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Updated: June 3, 2025
Students of theology and church history, on the other hand, have had a more difficult task set them in comparing and arranging the materials they have at their disposal, as found in the patristic writings and legendary records; and various theories have been put forward, not the least astonishing being the supposition that Simon was an alias for Paul, and that the Simon and Peter in the accounts of the fathers and in the narrative of the legends were simply concrete symbols to represent the two sides of the Pauline and Petrine controversies.
But that episcopal autonomy if we may so call it under the presidence of the three Petrine patriarchs, which was in full life and vigour at the Nicene Council, which St. Gregory still recognised in his letter to Eulogius, was greatly impaired.
"Some things can be done, as well as others," he said in his masterful way, as three of us were walking home together after the autumnal dinner of the Petrine Club, which he always attended as a graduate member. "A real fisherman never gives up. I told you I'd make an angler out of my wife; and so I will. It has been rather difficult. She is 'dour' in rising.
Paul and himself in the first person plural, are the work of an eye-witness, and that most of the important facts in the later chapters are from the same source. The difficult problem is concerned with the relation of this writer to the editor, who is responsible for the 'Petrine' part of the book.
Again, if every temporal community is called after its head, and we say of this city, it is Electoral, and of that, it is Ducal, and of another, it is Frankish; then by right all Christendom should be called Roman, or Petrine, or Papal. But why, then, is it called Christendom? Why are we called Christians, if not from our head, although we are still upon earth?
The persecutions of Nero, incident on the burning of Rome, did not for a moment retard its career; during his reign it rapidly spread, and in every direction Petrine and Pauline, or Judaizing and Hellenizing churches were springing up. The latter gained the superiority, and the former passed away.
Probably Jesus was seldom brought into direct contact with others than Jews, so that the questions concerning the admission of Gentile converts did not come up during his lifetime; and thus the way was left open for the controversy which soon broke out between the Petrine party and Paul.
Probably not their belief in Jesus as the Messiah, for at the riot in which Stephen was murdered and all the Hellenist disciples driven from Jerusalem, the Jewish disciples were allowed to remain in the city unmolested. The Petrine disciples never held this view of the mission of Jesus; and to this difference it is undoubtedly owing that Paul and his companions forbore to disturb them.
In the course of the next three years he confirmed, at the eastern emperor's repeated request, the doctrinal decrees of the great Council; but he humbled likewise the arrogance of Anatolius, and not all the loyalty of Marcian, not all the devotion of the empress and saint Pulcheria, could induce him to exalt the bishop of the eastern capital at the expense of the Petrine hierarchy.
We thus see that the evidence of Papias is discredited at the very outset, perhaps to the advantage of the Christians, however, for his testimony is fatal to the Canonical Gospels. How far does this account apply to the Gospel now known as "according to St. Mark?" Far from showing traces of Petrine influence, such traces are conspicuous by their absence.
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