The Breaking In Of The Future Age

"He who is wise and, therefore, walks carefully, redeems the time. But he redeems the time because 'the days are evil' [Ephesians 5:16]. Whenever we consume time in a good work we buy it and make our own what has been sold by the malice of humanity. But no one seeking the necessary things of this life and thinking about riches and cares, which the Gospel calls thorns (Matt. 13:22), can redeem the time for himself. Moreover, when we 'redeem the time' which is in evil days, we change it, to a certain degree, and turn the evil days into good and make them days not of the present age but of the future." (Origen and Jerome, in Ronald Heine, trans. and ed., The Commentaries Of Origen And Jerome On St. Paul's Epistle To The Ephesians [New York: Oxford University Press, 2002], 225)

Is there support for praying to angels in Origen's Homilies On Ezekiel?

You can access a recent English translation of the homilies here. In section 1:7:2 (pp. 39 and 41 of the e-book just linked), Origen writes as if he's addressing an angel:

The Apologetic Task

"Our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ was silent when false witnesses spoke against him, and answered nothing when he was accused; he was convinced that all his life and actions among the Jews were better than any speech in refutation of the false witness and superior to any words that he might say in reply to the accusations.…Whereas it is our task, since we try to confirm men's faith by arguments and treatises, to do all in our power that we may be called 'workmen who need not to be ashamed, handling rightly the word of truth'. One of all these tasks seems to us to be that of demolishing Celsus' plausible arguments to the best of our ability, and to perform faithfully the work which you have enjoined upon us." (Origen, Against Celsus, Preface:1, 5:1, in Henry Chadwick, ed., Origen: Contra Celsum [New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 3, 264)

Some Church Fathers On The Efficaciousness Of Prebaptismal Faith

Some of the church fathers who use highly efficacious language about baptism also use highly efficacious language, including language about the new birth and salvation, when discussing prebaptismal faith. However you explain that (that they viewed justification as a multistep process, that they were inconsistent, or whatever), it offers partial corroboration for the view that we're justified through prebaptismal faith. They ascribe more to prebaptismal faith than advocates of baptismal regeneration typically do. It also provides another example of the diversity of the baptismal beliefs of the pre-Reformation sources. The historian Nick Needham writes that the view of these fathers "effectively makes initial justification itself a twofold process: faith introduces us to salvation, and baptism perfects the introduction" (in Bruce McCormack, ed., Justification In Perspective [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2006], 42). He cites Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Basil of Caesarea as examples. He goes on, "Basil's use of 'seal' imagery may indicate that he regarded baptism as the public and official declaration of a justification that until then has been private and unofficial" (ibid.). Whether you explain these fathers' comments as Needham does, explain them in some other way, or remain agnostic about it, I agree that such comments are found in the three fathers he mentions. At least in the passages I've read, it's clearer in Cyril and Basil than in Origen, but seems likely to be present in Origen as well. It may also be present in a Western source of the fourth century, Fortunatianus, though his comments are highly metaphorical and harder to interpret. He wrote in his Commentary On The Gospels:

Joe Heschmeyer's Arguments For Praying To Saints And Angels

He's been exchanging videos with Gavin Ortlund on the subject. Joe has commented on some issues beyond what Gavin brought up as well. You can watch Gavin's most recent video here, which makes a lot of good points. You can find Joe's videos here, here, here, and here. I've said a lot about prayer to saints and angels in the past. You can find a collection of many of my posts here, for example. What follows are some of my initial reactions to Joe's videos:

A Historical Argument For The New Testament Canon

My last post cited Charles Hill's Who Chose The Books Of The New Testament? (Bellingham, Washington: Lexham Press, 2022). The book makes a lot of good points (e.g., the manuscript and patristic evidence that the canonical gospels were more widely accepted and viewed more highly than the non-canonical ones in the earliest centuries of Christianity).

However, his focus when discussing canonical criteria is on the self-authenticating nature of scripture, and he doesn't provide what I consider the best argument for the canon. See here for a series I wrote in 2009 that makes a historical argument for the canon on the basis of the criterion of apostolicity. Some parts of that series are somewhat dated, and you can find more recent material in our archives (e.g., I've written substantially more about 1 Timothy 5:18 since then, like here). But the 2009 series provides the general parameters and many of the relevant details.

One of the good aspects of Hill's book is that he cites the existence of our 27-book New Testament canon in Origen more than a century before it appears in Athanasius. But Hill doesn't go into much depth when discussing the subject. See here for my article on the topic, which covers a lot of details Hill doesn't mention, some of which I haven't seen anybody else bring up. As I explain in that article, there are multiple lines of evidence that the 27-book canon predates the letter of Athanasius that's typically cited. People ought to stop citing that letter or Athanasius as an individual as the first source supporting the canon.

Jesus' Birthplace Outside Matthew And Luke

Among the earliest sources, the place of Jesus' birth is discussed most explicitly in Matthew and Luke. But his birthplace is implied elsewhere in the New Testament and is discussed in the early patristic literature, and those other sources get much less attention in modern considerations of where Jesus was born. The evidence from ancient non-Christian sources has been neglected as well. What I want to do in this post is address some of those sources outside Matthew and Luke.

For some important background to this post, see my article on Micah 4-5 and my article on how difficult it would have been for people to determine where Jesus was born. You don't need to read those in order to understand what I'm arguing here, but those other posts will help you understand the larger significance of this one.

How Much Did Papias Influence Gospel Authorship Attributions?

I just had an exchange on Facebook regarding the popular claim that a large percentage of ancient gospel authorship attributions, if not all of them, were based on the testimony of Papias. I'll indent the other person's comments and leave mine without indentation.

Jason, I hope you don't mind me asking, but I was wondering if in your studies on Origen of Alexandria you ever came across discussions of what sources were behind Origen's Gospel attributions. I checked Monte Shank's book on Papian fragments and it looks like Origen never mentioned Papias anywhere in his writings - so it seems like Origen was naming the Gospels independent of Papias. Thanks for any information you may be able to relay.

Origen's Homilies On Ezekiel Now Available Online

Roger Pearse has linked an English version he edited that's now available online for free.

It’s time to think about Ash Wednesday and Lent

Giving things up for the Kingdom?

Just a reminder: that time of year is upon us: the “liturgically-minded” all want to “give up things for Lent” and such. So you’ll be seeing articles about Ash Wednesday and Lent this week, including those from Christians. The linked article here is from Christianity Today, which ought to know better.

Such suggestions among Christians border on the ridiculous. We should remember Paul’s admonitions, such as:

Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? Galatians 3:2-6)

And:

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh (Colossians 2:20-23).

Instead, Ash Wednesday is a 10th century invention, and not one “Lenten” practice can be traced to the New Testament. The list here, compiled by Yves Congar in his “The Meaning of Tradition”, places many of these rituals well into the fourth century and later:

— The Lenten fast (Irenaeus, Jerome, Leo)

— Certain baptismal rites (Tertullian, Origen, Basil, Jerome, Augustine)

— Certain Eucharistic rites (Origen, Cyprian, Basil)

— Infant baptism (Origen, Augustine)

— Prayer facing the East (Origen, Basil)

— Validity of baptism by heretics (pope Stephen, Augustine)

— Certain rules for the election and consecration of bishops (Cyprian)

— The sign of the cross (Basil, who lived 329-379)

— Prayer for the dead (note, this is not “prayers to the dead) (John Chrysostom)

— Various liturgical fests and rites (Basil, Augustine)

From Yves Congar, in his “The Meaning of Tradition,” (and derived from his scholarly “Tradition and Traditions” and a textbook for Roman Catholic seminarians), (pg. 37).

Again, while such practices as Lenten fasts and the sign of the cross are still practiced, many of these “apostolic traditions” – really those extending earlier than the 4th century – such as prayer facing east, and Cyprian’s rules for electing and consecrating bishops, actually find themselves in the dustbin of history.


Even those for which there is attestation became exaggerated over time. The “Lenten Fast” mentioned with respect to Irenaeus, above, for example, originally only was “40 hours”:

Closer examination of the ancient sources, however, reveals a more gradual historical development. While fasting before Easter seems to have been ancient and widespread, the length of that fast varied significantly from place to place and across generations. In the latter half of the second century, for instance, Irenaeus of Lyons (in Gaul) and Tertullian (in North Africa) tell us that the preparatory fast lasted one or two days, or forty hours—commemorating what was believed to be the exact duration of Christ’s time in the tomb. By the mid-third century, Dionysius of Alexandria speaks of a fast of up to six days practiced by the devout in his see; and the Byzantine historian Socrates relates that the Christians of Rome at some point kept a fast of three weeks. Only following the Council of Nicea in 325 a.d. did the length of Lent become fixed at forty days, and then only nominally. Accordingly, it was assumed that the forty-day Lent that we encounter almost everywhere by the mid-fourth century must have been the result of a gradual lengthening of the pre-Easter fast by adding days and weeks to the original one- or two-day observance. This lengthening, in turn, was thought necessary to make up for the waning zeal of the post-apostolic church and to provide a longer period of instruction for the increasing numbers of former pagans thronging to the font for Easter baptism. Such remained the standard theory for most of the twentieth century.

We simply should not adopt fourth century practices as if it enables us to repent better than or more sincerely than simply to bow our heads and “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

The TurretinFan/Albrecht Debate On Intercession Of The Saints

TurretinFan recently debated William Albrecht on the subject of the intercession of the saints. Albrecht claimed that none of the church fathers opposed praying to the deceased. He said that he didn't know of anybody who opposed the practice before John Calvin, though he later added the qualifier that Vigilantius opposed it in the fourth century. He cited a passage from Hippolytus, popularized by Ludwig Ott, to argue that Hippolytus supported the practice of praying to the dead. He also claimed that Origen supported it, among many others.

Actually, the evidence suggests that prayer to the dead wasn't practiced by believers in the Biblical era, is sometimes contradicted by the Biblical authors, and was rejected in the earliest generations of patristic Christianity. You can find a collection of many of my posts on these issues here. And here's a listing of our posts under the Prayer label. (Keep clicking "Older Posts" at the bottom right of the screen to see more.)

In some posts on Hippolytus here and here, I explain that he seems to oppose praying to the dead rather than supporting it. I don't know if Albrecht read more of Hippolytus' commentary on Daniel than the one passage he cited. He may have just been repeating what he saw in Ludwig Ott. But Tom Schmidt recently published the first full English translation of Hippolytus' commentary, and I've read the entirety of it. If you read the passage Ott cites in context, it doesn't support the conclusion Ott and Albrecht have used it for. Similarly, the evidence suggests that Origen opposed prayer to the dead rather than supporting it. Celsus, a second-century opponent of Christianity Origen wrote against, suggests that Christians reject prayer to deceased humans, angels, or any other beings other than God, and Origen suggests the same in response. See here and here, among other posts I've written about Celsus and Origen's comments on these issues.

In a thread here you'll find a lengthy comments section in which I address Hermas, Athenagoras, and many other patristic sources. You can use the Ctrl F feature on your keyboard to find the material you're interested in. For example, if you search for "Vigilantius", you'll find my comments on how he wasn't alone in opposing prayers to the dead in the fourth century. Other church leaders and laymen held the same view.

In our index post on prayer, you'll also find links to posts in which we address the Biblical evidence. On the issue of deceased believers being spiritually alive, which supposedly exempts them from Biblical passages about not trying to contact the dead, see here. For example, go to the comments section of that thread, and read my posts at 4:55 A.M. and 4:59 A.M. on 6/4/10. On Revelation 5:8, which was cited by Albrecht, see here. See here concerning catacomb inscriptions. Albrecht made much of the fact that deceased believers in heaven are sometimes portrayed as being aware of events on earth. On that subject, see here. The same post expands on a good point TurretinFan made during the debate, that prayer to the dead is absent in scripture across so many passages and so many contexts addressing so many timeframes.

Celsus And Origen On Christian Unity

Here's a post I wrote on the subject several years ago, which includes quotations from both sources. Notice that when Celsus criticizes Christian disunity, Origen's response makes no appeal to a papacy, a worldwide denomination every Christian belongs to, or ecumenical councils, for example. Such means of unity, which are often proposed by modern critics of Evangelicalism, aren't mentioned by Origen. As Robert Eno, a Roman Catholic patristic scholar, noted, "a plain recognition of Roman primacy or of a connection between Peter and the contemporary bishop of Rome seems remote from Origen’s thoughts" (The Rise Of The Papacy [Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, 1990], 43). And for those who want to dismiss Origen as a heretic, schismatic, or something of the like, see here. Origen's response to Celsus regarding Christian unity probably represents common Christian thought at the time.

Grace and Salvation: Is it Personal? Or is it Mystical?

Several weeks ago, I went round and round with some of gang at Called to Communion on the topic of Grace in the New Testament.

Grace in the New Testament: An Overview

Grace Part 1: Ancient Greek Conceptions of Grace

Grace Part 2: Biblical (OT and NT) Conceptions of Grace

And I worked through the letter of First Clement and showed how Clement misunderstands not only “grace” but also a number of other things in the New Testament.


Just a short while ago I came across a work by Donald Fairbairn, who picks up some of these “misunderstandings” and traces them further through church history.

Fairbairn is the Robert E. Cooley Professor of Early Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the author of (among other things), a work called Grace and Christology in the Early Church (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press ©2002), in which he traces a “personal” (in contrast with a “mediated”) view of grace through a number of fourth and fifth century church fathers.

More recently, he’s published a work entitled Patristic Soteriology: Three Trajectories, which again traces three “trajectories” of salvation (and hence grace) through patristic soteriology.

One of these is the Western, or “personal” understanding, as espoused by Irenaeus and later Cyril of Alexandria (in a more “precise” way). The other two are those espoused first by Origen, and later modified by Gregory of Nyssa. Here are some of his comments on both of those “trajectories”.

First, he describes the view of Irenaeus and the “personal” understanding of salvation:

The centrality of a personal understanding of salvation in Irenaeus’s thought, the gift (described as eternal life, adoption, and incorruption) is connected to the Logos himself, to Christ. To be united to Christ is to share in his eternal life, his incorruption. Moreover, we again see that adoption lies at the heart of Irenaeus’s soteriology. When we receive the Logos, the true Son of God, he makes us adopted sons and daughters, and then we are able to share in the Son’s incorruption.

The centrality of a personal understanding of salvation in Irenaeus’s thought is further illustrated by his later work Demonstratio praedicationis apostolicae (written ca. 190). As he introduces the three articles of faith (that is, the three persons of the Trinity), Irenaeus writes that the Son “became a man amongst men, visible and palpable, in order to abolish death, to demonstrate life, and to effect communion between God and man.” Later, he writes of Christ’s preeminence: “Thus, in this way, is the Word of God preeminent in all things, for He is true man and ‘Wonderful Counsellor and Mighty God,’ calling man back again to communion
with God, that by communion with Him we may receive participation in incorruptibility.” Here one should note the order of the statements: communion with God is foundational, and incorruptibility is the result of sharing communion with God …. Participation, for Irenaeus, does not mean merely sharing in some qualities of God, and it emphatically does not mean virtual absorption into God’s being. Instead, Irenaeus uses the idea of participation in a decidedly personal way: through our union with the natural Son of God, we become adopted sons and daughters, and thus we share fellowship or communion with God. Sharing in God’s qualities (such as incorruptibility) follows from this primarily personal way of looking at salvation. By using the idea of participation in God to refer to adoption and communion, Irenaeus plots what I call a personal trajectory, which part of the Church will subsequently follow in describing salvation [emphasis added].

This sounds very much like Calvin’s [monergistic] doctrine of Union with Christ – a thing effected by God’s grace, to which man can never aspire on his own efforts.


Eastern writers Origen and Gregory of Nyssa went in a different direction:

Here one should recognize how sharp the difference between Irenaeus and Origen is, even though both are arguing against the same opponent, Gnosticism. Irenaeus’s rejection of Gnostic dualism enables him to accentuate the importance of the whole person, body and soul. He is then able to describe salvation in personal terms, as the communion of a human being with God through adoption into God’s family, with the result that the whole person shares God’s incorruption. In contrast, Origen’s rejection of Gnostic fatalism pushes him, ironically, toward somewhat of an acceptance of Gnostic dualism: he postulates a cosmos in which the very existence of the physical realm is a result of sin. In such a cosmos, the pre-existence of the souls gives those souls a kinship with God that the bodies, created later, can never have. This, in turn, prevents him from seeing human beings as whole persons, and thus makes it difficult for him to see salvation in personal terms. As a result, in Origen’s system salvation becomes the task of the human soul to achieve mystical union with God, and this soteriology bears an unmistakable resemblance to the Middle Platonic philosophy that had seeped into second-century Alexandrian Christianity through Philo and Clement.

This strong emphasis on salvation as the task of the human soul leads Origen to view participation in God primarily as sharing in God’s holiness, wisdom, and other qualities, not as sharing in his personal fellowship.

Fairbairn calls this the “mystical” trajectory, and it seems to lead to such things as the “chain of being” types of theology (to which a lot of Eastern theologians and some Medieval western theologians adhered).

There are several ways in which Origen’s understanding of salvation serves to plot what I am calling the mystical trajectory. His focus on the free human action to ascend to God, in contrast to a paradigm in which God’s downward action is the primary focus, promotes a view of Christian life in which our action is the key to union with God. His depiction of salvation as participation in God’s qualities, as purification so that we can see God as he really is, creates a climate in which the personal dimensions of salvation are underemphasized. And his insistence that the final state of believers (and indeed, of all creatures) will be immaterial paves the way for a view of salvation that comes dangerously close to blurring the distinctions between individual creatures, and even the distinction between God and all creatures [emphasis added].

That sounds very much like the kinds of things I’ve cited Joseph Ratzinger as saying.

Of Gregory of Nyssa, who provided “a minimalist correction” to Origen, he says, “Gregory continues to see through Origen’s eyes in many ways”.

Where does this “mystical trajectory” lead?

it seems to me that what I am calling the mystical trajectory was the one that gained preeminence during the Byzantine period. The emphases of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa were echoed prominently in the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius early in the sixth century [upon whom Aquinas relied, mistakenly thinking that “Pseudo” Dionysius was the real Dionysius from Acts 17]. Later, Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580–662) launched an extensive critique of Origen’s cosmology, allegedly solving once-for-all the problems inherent in it, but in my opinion he did not significantly depart from the overall vision of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. This trajectory may be traced further through Gregory Palamas (ca. 1269–1359), who crystallized the distinction between God’s essence (in which we do not share) and his energies (in which we do share through salvation). With Palamas the Eastern Orthodox Church was locked onto a trajectory in which salvation consists more of participation in God’s qualities, his energies, rather than participation in a relationship [between persons].

Finally, he discusses Cyril of Alexandria, who distinguishes between “unity of substance (which God does not share with us at all), and unity of fellowship (which is the heart of what he does share with us)”:

like Irenaeus and Athanasius, and unlike Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, he places his dominant emphasis on salvation as personal participation. In fact, Cyril’s treatment of this theme is more extensive than that of other patristic writers. He emphasizes that Christians receive both the status of adopted sons and communion with the Father and the Son. More important, Cyril develops technical terminology to emphasize that believers do not share in any way at all in the substance of God, but that we nevertheless do participate in the fellowship that the persons of the Trinity have with one another because they are of the same substance. By developing this terminology, Cyril guards against a mystical concept of salvation (in which the distinction between the saved person and God is blurred) and also affirms the most personal concept of salvation possible. …

…[I]t should be clear that Cyril of Alexandria represents the same trajectory as Irenaeus and Athanasius, but he is considerably more precise than either of them. He guards sedulously against any idea of mystical absorption into God, and he tirelessly promotes a personal concept of participation in which we share in the very love between the Father and the Son. Cyril also places a great deal of emphasis on our human inability to rise up to God, and thus on God’s downward action through the incarnation and crucifixion in order to make us his adopted sons and daughters. These emphases stand in marked contrast to Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. Virtually all Greek Fathers use the words “participation” and “deification,” but as I have sought to show, there are at least two quite different ways of understanding these concepts in the patristic period. And I believe that the personal participatory way of understanding salvation deserves a great deal of our attention. We should not let the problems of the mystical pattern lead us to write off altogether the concept of salvation as participation.

Of course, I’m certain that understanding these “trajectories” will require a great deal more study. He applies this to a current evangelical understanding:

Of course, evangelical spirituality, the typical concept of Christian life present among the people in evangelical churches, is abundantly personal. We focus on Jesus as our friend. We speak about “a personal relationship with Christ” or “knowing God personally.” Evangelical sermons and Bible studies stress that Christ is there for us, pulling for us. But I fear that this personal spirituality is often rather distantly removed from the primarily juridical theology common in evangelicalism. Most laypeople—and perhaps even many pastors—are unable to connect the juridical and the personal aspects of evangelical faith, and these aspects remain in separate boxes in people’s minds, relegated to separate sermons from evangelical pulpits.

This is just a very broad-brush view, but my hope is that many more Reformed and Evangelical scholars will follow these threads through history.

Meanwhile, around the turn of the third century, Tertullian asked, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” The context for this notes that importing secular ideas into Christs teaching is mixing chalk and cheese together.

It seems important to be able to understand how they got mixed, and what the effects were.

The first extant exegesis of Matthew 16:18-19

One of the more significant exegetical monographs that we have on the topic of the importance of Peter is Peter in the New Testament, edited by Raymond Brown, Karl Donfried, and John Reumann. This work describes its mission and function:

A National Dialogue between Lutheran and Roman Catholic theologians began in July 1965 under the sponsorship of the U.S.A. National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation and the Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops…. In their 1971 meetings [these groups] began to discuss one of the thorniest problems arising from the Reformation: the problem of ministry in the universal church, with special emphasis on papal primacy…. In order that the work of the National Dialogue not become impossibly long, it was decided that smaller task forces of specialists be appointed to work on two particularly sensitive historical periods, namely the New Testament and the Patristic periods (pgs 1-2).

So two works have been produced by this commission. I’ve had the first for some time now, and have referred to it on occasion. The second, Papal Primacy and the Universal Church, just arrived in my mailbox. It has taken me a while to locate it, because it was not referred to directly in the first work. The footnote in the first work refers to the second only in terms of function (I suppose the essays had not been collected at that point):

The Patristics task force, co-chaired by the Rev. Dr. A.C. Piepkorn of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, and by Professor J. McCue [a Roman Catholic] of the School of Religion at the State University of Iowa (Iowa City), will make a separate report on the evidence pertaining to the first five centuries (fn 4, pg 2).

From the Roman Catholic side, T.Austin Murphy, Bishop’s Committee for Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Affairs served as a co-editor. Murphy was an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore at the time.

I’m working through McCue’s essay, “The Beginnings Through Nicaea”, and I hope to talk about this a bit more, but for now, I’ve found the following, which I find quite interesting:

When Origen is commenting directly on Matthew 16:18f. he carefully puts aside any interpretation of the passage that would make of Peter anything other than what every Christian is to be.

… And if we too have said like Peter, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”, not as if flesh and blood had revealed it to us, but because light from the Father in heaven had shone in our hearts, we become a Peter, and to us also he who was the Word might say, “Thou Art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church”. For every imitator of Christ is a rock, of Christ, that is, who is the spiritual rock that followed them that drank of him. And upon every such rock is built every word of the Church, and the whole order of life based thereon; for whosoever is perfect, having the sum of words and deeds and thoughts which fill up the state of blessedness, in him is the Church that God is building.

But if you suppose that God builds the entire Church upon Peter and on him alone, what would you say about John, the son of thunder, or any particular apostle? In other words, are we so bold as to say that it is against Peter in particular that the gates of Hades shall not prevail, but that they shall prevail against the other apostles and the perfect? Does not the above saying “The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” hold in regard to all, and in the case of each of them? And likewise with regard to the words “Upon this rock I will build my Church”? Are the keys of the kingdom of heaven given by the Lord to Peter only, and will no other of the blessed receive them? For in the passage before us, the words “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” and what follows do appear to be addressed to Peter individually; but in the Gospel of John, the Saviour, having given the Holy Spirit to the disciples by breathing on them, says “Receive ye the Holy Ghost” and what follows. For all the imitators of Christ are surnamed “rocks” from him, the spiritual rock which follows those who are being saved; … but from the very fact that they are members of Christ, they are called Christians by a name derived from him. And those called after the rock are called Peter. (In Matt. 12:10-11; ANF translation, extensively revised by E. Giles, Documents Illustrating Papal Authority 1952, pp. 45-46).

This is the earliest extant detailed commentary on Matthew 16:18f. and interestingly sees the event describe as a lesson about the life to be lived by every Christian, and not information about office or hierarchy or authority in the church.

The Brown, Donfried, and Reumann work concludes by saying, “it has become clear to us that an investigation of the historical career does not necessarily settle the question of Peter’s importance for the subsequent church” (168).

Origen is the first commentator from the Eastern church (Alexandria) on the importance of Peter. According to this passage, Peter’s importance as an apostle is not denied, but it is very much put on par with that of the smallest of believers.

There is no acknowledgement here of any “primacy”. This speaks also to the issue that Christ founded a visible church and specifically, what this “visible church” is – very much reminiscent of Calvin and the WCF, “The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.”

Here Origen’s understanding deals with the ontological aspects of what is visible, and that is, “every imitator of Christ is a rock”, a reflection of Peter’s own statement, “you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house”.

Both of these together support the notion that there was nothing special about the “ontologicalness” of being Peter. In terms of being “first”, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Peter had the privilege of being the first one to preach the Gospel, “first to the Jews, then to the Gentiles” (Acts 10), but in the context of historical “tradition”, Origen contradicts the notion that the early third-century church in the East thought that there was anything particularly special about him, or where he happened to be located.