Sunday, September 12, 2021

The Implausibility of Peter and Paul Being the Founders of the Church at Rome (contra Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.2)

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.