The Call of Simon

The Gospels preserve the call of Simon in two complementary moments: the Fourth Gospel’s account of Andrew bringing his brother to Jesus, who looks at him and renames him Cephas (John 1:40–42), and the Synoptic call by the Sea of Galilee — “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” — sealed in Luke by the miraculous catch and Peter’s cry, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:1–11; Mark 1:16–18). This file follows both strands and the renaming that founds Peter’s place at the head of the Twelve.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

Brought by Andrew

In the Fourth Gospel the first encounter is mediated. Andrew, a disciple of John the Baptist, hears the Forerunner point to Jesus as “the Lamb of God,” follows him, and spends a day with him; then “he first found his own brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus” (John 1:40–42). What follows is decisive for the whole later history of the Church: “Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas’ (which means Peter)” (John 1:42). At the very first meeting, before any confession or commission, the Lord gives Simon the name Cephas — Aramaic Kepha, “rock,” rendered in Greek as Petros. The Evangelist is careful to translate the Aramaic for his readers, marking the name as significant. The renaming is here a promise and a destiny rather than an accomplished fact; it will be taken up and explained at Caesarea Philippi (Matt 16:18; see The Confession at Caesarea Philippi).

That Andrew brings Peter is, for the Orthodox tradition, more than a biographical detail. Andrew the First-Called (Protoklētos) is the first to follow Christ and the one who leads Peter to him. The chief of the apostles is thus, from the first page, the one called through his brother — a fact the tradition keeps in view against any account that would make Peter a wholly independent and original head of the apostolic college (cf. Bockmuehl 2012).

The Call by the Lake

The Synoptic Gospels narrate a second, public moment by the Sea of Galilee. In Mark — the Gospel that the early tradition links most closely to Peter’s own preaching (Papias, in Eusebius, HE 3.39.15) — the scene is spare and arresting: “Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him” (Mark 1:16–18). Matthew gives the same scene almost word for word (Matt 4:18–20). The trade itself becomes the figure of the new vocation: the men who drew fish from the lake will draw men into the Kingdom. The immediacy — “immediately they left their nets” — is the Markan signature of true discipleship.

The Miraculous Catch and “Depart from Me”

Luke expands the call into a sign. Jesus, pressed by the crowd on the shore, gets into Simon’s boat, teaches from it, and then tells Simon to put out into the deep and let down the nets. Simon answers as a fisherman who has worked the lake all night: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets” (Luke 5:5). The catch is so great that the nets begin to break and both boats are filled to sinking. Then comes the response that the Orthodox tradition holds at the center of Peter’s character: “When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord’” (Luke 5:8). The first instinct of the rock of the Church, confronted with the holiness of Christ, is the confession of his own unworthiness — the very humility that will be tested and broken in the denial and restored by the lakeside again (see The Restoration). To this Jesus answers, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men” (Luke 5:10), and “when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him” (Luke 5:11).

The two strands — John’s renaming and the Synoptic lakeside call — are not in competition: the Fourth Gospel records an initial encounter near the Jordan during the Baptist’s ministry, the Synoptics the definitive summons to leave the nets in Galilee. Read together they give the shape of Peter’s vocation: a man first led to Christ by his brother, named for what he will become, and then called from his trade with a sign that exposes both the abundance of grace and his own sinfulness.

At the Head of the Twelve

From the moment of the call Peter stands first. When the Gospels list the Twelve, Peter’s name heads every list, and Matthew makes the priority explicit: “The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter” (Matt 10:2; cf. Mark 3:16, where the renaming is repeated as the apostles are appointed: “He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter)”; Luke 6:14; Acts 1:13). Within the Twelve there is an inner circle of three — Peter, James, and John — admitted alone to the raising of Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5:37), the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2; Matt 17:1), and the agony in Gethsemane (Mark 14:33); and within that three, Peter is consistently the spokesman, the one who answers, asks, and acts for the rest (e.g. Matt 15:15; 18:21; 19:27; Luke 12:41; John 6:68). This narrative primacy — Peter as the mouth and representative of the apostles — is acknowledged across the traditions; what it implies for the later question of jurisdictional primacy is precisely the disputed matter treated in Section 07 (see Primacy and the Orthodox Reading).

The Pattern Established

The call thus establishes the pattern of the whole Petrine story. Peter is named for a strength he does not yet possess; he is impulsive, generous, and quick to speak; he sees his own sin in the light of Christ’s holiness; and he is set, by the Lord’s own act, at the head of the apostolic band — not as a lone autocrat but as the first among brothers, brought to Christ by Andrew and numbered with James and John in the inner circle. St. John Chrysostom, preaching on these scenes, dwells on Peter’s “fervor” (to thermon) and love as the marks the Lord chose and on the grace that turned a fisherman into a teacher of the world (John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 14; trans. NPNF I/10). The Galilean who left his nets is, from this point, the disciple whom the Gospels watch most closely.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible — Matthew 4:18–22; 10:2; 16:18; Mark 1:16–20; 3:16; 5:37; 9:2; 14:33; Luke 5:1–11; 6:14; John 1:40–42; 6:68; Acts 1:13. Cited by book chapter:verse.
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew 14. Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 10. (On the call and Peter’s fervor.)
  • Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History 3.39.15 (Papias on Mark as Peter’s interpreter). Trans. NPNF II/1.
  • Bockmuehl, Markus. Simon Peter in Scripture and Memory. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012.
  • Cullmann, Oscar. Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr. 2nd ed. Trans. Floyd Filson. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962.