| St. Peter and Rome |
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| 11/15/04 |
Posted on 10/27/2006 8:14:39 PM PDT by Salvation
| St. Peter and Rome |
|
| 11/15/04 |
Matthew 16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Matthew 16:19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
What was a "rock" about Peter? Why would Jesus call him a "rock"? It has to be presumed that this would be based on his recognition of Jesus as the Lord. Peter certainly didn't act like a rock, and the Lord knew it.
But before that verse:
Matthew 16:17. . .for flesh and blood hath not revealed [it] unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
Jesus had said that the Kingdom of God is within you.
Luke 17:20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
I don't think it means the Catholic church, for God is accessible to and by each individual, and two of them if they want Christ to be there. Remember, God comes to individuals, not conglomerates.
And you're trying to interpret it as a conglomerate would.
The "rock" upon which He will build His church (a body of likebelieving (in the Gospels) individuals) is the connection with God that Peter showed. Jesus commended the act of receiving revelation from God.
In this, Jesus recognized Peter for communicating with God and His kingdom that is within. Each person who is in connection with God in his heart and is guided by the Holy Spirit indeed has the key to the kingdom, because he or she receives revelations from that Spirit.
Whatever an individual binds on earth is bound for that individual in heaven, for there are judgments to answer for, and whatsoever an individual looses on earth is loosed, for that individual, in heaven for the same reason.
Individuals are sons of God, individuals with a mustard seed of faith can move mountains to the sea, individuals pray, only two are needed to call Christ's presence, God spoke to individuals, individuals choose to follow God's law or stray, individuals go to Heaven or Hell, Peter was an individual.
In the Bible as a whole we focus on individuals, and only on groups as they are composed of individuals.
The above took place during Paul's "third" missionary journey. Journey #1 was 46-48 A.D. [Acts 13] and took him through Antioch of Syria, Seleucia, Salamis, Paphos, Perga in Pamphylia and on to Turkish Antioch. To Iconium, Lystra [Acts 14] and Derbe and then they backtracked all the way back to Antioch where they had been two years before. Then back down to Perga and Attalia [Acts 14:24-25]. Then back to Antioch of Syria.
The council at Jerusalem was held in about 49 A.D. right before his second journey took place. [Acts 15:36]
#2 was 49-52 A.D. and started at Antioch in Syria and went on to Cilicia where he strengthened the Churches. After going to Derbe he met up with Timothy at Lystra [Acts 16:1-5] and continued northward through Phrygia and Galatia where he got sick [Galatians 4:13-14). This was southern Galatia and he was near Bithynia but the Spirit would not let him enter [Acts 16:6] as this was part of the assigned territory of Peter evangelizing the Israelites of the dispersion (721 B.C.) [1 Peter 1:1-2].
Paul and Timothy then went by Mysia and on to Troas [Acts 16:7-8]. It was at Troas where he had the vision of the man in Macedonia (Europe) [Acts 16:9] so on they went. Then to Philippi, Thessalonica and Berea [Acts 17:1-15].
Paul went on by himself to Athens and Corinth where he remained for a couple of years. It was here where he met Aquila and Priscilla who accompanied him to Ephesus.
His journey #3 is generally thought to have started here because of the length of time he stayed in Greece. This would have been 52 or 53 A.D. and he had yet to go to Rome. After spending some time in Antioch (Turkish) [Acts 18:23] he went through Galatia and Phrygia strengthening the disciples and then back to Ephesus and remained there three years and then back to Macedonia, Philippi, and on to Troas where he preached until midnight and the young man "Eutychus" was brought back to life [Acts 20:10-11].
[Acts 20:13-16 show him going through Assos, Mitylene, Kios, Samos, and Miletus and the final stage of Cos, Rhodes, Patara, Cyprus, and landing at Tyre in Syria. Then through Ptolemais, Caesarea and finally Jerusalem. It is now 56-57 A.D. and he has not been to Rome. Neither has Peter!
Bingo --- does that speak volumes!!!!
Also it appears that Paul wrote his letter to the Romans in 57 AD from Corinth. Was it after that letter that he went back to Jerusalem, was arrested, and sent to Rome? Where would that be on your narrative, which incidentally is very instructive.
Everything that we have been saying is being confirmed by the facts of the Scriptures. Is there any way to determine the approximate dates between Paul's two imprisonments in Rome. He apparently was released and then re-arrested. How long would he have been out and approximately when?
The reason that I ask is that the first place in any document that we hear of Peter in Rome is one written by Ignatius who says that Peter was preaching with Paul in Rome. If this indeed happened, then it could only have occurred during the time when Paul was out of prison there in Italy, which would be what? 62-63 AD??. I do not know? Peter would have left after that and gone back to Asia Minor and then on to Babylon where he wrote his epistles.
I have a statement from one of the later Roman Catholic scholars [Hippolytus] saying only this:
"Peter preached the Gospel in Pontus, and Galatia, and Cappadocia, and Betania, and Italy, and Asia".
Note that he says "Italy" [not Rome]. This is confirmed by a statement from another Catholic source that says Peter was in "Italy"[not Rome] as well, and only when Paul would have been there between imprisonments. How likely is any of that???
Try to put together an agreement between both sides of this debate that has divided the Church for so long, bringing the Roman Catholic Church [RCC] and the Reformation Churches [RC] to some kind of agreement on the facts of what we turn up in our genuine truthseeking. Perhaps the following would be a start toward a concord of understanding between the RCC and the RC:
1] The RCC will withdraw its claim that Peter had a Bishopric in Rome of any length at any time, and the RC will withdraw its claim that Peter was never in Rome.
2] The RCC will quit claiming that it received sole apostolic authority handed down from Peter during his non-existent bishopric in Rome, and the RC will quit picking on Peter.
3] The RCC will quit claiming the sanctity of the writings of its patriarchs, and the RC will do likewise.
4] Both sides will agree to re-examine the meaning of the "Thou art Peter" passage in light of the above quitclaims.
5] Both sides will initiate a search for those Keys apparently given to Peter to see where he may have dropped them, perhaps at the house of Cornelius or somewhere there in Jerusalem.
6] Both sides will agree that Scripture is superior to the wisdom of any magisterium anywhere.
7]
Here is what I found in my preliminary research on this matter. Although it is all but certain that Peter preached in Rome, helped to write the Gospel of Mark at Rome, wrote the first letter of Peter from Rome, and was a bishop of Rome, we don't know with "CNN" certainty WHEN he began his leadership at Rome.
"It is widely held that Peter paid a first visit to Rome after he had been miraculously liberated from the prison in Jerusalem; that, by "another place", Luke meant Rome, but omitted the name for special reasons. It is not impossible that Peter made a missionary journey to Rome about this time (after 42 A.D.), but such a journey cannot be established with certainty. At any rate, we cannot appeal in support of this theory to the chronological notices in Eusebius and Jerome, since, although these notices extend back to the chronicles of the third century, they are not old traditions, but the result of calculations on the basis of episcopal lists. Into the Roman list of bishops dating from the second century, there was introduced in the third century (as we learn from Eusebius and the "Chronograph of 354") the notice of a twenty-five years' pontificate for St. Peter, but we are unable to trace its origin. This entry consequently affords no ground for the hypothesis of a first visit by St. Peter to Rome after his liberation from prison (about 42). We can therefore admit only the possibility of such an early visit to the capital."
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11744a.htm {Peter, Prince of the Apostles - Catholic Encylopedia}
This same article discusses St. Peter's role in Antioch, as well.
It is reasonable to presume that Peter DID go to Rome in the early 40's after his imprisonment by Herod Agrippa and miraculous release and was later involved in the subsequent dismissal of "Jews" (at the time, Christianity was still considered a Jewish sect by Rome, as they both continued to worship at the synogogue) from Rome during the reign of Claudius during this same period, as mentioned by Seutonius and the Scriptures.
"Peter's long residence in Jerusalem and Palestine soon came to an end. Herod Agrippa I began (A.D. 42-44) a new persecution of the Church in Jerusalem; after the execution of James, the son of Zebedee, this ruler had Peter cast into prison, intending to have him also executed after the Jewish Pasch was over. Peter, however, was freed in a miraculous manner, and, proceeding to the house of the mother of John Mark, where many of the faithful were assembled for prayer, informed them of his liberation from the hands of Herod, commissioned them to communicate the fact to James and the brethren, and then left Jerusalem to go to "another place" (Acts 12:1-18).
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11744a.htm#III {same article as above}
To be honest, I don't think this was foremost on the minds of men of the first 300 years, as the first real Christian historian was Eusebius, writing during the time of Constantine. Thus, it will be difficult to provide positive evidence of Peter's bishopric in Rome that lasted 25 years. Tradition shows he was certainly Bishop of Rome and died there, but it is more speculative to say he was there in 42 AD and was bishop at that point in time.
Regards
Diego1618 included you (adiaireton8) in this posting. Does it make any sense to you ?
None of us can verify the exact dates but we can get in the ballpark by interpolation. No?
I have no intention of belaboring this point any further. I think you are playing a game and I don't wish to play along with you.
I posted what I think is the timeline best supported by all the evidence here.
-A8
by whom is it being widely held? I have asked for citations from Josephus, Tacitus, Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, and they say nothing. Ignatius tells us something but nothing close to what is claimed here as being widely held.
that Peter paid a first visit to Rome after he had been miraculously liberated from the prison in Jerusalem; that, by "another place", Luke meant Rome, but omitted the name for special reasons.
Didn't he know how to spell "Rome"? If he meant "Rome" why didn't he say "Rome" as he does later when telling about Paul's upcoming visit to "Rome". He didn't call it "another place" there, did he? He clearly knew how to spell "Rome" and had no special reason not to.
It is not impossible that Peter made a missionary journey to Rome about this time (after 42 A.D.)
It is not impossible that Peter made a missionary journey to China about this time either? Shall we assert that since we have no evidence to the contrary?
but such a journey cannot be established with certainty.
Then why are you trying so hard to believe that for which you have no evidence?
At any rate, we cannot appeal in support of this theory to the chronological notices in Eusebius and Jerome
Then why have you been pontificating this myth for 1500 years and claiming that it is true when you know that you have NO EVIDENCE. Why are you lying to your own people and those outside your church as well? The entire magisterium of your church is built upon the words of Eusebius and Jerome, which you now claim to be untrue.Your church was built upon a LIE.
Why are you accusing jo kus of "lying to his own people"?
meant to ping you, j k
In my post to Uncle Chip I explain that I am referring to the consensus of the Church Fathers and not a complete formal listing of books. As you can see, prior to Athanasius there was much consensus, and no one was proposing various apocryphal acts.
B. THE PERIOD OF DISCUSSION (A.D. 220-367)
In this stage of the historical development of the Canon of the New Testament we encounter for the first time a consciousness reflected in certain ecclesiastical writers, of the differences between the sacred collections in divers sections of Christendom. This variation is witnessed to, and the discussion stimulated by, two of the most learned men of Christian antiquity, Origen, and Eusebius of Cæsarea, the ecclesiastical historian. A glance at the Canon as exhibited in the authorities of the African, or Carthaginian, Church, will complete our brief survey of this period of diversity and discussion:-
1. Origen and his school
Origen's travels gave him exception opportunities to know the traditions of widely separated portions of the Church and made him very conversant with the discrepant attitudes toward certain parts of the New Testament He divided books with Biblical claims into three classes:
In the first class, the Homologoumena, stood the Gospels, the thirteen Pauline Epistles, Acts, Apocalypse, I Peter, and I John. The contested writings were Hebrews, II Peter, II and III John, James, Jude, Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and probably the Gospel of the Hebrews. Personally, Origen accepted all of these as Divinely inspired, though viewing contrary opinions with toleration. Origen's authority seems to have given to Hebrews and the disputed Catholic Epistles a firm place in the Alexandrian Canon, their tenure there having been previously insecure, judging from the exegetical work of Clement, and the list in the Codex Claromontanus, which is assigned by competent scholars to an early Alexandrian origin.
- those universally received;
- those whose Apostolicity was questions;
- apocryphal works.
2. Eusebius
Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea in Palestine, was one of Origen's most eminent disciples, a man of wide erudition. In imitation of his master he divided religious literature into three classes:
- Homologoumena, or compositions universally received as sacred, the Four Gospels, thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, Hebrews, Acts, I Peter, I John, and Apocalypse. There is some inconsistency in his classification; for instance, though ranking Hebrews with the books of universal reception, he elsewhere admits it is disputed.
- The second category is composed of the Antilegomena, or contested writings; these in turn are of the superior and inferior sort. The better ones are the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, II Peter, II and III John; these, like Origen, Eusebius wished to be admitted to the Canon, but was forced to record their uncertain status; the Antilegomena of the inferior sort were Barnabas, the Didache, Gospel of the Hebrews, the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd, the Apocalypse of Peter.
- All the rest are spurious (notha).
Eusebius diverged from his Alexandrian master in personally rejecting Apocalypse as an un-Biblical, though compelled to acknowledge its almost universal acceptance. Whence came this unfavourable view of the closing volume of the Christian Testament?--Zahn attributes it to the influence of Lucian of Samosata, one of the founders of the Antioch school of exegesis, and with whose disciples Eusebius had been associated. Lucian himself had acquired his education at Edessa, the metropolis of Eastern Syria, which had, as already remarked, a singularly curtailed Canon. Luician is known to have edited the Scriptures at Antioch, and is supposed to have introduced there the shorter New Testament which later St. John Chrysostom and his followers employed--one in which Apocalypse, II Peter, II and III John, and Jude had no place. It is known that Theodore of Mopsuestia rejected all the Catholic Epistles. In St. John Chrysostom's ample expositions of the Scriptures there is not a single clear trace of the Apocalypse, which he seems to implicitly exclude the four smaller Epistles--II Peter, II and III John, and Jude--from the number of the canonical books. Lucian, then, according to Zahn, would have compromised between the Syriac Canon and the Canon of Origen by admitting the three longer Catholic Epistles and keeping out Apocalypse. But after allowing fully for the prestige of the founder of the Antioch school, it is difficult to grant that his personal authority could have sufficed to strike such an important work as Apocalypse from the Canon of a notable Church, where it had previously been received. It is more probable that a reaction against the abuse of the Johannine Apocalypse by the Montanists and Chiliasts--Asia Minor being the nursery of both these errors--led to the elimination of a book whose authority had perhaps been previously suspected. Indeed it is quite reasonable to suppose that its early exclusion from the East Syrian Church was an outer wave of the extreme reactionist movement of the Aloges--also of Asia Minor--who branded Apocalypse and all the Johannine writings as the work of the heretic Cerinthus. Whatever may have been all the influences ruling the personal Canon of Eusebius, he chose Lucian's text for the fifty copies of the Bible which he furnished to the Church of Constantinople at the order of his imperial patron Constantine; and he incorporated all the Catholic Epistles, but excluded Apocalypse. The latter remained for more than a century banished from the sacred collections as current in Antioch and Constantinople. However, this book kept a minority of Asiatic suffrages, and, as both Lucian and Eusebius had been tainted with Arianism, the approbation of Apocalypse, opposed by them, finally came to be looked upon as a sign of orthodoxy. Eusebius was the first to call attention to important variations in the text of the Gospels, viz., the presence in some copies and the absence in others of the final paragraph of Mark, the passage of the Adulterous Woman, and the Bloody Sweat.
3. The African Church
St. Cyprian, whose Scriptural Canon certainly reflects the contents of the first Latin Bible, received all the books of the New Testament except Hebrews, II Peter, James, and Jude; however, there was already a strong inclination in his environment to admit II Peter as authentic. Jude had been recognized by Tertullian, but, strangely, it had lost its position in the African Church, probably owing to its citation of the apocryphal Henoch. Cyprian's testimony to the non-canonicity of Hebrews and James is confirmed by Commodian, another African writer of the period. A very important witness is the document known as Mommsen's Canon, a manuscript of the tenth century, but whose original has been ascertained to date from West Africa about the year 360. It is a formal catalogue of the sacred books, unmutilated in the New Testament portion, and proves that at its time the books universally acknowledged in the influential Church of Carthage were almost identical with those received by Cyprian a century before. Hebrews, James, and Jude are entirely wanting. The three Epistles of St. John and II Peter appear, but after each stands the note una sola, added by an almost contemporary hand, and evidently in protest against the reception of these Antilegomena, which, presumably, had found a place in the official list recently, but whose right to be there was seriously questioned.
"The scripture stands by itself and says clearly what it means."
_______________________________
FWIW, the Scriptures are the only documents we have from the Apostolic era that we can be absolutely certain reveal what God wants us to know. All other sources are fallible and subject to human error. Any other sources may offer insight into the thought processes of men at the time, or the history of the time, but none of them are "God Breathed", or they would have been in the Scriptures.
I am not!! I am responding to the citation from the source that he presented. I apologize if it appears that I am saying this to "jo kus", I am not. I am commenting on the words from the source that he presented.
Did Origen ever have credibility problems? Did he bring any heresies into the Church? Are you sure that you want to trust him?
They cannot defend their 1500 year old myth and thus they are pulling back to try to find some position that they can defend. And even those positions are crumbling as we speak. Soon they will have no castle left in which their magisterium can hide.
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