The Petrine Fact, Part 2: Peter and the Resurrection

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Christ with St. Peter and the Disciples on the Sea of Galilee (Flemish – Lucas Gassel, ca. 1500-1570)

NOTE: This series is a work in progress. See Part 1 updates including bibliography in progress. As I add sources and update past posts I will continue to expand the bibliography.

“He appeared to Kephas, then to the Twelve” (1 Cor 15:5).

Special note is taken of Peter in the first known Christian credal formula, the probably pre-Pauline resurrection tradition of 1 Corinthians 15, which singles him out as the first among the Twelve to witness the resurrected Christ. (On the name Kephas or Cephas, see Part 5.)

Paul emphasizes both the importance and the antiquity of this tradition, which Paul professes to have passed on from those who taught it to him, using the technical terms “received” and “delivered”:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received:

that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,

that he was buried,

that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,

and that he appeared to Kephas, then to the Twelve” (1 Cor 15:3ff).

Note the parallelism of the lines, with the formulaic double use of “in accordance with the scriptures.” This is confessional language, shaped for rote memorization and exact transmission. The terms “receive” (parelabon) and “deliver” (paredoka) are borrowed from rabbinic usage, describing the faithful transmission of oral tradition (cf. 1 Cor 11:2). The only other time Paul uses these two terms together is in recounting the Eucharistic institution narrative in 1 Corinthians 11:23ff, language that is clearly liturgical and which almost no one would argue originated with Paul himself (see the close parallels to Gospel accounts in Matt 26:26-29, Mark 14:22-25, and Luke 22:13-20).

The special resurrection appearance first to Peter is also attested in Luke, in which we find the eleven bearing witness, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” (Luke 24:34). An echo of this special attention to Peter can be heard in Mark’s resurrection material, where the angels tell the women to “go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you” (Mark 16:7). John’s resurrection material gives Peter a prominence in other ways, as we will see in Part 3.

As Ratzinger points out, Peter’s privilege as first apostolic witness to the resurrection, attested by Paul in the pre-Pauline confession of faith recorded in 1 Corinthians 15, is particularly striking in light of Paul’s emphasis on “the essence of apostleship as witness to the Resurrection of Christ” (Called to Communion, p. 49). Paul’s claim to be an apostle is directly tied to his claim to have seen the risen Christ (“Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Christ?” 1 Cor 9:1).

See also Acts 1, where Peter himself sets the criteria for Judas’ replacement in the apostolic ministry: “So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us — one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” Witnessing and bearing witness to the resurrected Christ was the essence of apostleship.

Interestingly, while in some places Paul emphatically denies any inferiority to other apostles, in 1 Corinthians 15, in the very passage where he attests the credal tradition that the Lord appeared first to Peter, Paul humbly declares that, after all his other appearances, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor 15:8-9).

If Paul’s late resurrection appearance makes him “untimely born,” “last of all” and “the least of the apostles,” by implication the Lord’s appearance first to Peter makes him in effect the first-born among the apostles — a role given credal or confessional significance in the very early pre-Pauline tradition that Paul preserves. (I am not arguing that it makes him superior to the other apostles, any more than Paul’s “untimely” status correlates with inferiority.)

As mentioned above, John’s resurrection narrative also attests Peter’s unique role in regard to the risen Christ, in two ways.

First, when Peter and the beloved disciple run to the sepulchre, the beloved disciple outruns Peter, arriving at the sepulchre first. Then, however, he waits outside until Peter has arrived and entered, and only then enters himself, at which point he sees and believes (John 20:3-8). John’s Gospel gives the “beloved disciple” a primacy of one sort, seen here in the fact that he outruns Peter, but then Peter’s primacy is also given its place as he waits outside for Peter, and only enters and “believes” following Peter.

Second, when Jesus appears to the Twelve at the Sea of Tiberias, he makes a charcoal fire (the same term used for the fire at which Peter warmed himself on the eve of the crucifixion, when he denied Jesus) and questions Peter thrice about his love, responding each time with the commission to tend/feed Jesus’ sheep/lambs. Peter’s triple declaration of love, and Jesus’ triple commission of Peter as shepherd of his sheep, parallels and cancels Peter’s well-known (attested in all four Gospels) triple denials, solemnly restoring Peter by triple commission to his place of honor.

In this connection it may be significant that Jesus’ first two queries about Peter’s love use the term agape and that he first asks if Peter loves him “more than these”; but Peter determinedly replies with the word phileo, prompting Jesus to ask the third time using phileo (and receiving the same word in Peter’s third reply). (There is room for question here because the elevated Christian meaning of agape was a development in early Christian vocabulary, reflecting the need for a word corresponding to a new conceptual world, and like other words which acquire new meanings it is not always clear in early usage whether the new meaning is fully in place yet.)

If it is significant, then it seems likely that the humiliating experience of the triple denials, of fleeing while the beloved disciple followed, has cured Peter of making grandiose claims about his devotion to Jesus. As seen in the race to the sepulchre, Peter is not necessarily the disciple most driven by love for Jesus; that would be the beloved disciple. Nevertheless, just as it is Peter who first enters the sepulchre, it is to Peter that Jesus gives the solemn threefold commission as vice shepherd under the Good Shepherd.

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