PETER'S THREE DENIALS

 

In response to a call on the Quora website for atheists to submit their favorite Bible contradictions, one person came up with the following point concerning Peter's triple denial: “By Jesus predicting Peter's moves in advance, he was in actuality taking away Peter's free will by forcing him to act that way.” On the surface that appears to be a very clever example of a paradox. But in fact, it is more clever than accurate.

There are several ways one could address this concern. The first, but perhaps the least satisfactory for many to face, is that if we feel we are nothing but material beings, then there really is no such thing as free will. An atheist should be the first to admit that (and the more honest ones have done just that), since in the absence of any supernatural elements in the universe such as God or a spiritual component to humanity we are wholly at the whims of our heredity and environment. I have argued this point at length with a very intelligent atheist friend, who at last had to throw up his hands and say, “But I still think there must be some way in which we can make decisions free from any outside forces.” That is called having blind faith in what you hope for in the absence of reason, a fault of which atheists generally accuse Christians.

Another possible approach is to explain that Jesus' prediction is predicated on his preknowledge. We as human beings are forced to think of time as a forward pointing arrow, whereas Divine beings can view all time periods past, present and future from a point outside of time. Thus, Jesus knew exactly what Peter would chose to do before Peter, exercising his free will, actually did it. A clearer example of this is seen in in the Old Testament in the book of Exodus.

The repeated motif concerning Pharaoh in the narrative of the ten plagues of Egypt is seen in the variations on the theme of his hardness of heart. If one reads them in chronological order, God starts out in Exodus 4:21 by saying “I will harden.” This appears to be an absolute statement, but (a) “if” clauses are sometimes missing in OT prophecies even though the prophecy is conditional upon man's reactions, and (b) foreknowledge by God of future events is not really the same as predestination.

The next instances of hardening in the Exodus passage either say that Pharaoh hardened his own heart or that his heart was hardened (leaving the question open as to who caused it). Then we at last get to the point where God is definitely stated as the “hardener.” But even after that time, the text states, “Pharaoh sinned yet again and hardened his heart.” So we can conclude that the stubborn ruler still retained a measure of free will and could have repented if he had wanted. To some extent I must admit that this phenomenon retains a certain degree of mystery to it.

Getting back to the case of Peter, it could be argued that this is a somewhat different situation in that Peter was actually told ahead of time what he was going to do, unlike Pharaoh. I can see how one might argue that a person might feel helpless if told by Jesus that he was going to deny him three times, and so would be sure to do that very thing rather than make Jesus a liar. Someone might do that, but certainly not Peter, who was every bit as hard-headed as Pharaoh and known to argue vehemently with Jesus on several occasions. And sure enough, even after being told what he was going to soon do, Peter adamantly refused to admit that he would ever do such a thing – that is until a little peer pressure and fear caused him to act that way anyway. And only then did it suddenly hit him that he had done exactly as Christ had predicted.

That this weakness was part of Peter's character is confirmed by a later event recorded in Acts. On that occasion Peter refused to eat with Gentile converts, even though he had been the first to get the revelation from God that they were to be accorded full fellowship along with Jewish believers. But Peter totally dissociated himself from the Gentiles in the church when some Jewish Christians of the circumcision party from the Jerusalem Church came to visit. (Galatians 2:11-13) This appears to have been a character trait which Peter had to fight against most of his life.