PETER IN ROME
CHAPTER I
Introduction
Few theological questions loom
as important to Christianity in the West as that of the primacy of Rome as established
by claims to the labors, episcopacy, death, and burial of the Apostle Peter at
that city. According to the Catholic
Encyclopedia:
The significance of Rome lies
primarily in the fact that it is the city of the pope. The Bishop of Rome, as the successor of
St. Peter, is the Vicar of Christ on earth and visible head of the Catholic
Church. Rome is consequently the center
of unity in belief, the source of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and the seat of
the supreme authority which can bind by its enactments the faithful throughout
the world. The Diocese of Rome is known
as the “See of Peter,” the “Apostolic See,” the Holy Roman Church, the
“Holy See” — titles which indicate its unique position in Christendom and
suggest the origin of its pre-eminence. [U. Benigni, “Rome,” Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911),
XIII, p. 164.] (Emphasis mine throughout.)
This
is how the Catholic Church sets forth the authority of its ruling city. As to
the authenticity of its claims that Rome is the “See of Peter,” they further
state:
It is an indisputably
established historical fact that St. Peter labored in Rome during the last
portion of his life, and there ended his earthly course by martyrdom . . .The
essential fact is that Peter died at Rome:
this constitutes the historical foundation of the claim of the Bishops
of Rome to the Apostolic Primacy of Peter. [ibid.,
Vol. XIII, p. 748.]
Clearly
the importance of the study of Peter at Rome, of his last acts, and whether or
not he died at Rome cannot be overstated.
It is perhaps the most important problem of the Christian Church. It is also one of the most ancient, having
been probed and queried by scholars and theologians since even before the
Protestant Reformation.
Cullmann, in a section
devoted to the History of the Debate Whether Peter Resided in Rome, notes
that:
. . . the question was first
raised in the Middle Ages by Christians for whom the Bible was the sole norm,
the Waldensians. We can understand why
it was they who did so. As we have
seen, the New Testament nowhere tells us that Peter came to the chief city of
the Empire and stayed there. For the
Waldensians, the silence of the Bible was quite decisive. [Oscar Cullmann, Peter — Disciple,
Apostle, Martyr (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1953), p. 71.]
He then traces the debate
from Luther to the Post-World War II era citing such notable Catholic and
Protestant scholars as Eichhorn, Baur of Tubingen, Renan, Harnack, Lietzmann,
Heussi, and many others. The history of
the argument takes over seven pages to recount. [Ibid., pp.
70-77.]
In a more recent work,
O’Connor summarizes the history into five pages, noting that even Catholic
scholars such as Duchesne have expressed doubts about some of the particulars
of Peter’s sojourn at Rome — namely, that he went there in the time of Claudius
(circa 42 A.D.). [Daniel Wm. O’Connor, Peter
in Rome (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p.
4.] And O’Connor, as a modern Catholic
theologian, does not fail to note the importance of the study. He writes in his introduction:
It is not curiosity
concerning the latter part of Peter’s life, his death and his burial, that
prompts this work. . . . One point of importance in the problem lies in the
relationship which exists between the coming of Peter to Rome, his martyrdom
and burial there, and the question of the supremacy of the Roman See and the
Roman Pontiff. [Ibid.,
p. xiii.]
If indeed the Apostle Peter conducted
a considerable part of his later ministry at Rome and was martyred there, then
the Catholic Church can make impressive claims to the historic foundation of
the Roman Church. If he did not long
minister there, and if there is no positive proof of his death and
burial at Rome, then these claims are invalid and the historical grounds for
the establishment and pre-eminence of the Roman Church must be called into
serious question. Thus the implications
of this centuries-old question have always been considerable and weighty.
It will be the purpose of
this study to show that there is no positive proof linking the Apostle Peter
to the City of Rome — neither in
his establishment of, and ministry to the Roman Church, nor in the later
literary evidence of legends and scanty records regarding his ministry and
death. His “twenty-five year
episcopate” can and will be shown to be an easily disproved theory. Traditions surrounding his death and burial
will be seen for the vague and often contradictory legends that they are.
What we will see emerge is
just the opposite of what one might have reason to expect. Instead of clear, impressive, and
oft-repeated testimony of the earliest church historians, dwindling with the
passage of long time to scanty references dimmed by antiquity, we find that the
earliest records — those closest to the actual events — are the most
vague, uncertain, and sparse, but that out of these scant notices evolves
a constantly growing, increasingly precise and definite tradition that
sharpens its clarity and certainty with the passing of time! The net result is that the historians of the
fourth century speak with absolute certainly on matters that were unknown or
unrecorded by the writers of the first and second!
The Method of Study
The method of the
study will be to study available literary evidence in chronological order
beginning with the Biblical record, on through the early writers and historians
of the first through fourth centuries, both Greek and Latin. The Catholic claim is that:
St. Peter’s residence and
death in Rome are established beyond contention as historical facts by a
series of distinct testimonies extending from the end of the first to the end
of the second centuries, and issuing from several lands. [J.P. Kirsch, “Peter,” Catholic
Encyclopedia (New York: Robert
Appleton Company, 1911), XI, p. 748.]
We will carefully and in
detail re-examine those very testimonies to see if they indeed answer the question
beyond contention, or, if they do not indeed raise considerable questions and
even suggest negative answers about Peter and Rome.