The spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ from Jerusalem to Rome has fascinated and inspired Christians from the earliest times. Jerusalem, the place from which the good news was launched to the world at the command of the risen Lord, bore the weight of Roman rule in the eastern parts of the empire. The emperor expected only two things from those who ruled in his name: to collect taxes and keep the peace. The rebellion of the Jewish people against their Roman oppressors prevented these imperial expectations from being met, especially when the emperors demanded to be honored as deities and worshipped with sacrifice. The great Jewish revolt of AD 66 provoked the emperor to order the siege of Jerusalem. By AD 70, in an orgy of bloody violence, the city and its temple were completely destroyed.
While the path from Rome to Jerusalem resulted in oppression and destruction, the way from Jerusalem to Rome created much different results. Rome ruled over the vast territory of what is today Israel-Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, northern Africa, and western Europe. Thanks to the Roman system of roads and free passage, the good news of the Jewish Messiah was brought from Jerusalem to the four corners of the empire. The Jewish synagogues throughout the empire provided the original outposts from which the gospel was preached and the people evangelized. By the early AD 40s, the gospel had reached the imperial city of Rome and the first house churches had begun forming there. The capital of the empire had been infiltrated by the gospel.
The book of Daniel prophesied that four earthly kingdoms would rule over the Jewish people, culminating in the fourth kingdom, the Roman Empire, represented by a terrible beast. This Roman beast, according to Daniel’s visions, will blaspheme the Most High and persecute God’s holy ones (Daniel 7:25). But in the days to come, the prophet proclaimed, God will “set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44). The Son of Man will receive this kingdom from God and will be given everlasting “dominion and glory and kingship,” being served by all “peoples, nations, and languages” (Daniel 7:14). The Jewish people understood these prophetic texts as referring to the time of the Messiah, and Jewish Christians understood them to refer to the kingdom of God, established by Jesus Christ.
As Christian missionaries came to Rome, the destructive powers of the empire slowly began to be undermined by the gospel of peace and justice. The persecution experienced by believers at the hands of the Romans would only further the growth of God’s messianic kingdom in the world. Of course, this kingdom of God was only in the form of a small mustard seed when the gospel reached Rome in the AD 40s; it would require two more centuries of steady growth before being officially acknowledged by the rulers of the empire. Yet, slowly but surely, the teachings of the apostles, the charity of the community, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers of God’s holy ones would infiltrate the city so that Jesus would be acknowledged as the King of kings and the true ruler of all of the nations.
Jesus had introduced Peter to the powers of the Roman Empire at Caesarea Philippi. The city was dominated by a massive wall of rock and a temple in which to honor the emperor with sacrifices. Nowhere else in Palestine was the authority of Rome more clearly expressed. Jesus chose this place to proclaim Peter as the indestructible rock on which the church would be built, and to give him the royal keys of authority in God’s kingdom. Here, Jesus connected the mission of Peter with the power of Rome and the keys of God’s kingdom with the authority of the empire. While Jesus assured Peter that the church would not be overcome by the powers of the underworld and that God’s kingdom would be everlasting, the days of Rome and its powerful empire were numbered and its destructive might would be overcome.
Jesus knew, of course, that this would not be Peter’s last encounter with the power of Rome. Peter’s missionary travels would extend through many areas of the empire, and his leadership would culminate in its capital. As a witness to Christ from Jerusalem to Rome, Peter was God’s primary instrument in transforming the fourth kingdom of Daniel’s prophecy into the geographical center of the growing church.
Although we have far less information about Peter’s travels than we do about Paul’s, we must assume that Peter was a successful missionary organizer and preacher. We know that he was committed to the church’s mission extending out to the world. But his concern was not only the church’s expansion but also the development and unity of the many and diverse churches extending across the empire from Jerusalem to Rome.
Whether Peter first came to Rome early in his pastoral career in the AD 40s or closer to his martyrdom in the 60s, we don’t know. After Peter’s imprisonment and miraculous release in Jerusalem, Acts tells us that Peter “left and went to another place” (Acts 12:17). But it is impossible to know for sure where Peter traveled next. One tradition claims that Peter went immediately to Rome and there became the bishop of the church for twenty-five years until his martyrdom. Other sources indicate that Peter traveled elsewhere, including extended stays in Antioch, Corinth, and Asia Minor.
Peter’s stature and influence throughout the church, whether he was a traveling missionary or the more stationary leader of the church in Rome, must have been considerable. His role at the apostolic council in Jerusalem, where he returned after having left the city for many years, indicates his continuing importance. When Peter became leader of the church in Rome, whether earlier or later, his authority became most assured. The word of the Gospels about Peter—as the rock of Christ’s church given the keys of authority (Matthew 16:18–19), as the faithful one who will return to strengthen his brothers (Luke 22:32), and as the one Jesus commissioned to feed his flock (John 21:15)—cannot apply only to the earliest period of the church. They describe Peter’s entire ministerial life up to and including his martyrdom in Rome.
The first letter of Peter is an encyclical from Rome addressed to Christian house churches in five Roman provinces of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey). It was sent to be circulated among these communities, meant to be read at Eucharist on the Lord’s Day, and designed to build up the faith of its hearers during times of trial.
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood:
May grace and peace be yours in abundance. (1 Peter 1:1–2)
What is the relationship between Peter and the Christians in these five provinces? The most common view is that these are churches Peter visited during his missionary journeys before he went to Rome. Now Peter is writing from Rome to offer encouragement to these Christians in their struggles. He addresses them as “exiles of the Dispersion,” in the metaphorical sense that all people are exiles in the world because our true home is with God.
An alternative theory holds that the people of these five provinces became Christians in Rome and were then expelled by the emperor into these distant territories.8 They were some of those Jews and Jewish Christians deported from Rome in AD 49 by the emperor Claudius (referred to in Acts 18:2). The emperor relocated them to strategically located colonial areas in Asia Minor in order to expand and strengthen the empire. The recipients of Peter’s letter are then literally “aliens and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11) in a distant and foreign land.
Although Peter’s authorship of this letter was unchallenged throughout the history of the church, some modern scholars attribute the authorship to someone other than Peter. Objecting that the Greek style and theology is too developed for a simple Jewish fisherman from Galilee, they propose that the letter was attributed to Peter to give it authority. I maintain, however, that the best arguments lie on the side of the traditional view of Petrine authorship.
First, as we mentioned when discussing Peter’s origins in Galilee, his hometown of Bethsaida was heavily Greek-speaking, although he later moved to Aramaic-speaking Capernaum. Yet bilingual abilities would have helped Peter during the years he was building his fishing trade, and he would have further developed his skills after traveling through the Greek-speaking world for twenty to thirty years before writing this letter. Furthermore, studies of the language of 1 Peter indicate Semitic influences and suggest a Semitic author for whom Greek was a second language.
Second, although Peter undoubtedly developed into a more refined, bilingual speaker and possibly a writer, he could have been the author of the letter but not its writer. At the end of the letter, Peter states, “Through Silvanus, whom I consider a faithful brother, I have written this short letter” (1 Peter 5:12). This postscript could indicate that Silvanus, a frequent companion of Paul, helped to compose the letter for Peter.
Third, the letter alludes to the words and deeds of Jesus while Peter was present as well as moments from Peter’s life during the ministry of Jesus. The letter has all the characteristics of one who was with Jesus and who personally witnessed his suffering and glory.
This first letter of Peter probably presents some of Peter’s final correspondence before his death. It is a magnificent testimony of Peter’s apostolic zeal to help the churches face the challenges of living in a hostile world. Although Peter does not directly state that he is writing from Rome, his final greetings imply that he writes from the capital city of the empire.
Your sister church in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings; and so does my son Mark. Greet one another with a kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ. (1 Peter 5:13–14)
Babylon, almost all interpreters agree, is a code word for Rome. Just as Babylon was the archenemy of God’s people during Judah’s early history, so Rome is now the universal power that threatens Christ’s church with destruction.
The letter is soaked with quotations, allusions, and images from the Hebrew Scriptures, demonstrating that Peter took seriously the importance of keeping Christianity within the framework of ancient Israel and ensuring that its Jewish character not be lost. Furthermore, the letter gives evidence that Peter reflected on the teachings, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus and pondered their meaning and significance for the infant church.9
Jesus helped Peter understand his mission by using images of a foundation rock and of a shepherd tending the flock. Now, in his letter to the churches, Peter uses similar images to help the early Christians understand their mission. And the words of Peter from Rome also speak across the centuries to us who desire to serve Christ’s church today.
Peter the Rock uses the picture of a stone to reflect on Christ and his relationship to the church. He uses quotations from the psalms and prophets that describe Christ as a rejected stone, a stumbling stone, and a cornerstone. According to God’s grand design for the church, we are “like living stones” being built upon the foundation stone of Jesus into a spiritual house.
Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:4–5)
As individual believers are built up in faith, each one becomes an integral part of God’s house, according to the divine architectural plan. This holy temple exists for the singular purpose of worshiping God. In contrast to the temple in ancient Israel, made of lifeless stones, this spiritual house is made of living stones. Rather than an inherited priesthood made up only of Levites, all Christians form a holy priesthood. Instead of material sacrifices, Christians offer spiritual sacrifices of prayer and praise, of self-consecration and self-giving. Such sacrifices are acceptable to God not on account of the one offering them but because they are made “through Jesus Christ,” that is, joined with his perfect sacrifice and united with his Spirit.
While Peter the Rock refers to Jesus as the cornerstone and his church as the living stones of God’s temple, Peter the Shepherd refers to Jesus as “the chief shepherd” and understands his own leadership within the church as modeled on the life of Jesus.
Now as an elder myself and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as one who shares in the glory to be revealed, I exhort the elders among you to tend the flock of God that is in your charge, exercising the oversight, not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you do it—not for sordid gain but eagerly. Do not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will win the crown of glory that never fades away. (1 Peter 5:1–4)
By the time Peter wrote this letter from Rome, Jesus’ lakeside charge to him, “Tend my sheep,” had been fulfilled for several decades through Peter’s pastoral care of the church in many areas of the world. Peter’s apostolic exhortation, “Tend the flock of God that is in your charge,” reflects his own experience of suffering and joy among God’s flock and serves as a kind of final testament to his successors.
In offering his pastoral advice, Peter reminds the elders that they do not own the flock; rather, they exercise “oversight” of God’s flock. He describes the kind of leadership they should exercise with a series of contrasts. They should shepherd the community not under compulsion but willingly, not inspired by greed but by a desire for service, and not lording it over them but by being “examples to the flock.” The image of Christ the Shepherd must encourage them to act like shepherds toward all entrusted to their care.
Peter’s letter shows the strong bonds that joined the early communities of the church stretched across the world. From the church in Rome, Peter reached out to the small towns in the remote provinces of Asia Minor. He reminded them that they were not alone but part of a worldwide church united together in suffering and in hope. The struggles of believers are necessary for following in the steps of Christ, and they are part of the transformation through which evil will be overcome and through which believers will share in God’s eternal glory in Christ.
At the end of his letter, Peter sends greetings from “my son Mark.” This is an affectionate reference to John Mark, known from Acts and Paul’s letters. It was to the home of Mark’s mother, Mary, in Jerusalem that Peter had fled many years before after his miraculous escape from prison (Acts 12:12). John Mark must have remembered this highly charged moment for the rest of his life. Peter could not have known on the night he left Jerusalem that decades later his life would be interwoven again with that of Mark, Mary’s wide-eyed son.
Mark became Peter’s disciple and interpreter in Rome. By now an experienced and wiser man, he must have spent countless hours listening to Peter teach about Jesus based on his personal experiences with him. Mark surely asked Peter many questions to help him understand who Jesus was and what it meant to follow him. Then, according to Papias, writing at about the turn of the second century, Mark based his Gospel on what he had learned from the teachings of Peter: “Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatever he remembered of the things said and done by the Lord, but not however in order.”10
Either shortly before or shortly after Peter’s death, Mark edited Peter’s memoirs of Jesus into the Gospel according to Mark.11 Faced with growing Roman persecution and the tragic deaths of church leaders, it became increasingly necessary for someone to preserve in writing the teachings and events of the life of Jesus, and with these words to encourage Christians suffering persecution. Mark seemed to be the ideal person for this task because he had grown up in the first Christian community in Jerusalem, had traveled and worked with Peter and Paul, and had the literary skills to accomplish this.
It is well recognized that Mark’s Gospel was the first of the four; hence, before this book no literary form called a “gospel” existed. Mark not only wrote down the words and deeds of Jesus according to the memoirs of Peter, he also created a whole new literary form. Mark opened his work with these words: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Euangelion is the Greek word for “good news” used here. It can also mean “glad tidings” or simply “gospel.”
As Mark’s writing demonstrates, a Gospel is more than a biography. Rather than offering a detailed and chronological description of Jesus’ life, Mark selected certain moments of Jesus’ life that particularly described his words and deeds as good news for the audience to which Mark was writing. Rather than describe Jesus’ family, his education, and his young adulthood, Mark began with the public ministry of Jesus in Galilee, pointing to those crucial moments that portrayed Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God. Although Mark had many sources for the material of his Gospel, Peter seems to be his most important and consistent source of information. Peter not only provided Mark with his own memories, but helped Mark to shape his narrative into a font of hope for all who would hear it.
In his Gospel, Mark narrated the events of Jesus’ life and also taught others how to be disciples of Jesus. He used the lives of the historical disciples to show people in his own generation how to follow in the way of Jesus. Mark gave examples of good discipleship and also provided many illustrations of failure in discipleship. For these demonstrations, Peter was a prime inspiration and became Mark’s representative figure for Christian discipleship. Through Peter, Mark portrays the role of the disciple as one who struggles and fails, learns through his mistakes, and grows to become Jesus’ outstanding follower and the leader of his church.
Mark composed his Gospel during the first serious persecution of the church. Under Nero, the Christians of Rome were undergoing great struggle. Many had seen their loved ones tortured and killed because they would not abandon their faith. Others were hounded by guilt for renouncing their faith to protect their families and survive another day. Mark developed his Gospel especially for these people. He used as a primary theme the idea that only through personal struggle and failure can disciples grow stronger in faith and in their understanding of Jesus. Of course, the primary character of the Gospel to exemplify this growth through weakness and failure was Peter the apostle. But Mark did not paint a negative portrait of Peter. Rather, he painted a human portrait, someone with whom his readers could easily identify. Through Mark’s Gospel, Peter teaches us all how to gain courage and understanding by growing past our skepticism, narrow-mindedness, denials, and meltdowns. By slowly taking away the obstacles to God’s grace working within him, Peter became the great fisherman of the church, the leader Jesus had called him to become.
As the first Gospel ever written, Mark’s account became the primary source for Matthew and Luke. These writers took the basic frame of Mark’s Gospel and added material from their own sources, arranging the narrative in a way that would be most impactful for the communities to whom they wrote. In these other Gospels, too, Peter is the primary character and model of discipleship. Therefore, we can state that Peter is one of the three primary authorities behind the writings of the New Testament. He is the prime influence for the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), just as Paul is the principle source of the thirteen Pauline letters, and John is the authority behind the Gospel of John, the Johannine letters, and Revelation.
Near the Church of St. Peter in Chains, the church containing the relics of Peter’s prison chains from both Jerusalem and Rome, stands the Mamertine Prison. It can be found on the slope of the Capitoline Hill close to the Roman Forum. The ancient Romans simply called the site carcer (Latin for “prison”), since it was the only prison in the ancient city and was reserved for significant criminals of the state. Incarceration was a temporary measure, with the prison serving as a holding cell prior to execution. The prison dates to the seventh century BC and is mentioned by several classical writers, one of whom says “neglect, darkness, and stench make it hideous and fearsome to behold.”
The prison remained in use until at least the fourth century AD, when it became a pilgrimage site. Although there are no historical accounts of Peter being held here, the tradition of Peter’s captivity here before his death in Nero’s circus on Vatican Hill had taken hold by the fifth century. The site continues to attract pilgrims today.
The Mamertine Prison consists of two vaulted chambers, one above the other. The upper room is on a level that was the ground level of the prison in ancient times. The walls are made of blocks of tufa on which is mounted a plaque engraved with the names of the prison’s most celebrated prisoners. At the back is a small altar with busts of both Saint Peter and Saint Paul, whose imprisonment before their martyrdom is remembered here. The lower room was originally accessed through a round opening in the floor of the upper room. The condemned prisoners were thrown down or lowered through a hole to await their gruesome fate. The hole is now covered with a grate, and the lower floor is accessed by a modern staircase.
This lower cell, which was originally a cistern to catch water from a spring in the rock, today contains an altar and a relief of Peter baptizing his fellow prisoners. To the left of the altar is a column to which Peter was tied and from which he is said to have converted his guards to Christianity. In the floor in front of the altar is a round opening leading to the spring, the water from which Peter baptized the prisoners and guards. On the front of the altar, standing out against a red marble background is the upside-down cross of Peter, a reminder that he was crucified feet up and head to the ground at his own request, because he did not consider himself worthy to die in the same manner as his Lord.
The dark and hideous prison has been transformed into a place where pilgrims may reflect on Peter and the early martyrs of the church. Although Peter was not miraculously released from this prison by an angel of God, his witness unshackled countless believers from the fear of despair. From his stone cell, Peter served his final hours as rock of the church, teaching anyone who would listen in that dank jail about the liberating Christ and the hope of God’s kingdom.
The Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo dominates the monumental piazza welcoming pilgrims as they enter the city of Rome from the north. And within this church is one of the greatest paintings of the Baroque era—the Crucifixion of Saint Peter. The painter, known as Caravaggio, after the northern Italian town where he was born, created this work to illustrate the moment when Peter was crucified in Nero’s circus.
Here Peter is depicted not as a Herculean hero in the manner of Michelangelo, but as an old man suffering pain and fearing death. The black, impenetrable background accentuates the four sharply illuminated figures of the scene. Peter and his three executioners create a cross of bodies as rope, muscles, and brute strength struggle to raise Peter on his cross. The three carry out their assigned task efficiently and anonymously. Their faces hidden or turned away, they are pushing, pulling, and dragging the cross to which Peter has been nailed by the feet with his head down. The grim ugliness of their movements convinces us that this is not a heroic drama but a miserable, shameful execution.
In this work, Caravaggio has turned on its head the baroque pomp of the papacy in his day. This painting was commissioned by the church in Rome to depict the death of its first bishop. Yet it is entirely drained of the kind of spiritual character we might expect from a treatment of this subject matter. The artist has chosen the moment when Peter’s elderly but still-husky physique is raised in the most undignified position. His feet are above his head, and he is looking past the brutish nail that has been driven through his clenched left palm, perhaps to see the other Christians being executed with him.
The drama of the scene is understated; there is no bloodshed or sensationalism. Peter is neither angry, resisting, nor panicked. He is staunch, uncompromising, and resolute, the rock of faith on which the church would be secure. His face shows his resignation as he submits to Jesus’ own prophecy about him: “When you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go” (John 21:18).
The focus on these three figures and the absence of spectators transmutes the crucifixion of Peter from an historical event to a personal ordeal. The pulling, heaving, and straining of the savage executioners contrasts with Peter’s acceptance of his martyrdom. They have significance only in relation to him. Their job is to hoist an old man up on a couple of crossed planks as quickly as possible. Who knows what the hourly rate might have been for this sort of sweaty toil in those days and how many others nearby awaited similar treatment. Their labor is the operative means through which Peter can glorify God and give witness to Jesus Christ.
Peter’s inverted crucifixion in Nero’s circus on Vatican Hill is the culmination of his years of preaching and evangelizing. Martyrdom is his final witness and the most glorious of all. The image of Peter, facing his death head-to-the-ground on a cross, endured through the ages in art and literature as a powerful statement about the nature of Christian faith. The same impulse that led the evangelists to portray Peter as a fallible and stumbling disciple during the life of Jesus also led artists to express his death in such an ignoble way. Peter is not the hero of the gospel; Jesus is. Peter is not the cornerstone of the church; Jesus is. Peter always points to Jesus, much as his comrade Paul does, who was also martyred by Nero. Paul affirms:
[The Lord] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9–10)
What were some of the consequences of bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to the capital city of the Roman Empire? In what sense do these results continue today?
In his first letter, Peter describes the church as a temple made of “living stones” and “a holy priesthood” offering “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” How do these images influence your understanding of the church?
What are these “spiritual sacrifices” that we offer? How can they be “acceptable” to God?
When Peter, in his first letter, urges ministers in the church to “tend the flock of God” in their charge, what counsel does he offer to church leaders?
In what sense is Peter the authority behind the earliest written Gospels? In what ways does the writing of Mark’s Gospel in Rome influence the Gospel’s contents and its presentation of discipleship?