The Throne of Saint Peter at Antioch

Saint Peter

Today is, oddly enough, not only the feast-day of three great Syrian Orthodox ascetics in the Holy Orthodox Church, but also the Roman Catholic feast-day of the Throne of Saint Peter… at Antioch. Hmmm. This deserves to be, if it isn’t one already, an Orthodox feast day as well. Antioch is, after all, indeed one of the five ancient Patriarchal sees, the first at which the disciples were called Christians (Acts 11:26), and one of two founded by the Holy Apostle Peter. Old Rome isn’t quite as unique in that respect as she sometimes pretends to be in her apologetics materials.

I have a particular love for the Church of Antioch, for the simple reason that attending Divine Liturgy at Saint Mary Antiochian Orthodox Church in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 2009 was one of several fragmentary formative experiences that led me into the Orthodox Church. Witnessing, and receiving, the blessing of Fr Isaac (Crow) and the warm, ebullient hospitality of the multinational layfolk there – Syrian, Lebanese, Armenian, Palestinian, Ethiopian, American convert – was the single factor that turned my cerebral embrace of Nikolai Berdyaev’s religious philosophy into something real, something lived. As a somewhat peregrinating soul, it is true that I may be in an OCA parish now, and it is true that I was received into the Moscow Patriarchate by chrismation. But whenever I go ‘home’ to Rhode Island, my ‘home church’ is Saint Mary’s.

Antioch was an important hub of Christianity in the late Classical world, in part because it was the place where many Christians who came to believe in Christ at Jerusalem fled after the stoning of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr. Because Antioch was also a critical strategic post for the Roman Empire’s military in its perennial wars against Persia, this city also became a site of repeated persecutions of Christians.

The Episcopal See of Antioch was founded by Holy Apostle Peter in 34 AD, and is a solid claimant for being the oldest continuing existing Christian Church in the world. Indeed, the Cave Church of Saint Peter still exists in Antakya. Origen and Eusebios both agree with Saint Luke that Saint Peter was the founder of the Church in Antioch. Peter was promptly cast into prison by the Roman governor shortly after his arrival there, on a charge of corrupting the people. Peter was joined by Holy Apostle Paul, as well as Apostle Barnabas of the Seventy, and they began to preach to the people in Antioch, who were a mixture of Greeks, Hellenised Syrians and Jews.

The first ecclesiological dispute emerged at Antioch over whether or not Gentiles should accept the entirety of Jewish law – particularly circumcision – before being baptised; and also whether Gentiles and Jews should eat separately. Apparently Saint Peter was originally of the opinion that the entirety of the Jewish law ought to be upheld, including circumcision and laws on food cleanliness and table fellowship. Saint Paul, on the other hand, held that the Gentiles who were baptised ought to be held to certain core aspects of the Law, but that the Resurrection of Christ had made a strict adherence to the Jewish Law superfluous. Saint Paul apparently confronted Saint Peter at Antioch and the two of them discussed the matter. Guided by Peter, Paul and James the brother of Jesus – each of whom fell on one side of that debate at first – the Church forged a middle path between the extremes of Judaïsation and Hellenisation. But it was this middle path blazed at Antioch, described in Acts 15, which preserved the true radicalism of the message of Christ: it was neither to Jew nor Greek exclusively proclaimed; and it was a message as much for the poor as for the wealthy; and as much for women as for men.

According to Church traditions both East and West, Saint Peter ruled as bishop in Antioch for seven years before he sojourned to Rome and established the Church there in 43 AD. He had left his family in Antioch, and to this day there are still Syrian families with the surname Sem‘ân which claim blood descent from Saint Peter. When the Jews were expelled from Rome under Emperor Claudius in 49 AD, Saint Peter and the small Christian community in Rome shared in their fate. He returned to Antioch in 49 and ruled there temporarily until after Claudius’s death in 54, when he left Antioch in the care of Apostle Euōdias of the Seventy, the second Patriarch of Antioch.

We can see from Peter’s tenure in Antioch several distinct aspects of Antiochian Christianity that will crop up later in the city’s history. I personally have witnessed the multinational character of the Antiochian Church, which is not only Syrian and Lebanese Arabs but also half a dozen other nationalities. So indeed was the city of Antioch when Peter first came there home to many nations. We also see the determination of the Antiochian Church to persevere even under severe persecution. The Christians of the Syrian Arab Republic have indeed persevered under a persecution aided and abetted by the governments of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and (sadly) the United States. We can see also from Saint Peter’s and Saint Paul’s time, the understanding of Christ as human and a particular instance of humanity, which would come to colour the Antiochian school of exegesis in the fourth to sixth centuries. The question of how Christ Himself would have ministered to the Gentiles as opposed to the Jews was at the forefront of the dispute between Saint Peter and Saint Paul; and the entirety of the Church is the richer for their wrangling about and ultimately coming to an understanding on that question. We can therefore behold in the early Christianity of Antioch a very distinctly localist sensibility, which is at the same time supranational and even cosmopolitan for its insistence on that same locality.

So let us Orthodox Christians, too, spare a request to Saint Peter for his intercessory prayers for us on this day, when the Latins are remembering his stay among the people of Antioch. Holy Apostle Peter, who preached in the place where the disciples were first called Christians, pray unto Christ our God that we may be saved!