First among followers
Peter overcame flaws and rose to lead early church
Friday, April 14, 2006
Dennis M . Mahoney
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

None of Jesus’ other apostles can claim as much ink in the New Testament
as Peter. For him there are good times (Jesus handing him leadership of the
young Christian movement) and bad (denying he knows Jesus, who had been
arrested).

But Peter seems to have had a special relationship with Jesus, who loved
that the apostle was a person who could change, said the Rev. Bertrand
Buby.

"He’s certainly open to conversion so rapidly when he sees the truth,"
said Buby, who teaches about the New Testament at the University of Dayton.

"He’s an honest man, very honest. And I think he reaches that point where
we can say that he’s a wholesome person as he comes to the end of his life
in martyrdom. And looking at the whole picture of his life, we see the
integrity of the man."

Peter is a key player in the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of
Jesus, which this weekend is being commemorated by Western Christians
worldwide.

The New Testament gives more detail about Peter than any of the other
original 12 apostles.

In the text, he is described as a fisherman who lived by the Sea of
Galilee, north of Jerusalem. He was Jewish; he and his brother, Andrew,
were among early followers of Jesus. He was married and lived with his
mother-in-law, who is said to have been cured of a fever by Jesus.

But beyond what is written of him in

Decades of evangelism

Pheme Perkins, Boston College professor and author of Peter, Apostle for
the Whole Church, said that contrary to the view held by many that Peter
was an older man, he likely was younger than Jesus because he lived about
another 30 years after Jesus’ time.

When Jesus was arrested, the Gospels say, the apostles scattered, save for
Peter, who followed as Jesus was taken to trial at the high priest’s
palace. As he sat outside in the courtyard, Peter was questioned and denied
that he knew Jesus.

After the Crucifixion, Perkins said, the Gospels give two tales of the
apostles’ actions. One is that they hunkered down in Jerusalem, and the
risen Jesus appeared to them; the other is that they went to Galilee.

The movement gained momentum when Peter was able to "pull the thing back
together," she said.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is the key spokesman when the apostles
take their message to the world after being inspired by the Holy Spirit
once Jesus is gone.

From that point, it is clear Peter became a leader of the Christian
movement in Jerusalem, Perkins said. His preaching landed him in jail, from
which he was freed by an angel, Scripture says; he was at the Council of
Jerusalem in 51, which helped decide the direction of the early church.

There is no solid historical evidence of Peter’s whereabouts after the
council, Perkins said, but there are hints that he finally made his way to
Rome.

Clement, an early church leader, wrote in a letter in about the year 90
that Peter was martyred in Rome, she said. The first letter of Peter, which
scholars believe he might have written, places him in "Babylon," a term
used at the time to refer to Rome, Perkins said.

Many have concluded that Peter was martyred there around the year 65,
during the reign of Nero.

Lee Johnson, assistant professor of New Testament at Methodist Theological
School in Ohio in Delaware, said Peter likely spent years as a missionary
helping to organize Christian communities in places such as Jerusalem,
Corinth, Ephesus, Antioch and Rome. It appears he primarily evangelized to
Jews (there were a number of Jewish Christians in Rome), while Paul took
the Gospel to non-Jews, she said.

Johnson said Peter, like the other original apostles, had a flawed notion
of Jesus as the messiah before the Crucifixion.

"The messianic idea of the day was let’s have a political leader that’s
going to get us out from under the grind of Rome’s rule," she said. "And so
that was certainly an anticipation, maybe not the only one, but the major
one of messianic rule."

When that didn’t happen, they realized their view of Jesus needed to
change, Johnson said.

"Peter maybe was one of the first to put together this idea of what can a
messiah mean besides what we had hoped for," she said. "And it looks like
he was maybe one of a few that started this reinterpretation of things,
started to make sense of Jesus’ death. And I think that’s probably his best
moment."

What he began to realize, she said, was that Jesus’ message was about not
only one’s spirituality, but also the responsibility of seeing to each
other’s needs and "what you can do to serve." Roman accounts of the time
mention Christians’ concern for one another, Johnson said.

Human flaws

Buby said Jesus was constantly challenging Peter to grow in his faith. His
life showed a transformation, from a fisherman to a leader whose strong
belief in the Resurrection is found in his preachings, recorded in the Acts
of the Apostles.

"He is no longer running away from the master as he did at the
Crucifixion," Buby said of those passages.

Peter’s character might be described as "impetuous," said the Rev. Mark
Allan Powell, New Testament scholar at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Bexley.
Yet, frequently being the first among the apostles to act or say something
can be seen as a leadership quality, he said.

"An impression we keep getting in the New Testament, in the Gospels, is
that Peter seems to be a step ahead of the disciples, and yet he’s not
where Jesus would want him to be," Powell said.

When he falls short, such as in denying he knows Jesus, Peter is a figure
that many can empathize with, Powell said.

"He is presented as representative of not only all of Jesus’ disciples,
but what all Christians would experience," he said.

"Even when Peter fails, when he gets corrected, when we are reading the
Gospels we have the impression, if I had been there, that would have been
me."

Evolution of a leader

Some commonly held beliefs about Peter come from legends that grew around
his memory, biographer Perkins said.

As the story goes, Peter tried to flee Rome when Nero began his rampage
against the Christians. But as he left, it is said, Peter had a vision of
Jesus and was shamed into going back.

At Rome, he eventually was condemned to death. The Acts of Peter, a text
that was circulated in the early church but not included in the accepted
version of the New Testament, says he was crucified upside down because he
felt unworthy to die as Jesus did.

While legend, it’s certainly possible that Peter was crucified, Perkins
said.

"The Romans crucified people in all kinds of positions. . . . Any kind of
positions by which you thought that the victim would slowly asphyxiate in
as much pain as possible are pretty much fair game if you’re a Roman
executioner," she said.

Peter’s status as the Roman church’s first pope evolved as stories about
him developed beginning in the second century, Perkins said.

As church hierarchy developed, Peter came to be seen as the first pope,
based on the legends and the devotion to him as a martyr, she said.

Johnson said Peter rose to the top because he was one of the original 12.

"The idea of apostolic succession is what has brought Peter to the front
of this," she said.

Additionally, Matthew’s Gospel says it was Jesus who anointed Peter as the
church’s leader when he told the apostle, "You are Peter, and upon this
rock I will build my church," Johnson said.

Jesus seemed to look to Peter as the one he could always count on, Powell
said. While never equals, he said, there appears to have been a special
bond between them.

"I don’t think it would be incorrect to say that Peter seems to be Jesus’
best friend," Powell said.