Was Saint Peter the first Pope?

I may mention here that it was from the time of Cyprian only that Rome obtained the title of Peter's chair. Baronius indeed gives twenty-five years of Peter's holding the See of Rome, but all early authors make Linus the first bishop. Ruffinus, as we have seen, conciliates them by keeping Peter in his apostleship, and making two of them sit in the see while he was alive. The first author who makes Peter bishop is Optatus (De Schis. Don., lib. 2, 3) in the latter part of the fourth century; while Epiphanius (thinking it possible Clement was first named, but would not act till after Linus and Cletus were dead, and then was compelled) says that Peter and Paul were apostles and bishops (27, 6), then Linus. Eusebius simply says that Linus was the first bishop after Peter. He may perhaps be considered an earlier testimony that Optatus. They were nearly contemporaneous, and Optatus is the first who explicitly states it. That Peter was twenty-five years bishop of Rome is a simple absurdity; because if the tradition of his being put to death by Nero be true, this was A.D. 68 or 69. But the Lord suffered A.D. 34. More than fourteen — say fifteen — years after that (Gal. 2) Peter had not left Jerusalem, and there had been as yet no apostolic work at Rome at all. This makes A.D. 49. He is still at Jerusalem. After this he goes to Antioch; but tradition says he was seven years in the see of Antioch, before coming to Rome, and in A.D. 49 he had not yet gone to Antioch, and certainly was not fixed in the see, for Paul was labouring there and rebuked him for his conduct. How long after, we cannot tell — say it was immediately, which I do not believe, because Paul was the apostle labouring there — but I take up the tradition as it is given. He was at Antioch then, at any rate, till A.D. 56 or 57; thus he could not by any possibility have begun to have to address Rome as its pope at all till about eleven years before his death. The whole thing is a fable upon the face of it.

But some of the points are to be cleared up. First, it is exceedingly doubtful if Peter ever was at Rome. Scripture never shews him to have been there, and it seems to me impossible to reconcile what it does state with his having been there. I admit respectable writers think he was, but scripture speaks only of Paul. Peter certainly did not found the church there. There were many Christians before any apostle was there, and Paul was the first that went. In the free exercise of their ministry, as the Holy Ghost has recorded it and thought proper to give it to us, no apostle founded the church at Rome. Paul, who preached the full and blessed gospel to the Gentiles (which was not Peter's office, as we know he was apostle of the circumcision, or of the Jews) — Paul went there as a prisoner. The gospel was never apostolically in Rome, save as in prison. It is possible that Peter closed his life there; but this is the utmost that can be historically admitted, because we have a divine account of what passed till then, and his presence is incompatible with that account. History is silent for a century afterwards, and then every country sought to have it believed to have been visited, and its chief see founded, by an apostle or apostolic man. John lived at Ephesus, yet he certainly did not found the church there, as we know from scripture. So history alleges that Peter founded the church at Antioch — a statement entirely unfounded, because we have, in the Acts of the Apostles, a long account of the church at Antioch; and all that Peter had to do with it was to divide it, when it existed already, by leading away all the Jews by his dissimulation, so that Paul had to resist him to his face. It is just as little true that he founded the church of Rome. We have Christians at Rome two years at least before Paul went there, and Paul there two years, who began working with the Jews; and none of them, Christians, Jews, or Paul, know anything at all of Peter at Rome. He may have visited Rome to see the Jewish Christians after this, and been martyred there, but that is the utmost possible.

Now we have the inspired writings of N.T. prophets and apostles. How comes it that, in providing bountifully and unerringly for the church and the Christian, nothing can be produced but such ghosts of so-called tradition, of really patristic confusion? Imagine if you can that Peter was invested with a power which solely belongs to the glorified Head; imagine Christ to vacate His functions, instead of ever living to make them good; imagine the Holy Ghost to have gone back into the heavens whence He came to abide with us and in us for ever. How comes it that there is not one sure testimony to it in a single Gospel or Epistle? Yet we have the apostle writing to the saints in Rome, unfolding fundamental truths, and regulating differences which menaced the peace of the church; but not a whisper about Peter, who is said, by one of the most respectable of early fathers, to have with Paul founded the church there! This we know to have been not only absolutely baseless but contrary to scripture. For how could this be, when Paul wrote as one who had never visited Rome, and altogether ignored Peter there, though he salutes more saints there at that time than in any other epistle? It is certain in fact that Paul was there a prisoner, and a martyr; it is probable that Peter may have been carried there to die; but that both founded the church in Rome, or that either was a bishop there, is a fabrication, in the teeth of powerful evidence in scripture against any such ideas of the Fathers.

N*. I do, as having the smallest authority. But here you have not any two agreeing. You may consult Baronius in the first and twenty-fifth year of Peter, and see what he says with Pagius, who notices the attempt to make two comings of Peter, one in Claudius' and another in Nero's reign, and rejects it all, taking the plain statement of Lactantius that the apostles had been preaching everywhere for twenty-five years, and then that Peter came to Rome in the time of Nero (Lac. de Mort. Peter 2, 95). That Peter may have come to Rome for his martyrdom, or to see the Jewish saints there, is possible, though we have little proof of it; but vague and late statements that he ever held the see are mere got-up fiction; that he founded the church of Rome, we know from scripture to be totally false, let the good Irenaeus say what he will. No apostle did; of this we are sure from Paul's epistle to them. If we are to believe Dionysius of Corinth, quoted by Eusebius (2, 25), Peter and Paul both planted the church at Corinth too, a statement useful to shew what such statements and traditions of the Fathers are worth. Yet in this passage of Dionysius we get, if it be true that Peter ever was at Rome, a glimpse of the truth, namely that Peter and Paul were taken prisoners to Rome together, or at least went together there on the journey which ended in their martyrdom; but all is utterly uncertain. The only thing certain is that Peter's sitting — still more his sitting twenty-five years at Rome — is a got-up fable, and a very poor and transparent one.

But this conferred no primacy upon Peter any more than God's choice of John to do something else made him the chief. Peter had no "see," as we shall show in our chapter on "Bishops." Neither he nor any of the apostles have successors in an official sense. Thank God, there are still successors of the apostles in the sense that there are men who willingly endure poverty and hardship, and go forth to serve their Lord, not as the emissaries of a corrupt "church," but as simple heralds of the Gospel. And they meet with apostolic success, which is infinitely better than claiming to be in apostolic succession.

105 Now setting aside Paul for the moment, who was called later, I admit in certain respects a personal pre-eminence in Peter; no official one, nor one which could go to a successor, if he had one, which in office he had not, for he was an apostle, and they had no apostles to succeed them, and could not have. For none were eye-witnesses of Christ, and sent by Him to found the church; Paul was, and so he was in the fullest and strictest sense an apostle. I admit a personal pre-eminence in certain respects, because scripture teaches us there was: James and Cephas and John seemed to be pillars. All three were preeminent in gift and energy, and all three had names given by Christ Himself. But, even among these, Peter was preeminent. Paul tells us that God was mighty in Peter to the circumcision, as in Paul himself to the Gentiles. As the fathers note, he was the first to make that particular confession, and specially noticed then by the Lord. His ardent character made him forward sometimes in a sad way, for he spoke not knowing what he said, and he had to be called Satan, and the too great confidence it led to brought him to curse and swear he did not know Christ. Yet even this energy, when he was humbled and ceased to trust himself so much, as taught by his fall, and was filled with the Holy Ghost, served to fit him, as a vessel of God's choice, for the special ministry he was appointed to.

It is of this, and of this only, the keys were entrusted to Peter. The prime use of keys is to open doors (Rev. 3:7). Accordingly, in Acts 2 we have Peter divinely selected to preach the first discourse after the Holy Ghost came down from heaven, and three thousand persons were brought to repentance, being baptised forthwith in the Saviour's name. But these were Jews only. In Acts 10 we have the same apostle proclaiming Christ for the first time to a Gentile congregation, with the happy result that all who were assembled in Cornelius' house believed, and were granted the privilege of Christian baptism forthwith. Speaking of this event afterwards, Peter said: "Brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the Word of the Gospel and believe." (Acts 15:7).

Peter has thus used the keys entrusted to him by the Lord, and the door of the kingdom has been thrown open to both Jews and Gentiles. The Church belongs to heaven; the kingdom belongs to earth; of the latter only have the keys been committed to human hands. But what of the binding and loosing? This has reference to discipline here below, eternal issues being in Christ's keeping alone. Peter's stern dealing with Ananias and Sapphira, and with Simon Magus, are incidents illustrative of binding. Is there anything successional in this authority committed to the apostle? There is no hint of such a thing in Matt. 16:19. Nothing beyond a personal commission can possibly be deduced from the Saviour's words. But when we pass to Matt. 18:18 we find the very same words in an altogether different connection. Peter is not there in view, but the assembly of God's saints, gathered together in any given locality upon earth, and at any time. Even supposing the number be but "two or three," the authority to "bind" and "loose" is with them, the Lord's own presence in the midst supplying them with the necessary power and grace. To receive into communion from the world outside is to "loose"; to put away a transgressor, such as he of 1 Cor. 5, is to "bind"; to welcome once more the repentant one, as in 2 Cor. 2:6-8, is to "loose" again. But in all this heaven is not in question. To import such an idea to the Saviour's words is to produce inextricable confusion, to say nothing of the spiritual terrors thus injected into the minds of the unthinking. The apostle is gone but the Church remains; though as far as its external unity and order is concerned it has degenerated into a shapeless wreck. But wherever two or three are gathered together to the name of the absent Christ, His presence is assured, conveying with it all that is needed in grace and competency to act for Him until He come.

Some, strangely enough, connect “the key of the house of David” with “the keys of death and of hades.” They are not identical. The former intimates Christ’s sovereignty in time, the latter His sway in the unseen world in all that concerns the bodies and souls of men. “The keys of the kingdom of Heaven” (Matt. 16:19) were alone committed to Peter to signify delegated authority, which necessarily ceased when his work was done. Peter by his preaching opened the door of the kingdom for Jews in Acts 2, and for the admission of Gentiles in Acts 10. The keys having been used, and the doors opened, a successional and vested right in “St. Peter’s keys” is absurd. Peter left the door open; hence they are of no further use.

After saying that the Father had revealed this truth to Peter, the Lord goes on, "And I also say" — not "And I say also," invert those two words, the Father had spoken, and now He Himself has somewhat of grave moment to say to Peter — "I also say to thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." What did the Lord mean by this? He confirms Peter in his new name, a stone. But where was this shone to be built? On the rock. "Upon this rock will I build my church." Rome has tried to make out that Peter was the rock. A poor rock would Peter have been! Peter was far too much like you and me. No, no, Peter was a stone, but Christ was the rock, Christ, according to the confession of Peter here, the Son of the living God.

Further, as to supremacy, we find that at Jerusalem, James � not Peter � had the chief place. At the council at Jerusalem, after Peter and others had spoken, James said, "My sentence is," etc., though they were able to say, "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us." (Acts 15:19, 28.)

Again, at Antioch we find that Paul withstood Peter to his face, because he was to be blamed; clearly proving that Peter then held no such place in the church as has been claimed for him by the church of Rome.