There are a fair number of issues here in which we substantially agree. For one example, no one can dispute that accurate interpretation of Scripture is critical to the spiritual well-being of Christians, whether considered individually or corporately. The reason for this is simple. Anyone who truly loves God both wants and needs to know His mind, "Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee."
But here we have a problem:
I think Peter gets to the heart of the matter immediately when he lays out the great gift and promises to us from God, and explains how to make sure we are not led astray by those who personally interpret the scriptures incorrectly
The problem is, the set of all believers who have ever personally interpreted a Scripture is 100% of all believers who ever read the Bible, which I hope would be most of us. Of all those, I'm willing to bet well over 99% have been incorrect on occasion, simply as part of the learning process. Therefore virtually all believers have been "heretics" at one time or another IF "personal interpretation" is the offense you say it is.
But the above analysis is of course absurd, and intentionally so. You can't even think without doing some sort of interpretation, of words, sounds, whatever the media, and if it is you doing it, it is by definition personal. You are doing it. Not someone else. You are a unique individual. All of your experiences condition and color how you interpret anything that comes to you. There is no way to interact with the world at all without that personal lens affecting it.
So the problem is not with
personal interpretation per se, but with
subjective interpretation. The word of God is objective truth. If by rejecting "personal/private interpretation" all you meant was that Scripture is not theological putty that I can reshape at a whim to conform to my personal preferences and defects of mind and soul, then I would gladly agree with you. But as I understand it, the typical Catholic meaning assigned here goes well beyond that, to imply a monopoly on comprehending the word of God held by an elite within a single human ("visible") organization. It is the latter view to which I object, for reasons which I hope to show are consistent with Peter's own argument concerning the origin of Scripture.
For one thing, a great deal of interpretation has already occurred by the time the phrase "personal interpretation" shows up in these discussions. The original text never even uses a word that directly translates as "personal" or "private."
(Greek sidebar: The Greek word thus translated is ιδιας ("idais"). Here it means "of one's own," being in the genitive, though really it is in the feminine, not the neuter. This is an odd property of the Greek, in that words are often grouped to show relationship by conforming the gender to the main term, but with no necessary implication of actual gender in the other words of the group. This idea is awkward to represent in English, so we default to using the neuter "of one's own.")
The main term in this gender-group phrase is epiluseis, what we might see as "interpretation," or here more likely "disclosure." Compare for example Acts 20:3, where the critical text (though not the Byzantine) contains the expression εγενετο γνωμης. This is speaking of Paul's resolve to go to Macedonia. Like 2Peter 1:20, the base verb is ginomai ("to come into being"), not estin ("to be"). And like 2Peter1:20, the noun gnomes ("opinion/resolution") is in the genitive, which in this scenario depicts source or origin, thus the genitive points us back to ginomai to describe the origin of the opinion/resolution. The simple translation would then be "[he] came to be of the opinion ..." or more loosely "[he] arrived at the resolution to ..." In other words, we now know something about the
origin of Paul's resolution to go through Macedonia. There was a time when it was not, and then it came into being.
This is exactly the structure of 2Peter 1:20. For any given prophecy, there was a point in time when it did not exist. Then it came to be. That's why the verb is ginetai, not estin. Peter is addressing how it came to be, because he wishes to assert that the prophetic text is NOT fable, but comes to us directly from God.
BTW, I have noted your argument that if the KJV's "private interpretation" is ambiguous as to whether he speaks of the reader or the prophet, you contend that ambiguity can be resolved by determining who is Peter's audience, such that if the audience is primarily Jewish they have no need to be reminded of the divine origin of Scripture, and therefore the focus must be the reader, not the prophet. Then you proceed to marshal evidence that the audience in other places is presumed aware of Jewish biblical traditions, and this diminishes the probability Peter was addressing Gentiles, despite the potentially conflicting evidence of the addressees listed.
That is certainly a creative argument, but I do not think it holds water, for the simple reason that both Jew and Gentile are human, and by definition in need of constant reminding of important divine truths. Consider the Lord's Supper. Why did Jesus say, in plain terms, we should do this? To remember Him. You would ask, how could it be forgotten? Not only were the apostles Jewish, but they lived with Messiah in person. Yet here is Jesus telling them to do this in remembrance of Him. Indeed, the passover itself was given as a celebration of the exodus, to
remember the deliverance Israel received from God, liberation from bondage in Egypt, yet Israel would forget time and time again, as a nation, and fall into idolatry and need to be delivered yet again, after being
reminded by God to whom they belonged.
So I do not think the Jewish audience factor has any bearing on the question of what is being said in verses 20-21. The structure and grammar and purpose within the flow is all about setting up the contrast between a true message of divine origin versus a false message of human origin. I do not see how to evade that, least of all with the question of who the audience was, and remains to this day. It is all believers who wish to keep in mind the authenticity of God's promises, and especially the promise of Christ's return in glory, despite a discouraging torrent of unbelief, so that we may remain faithful to Him until that happy reunion.
So let's get back to Peter's game plan for this book. We agree he wanted to protect his flock from false teaching and the harmful divisions it brings. His method is where we disagree. Of course he is concerned about wrong interpretation of Scripture, and he expresses that elsewhere, warning against those who "are unlearned and unstable" twisting the Scriptures (2Peter 3:16).
But his focus is establishing the truth claims of Christian faith by eyewitness testimony of the glory of Christ, and the even better testimony of the Spirit-driven Scriptures. This is like preparing someone to recognize counterfeit money. The method is NOT to catalog all possible variations of error. Nor is it to deny someone the ability to objectively review the authenticity of the currency
for themselves. To the contrary, the technique is to firmly establish the true pattern in the minds of everyone who will have contact with the false patterns, so that they may spot the false by noting it's disagreement with the true. And that is exactly what Peter is doing here. He's making all of them "truth detectors," by confirming to their hearts and minds the authenticity of the apostolic and Scriptural witness, which is the single best defense against heresy in any form.
As for your commentary on the definition of heresy, I note you are using Strong's definition. Nothing wrong with that, except it is overstating the case to speak of "self-choice" as the raw etymology. αἵρεσις ("hairesis") is more purely just "a choice." Then it moved beyond it's etymology (as most words do) and came to mean sect or school. The Louw-Nida lexicon uses semantic categories that account for these shifts away from etymological roots and get at the sense of a word in its contextual usage, and it describes two usage categories for the term:
33.241 αἵρεσιςb, εως f: the content of teaching which is not true—‘false teaching, untrue doctrine, heresy.’ οἵτινες παρεισάξουσιν αἱρέσεις ἀπωλείας ‘they will bring in false teachings which are destructive’ 2 Pe 2:1.
63.27 αἵρεσιςc, εως f: a division of people into different and opposing sets—‘division, separate group.’ δεῖ γὰρ καὶ αἱρέσεις ἐν ὑμῖν εἶναι ‘for it is necessary that divisions exist among you’ or ‘the existence of divisions among you is inevitable’ 1 Cor 11:19.
See also Liddell and Scott: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=ai(/resis
So while one can certainly infer that one must make an individual choice to follow false teaching, one must also make an individual choice to follow true teaching. Therefore "self-choice" factors out. It's not the complaint Peter has. On the contrary, Peter wants each of his readers to choose, personally, to follow the apostolic witness, confirmed as true by eye-witness testimony, but verified by an even more certain testimony, the word of God given to the prophets, not by some secret, personal mediation of the message, but as mere mail-carriers for the Holy Spirit.
Now I have no doubt these false teachers tried to bolster their position among the gullible by claiming such secret revelations, alleging for themselves some "edge" in getting in with God. If so, this would almost seem to suggest they were the precursors of the coming gnostic syncretism, which tried to infiltrate Christianity in the First and Second Century. They seem given over to lust, whether for money or for sex or for souls. They appear to be some group that was expert at justifying their carnality while at the same time convincing the gullible they were spiritually superior to the apostles themselves, which evidently is one of the dignities against which they railed.
All of this is consistent with the gnostic incursion, because one of the principles of their dualism was they imagined they could be spiritually enlightened through their secret knowledge (which apparently had something to do with pagan temple prostitutes), yet carry on in wild, libertine excess, because deeds done in the material self were irrelevant to the spiritual self. So they found a way to make a living by telling people they could have their cake and eat it too. And I agree with Peter. Their condemnation is just, and they will pay a horrible price for their wickedness and how they inflicted it on the tender sheep of Christ's flock.
But in none of this does Peter discourage his readers to defer all theological thinking to an elite. Exactly the opposite. The false teachers he excoriates were the very ones trying to become that elite. His solution? Simply telling his readers they can trust his eyewitness testimony, and even more so they can trust the Scriptures, to tell them the truth, so that they may, as you have rightly said, remain steadfast in the faith until the day our Lord returns.
2Pe 3:17-18 Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. (18) But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
May it be so.
Peace,
SR