PETER

PETER (originally Simeon or Simon, שִׁמְעוֹן, called also, by a rendering of the Greek Πέτρος into the corresponding word in the Aramaic dialect spoken in Palestine in the days of our Lord, Cephas, כִּיפָס, John i. 42), one of the twelve apostles, and author of two Epistles in the inspired canon. He was a native of Bethsaida in Galilee, and was the son of a certain Jonas, or John; whence he is named on one occasion in the gospel history Simon Barjona, that is, son of Jona (Matt. xvi. 17). At the time of his introduction to Christ he was married, and was resident at Capernaum with his family. Along with his brother Andrew, he followed the occupation of a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee. It is probable that before they became known to Christ they were both disciples of John the Baptist. That Andrew was so, we are expressly informed by the

St. Peter. evangelist John; and as his brother seems to have been much of the same mind with him on religious matters, it is extremely likely that he was so likewise. Their becoming known to Christ was owing to John's pointing him out on the day after his baptism to Andrew and another disciple (probably the evangelist John), as "the Lamb of God," on which they immediately followed Christ, and spent some time in receiving his instructions. Shortly after this, Andrew finding Simon, carried him to Christ, who, on receiving him as his disciple, bestowed upon him that surname by which he has since that time been most commonly designated: "When Jesus beheld him he said, thou art Simon the son of Jona; thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation a stone (πετρος)." After this interview the two brothers seem to have returned to their usual occupation for a season, as we have an account in Matthew (iv. 18-20) of their being summoned from that occupation by Christ on a subsequent occasion, posterior to his temptation in the wilderness, and to the commencement of his public ministry as a religious teacher. From this time forward they were his devoted and admiring followers. In the course of the evangelical history several anecdotes of Peter are incidentally recorded, for the purpose, doubtless, principally of illustrating the character and teaching of our Lord, but which tend also to throw light upon the history and character of his attached disciple. Such are the accounts furnished by the evangelists of his walking upon the agitated waters of the Sea of Galilee to meet his master (Matthew xiv. 22, ff.; Mark vi. 45, ff.); of his bold and intelligent avowals of the undoubted Messiahship of Jesus, notwithstanding the difficulties which he, along with the rest of the disciples, felt in reconciling what they saw in him with what they had fondly expected the Christ to be (Matthew, xvi. 13-20); of his rash but affectionate rebuke of his Lord for speaking of suffering and death as in prospect for him, and as forming a necessary part of his mediatorial work (Matthew xvi. 21-23); of his conduct in first rejecting, with an earnestness bordering on horror, the offer of Christ to wash his feet, and then, when the symbolical nature of that act had been explained to him, his over-ardent zeal that not his feet only, but also his hands and his head, might be washed (John xiii. 4, ff.); of his bold and somewhat vaunting avowal of attachment to his Master, and his determination never to forsake him, followed by his disgraceful denial of Jesus in the hour of trial (John xiii. 36, 37; Mark xiv. 29, &c.); of his deep and poignant contrition for this sin (Matthew xiv. 72); and of his Lord's ample forgiveness of his offence, after he had received from him a profession of attachment as strong and as frequently repeated as his former denial of him (John xxi. 15-18). From these notices it is easy to gather a tolerably correct conception of the predominating features of the apostle's character up to this period. He seems to have been a man of undoubted piety, of ardent attachment to his Master, and of great zeal for what he deemed his Master's honour, but at the same time with a mind rather quick than accurate in its apprehensions, and with feelings rather hasty in their impulse than determined and continuous in their exercise. Hence his readiness in avowing his opinions, and his rashness in forming them; and hence also the tendency which beset his honest openness to degenerate into bravado, and his determinations of valour to evaporate into cowardice at appalling forms of danger. His fall, however, and his subsequent restoration, connected as these were with the mysterious events of his Master's cru-

St. Peter. cifixion and resurrection, and with the new light which had by them been cast around his character and work, produced a powerful change for the better upon the apostle's mind. From this time forward he comes before us under a new aspect. A sober dignity and firmness of purpose have displaced his former hasty zeal; sagacity and prudence characterize his conduct; and whilst his love to his Master shows no symptom of abatement, it displays itself rather in active labour and much-enduring patience in his service, than in loud protestations or extravagant exhibitions of attachment. In the subsequent Scripture history he is presented to us as the courageous herald of the kingdom of Christ, by whose mouth the first public declaration of salvation through the crucified Jesus was made to the people; by whose advice and counsel the early churches were planted and governed; and by whom the prejudices of Judaism were first fairly surmounted, and the gospel preached in all its universal freeness to the Gentile world. The Acts of the Apostles contain recitals of many interesting incidents which befall him whilst engaged in those efforts. Of these, the chief are his imprisonment and trial before the Sanhedrim, for preaching Christ, and his bold avowal of his determination to persist in that work (Acts iv. 1-22); his miraculously inflicting the punishment of death on the infatuated couple who had dared to try an experiment upon the omniscience of the Holy Ghost (v. 1-11); his visit to Samaria, and rebuke of Simon Magus, who deemed that the miracles of the apostle were the work of some deep magic spell of which he had not yet become possessed, and which consequently he was desirous of purchasing from Peter (viii. 14-24); the vision by which he was taught that the ancient ritual distinctions between clean and unclean had been abolished, and thereby prepared to attend on the summons of Cornelius, to whom he preached the gospel (x. 1-48); his apprehension by Herod Agrippa, and his deliverance by the interposition of an angel, who opened for him the doors of his prison, and set him free (xii. 3-19); and his address to the council at Jerusalem, on the occasion of a request for advice and direction being sent to the church there by the church in Antioch, in which he advocated the exemption of Gentile converts from the ceremonial institutes of the law of Moses (xv. 6-11). In all these incidents we trace the evidences of his mind having undergone an entire change, both as to its views of truth and impressions of duty, from what is displayed by the earlier events of his history. On one occasion only do we detect something of his former weakness, and that strangely enough in regard to a matter in which he had been the first of the apostles to perceive, and the first to recommend and follow, a correct course of procedure. The occasion referred to was his withdrawing, through dread of the censures of his Jewish brethren, from the Gentiles at Antioch, after having lived in free and friendly intercourse with them, and his timidly dissembling his convictions as to the religious equality of Jew and Gentile. For this Paul withstood him to the face, and rebuked him sharply, because of the injury which his conduct was calculated to produce to the cause of Christianity. With this single exception, however, his conduct seems to have been in full accordance with the name which his Master had prophetically bestowed on him when he called him Simon the Rock, and with the position which Paul himself assigns to him, at the very time that he recounts his temporary dereliction, as one of the "pillars of the church."

Thus far we are enabled, from the inspired documents,

St. Peter. to trace the history of this apostle; but for what remains we must be indebted to evidence of a less explicit and certain character. The testimony of several of the ecclesiastical writers, corroborated by the phraseology employed by the apostle himself in the salutation of his first Epistle, makes it highly probable that at some period of his official life he performed an extensive missionary tour throughout those districts, to the converts to which his Epistles were addressed. "It appears," says Origen, "that Peter preached to the Jews in the dispersion, in Pontus, Galatia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Asia."¹ A less certain tradition reports the apostle as having, towards the close of his life, visited Rome, become bishop of the church in that city, and suffered martyrdom in the persecution raised against the Christians by Nero. The importance of these points in connection with the claims urged by the Catholics on behalf of the supremacy of the Pope, has led to a careful and sifting examination of the accuracy of this tradition, the result of which seems to be that, whilst it is admitted as certain that Peter suffered martyrdom, in all probability by crucifixion,² and as probable that this took place at Rome, it has, nevertheless, been made pretty clear that he never was for any length of time resident in that city, and morally certain that he never was bishop of the church there.³ By some an attempt has been made to obtain the support of the apostle's own testimony in favour of his having at one period resided at Rome, by interpreting the words "the church that is at Babylon," the salutations of which he sends to those to whom he wrote his first Epistle, as applying to the church at Rome; an attempt which Dr. Campbell justly stigmatizes as "poor, not to call it ridiculous." Even if we admit that at the time when this Epistle was written it was understood amongst the Christians that Babylon was the prophetical name for Rome, an admission, however, which is entirely unsupported by evidence, it would remain unexplained why the apostle, in such a mere matter-of-fact affair as the communication of the friendly salutations of one church to another, should have employed the obscure and symbolical language of prophecy, when his meaning could have been so much more distinctly conveyed by a simple statement. This would be the more inexplicable, that the style of Peter is remarkably plain and perspicuous throughout the entire Epistle. It seems much more consistent, therefore, with rational principles of interpretation, to understand the statement literally of Babylon in Egypt, in which city, as we learn from Josephus, there was a great multitude of Jews (ἅμα καὶ πλῆθος Ἰουδαίων, Ant. Jud., l. xv., c. ii., sect. 2; see also c. iii., sect. 1), and to which, consequently, it is almost certain, that at some period of his life, "the apostle of the circumcision" (Gal. ii. 8) must have paid a visit.

The assertion, that St. Peter was bishop of Rome, is connected with another by which the claims of the Papacy are sought to be established,—namely, that to him was conceded a right of supremacy over the other apostles. In support of this, an appeal is made to those passages in the Gospels where declarations supposed to imply the bestowal of peculiar honour and distinction on Peter are recorded as having been addressed to him by our Lord. The most important of these are, "Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build my church" (Matt. xvi. 18); and "Unto thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven," &c. (Matt. xvi. 19). At first sight these passages would seem to bear out the assumption founded on them; but upon a more careful investigation it will be seen that this is rather in ap-

pearance than in reality. The force of both is greatly impaired for the purpose for which Catholics produce them, by the circumstance, that whatever of power or authority they may be supposed to confer upon Peter must be regarded as shared by him with the other apostles, inasmuch as to them also are ascribed in other passages the same qualities and powers which are promised to Peter in those under consideration. If by the former of these passages we are to understand that the church is built upon Peter, the apostle Paul informs us that it is not on him alone that it is built, but upon all the apostles (Ephes. ii. 20); and in the book of Revelation we are told, that on the twelve foundations of the New Jerusalem (the Christian church) are inscribed "the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (chap. xxi. 14). As for the declaration in the latter of these passages, it was in all its essential parts repeated by our Lord to the other disciples immediately before his passion, as announcing a privilege which, as his apostles, they were to possess in common (Matt. xviii. 18; John xx. 23). It is, moreover, uncertain in what sense our Lord used the language in question. In both cases his words are metaphorical; and nothing can be more unsafe than to build a theological dogma upon language of which the meaning is not clear, and to which, from the earliest ages, different interpretations have been affixed. And, finally, even granting the correctness of that interpretation which Catholics put upon these verses, it will not bear out the conclusion they would deduce from them, inasmuch as the judicial supremacy of Peter over the other apostles does not necessarily follow from his possessing authority over the church. On the other side, it is certain that there is no instance on record of the apostle's having ever claimed or exercised this supposed power; but, on the contrary, he is oftener than once represented as submitting to an exercise of power upon the part of others, as when, for instance, he went forth as a messenger from the apostles assembled in Jerusalem to the Christians in Samaria (Acts viii. 14), and when he received a rebuke from St. Paul, as already noticed. Whilst, however, it is pretty well established that Peter enjoyed no judicial supremacy over the other apostles, it would perhaps be going too far to affirm that no dignity or primacy whatsoever was conceded to him on the part of his brethren. His superiority in point of age, his distinguished personal excellence, his reputation and success as a teacher of Christianity, and the prominent part which he had ever taken in his Master's affairs, both before his death and after his ascension, furnished sufficient grounds for his being raised to a position of respect and of moral influence in the church and amongst his brother apostles. To this some countenance is given by the circumstances, that he is called "the first," πρῶτος, by Matthew (chap. x. 2), and that apparently not merely as a numerical, but as an honorary distinction; that when the apostles are mentioned as a body, it is frequently by the phrase, "Peter and the eleven," or, "Peter and the rest of the apostles," or something similar; and that when Paul went up to Jerusalem by Divine revelation, it was to Peter particularly that the visit was paid. These circumstances, taken in connection with the prevalent voice of Christian antiquity, would seem to authorize the opinion that Peter occupied some such position as that of πρῶτος, or president in the apostolical college, but without any power or authority of a personal kind over his brother apostles.⁴

The extant writings of the apostle Peter are confined to two brief Epistles, of which the former has been universally admitted as genuine, whilst the latter has by many been re-

Peter. Peter, rejected as spurious. The grounds of this rejection, however, are extremely insecure, as they depend chiefly upon nice distinctions and analogies of style between the two Epistles, which are seldom drawn with such unerring accuracy as to induce us to attach very much weight to them.¹ The persons to whom these Epistles were addressed were converted Jews scattered over the districts enumerated by the apostle in the commencement of the first of them. The Epistles themselves are characterized by great vigour of conception, warmth of feeling, and force of eloquence. The style is glowing and rapid, approaching at times to vehemence; and the sentiments are of the most elevated description. The exhortation to holiness with which the second chapter of the first Epistle concludes is perhaps unequalled in the New Testament for the appropriateness of its sentiments, the beauty of its appeals, and the concentrated energy and rapid flow of the style; nor would it be easy to find any passage, either in sacred or profane literature, that should surpass in vividness of description and power of expression the prophetic view of the end of the world with which, towards the conclusion of the second Epistle, he enforces his exhortation to holy conversation and godliness. In both Epistles we trace the characteristic ardour and the elevated piety of their author, and of both we may justly say, in the language of the excellent Leighton, that they are eminently adapted "to establish Christians in believing, to direct them in doing, and to comfort them in suffering, often setting before them the matchless example of the Lord Jesus, and the greatness of their engagement to follow him." "Peter," says a recent German writer, "has, according to his own fundamental trait, conveyed the character of enduring firmness from the life of Christ to the church. The shadow sides of this fundamental trait have been represented in the Romish hierarchy; the light sides in the pure form of the church confessions, the church institution, order, discipline, and manifestations." (Lange, Das Apostol. Zeitalter, i. 357. See also Neander, Gesch. d. Pfl. und Leit. der Christ. Kirch., p. 443-463, Eng. tr., vol. i., p. 368-383; Hug's Introduction by Fosdick, p. 635; Davidson's Introduction to the New Testament, vol. iii., &c.) (W.L.A.)