Peter the Apostle

Life and Ministry

Simon, son of Jonah, was a fisherman of Bethsaida and Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus called him from his nets, gave him the name Cephas — the rock — and brought him into the inner circle alongside James and John. Peter was the first of the Twelve to confess Jesus as the Christ at Caesarea Philippi, the first to enter the empty tomb at the apostles' running, the first to preach at Pentecost, and the first to take the gospel to a Gentile household at Caesarea. After his disastrous threefold denial in the high priest's courtyard he was restored by the risen Christ on the shore of Galilee with three commands to feed His sheep, and from that morning he led the Jerusalem church and then carried the gospel west.

Circumstances of Death

Eusebius, drawing on Tertullian and Origen, records that Peter died in Rome during the persecution under Nero that followed the great fire of AD 64. The persistent and very early tradition is that he was crucified, and that on his own request he was crucified head-downward, judging himself unworthy to die in the same manner as his Lord. The Quo Vadis legend — Peter fleeing Rome, meeting the risen Christ on the Appian Way, asking where He is going, and being told "to Rome, to be crucified again" — is later but ancient. He was buried on the Vatican Hill near the place of his execution, where excavations under Saint Peter's Basilica in the 1940s uncovered first-century burial structures consistent with the tradition.

Legacy

Peter is the apostle around whom the Western and Eastern churches alike construct their account of apostolic continuity, and his two surviving epistles — pastoral, written to scattered churches under pressure — close out the Petrine voice in the New Testament. His denial and restoration is the church's first written portrait of how the risen Lord deals with a coward, and his preaching at Pentecost the first sermon of the Spirit-filled church. Augustine called the date of his martyrdom the day on which the Roman church was founded in blood.