For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.

2 Peter 1: 5-7 

It’s easy to quickly read a passage like the one above which contains a list of nine attributes, and not think much about it. Yes, we need faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. But is this just Paul rattling off attributes at random?

Paul structures his list as a sorites, a Greek construct for forming a list that we can visualize as a staircase. Each statement builds on the previous one, climbing the staircase until we reach the climax at the top. I also like to think of the list in a different way – as the growth of a child into a mature adult.

In the Greco-Roman world a child grew up through three phases of development. First was their schooling – the paideia. Then, when the child reached their teenage years, they entered the gymnasium. The aim through this process was produce what the Greeks called the kalos kai agathos – the complete man.

The first two attributes, faith and virtue, fit in with the paodeia phase of development. The outcome of this schooling is the next attribute, knowledge, which is the bridge between the paideia and gymnasium. In the gymnasium the next two attributes are developed – self-control and steadfastness. This should produce someone who possesses the next attribute, godliness which is the bridge to becoming the kalos kai agathos – someone with the final two attributes, brotherly kindness and love.

We could also look at the nine attributes as stages of development from infant to adult:

• Faith: the baby. Faith is about having trust and an infant has implicit trust in their parents.

• Virtue: the toddler. Virtue is about aspiring to excellence as a toddler desires to be like their parents.

• Knowledge: the school kid. In school, a child grows in knowledge.

• Self-control: the adolescent. When a child reaches adolescence, they need to learn self-control as their bodies change.

• Steadfastness: the young adult. With growing responsibilities, the adult needs to learn to endure.

• Godliness: the full-grown man. Godliness is about having a mature character.

• Brotherly love: the parent. Brotherly love is love within the family environment.

• Love: the grandparent. The ultimate attribute, love, is about loving the wider family.

Whichever way we look at the list it teaches us about progression. Faith, the beginning attribute, is meant to be something that grows eventually into love. My next few blog posts will examine the nine attributes in more detail. I’ll try to answer questions like “what is virtue?” and “why doesn’t knowledge come first in the list?”