Irenaeus, writing in c. 180 AD, made the following claim about the church at Rome:
Since, however, it
would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions
of all the churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner,
whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse
opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating
that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient,
and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most
glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached
to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the
bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with
this church, on account of its pre-eminent authority, that is, the faithful
everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved
continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere. (Against Heresies
3.3.2)
As Tony Costa noted:
This tradition is highly
doubtful as Paul himself admits he was a stranger to the church of Rome (Romans
1:10, 13; 15:22). It is also highly doubtful that Peter founded the church in
Rome at such an early stage, as Paul most certainly would have made reference
to him in Romans. . . . We know that Aquila and Priscilla were in Rome before
they met Paul (Acts 18:2), and it is possible that they or other Jews from Rome
who heard the gospel at Pentecost in Jerusalem took the gospel message back
with them and started the church there (Acts 2:10). (Tony Costa, Early Christian
Creeds and Hymns—What the Earliest Christians Believed in Word and Song: An
Exegetical-Theological Setting [Peterborough, Ontario: H&E Academic,
2021], 174 n. 5)
For a further discussion of this tradition
of Peter and Paul founding the church at Rome (I stress "founding" as I believe "Babylon" in 1 Pet 5:13 to be a codeword for Rome), see Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians
at Rome in the First Two Centuries (Fortress Press, 2003) and my blog
post William
Farmer on Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.2-3 and the Role of Peter and Paul.
