Saint Peter

Christian religious leader

• Born: Unknown
• Birthplace: Bethsaida, Galilee (now in Israel)
• Died: c. 67 c.e.
• Place of death: Rome (now in Italy)

During Jesus’ life, Peter was the most faithful and outspoken of the disciples. After Jesus’ death he gave leadership to the early Church at Jerusalem and was active in missionary work. In Catholic tradition, he is the founder of the Christian Church and of the Papacy.

Early Life

Peter (PEE-tuhr) was born Simon (or Simeon), son of Jonah in Bethsaida; the date is uncertain, but it is believed that he was born in the first few years of the Christian era. The name Peter was given to him later by Jesus; the Greek word petros means “rock” and translates into the Aramaic Cepha or Cephas. Nothing is known of Peter’s life before his call to discipleship. At the time of the call, he was working as a fisherman in partnership with his brother Andrew. According to the Gospel of Luke, he was also partners with James and John, thus beginning an intimacy with John that continued until both left Palestine.

Peter was a married man; it is recorded that Jesus cured Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever. That his wife later accompanied him on missionary journeys is suggested by Paul in 1 Corinthians 9: “Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?” According to another tradition, Peter’s wife was martyred at the same time as Peter.

Concerning Peter’s call, there are two accounts. The Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) make Peter and Andrew the first to be called as they were fishing (or washing their nets); henceforth, they were to be “fishers of men.” According to the Gospel of John, Andrew was the first to follow Jesus and afterward recruited Simon, whom Jesus immediately christened Peter.

Life’s Work

In the accounts given of Jesus’ ministry in the four Gospels, Peter plays a more prominent part than any of the other disciples, even John. When the Twelve are listed, Peter is always listed first and is even identified as “the first.” He is noted as first, too, of an inner circle that includes James and John. These three were present (with Andrew) at the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law and also at the healing of Jairus’s daughter. Together they were present at the Transfiguration, where Peter proposed building tabernacles (“shelters” in the New English Bible) for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah (Matt. 17).

Of all the Apostles, Peter was the most talkative—or the most often quoted. It was Peter who asked how often he should forgive his brother, who asked for the interpretation of a parable, who commented on the withered fig tree, and who protested that the Apostles had left all to follow Jesus. He also attempted to imitate his master by walking on the water and then lost his faith and had to be rescued. It was Peter who first realized that Jesus was indeed the Christ, “the son of the living God” (Matt. 16). It was Peter who refused to believe that Jesus had to “be killed, and the third day be raised up” (Matt. 16) and earned the rebuke “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Peter was also prominent in the events of the Passion. According to Luke 22, Jesus sent Peter and John ahead to prepare the Passover. When Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, Peter alone resisted, and when Jesus insisted, Peter asked that “not my feet only, but also my hands and my head” be washed (John 13). When Jesus foretold that “one of you shall betray me,” Peter prompted “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (presumably John) to ask Jesus who it was. When Peter protested that he was ready “to go both to prison and to death,” Jesus answered, “Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me” (Luke 22).

In the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus went aside to pray for the last time, he took Peter, James, and John with him. Three times he found them sleeping; according to Matthew and Mark, it was to Peter that he directed his reproach: “What, would you not watch with me one hour?” (Mark 14). According to John, when the officers came to arrest Jesus, again Peter alone resisted and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant. He followed Jesus to Caiaphas’s house and sat in the court with the officers, warming himself by a fire; it was there that, being questioned by the servants, he denied Jesus thrice.

Though in the First Epistle of Peter, Peter calls himself a witness of Christ’s sufferings (implying that he was present at the Crucifixion), he next appears in the Gospels in the aftermath of the Resurrection. According to Luke and John, Mary Magdalene, perhaps with some other women, found the tomb empty and reported the fact to Peter (and “the beloved disciple,” according to John); Peter went to the tomb and found only the linen cloths in which Jesus’ body had been wrapped. Luke speaks also of an appearance of the Lord “to Simon.” Otherwise, aside from the appearance to Mary and to the two on the road to Emmaus, Jesus first appeared to the Eleven (or the Eleven without Thomas); neither here nor in most of the subsequent appearances was Peter particularly distinguished. An exception is John’s report of an appearance by the Sea of Galilee. Peter had gone fishing with his old partners, James and John, and some others, when they became aware of a figure on the shore, whom the “beloved disciple” recognized as the Lord. It was then that Jesus gave Peter a pointed commandment, “Feed my sheep,” and prophesied “by what manner of death he should glorify God.”

In the period following the Resurrection appearances, one sees the Apostles gradually, and perhaps at first not intentionally, forming themselves into a church at Jerusalem, of which Peter was the natural, if not the official, leader. (Paul speaks of Peter and John and James, the Lord’s brother, as “reputed pillars” of the Church.) Peter took the initiative in urging the appointment of a twelfth Apostle to replace Judas. When the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles at Pentecost and they spoke in tongues, Peter spoke boldly to the astonished multitude, defending the speaking as the fulfillment of prophecy and proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah; thus he added thousands to the Church.

When, in company with John, Peter healed a crippled man, he and John were for the first time arrested and brought before the high priest and the Sanhedrin, but they were released after being warned to desist from preaching in the name of Jesus. When further miracles followed, the whole body of Apostles was arrested, and although (it is said) the Apostles miraculously escaped from prison, they appeared before the high priest the next day and might have been executed except for the cautiousness of Gamaliel, a teacher of the law.

After the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, the infant church was dispersed, and adherents carried the Gospel into the country districts. Philip preached in Samaria with such success that Peter and John were sent down to support him. This was apparently the beginning of Peter’s missionary work outside Jerusalem. Tours of Lydda and Joppa, which followed, were important to the history of the Church. Peter had performed two miracles; soon afterward, he had a vision that seemed to abolish the Jewish distinction between clean and unclean food. The next day, he received a message from one Cornelius, a Roman centurion and convert to Judaism, who had had a vision urging him to send for Peter. The result was that the Holy Spirit was poured out on Gentiles, and they were baptized. Peter understood that he could no longer reject food as unclean or refuse to eat with the uncircumcised. For the time being, the disciples in Jerusalem seemed to accept Peter’s position. It was about this time that Herod Agrippa I executed John’s brother James. (He would have done the same with Peter if Peter had not miraculously escaped from prison.)

Meanwhile, Paul had undergone his conversion, and his missionary activity raised again the problem of the status of gentile converts. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, Paul asserts that three years after his conversion he went to Jerusalem and spent two weeks with Peter, without seeing any of the other Apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. Fourteen years later, Paul went again to Jerusalem with Barnabas to discuss the problem raised by those Jewish Christians who would have imposed on gentile converts the burden of observing the Jewish ceremonial law. According to Paul, the meeting concluded amicably, with James, Peter, and John agreeing that they would minister to the Jews and Paul would minister to the Gentiles. The account in Acts of the Apostles (assuming that the same meeting is meant) adds that Peter spoke up on behalf of the Gentiles and was supported by James, who, however, made the condition that the Gentiles should abstain “from pollutions of idols, fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood” (Acts 15). The fragmentary evidence would suggest that by this time Peter, though apparently still the most outspoken of the group at Jerusalem, had yielded some of his influence to James. The compromise did not prevent further misunderstandings: Later, at Antioch, Peter, under pressure from James, refused any longer to eat with gentile converts and was rebuked by Paul (Gal. 2).

This, except for what can be conjectured from the Epistles of Peter, is the last that Scripture tells of Peter. The episode does not do credit to him, and yet the whole business of the controversy about the gentile converts fits with what is already known about Peter. The Gospels uniformly depict him as loyal, enthusiastic, courageous, and open to change, but he is also depicted as possessing that quality of irresolution that appeared most spectacularly in the episode of the denial.

Significance

Even though Scripture breaks off with the quarrel at Antioch, this does not mean that Peter ceased to serve the Church. Indeed, tradition has much to say about his further career, though some of the statements have proved highly controversial. It seems obvious from Scripture that Peter held a special place among the disciples. Matthew 16 elaborates on this:

Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.

This passage has been used to support the claims of the Roman Catholic Church regarding the authority and infallibility of the papacy. Connected with this is the question of Peter’s residence and martyrdom in Rome. According to tradition, Peter was martyred in Rome by Nero between 64 and 67 c.e., after having lived in Rome for about twenty-five years, serving as bishop. Tradition also asserts that Peter was in contact with Mark in Rome and furnished material for his Gospel. It is natural for Protestants to deny not only that Peter was in effect the first pope but also that he was ever in Rome at all. The controversy has of late become less intense. It seems to be agreed that Peter was in Rome, though hardly for twenty-five years, and that he was crucified there, in the vicinity of the Vatican Hill; the question of his burial is still uncertain.

Peter showed himself a leader of the Apostles even during the lifetime of Jesus, and he was also a leader of the early Church, though sharing his authority at first with John and later with James and Paul. He almost certainly was martyred in Rome. Whether he had any authority in the Roman church and whether he could transmit that authority to others are questions on which even believers are likely to remain divided.

Bibliography

Alter, Robert, and Frank Kermode, eds. The Literary Guide to the Bible. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. Especially relevant on the subject of Acts, which contributor James M. Robinson treats less as history than as “dramatized theology.” The section “English Translations of the Bible,” written by Gerald Hammond, explains the preference for the King James Version, used in this article.

Cullmann, Oscar. Peter—Disciple, Apostle, Martyr: A Historical and Theological Study. Translated by Floyd V. Wilson. 2d ed. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962. Although thorough and scholarly, this volume is less a biography than a Protestant criticism of Catholic claims.

O’Connor, Daniel William. Peter in Rome: The Literary, Liturgical, and Archaeological Evidence. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. An exhaustive survey of the evidence for Peter’s presence in Rome. The account of the archaeological investigations (heavily illustrated) is particularly interesting.

Ray, Stephen K. Upon This Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999. Tackling the issue of authority that divides Catholics and Protestants, Ray asserts that the early Christians had a clear understanding of the primacy of Peter in the See of Rome. Contains a complete compilation of Scriptural and Patristic quotations on the primacy of Peter and the Papal office of any book currently available.

Reicke, Bo. Introduction and notes to The Epistles of James, Peter, and Jude. New York: Doubleday, 1973. Accepts that the First Epistle was written by Peter, probably with assistance from Silvanus. The First Epistle was written from “Babylon,” by which Rome is almost certainly meant; there is a reference to Mark, presumably the author of the Gospel of Mark.

Smith, Terence V. Petrine Controversies in Early Christianity: Attitudes Toward Peter in Christian Writings of the First Two Centuries. Tübingen, West Germany: J. C. B. Mohr, 1985. In his opening statement, Smith confesses, “To talk of the Apostle Peter is to enter into a world of disaccord, polemic, and controversy.” Contains an extensive bibliography.