The Two Chief Apostles

Paul and Peter are venerated together as the two “chief” or coryphaei apostles — Peter the apostle to the circumcision, Paul the apostle to the Gentiles (Gal. 2:7–8) — co-laborers and co-martyrs whose complementary witness the Church celebrates on a single feast, June 29. This file sets out the division of their mission, their complementary roles, the references to Peter in Paul’s letters, the early tradition of their joint labor and martyrdom at Rome, and the meaning of their joint veneration.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Division of the Mission

Paul himself records the recognition, at the Jerusalem meeting, that he and Peter had been entrusted with complementary missions: “the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter; (for he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles)” (Gal. 2:7–8). The pillars — James, Cephas, and John — “gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision” (Gal. 2:9). This is not a division into rival churches but a sharing of one apostolic labor across the great divide of the age: Peter and the Jerusalem apostles to Israel, Paul to the nations, both preaching the one gospel of the one Lord. The division was never absolute — Peter, too, opened the door to the Gentiles (Acts 10–11, Cornelius), and Paul always preached “to the Jew first” (Rom. 1:16) — but it captures the providential complementarity that the Church remembers in the two apostles.

Peter in Paul’s Letters

Peter appears at several points in the Pauline correspondence, always as a figure of the first rank. Paul went up to Jerusalem after his conversion specifically “to see Peter [Cephas], and abode with him fifteen days” (Gal. 1:18) — the meeting that gave Paul the Jerusalem tradition firsthand. He names Cephas among the pillars (Gal. 2:9) and among the witnesses of the resurrection: “he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve” (1 Cor. 15:5), placing Peter first in the list of those to whom the risen Lord appeared. At Corinth, Paul has to address a party that called itself “of Cephas” (1 Cor. 1:12; 3:22), which he rebukes not by disparaging Peter but by insisting that no apostle may be made the head of a faction against Christ. And the Antioch confrontation (Gal. 2:11–14; see The Antioch Incident) — for all its sharpness — presupposes throughout that Peter is a brother apostle whose conduct matters precisely because of his standing. Across the letters Peter is Paul’s senior in the faith, his fellow witness of the risen Christ, and his partner in the one apostolic mission.

The Tradition of Joint Labor and Martyrdom at Rome

By the end of the first century the Roman church remembered Peter and Paul together as its founding apostles and as martyrs. Clement of Rome, writing from Rome around A.D. 96, names them in a single passage as the great recent examples of those who suffered for the faith: Peter, who “endured not one or two but many labours, and thus having borne his witness went to his appointed place of glory,” and Paul, who “after he had been seven times in bonds… and had preached in the east and in the west… taught righteousness unto the whole world, and having reached the farthest bounds of the west… bore his witness before the rulers, and so departed from the world” (Clement of Rome, 1 Corinthians 5; trans. Lightfoot / Holmes). Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Romans c. 107–117, appeals to the two apostles together: “I do not enjoin you, as Peter and Paul did” (Ignatius, Romans 4; see St. Ignatius of Antioch). By the later second century, Dionysius of Corinth and Irenaeus speak of Peter and Paul as having taught and founded the church at Rome together and suffered there about the same time (preserved in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.25; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.2; see St. Irenaeus of Lyons). The joint tradition is thus early and firm in outline, though its details are the subject of the martyrdom discussion (see The Roman Martyrdom).

The Coryphaei

In the language of the Greek tradition, Peter and Paul are the koryphaioi — the “chiefs” or “leaders” of the apostolic choir, the two who stand at the head. Orthodox iconography depicts them embracing, the two pillars of the Church meeting in fraternal love; the hymnography of their feast praises them together as “the chief shepherds” and “the two great luminaries of the Church.” The pairing is theologically deliberate: it holds together the apostle of the Jewish foundation and the apostle of the Gentile harvest, the rock of the confession (Matt. 16:16–18) and the chosen vessel of the nations (Acts 9:15), in a single witness to the one Christ. Their complementarity — not their rivalry — is the point, and the Antioch incident is read within, not against, this unity (see The Antioch Incident).

The Feast of June 29

The Church crowns this joint veneration with a single great feast: the Feast of the Holy, Glorious, and All-Praised Chief Apostles Peter and Paul, kept on June 29, preceded by the Apostles’ Fast (the fast of the Holy Apostles, beginning after the Sunday of All Saints and ending on the eve of the feast). The very next day, June 30, the Church keeps the Synaxis of the Holy, Glorious, and All-Praised Twelve Apostles, gathering all the Twelve in a single commemoration. That Peter and Paul share one feast, distinct from and prior to the synaxis of the Twelve, is the liturgical expression of their unique standing as the two chief apostles (see Veneration and the Feast). In the keeping of this feast the whole Orthodox world confesses what the tradition has held from the beginning: that Peter and Paul, for all the difference of their callings and the one sharp moment of their disagreement, are forever the two pillars and chief apostles, venerated together as one.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, King James Version. The Epistle to the Galatians 1–2; First Corinthians 1, 3, 15; Romans 1; the Acts of the Apostles 9–11; the Gospel of Matthew 16.
  • Clement of Rome. First Epistle to the Corinthians 5. Trans. in Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007; and J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers.
  • Ignatius of Antioch. Epistle to the Romans 4. Trans. in Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, 2007.
  • Eusebius of Caesarea. The Ecclesiastical History 2.25. Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 1.
  • Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies 3.3.2. Trans. in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1.