The Calling

Andrew is the first of the Twelve to follow Jesus, hearing the testimony of John the Baptist and abiding with Christ before any other disciple. Having found the Messiah, he at once brings his brother Simon Peter to him (John 1:35–42). From this priority of calling and of witness the Orthodox Church gives Andrew his proper title, Prōtoklētos, “the First-Called.”

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Holy Apostle Andrew is venerated throughout the Orthodox world under one settled epithet: Prōtoklētos, “the First-Called.” The title is not a description of rank or precedence among the apostles but a record of sequence — Andrew was the first disciple to follow Christ — and of a particular event narrated in the Fourth Gospel. To understand the title is to read John 1:35–42 closely, to set it beside the calling by the Sea of Galilee in Matthew and Mark, and to see how the tradition has held the two scenes together.

The Johannine Call (John 1:35–42)

The Gospel of John locates Andrew’s first encounter with Jesus not in Galilee but at the Jordan, in the circle of John the Baptist. On the day after the Baptist had borne witness, “John stood, and two of his disciples; and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God!” (John 1:35–36). The two disciples — one of whom the evangelist names as Andrew (John 1:40), the other left unnamed and traditionally identified with John the son of Zebedee — leave the Baptist and follow Jesus. Jesus turns and asks, “What seek ye?” and they answer, “Rabbi… where dwellest thou?” He replies, “Come and see,” and they “abode with him that day” (John 1:38–39).

The decisive verse for the title comes next. Andrew “first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias” (John 1:41), and “he brought him to Jesus” (John 1:42). Christ, looking on Simon, gives him the new name: “Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone” (John 1:42) — the Aramaic Kēphā rendered in Greek as Petros. Three things are established in this short scene that the tradition never lets go of: Andrew is the first to follow, the first to recognize and confess the Messiah, and the first to evangelize, drawing his own brother to Christ.

The Greek adverb prōton (“first”) in John 1:41 carries real weight. Andrew’s first act after meeting Jesus is to find his brother; the priority of the verb is the seed of the noun the Church later attaches to him. Raymond Brown, in his commentary on John, treats this Johannine call as a discrete tradition distinct from the Synoptic lakeside call and notes the evangelist’s deliberate ordering of the first disciples around Andrew’s witness (Brown, John I–XII, on 1:35–42). It is precisely this Johannine priority — not anything in Matthew or Mark — that grounds the epithet.

The Title Prōtoklētos

Prōtoklētos (Greek Πρωτόκλητος) is a compound of prōtos, “first,” and klētos, “called” (the verbal adjective of kaleō, “to call”). Literally it means “first-called,” and it is the standard liturgical surname of Andrew in Greek and Slavonic usage alike (Slavonic Pervozvanny). The title is traditional and liturgical rather than scriptural: the Gospels never use the word of Andrew, but the Byzantine synaxaria, the menaia, and the hymnography for his feast on November 30 make it his proper name. The apolytikion appointed for the feast addresses him directly as “first-called of the Apostles and brother of the foremost,” binding the two foundational facts — his priority in calling and his kinship with Peter — into a single liturgical confession (The Festal Menaion, apolytikion of St. Andrew, November 30).

The logic of the title is chronological. Among the Twelve, Andrew is the first whom the Gospel record shows attaching himself to Jesus; he is called before Peter, before John, before all the rest. The Church does not read this as making Andrew greater than Peter — the same hymnography calls him “brother of the foremost,” acknowledging Peter’s own primacy of confession and leadership — but it does honor the simple priority of the encounter. Peterson, in his study of Andrew’s history and legends, observes that this title and the evangelistic priority attached to it became the seed of the entire later Andrew tradition, the Byzantine and Kievan claims included (Peterson, Andrew, Brother of Simon Peter).

The Synoptic Call (Matthew 4:18–20; Mark 1:16–18)

The Synoptic Gospels narrate a different scene. By the Sea of Galilee, Jesus “saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him” (Matthew 4:18–20). Mark gives the same event in nearly identical words: “Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea… And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him” (Mark 1:16–18). Here there is no Jordan, no Baptist, no naming of Cephas; the emphasis falls on the immediacy and totality of the response — “straightway” they leave the nets.

Luke offers a related but distinct narrative. In Luke 5:1–11 the call by the lake is set within the miraculous catch of fish and centers on Simon Peter, who falls at Jesus’ knees; Andrew is not named in Luke’s scene, though the sons of Zebedee, James and John, are mentioned as Simon’s partners (Luke 5:10). Luke’s call narrative is thus differently shaped and Peter-centered, and the tradition treats it as its own moment rather than as a simple parallel to Matthew and Mark.

Harmonization in the Tradition

The Johannine and Synoptic scenes differ in place, occasion, and detail, and the Church reads them not as rivals but as successive moments in a single history. The standard harmonization, found among patristic commentators and continued by later harmonizers, runs thus: the encounter at the Jordan (John 1) was a first meeting and an initial attachment, after which the disciples returned for a time to their ordinary trade; the lakeside call (Matthew 4; Mark 1) was the definitive summons to leave their nets and follow permanently. On this reading there is no contradiction — the man who first “came and saw” at the Jordan is the same man later called to forsake his nets in Galilee, and the immediacy of the Synoptic response is explained precisely by the prior acquaintance the Fourth Gospel records.

John Chrysostom argues in this direction in his Homilies on the Gospel of St. John. Commenting on John 1:35–42 (Homilies 18 and 19), Chrysostom dwells on Andrew’s eagerness: having heard the Baptist’s “Behold the Lamb of God,” Andrew does not keep the treasure to himself but runs to share it, and “the first thing he does is to seek out his brother” (Chrysostom, Hom. in Joh. 18–19, NPNF I/14). Chrysostom reads Andrew’s act of finding Simon as the model of the apostolic impulse — the one who has found Christ cannot rest until he has brought another — and he notes the difference between this Johannine meeting and the later, fuller following. The harmonization is offered as the natural sense of the texts read together, without forcing the evidence beyond what it bears.

The First-Called as First Evangelist

The theological weight of the title lies here. The First-Called is, in the same breath, the first evangelist. Andrew’s first recorded act after meeting Christ is to “find” his brother and announce, “We have found the Messias” (John 1:41), and then to bring Peter himself to Jesus. The one who is called first does not hoard the calling; he passes it on, and the brother he brings becomes the chief of the apostles. This is among the most beloved Orthodox themes attached to Andrew: that priority in grace is fulfilled in mission, that to be first-called is to be first-sent. The hymnography of November 30 and the synaxarion accounts return to it constantly, and it gives the title Prōtoklētos its proper depth — not a badge of seniority, but a vocation to witness that begins the moment Andrew abides with Christ “that day.”

References

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version. John 1:35–42; Matthew 4:18–20; Mark 1:16–18; Luke 5:1–11.
Chrysostom, John. Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, Homilies 18–19 (on John 1:35–42). In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 14 (NPNF I/14).
Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John (I–XII). Anchor Bible 29. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966 (commentary on John 1:35–42).
The Festal Menaion. Apolytikion of St. Andrew the First-Called, November 30 — the liturgical source for the title Prōtoklētos.
Peterson, Peter M. Andrew, Brother of Simon Peter: His History and His Legends. Supplements to Novum Testamentum 1. Leiden: Brill, 1958.