Was Peter in Rome?

Question 60009.

Whether Peter in Rome is a historical fact or a later legend has been argued for five hundred years, and the heat in the argument comes from what is thought to hang on it, since the claim of the papacy is usually traced back to Peter as first bishop of that city.

I want to separate two questions that regularly get fused. Did Peter go to Rome and die there is a historical question. Whether that would establish the papacy is a theological one, and the answers are not connected in the way the argument assumes.

What Scripture actually says

The New Testament never places Peter in Rome by name. Acts follows him through Jerusalem, Samaria, Lydda, Joppa and Caesarea, has him imprisoned by Herod and released, and then largely leaves him after the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15.

Paul’s letter to the Romans greets some twenty six individuals by name in chapter 16 and does not mention Peter, which would be a striking omission if Peter were leading that church at the time. Paul also states his policy of not building on another man’s foundation.

In the letters from Paul’s Roman imprisonment he names his companions and says at one point that everyone has deserted him. If Peter in Rome were an established fact of those years, the silence is hard to explain.

The one possible hint

There is a single verse worth weighing. Peter closes his first letter with greetings from she who is at Babylon, 1 Peter 5:13, and many scholars take Babylon as a coded reference to Rome, as Revelation later uses it.

That reading is plausible. Writing under Nero, a coded name would be prudent, and the church of the first century did use the term that way. It is not certain, since there was a literal Babylon with a Jewish population, and Peter was the apostle to the circumcision.

So the strongest scriptural evidence for Peter in Rome is a coded place name that most, though not all, scholars read as Rome. That is a thread rather than a rope.

What the early sources say about Peter in Rome

The external evidence is considerably stronger than the biblical evidence. Clement of Rome, writing around the year 96, refers to Peter and Paul as pillars who suffered and bore witness, in a letter from Rome that treats both as familiar to that congregation.

Ignatius, writing to the Romans around 107, says he does not command them as Peter and Paul did, which implies both apostles had authority there. Irenaeus around 180 states plainly that Peter and Paul preached at Rome and founded the church, and Tertullian and Eusebius follow.

That is a consistent tradition, early, and coming from several regions rather than one interested party. On the historical question I think the evidence for Peter in Rome is good, and I would accept it as probable.

The archaeology

Excavations beneath St Peter’s Basilica from 1939 onwards uncovered a first century cemetery and a second century monument, and graffiti nearby includes a Greek phrase read by some as Peter is here.

Bones were recovered and eventually announced as Peter’s remains, though the identification rests on a chain of inferences rather than anything decisive, and the archaeologists involved differed among themselves.

What the excavation does establish is that Christians in the second century venerated a site in that area as Peter’s grave. That is real evidence for an early belief about Peter in Rome, and it is not the same as proof of the belief itself. I write more generally about this discipline in how archaeology confirms Scripture.

Why the conclusion does not follow

Suppose it is settled. Peter went to Rome, ministered there and was executed under Nero, traditionally crucified upside down. What follows for church government is precisely nothing.

Paul was in Rome too, and nobody builds a succession on that. Peter had also been in Antioch, where Paul opposed him to his face, and Antioch has never claimed universal jurisdiction on those grounds. Presence does not create an office.

The step from Peter in Rome to a monarchical bishop over the whole church requires several further assumptions, each of which needs its own evidence, and the New Testament supplies none of them.

The rock, and what Jesus said

The other pillar of the argument is Matthew 16, where Jesus says you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. The wordplay is real and the Greek is worth noting. Peter is petros, a stone, and the rock is petra, a mass of rock.

The immediate context is Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and Jesus says flesh and blood did not reveal it. The rock is most naturally the confessed truth, or Peter in his capacity as the one confessing it, rather than a transmissible office.

Peter himself never claims such a position. He writes as a fellow elder exhorting the elders, not lording it over those in his charge, and Scripture elsewhere calls Jesus the cornerstone and the apostles and prophets the foundation collectively.

The New Testament pattern of leadership

Every New Testament church we can observe has a plurality of elders rather than a single ruling bishop. Paul appointed elders in every town, and the terms elder, overseer and shepherd describe one office rather than a hierarchy.

When a genuine crisis arises in Acts 15 it is settled by a gathering of apostles and elders in Jerusalem, and the summing up is given by James rather than Peter. That is not how a monarchy behaves.

So my objection to the papal claim is not that Peter never went to Rome. My objection is that the office being claimed does not appear in the New Testament at all, which is a considerably stronger point than arguing about geography.

How to discuss this with a Catholic friend

Concede the history freely. There is no need to fight over whether Peter in Rome is likely, and denying it makes us look as though we are protecting a position rather than following evidence.

Then move to the real question. Ask where the New Testament describes the office, the succession, or the authority being claimed, and read Matthew 16 together in its context, along with 1 Peter 5 and Acts 15.

Keep the tone warm. Many Catholics love Jesus and read their Bibles, and the conversation that matters most is about how a sinner is put right with God, which I set out in what the Reformers taught about salvation.

What Peter himself would want said

Read his letters and you find a man preoccupied with Jesus rather than with his own standing. He calls himself a witness of the sufferings of Christ and a partaker in the glory to be revealed, and he warns leaders against domineering.

He is also refreshingly honest about his failures, or at least Mark’s Gospel is, which the early church believed drew on Peter’s preaching. The denial is recorded in full detail and none of it is softened.

That is the Peter I want to learn from. A man who failed badly, was restored by a charcoal fire and a threefold question, and then spent his life pointing away from himself. Whether Peter in Rome ended his days is interesting. How he lived them is instructive.

How he died, and how we know

Tradition holds that Peter was executed during the Neronian persecution following the fire of 64, and that he asked to be crucified head downward as unworthy to die as his Lord did. That detail comes from Origen in the third century and cannot be verified.

What can be traced further back is the fact of a martyrdom. Jesus tells Peter in John 21 that when he is old another will carry him where he does not wish to go, and John adds that this indicated the kind of death by which he would glorify God, John 21:19. Clement, writing within a generation, refers to Peter’s sufferings as known to his readers.

So the shape of the account is early and consistent even where the details are not. Whether Peter in Rome died in the way Origen describes is beyond recovery, and it hardly diminishes the man. A fisherman who once denied his Lord to a servant girl went to his execution rather than repeat the performance.

So, now what?

Read Matthew 16 and 1 Peter 5 side by side and ask what Peter thought his own role was. His self description is the best commentary on the claims later made for him.

Then be careful how you argue. If you have been dismissing the historical evidence because of where you thought it led, that is a habit worth breaking, since truth is never served by convenient conclusions.

And notice what the church is actually built on. A confession that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, made by a man who would deny Him within the year. Would you have been chosen for that job?

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed.

1 Peter 5:1, ESV