'The Form of the Earth Shall Change, but the Substance Shall Remain'

2 Peter 3 and a History of Interpretation

2 Peter 3.10 envisioned by the AI art generator on Canva.

At the end of last year I had a piece published by the Reformed Theological Review. Exploring the question of continuity and discontinuity between this creation and the new creation in 2 Peter 3, the essay was a revised version of my fourth year project at Moore College.

Besides picking up many embarrassing typos that I and my proof-readers missed, working on that essay was something that I threw myself into in the evenings following John’s death in 2023. What was published was largely an extended exegetical essay of verses 5–7 and 10–13 of 2 Peter 3, and the many contentious issues concerning textual criticism in verse 10. What didn’t make it from my finished project into the essay was a brief exploration of how 2 Peter 3.10 has been read across church history. Leaving the questions of exegesis and textual criticism to one side, we’ll dip into different historical readings of 2 Peter 3.

2 Peter 3.10 and the ‘Received Text’
If one wants to argue that this creation will be dissolved and annihilated, with no connection to the new creation, then 2 Peter 3.10 is the locus classicus. What has long confused matters is a notoriously difficult textual variant. I deal with this extensively in my RTR essay, so I won’t rehearse the argument here. To set the scene, in the most recent critical editions of the Greek New Testament, verse 10 is published thus:

Ἥξει δὲ ἡμέρα κυρίου ὡς κλέπτης ἐν ᾗ οἱ οὐρανοὶ ῥοιζηδὸν παρελεύσονται, στοιχεῖα δὲ καυσούμενα λυθήσεται, καὶ γῆ καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτῇ ἔργα οὐχ εὑρεθήσεται.

In recent English translations, that is rendered:

• NIV2011: But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

• ESV: But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

• CSB: But the day of the Lord will come like a thief; on that day the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, the elements will burn and be dissolved, and the earth and the works on it will be disclosed.

The difficult textual variant is found in the final clause, ‘the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare’. As Metzger notes in his Textual Commentary, there are a ‘wide variety of readings’ 2 Peter 3.10; καὶ γῆ καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτῇ ἔργα οὐχ εὑρεθήσεται is the oldest extant reading we have, but is grammatically awkward. This has led to several variants, ranging from the suggestion that he earth and everything done in it will not be laid bare, to the addition of words like dissolved or disappear, suggesting that ‘the earth and everything done in it will’ somehow be dissolved or disappear.

This confusion is evidence in Authorised Version and the Textus Receptus:

• ἥξει δὲ ἡ ἡμέρα Κυρίου ὡς κλέπτης ἐν νυκτί, ἐν ᾗ οἱ οὐρανοὶ ῥοιζηδὸν παρελεύσονται, στοιχεῖα δὲ καυσούμενα λυθήσονται, καὶ γῆ καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτῇ ἔργα κατακαήσεται.

• But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

That is a radical differencebetween the Greek that was available for Erasmus when he published his Greek, and the earliest extant of Peter’s letter that we have access to. If the earth and its deeds are burnt up, that aligns with the cataclysmic language earlier in verse 10.

1 Corinthians 7.31 and Irenaeus
What I was interested in is how Christians down the centuries have read the eschatology of 2 Peter 3. What became apparent very quickly is that Paul become a central interpretive key. Paul says in verse 31 of 1 Corinthians 7:

‘For this world in its present form (σχῆμα) is passing away.’

The form, or σχῆμα, is the outward form and appearance of the world will pass away. It was frequently used to refer to the stage designs in Greek theatre; while the theatre remained the same, the stage setting would change. Why Irenaeus settled on this phrase is unclear. But it’s a picture of discontinuity with continuity, such that while the form shall perish, the substance shall remain.

One of the first to use this language for the present and new creations was Irenaeus. Arguing against the annihilation of creation’s essence or substance, Irenaeus drew upon two theological truths. Firstly, if the resurrection will be physical, and will result in material, ‘real men [sic]’, resurrected humanity will require a material, physical existence (plantationem) in which to inhabit.¹ Secondly, Irenaeus understood that creation was rightfully possessed by God, and he would not abandon his creation: ‘for faithful and true is He who has established it’.² At stake for Irenaeus was the truth and reliability of God. Arguing instead that ‘the form’ which passes away is the corrupted state of things which had settled upon the world, ‘those things among which transgression has occurred’. Indeed, a renewed creation is a world ‘restored to its primeval condition’—freed from corruption—such that it can be ‘under the dominion of the righteous.’³ This strongly accords with Irenaeus’ teleology and apologetics against Gnosticism, in which the god who created the world is the same god who achieves its redemption and perfection. Whereas God’s reality in the ordering of creation will remain, the false σχῆμα/figura of human innovation will pass away.

Irenaeus holds to an eschatology which appears to accord with our reading of 2 Peter 3. The difficulty is that he uses Pauline language to do so. Additionally, it is not entirely clear whether or not Irenaeus had access to 2 Peter, a possibility hampered by the loss of Adversus Haereses after chapter 36 of Book 5. However, there are enough allusions to 2 Peter within Irenaeus to suggest that he was aware of the epistle.⁴ Whereas Irenaeus’ language comes from Paul, Irenaeus is nonetheless producing a systematic account of the apostles’ depiction of the end.⁵ The terms form and substance, although unused by Peter, are nevertheless a fair reflection of Peter’s description. Creation itself remains, whilst corruption and transgression are eliminated.

Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas
Irenaeus’ schema was thus followed by many leading theologians in their assessment of 2 Peter 3:5—13. So Augustine writes that just as during the Noahic Flood, the ‘figure of this world will pass away in a conflagration of this-worldly fires’.⁶ Like Irenaeus, Augustine argued that the conflagration would purge the corruptible elements, and fit the substance for immortality. However, Augustine applies the purgation of corruption directly to the human body. On this basis Augustine argues that the destruction of the world will not affect those whose substance has been transformed. This transformation enables Christians to exist in heavenly realms out of reach of the flames.⁷ There is some equivocation from Augustine that apocalyptic scenes like 2 Peter 3 can be understood in another sense besides the literal.⁸ Nevertheless, the conflagration will result in radical discontinuity, and the purging effect of the conflagration will bring the world’s renewal.⁹

Whilst this hope for the transformation of creation was held by theologians such as Anselm, it was lost in the medieval synthesis of nature with grace.¹⁰ Aquinas looked for the eschatological renewal of the world rather than its dissolution.¹¹ Yet the new heavens and new earth were understood as atemporal, allowing humanity to escape their animal nature which Aquinas regards as corrupted.¹² At the same time, the language of form, or accidents, and substance was taken from Aquinas’ beatific vision, and applied directly to the Eucharist. This blending of nature and grace within transubstantiation resulted in the transfiguration of creation rather than its transformation.¹³

Rejection by Luther
According to Doyle, it was particularly in reaction to this transcendent, ahistorical apocalypticism which Luther responded to by highlighting the reality of Christ’s coming judgement on all people, and the radical discontinuity the apocalypse would bring.¹⁴ Sometimes confusedly, Luther appears to have argued for the dissolution and destruction of creation on one hand, and its material continuity and transformation on the other.¹⁵ Whereas Aquinas’s concept of connatural grace understood grace arising from both God and nature, Luther trumpeted the gulf between nature and grace.

[A]fter the Lord has thus beaten out the wheat and has gathered the grain in its place, what do you think will happen to the chaff? It will inevitably be burned with unquenchable fire (Matt. 3:12). This will be the lot of the world.¹⁶

It’s within Lutheranism we find the exception to Irenaeus’ schema. Is it because the language of form and substance became so associated with the Latin medieval mass? According to Berkouwer, a school of thought arose amongst Lutherans in the seventeenth-century which read 2 Peter 3 as describing Aufhebung, annihilation, after which God would produce a second creatio ex nihilo.¹⁷

A Return to the Schema in Reformed Circles: Calvin, Turretin, Ponet, and Bavinck
With Calvin we find a return to the patristic sense of substance and form in the context of eschatology. Calvin warned against speculating on the exact nature of restored creation, describing it as neither useful nor lawful.¹⁸ The type of speculation Calvin frowned upon came from Radical Reformers such as Pilgram Marpeck, who asserted that all creation would cease to exist bar those humans taken into God himself.¹⁹ Instead Calvin cautioned that we must be content to know that there will be no deformity in the new creation. Christ’s παρουσία will establish the repair of those corruptions initiated by sin.²⁰ God will not abandon his world; whereas the ‘corruptions of heaven and earth will be purged by fire…they are to be consumed, only that they may be renovated, their substance still remaining the same, as it may be easily gathered from Romans 8:21’.²¹ Calvin rejected the view that when God is all in all, ‘all things will vanish and dissolve into nothing.’²² Likewise: ‘No part of the universe is untouched by the longing with which everything in this world aspires to the hope of resurrection.’²³ Commenting on Isaiah 65, Calvin writes that at Christ’s παρουσία, ‘corruptions having been taken away, the world shall return to its first origin.’²⁴ The same dichotomy was employed by Calvin to describe the general resurrection: ‘the substance of the body is the same’.²⁵ By holding to this hope for creation, Calvin contended that redemption is not a repudiation of creation, but its perfection. God’s faithfulness to his creation means that the fiery judgement will cleanse but not obliterate the substance of creation. The renewal of the substance of world involves the restoration of the created order.

Calvin’s contribution was to hold nature and grace together as separate yet correlated. Whereas the medieval approach had effectively been to conflate nature and grace together, Calvin maintained the distinction by which grace is the perfection of nature. Under Christ, the redemption of the world is bound together with the redemption of humanity, such that the creation is the object of God’s love and redemptive work. Particularly with Romans 8 as his guide for reading passages like 2 Peter 3, there is incredulity within Calvin that creation is awaiting its redemption only to be extinguished. As such, salvation is not about replacing creation; instead, it is the liberation of creation from sin. Alongside unifying believers to Christ and justifying them by his blood, redemption involves the reordering of the world towards its original telos. In doing so, Calvin followed a path forged principally by Irenaeus.²⁶

The language of form and substance, whilst conspicuously absent from recent discussions, remained for almost two millennia the Church’s principle means of grappling with the New Testaments account of both radical discontinuity on the one hand, and thorough material continuity on the other. After Calvin, its usage can be found in Reformed circles across Europe. Owen, for instance, whilst taking 2 Peter 3 as largely referring to the destruction of the Judaism, preached that it is ‘not of the substance of the heavens and the earth, which shall not be consumed until the last day, but of persons or men living in the world.’²⁷ Likewise Turretin taught that whilst there would be radical change to creation and creature alike, the substance of the world will not be annihilated but restored and renewed.²⁸ Turretin’s own reading of 2 Peter 3 was that it referred to an accidental change: ‘these things imply a change and not an annihilation.’²⁹ This line of argument was largely followed by Bavinck who argued that the ‘fire burns, cleanses, purifies, but does not destroy’ the substance of the world.³⁰ Hence there is a strand of Reformed theology which emphasises the continuity of creation, even with some degree of discontinuity.

An interesting example of this is the Short Catechism that Bishop John Ponet prepared for King Edward VI of England in 1553.³¹ Set out as a ‘Master’ and a student (or ‘Scholar’, one who is being schooled) answering and answering questions over 88 pages structured around the Apostles’ Creed, Lord’s Prayer, and Decalogue. The original 42 Articles of Religion were included as an appendix to the catechism. And the Short Catechism covers different segments of theology, and the Master asks his student about the circumstances under which the world shall end. The language has been sightly revised from Middle English:

Master
‘The end of the world scripture calls the fulfilling and performance of the kingdom and mystery of Christ, and the renewing of all things. For (says the Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 3), 'We loke for a new heaven, and a new earth, according to the promise of God, wherein dwells righteousness. And it seems reasonable that corruption, unsteadfast change, and sin, where unto the whole world is subject, should at length have an end. Now by what way, and what fashion and circumstances do these things shall come to pass, I would feign hear the tell.’³²

The quote shows the dependence upon the Textus Receptus for 2 Peter 3.10. Nevertheless, in reply the student says:

Scholar
‘I will tell you as well as I can, according to the witness of the same Apostle. The heavens shall pass away like a storm, elements shall melt away; the earth, and all the works therein shall be consumed with fire – as though he should say, as gold is wont to be refined, so shall the whole world be purified with fire, and be brought to his full perfection. The lesser world, which is man, following the same, shall likewise be delivered from corruption and change. And so for man this greater world (which for his sake was first created) shall at length be renewed, and be clad with another hew, much more pleasant and beautiful.’³³

Ponet was a close confident of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, and published the with the backing of the King. The catechism is ‘one of the most comprehensive official theological treatises of the early English Reformation. In its own day it was understood to represent the theology of the English reformers.’³⁴ What is striking is that this significant piece of Tudor reformed theology, dependent as it was a Greek New Testament edition that was based on Byzantine minuscules, did envision the annihilation of creation but its refinement, purification, and renewal.

Moving forward a few centuries, whereas Calvin and Turretin preferred to leave to one side the exact nature of the new creation, Bavinck particularly synthesises the images of 2 Peter, Revelation and Romans 8 into a depiction of the new creation.³⁵ According to Bavinck:

All that is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, and commendable in the whole creation, in heaven and on earth, is gathered up in the future city of God—renewed, re-created, boosted to its highest glory.³⁶

Drawing upon the transformation of carbon into a diamond, or a wheat grain dying to produce new grain, Bavinck argues that the substance of new creation is currently present here, within this creation. The annihilation of substance is impossible, whilst the appearance of the world laid waste by sin will vanish.³⁷ In this change, nothing substantially is lost. Along familiar lines, Bavinck argues that the ‘state of glory will be no mere restoration of the state of nature but a re-formation’, that is, creation’s perfection.³⁸

Conclusion
With regard to 2 Peter 3:5—13, whilst the exact phraseology of ‘form changing but the substance remaining’ may be drawn from elsewhere in Scripture, its repeated use across centuries shows a willingness by theologians as varied in time as Augustine, Calvin, and Bavinck to read Scripture as a coherent whole, and allow the clearer passages to interpret the more difficult. Despite appearances, form and substance in this context has less to do with Greek philosophy, and more to do with the Church’s testimony of God’s commitment to his creation and how radically different the world shall be when righteousness is at home. It is, if anything, reflective of a hope grounded in Jesus’ incarnation, death, and resurrection that ‘is creational, this-worldly, visible, physical, and bodily’.³⁹

The form and substance dichotomy testifies to the sensitivity that theologians over many centuries sought to account for concerning the continuity and discontinuity between this world and the next. Significantly, whilst many of the theologians just surveyed only had access only to the Textus Receptus of 2 Peter 3, they turned to clearer passages within the New Testament to understand the more obtuse 2 Peter. For Calvin particularly, the key for unlocking 2 Peter 3 was his exegesis of Romans 8:21.⁴⁰ However, besides a hermeneutical principle of using clearer passages to explain the more difficult, there is a theological principle discernible in the dichotomy concerning creation and redemption. The doctrine of creation is, as Gunton reminds us, an article of faith for Christians.⁴¹ In a corrupted world it is an issue of revelation to believe that God made a good and ordered creation. Whilst this article of faith has been challenged over the centuries, including Irenaeus’ Gnostic opponents and Calvin’s Radical Reformation interlocutors, this article of faith has been upheld as implying a commitment of the Creator to his creation.

1. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 2/2 in Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Vol. IX: Irenaeus, Vol. II. — Hippoltyus, Vol. II. — Fragments of Third Century (transl. Alexander Roberts and W.H. Rambaut; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1884), 5.36.1.

2. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 5.36.1.

3. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 5.32.1.

4. cf. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 3.1.1 and 5.28.3.

5. cf. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 5.35.2.

6. Augustine, De Civitate Dei (transl. William Babcock, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21^st Century, Volume I/7; New York: New City Press, 1994), 20.16.

7. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 20.18.

8. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 20.24.

9. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 20.30; cf. Augustine, Exposition on the Book of Psalms, (transl. William Babcock, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21^st Century, Volume III/19; New York: New City Press, 2003), Psalm CII.30.

10. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo (transl. F.S Schmitt and Joseph M. Colleran; Albany: Magi Books, 1969), 1.18; cf. Robert C. Doyle, Eschatology and the Shape of Christian Belief (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999), 140—141.

11. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: Supplement to Part III, (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948) 91.1.

12. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 91.2, 5.

13. Robert C. Doyle, Eschatology and the Shape of Christian Belief (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999), 293.

14. Doyle, Eschatology and the Shape of Christian Belief, 160—161.

15. Martin Luther, Commentary on II Peter, Luther's Works (LW) Volume 30 (ed. J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann; St Louis;St Louis: Concordia, 1972), 14.66; Martin Luther, Disputation Concerning Man, Luther's Works (LW) Volume 34 (ed. J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann; St Louis; Concordia, 1960), 137.

16. Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 1—5, Luther's Works (LW) Volume 1 (ed. J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann; St Louis; St Louis: Concordia, 1958) 1.336; 2.24.

17. G.C. Berkouwer, The Return of Christ (Studies in Dogmatics; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 220; cf. Johannes Andreas Quenstedt, Theologia didactico-polemica sive systema theologicum (Wittenberg, 1685; Leipzig, 1715), 4.638.

18. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans (Calvin’s Commentaries; transl. by John Owen; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849), 174—175.

19. Pilgram Marpeck, ‘Concerning the Love of God in Christ’, in The Writings of Pilgram Marpeck (Transl. by William Klassen and Walter Klassen; Scottsdale: Herald, 1978), 536.

20. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2/2 (Trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), III.xxv.11.

21. Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles (Calvin’s Commentaries; transl. John Owen; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1855), 381—382.

22. John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians Volume 2 (Calvin’s Commentaries; transl. by John Pringle; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849), 25.

23. Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, 173.

24. John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah Volume 4 (Calvin’s Commentaries; transl. by William Pringle; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1853), 322.

25. Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, 41—42.

26. cf. Matthew J. Tuininga, ‘“The Kingdom of Christ is Spiritual”: John Calvin's Concept of the Restoration of the World’, in For the Healing of the Nations: Essays on Creation, Redemption, and Neo-Calvinism (Volume 1 of Proceedings of the Convivium Irenicum; ed. Peter Escalante and W. Bradford Littlejohn; Burford: The Davenant Press, 2014), 85.

27. John Owen, ‘Sermon X. Providential changes, an argument for universal holiness’, in The Sermons of John Owen, accessed 23 September 2015, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/owen/sermons.pdf, 732—745; cf. William J. Dumbrell, The Search For Order: Biblical Eschatology in Focus (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 328—329.

28. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology Vol. 3: Eighteenth Through Twentieth Topics (transl. George Musgrave Giger; ed. James T. Dennison, Jr.; Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 1997), 594—596.

29. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology Vol. 3, 590—591.

30. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 4 (transl. John Vriend; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 717. See also John Murray, Redemption: Accomplished and Achieved (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 169—172; Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 279—284.

31. My appreciation to Dr Mark Earngey to allerting me to Ponet’s Short Catechism. Cf. Mark Earngey, The life and theology of Bishop John Ponet (1516-1556). Submitted as a D.Phil thesis Oxford, 2018.

32. John Ponet, Short Catechism, 1553, 35. In Middle English: Master: ‘The end of the world scripture calleth the ful fyllynge & parformaunce of the kyngdome and mistery of Christ, and the renewing of all thynges: For (saythe the Apostle Peter in his second Epistle the third chapter.) We loke for a new heauen: and a new earth, according to the promise of God: whearin dwelleth ryghteousnesse. And it semeth reason that corruption, vnstedfaste chaunge, and synne, wherunto the whole world is subiect, shoulde at length haue an end. Now bi what way, and what fasshion circumstaunces these thinges shal come to passe· I would fayne heare the tell.’

33. Ponet, Short Catechism, 35—36. In Middle English: Scholer: ‘I will tell you as well as I can, accordyng to the wytnesse of the same, Apostle. The heauens shall passe awaye like a storme, elementes shal melt awaye: the earthe, & all the workes therein shall bee consumed wyth fyre: as thoughe he shuld say: as gould is wont to be fined: so shal the whole world be purified with fire, and be broughte to hys full perfection. The lesser world, whiche is man, folowynge the same, shall lykewyse bee delyuered from corruption and chaunge. And so for man this greater worlde (which for hys sake was first created) shall at length be renewed: & be clad wyth another hew, much more pleasaunt and beutifull.’

34. Mark Earngey, ‘Catechising – A short introduction’. Published Australian Church Record, accessed 3 January 2025.

35. cf. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology Vol. 3, 596.

36. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 4, 720.

37. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 4, 717.

38. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 4, 720.

39. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 4, 715.

40. Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, 421.

41. Colin E. Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 8.