency between saying that Divine Revelation ended and saying that this or that book or gospel was written after the death of the Last Apostle. It is possible that a scribe knew the spoken Gospel of this or that Apostle (say, St. Matthew) and wrote it all out in his name. The Revelation is still through the Apostle (and therefore does not contradict Lamentabili), but was written down by a scribe. The same way that we attribute the Torah to Moses but that doesn't mean he personally wrote it all out.

Of course, this is all speculative and I actually don't support the theory that the apostles didn't write the documents themselves.
[/quote]

The NT books were not all written by apostles and the pseudopigraphal authorship of some books is largely agreed upon (the agreement [i]approaches [/i]certainty in some cases, such as 2 Peter). Also, if you are suggesting that oral revelation ended with the death of the last apostle and that oral revelation could later be written down as Scripture, doesn't that pose the problem of not considering Scripture itself to be revelation? In other words, doesn't Scripture [i]by itself[/i] qualify as revelation (rather than the revelation merely being said to be the Sacred Tradition that the Scripture contains)?

Edited March 11, 2010 by Ziggamafu

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' date='11 March 2010 - 01:16 PM' timestamp='1268331388' post='2071039']
The NT books were not all written by apostles and the pseudopigraphal authorship of some books is largely agreed upon (the agreement [i]approaches [/i]certainty in some cases, such as 2 Peter). Also, if you are suggesting that oral revelation ended with the death of the last apostle and that oral revelation could later be written down as Scripture, doesn't that pose the problem of not considering Scripture itself to be revelation? In other words, doesn't Scripture [i]by itself[/i] qualify as revelation (rather than the revelation merely being said to be the Sacred Tradition that the Scripture contains)?
[/quote]
Interesting questions. I'm not really sure of an answer. I was more intending just to pose theoretical possibilities. I love the content of Scripture, but I'm far from being an expert on the development of Scripture.

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='Raphael' date='11 March 2010 - 02:53 PM' timestamp='1268337183' post='2071115']
Interesting questions. I'm not really sure of an answer. I was more intending just to pose theoretical possibilities. I love the content of Scripture, but I'm far from being an expert on the development of Scripture.
[/quote]

To be honest, I was looking to see if anyone thought there was wiggle-room on when divine revelation ended. Could "the death of the last apostle" be extended to the apostolic [i]period[/i], a frame of time that perhaps includes the immediate disciples of the apostles? It does seem that the doctrine itself is basically air-tight in its authority, but I'm not entirely certain. Anyway, I before I thought of the conflict, I actually relished in the idea that 2 Peter was written as late as 160 AD because it would be a huge boon for those of us trying to convince Protestants of Church authority and apostolic succession, as well as doctrinal development.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' date='12 March 2010 - 06:35 AM' timestamp='1268393714' post='2071658']
To be honest, I was looking to see if anyone thought there was wiggle-room on when divine revelation ended. Could "the death of the last apostle" be extended to the apostolic [i]period[/i], a frame of time that perhaps includes the immediate disciples of the apostles? It does seem that the doctrine itself is basically air-tight in its authority, but I'm not entirely certain. Anyway, I before I thought of the conflict, I actually relished in the idea that 2 Peter was written as late as 160 AD because it would be a huge boon for those of us trying to convince Protestants of Church authority and apostolic succession, as well as doctrinal development.
[/quote]
Alas, the ends don't justify the means.

However, 1 Clement would seem to accomplish much of the same, if your Protestants are open to ECFs.

[Ziggamafu]

Well, I just asked one of my professors and she said that indeed it is the preexisting apostolic kerygma contained in Scripture that is the revelation; the written words are a divinely inspired portrayal of divine revelation that [i]already [/i]existed in the apostolic kerygma. In other words, although Scripture is a source of divine revelation, it is so only and precisely because it is a source of Tradition (and may be argued to have a kind of "primacy" precisely because it is privileged instance of Tradition).

So there is no problem with 2 Peter being written after the death of the last apostle because it is nevertheless a source of apostolic Tradition, and moreover enjoys the special privilege of having been divinely inspired for the sake of its particular, objective emphasis and portrayal of Tradition in God's plan.

Since Scripture is a unique instance of Tradition's revelation and its canon is closed (at least in regards to the NT), we don't have to worry about people saying that such and such is apostolic revelation only just now written down. Everything after Scripture is, at its best and most authoritative, mere dogmatic clarification / amplification of doctrines already contained in revelation.

...at least that is what I took away from her. Hmm.

[Apotheoun]

God is the source of revelation, while scripture and tradition are distinct modes used by the Holy Spirit within the Church for transmitting the apostolic kerygma.