The perfect quaternion

The Letters of Peter, page 329
William Barclay

…J. B. Mayor compares the two letters (of Peter). He quotes some of the great passages of First Peter, and then he says: “I think that none who read these words can help feeling that, not even in Paul, not even in John, is there to be found a more beautiful or a more living description of the secret primitive Christianity, of the force that overcame the world, than in the perfect quaternion of faith and hope and love and joy, which pervades this short epistle (i.e. First Peter). No one could make the same assertion with regard to Second Peter: thoughtful and interesting as it is, it lacks that intense sympathy, that flame of love, which marks First Peter…. No change of circumstances can account for the change of tone of which we are conscious in passing from from one epistle to the other.”

…It is true that form from the purely linguistic point of view that there are 369 words which occur in First Peter which do not occur in Second Peter; and there are 230 words which occur in Second Peter and not in First Peter.

On this day…

• Psalm 126 – 2024
• Psalm 127 – 2024
• From beginning to end, the song is a lyrical outburst on the greatness of God – 2014
• The Trials of a Saint – 2011
• Obstinacy – I will not give up my right to myself – 2011
• I and the Father Are One – 2011
• Jesus Is the Resurrection and the Life – 2011
• Believed – 2011
• Begotten – 2011
• Beautiful – 2011