Theopedia

Peter

Overview

Peter (died c. AD 67), also called Simon Peter or Cephas, was a Galilean fisherman whom Jesus called as one of the twelve apostles (Matt. 4:18-20; John 1:42). He appears more often than any other disciple in the Gospels and in the early chapters of Acts, where he leads the Jerusalem church through its first years and opens the gospel to the Gentiles, and is the traditional source behind the preaching Mark recorded in his Gospel. He also wrote two of the New Testament’s epistles under his own name.

Life and Ministry

Peter, originally named Simon, was a fisherman from Bethsaida (John 1:44) who worked the Sea of Galilee with his brother Andrew (Matt. 4:18) before Jesus called them both to follow him. Jesus renamed him Cephas, Aramaic for “rock” (John 1:42; rendered Petros in Greek), and he consistently appears first in the New Testament’s lists of the twelve apostles (Matt. 10:2; Mark 3:16; Luke 6:14; Acts 1:13).

At Caesarea Philippi, Peter confessed on behalf of the disciples that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16), to which Jesus replied, “on this rock I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18). On the night of Jesus’ arrest, Peter denied knowing him three times before the rooster crowed, just as Jesus had predicted (Matt. 26:34, 69-75). Loraine Boettner cites the episode as an example of an act Scripture treats as both fully free and fully foreknown: God’s foreknowledge “did not destroy the freedom of…Peter,” who gave no sign of thinking otherwise himself, for “when Peter heard the cock crow and remembered the words of Jesus, he went out and wept bitterly.”1 The risen Christ later restored him beside the Sea of Galilee, three times asking whether Peter loved him and three times commissioning him to feed and shepherd his sheep (John 21:15-17).

Peter preached the first Christian sermon at Pentecost, after which about three thousand people were baptized (Acts 2:14-41), and he led the Jerusalem church through its early controversies, including his own arrest and miraculous release from prison (Acts 12:1-17). A vision at Joppa led him to preach to Cornelius, a Roman centurion, and his household, the first recorded Gentile converts admitted without circumcision (Acts 10:1-48); he defended that decision before the Jerusalem church (Acts 11:1-18) and again before the Jerusalem council in Acts 15. Paul later recounts publicly opposing Peter at Antioch for withdrawing from table fellowship with Gentile believers under pressure from Jewish Christians (Gal. 2:11-14).

Ancient tradition uniformly ties Peter to the composition of Mark’s Gospel. Papias, quoted by Eusebius, reports that “Mark, being Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately as many things as he remembered…not, indeed, as giving in order the things which were spoken or done by Christ…but, as I said, of Peter, who gave his instructions as occasion required.”2 Mark’s mother’s house in Jerusalem was where Peter went immediately after his escape from prison (Acts 12:12), a connection Elijah Porter Barrows takes as evidence of the two men’s early acquaintance.2

Tradition, though disputed by some, holds that Peter was martyred at Rome under Nero’s persecution, around AD 67.3

Theological Contribution

Peter wrote two epistles bearing his name. First Peter, addressed to “elect exiles of the dispersion” scattered across five provinces of Asia Minor (1 Pet. 1:1), was received without dispute by the early church, quoted by Polycarp and cited by Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen.4 Barrows dates it to roughly AD 63-67, written from Babylon (1 Pet. 5:13) to Christians already facing a “fiery trial” of persecution (1 Pet. 4:12), and summarizes its governing theme as “patience and steadfastness in the endurance of suffering for Christ’s sake.”4

Second Peter was, by contrast, one of the New Testament’s disputed books in the early church. External testimony to it is scant; Origen recorded that Peter “has left one acknowledged epistle; a second also, if you will, for it is doubted of.”3 The letter itself claims to have been written as the apostle’s decease drew near (2 Pet. 1:13-15), and Barrows identifies its governing theme as a warning against false teachers, set against 1 Peter’s theme of suffering.3

Historical Significance

Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi and Christ’s declaration that he would build his church “on this rock” (Matt. 16:18) became the textual basis for the papacy’s claim to primacy within Roman Catholicism. Herman Bavinck credits Leo I (440-461) with having “clearly and with all deliberateness in several letters developed this primacy of the Roman See and elevated it to the rank and value of a religious dogma, one that has its basis in Matthew 16:18.”5 The Eastern church rejected this reading. Bavinck notes that the Council of Nicea’s canons gave the bishop of Constantinople “the primacy of honor after the bishop of Rome, because the same is the new Rome,” and that the Council of Chalcedon (451) assigned Constantinople “equal priority” to Rome rather than subordination to it. Rome, Bavinck concludes, “has never been the shepherd of all Christendom,” only the head of Western Christendom.5

Reformed interpreters read Peter’s confession differently, taking his role as representative rather than singular. D. A. Carson and David L. Turner both read Matthew 16:18’s naming of Peter as marking him primus inter pares, “first among equals,” among the apostles rather than as their unique foundation: Turner writes that “it is not Peter alone but as first among equals, since the context makes it clear that Peter is speaking for the apostles as a whole in Matt. 16:16.”6

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1932), 155-156. ↩

  2. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), chap. 29, “The Gospel of Mark.” ↩ ↩2

  3. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, chap. 31, “The Catholic Epistles,” sec. II, “Epistles of Peter.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Barrows, Companion to the Bible, chap. 31, “The Catholic Epistles,” sec. II, “Epistles of Peter.” ↩ ↩2

  5. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality.” ↩ ↩2

  6. Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Local Church, 4th ed. (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth Publishers, 2017), endnote quoting David L. Turner, Matthew, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 407, and citing D. A. Carson, Matthew, EBC (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 1:237. ↩