The Peter principle: what the impetuous apostle can teach today's Catholics: an interview scripture scholar Pheme Perkins.

Most Catholics think of him as the first pope or the apostle who denied Jesus three times, but scripture scholar Pheme Perkins sees Peter as much more of a regular guy. He speaks his mind to Jesus, often getting it wrong or missing the point entirely, but still emerges as the leader of the early Christian community. "He was impetuous, but he had terrier-like loyalty," says Perkins, a professor of theology at Boston College.

In her book Peter: Apostle for the Whole Church (Augsburg Fortress, 2000), Perkins argues that Peter can inspire contemporary U.S. Catholics, which today would include the beleagured parishioners in the Boston archdiocese, that was the center of the sex-abuse scandal.

In addition to teaching undergraduates and graduate students in BC's Religious Education Institute, Perkins also leads a Bible study for senior at her parish. She is often called upon by the mainstream media to comment on the biblical story du jour, whether it's the so-called tomb of Jesus or new gospel attributed to Judas. While these stories may raise interest in the Bible, "Mostly I think, 'Oh, no, not another one!'" she says.

What do most Catholics think of when they think of Peter?

The folks in my parish, for example, probably are influenced by the stained glass window in our sanctuary. In it Peter is dressed in full Roman regalia--miter, shepherd's crook, and clothing that obviously no Galilean fisherman ever saw, let alone wore.

Peter was a first-century fisherman who did not have a theological education and who was probably quite young when he ran into Jesus. Given that he's believed to have been martyred around 60 A.D. under Nero, and that the average life expectancy in that culture was in the 40s, he had to have been in his 20s, if that, when he met Jesus.

So our artwork is misleading. In my own parish we have another stained glass window behind the altar with Jesus as the Good Shepherd and Peter on one side and Paul on the other. And Jesus looks the youngest! But Jesus was probably 10 years older. He's a mature man in his 30s, which in their culture is equivalent to someone in their late 40s or 50s in our culture.

So the relationship between Jesus and the disciples is not just a gang with a leader. Jesus does have a certain age or maturity in relationship to the disciples. This helps explain why people in antiquity weren't put off by some of the negative stories about Peter in the gospels.

That age gap may also explain some of the other tensions in the New Testament between Paul and Peter. Paul is probably closer in age to Jesus. He's had a theological education of a sort, some training as a Pharisee in scripture and in rhetorical argument. Even Matthew as a tax collector was more literate than someone who was a fisherman.

How do you think Catholics today relate to Peter?

One thing about Peter that many people can relate to is his impetuousness. He says whatever he thinks to Jesus. I always joke that he never had an unfiltered thought.

For people who have a tendency to think that within church walls they can't say what they think, it's good to have somebody like Peter, who time after time says exactly what he thinks. Here in the Archdiocese of Boston, after the meltdown of the sex-abuse scandal, Catholics still feel pretty fragile. So they are hungry for someone who shows that we can lay it out there, and then if it's wrong, we can get it right.

Another thing about Peter that's attractive to Catholics today is that he has this self-confidence that's sometimes cocky but it's also dogged. There's a loyalty with Peter. He sticks with Jesus. Catholics in the United States, I think, are very concerned about this issue of loyalty and what it means to be loyal to somebody--to a leader, to a church, to an idea.

What are some key stories about Peter in the scriptures?

One key story, one where once again Peter gets it wrong, is the Transfiguration. Peter wants to set up shrines, but Jesus says no. Or in Matthew 18, when they're talking about forgiveness and Peter comes up with a pretty generous offer--seven times seven. But Jesus slaps him down again.

There's also the story in Matthew 14 with Peter attempting to walk on water, and of course he fails because he suddenly loses confidence and starts to sink. When we get to the Last Supper, Peter keeps insisting that he'll go to the death with Jesus. And Jesus keeps saying, "Well, I hate to tell you, son, but you're not going to be able to do that now."

Peter's denials show determination on his part. Yes, he failed. But later his character is reformed in the Acts of the Apostles, when he does start managing to stand up and take charge. His learning curve is realistic, and people can relate to that.

Do you have a favorite story about Peter from scripture?

It's hard to choose one, but I guess it would be in John 21 when Jesus has just told Peter that his life might end with suffering, and Peter turns to the beloved disciple and says, "What about him?" It shows the tension between the beloved disciple and Peter, who's the same impetuous, headstrong character to the end. Jesus tells him that it's really none of his business.

If Peter is always wrong, why does he emerge as the leader of the disciples?

In Matthew's gospel we see Jesus setting him up to be the leader. Or maybe Peter just had that natural talent. One thing is for sure: the nickname Peter, meaning "rock" or "stone," stuck. So there's something characteristic about him that made him the bedrock person.

There's another tradition, mentioned by Paul and in other places, in which Jesus appeared to Peter after the Resurrection independently of the appearance to the group. That says there's something in Peter's character that makes him the person who's going to have to pull this thing together.

That tradition gets expanded in John's gospel with the story where Peter gets everyone to go fishing after the Resurrection. They meet Jesus, who gives Peter the option of taking back the denials and gives him the job of shepherd.

Does that mean to imply that Peter is to follow in Jesus' footsteps, since Jesus referred to himself as the Good Shepherd?

Yes. But it's important to remember that Jesus was not like the founder of an ancient philosophical or rabbinical school who picks a successor. Peter fills certain roles that Jesus fulfilled, but Jesus isn't just a human founder. So even though Peter has the job of shepherding the sheep and in some way filling in for things that are missing now that Jesus is off the scene, he doesn't become Jesus. And he doesn't become the sole repository of the Holy Spirit in the Christian community.

Unfortunately the bureaucratic, top-down military model that many Catholics have of the church today leads them to think that the only way the Spirit speaks to the church is by whispering in the papal chapel. That isn't the way the Spirit worked in the ancient church. There were always arguments about when the Spirit was speaking or not.

The bishop of Rome has always had a certain authority as someone who is consulted or who calls a council, where bishops try to determine some crisis of faith or doctrine that's being debated. But anybody who studies councils knows that nothing is decided at a council. Something gets formulated at councils, and then you work on the reception.

So do you see Peter as a unifier?

However he did it, he is remembered as the figure who managed to pull the fat out of the fire after the disaster of the Crucifixion and even after the Resurrection. So, in that sense, he was able to draw together the first followers of Jesus. And that's not insignificant because he was still quite a young man.

Then, when the early church faces the crucial decision of what to do about non-Jewish believers, Luke presents Peter as being the first person who was willing--with a lot of celestial interventions and dreams--to accept that there might have to be a change. He doesn't make the theological arguments that Paul does, nor does he seem to worry about the boundary issues Paul does.

Peter is perfectly willing to associate with non-Jewish believers. Peter, I think, was just doing the same thing he always had done, which was be accommodating. Paul throws a fit on a theological principle, for which Paul is probably right theologically.

Was there really that much conflict between Peter and Paul?

In classical Protestant theology Peter represents a legalistic kind of Christianity, more or less how Protestants viewed Roman Catholicism. Then Paul represents the great freedom of the gospel. I think Paul has fringes of his Pharisee background that he never sheds.

So rather than being about the freedom of the gospel versus the authority of Peter, I think it's more about a difference in religious mentalities. In the study of religion we talk about the "great tradition," referring to those who are learned in scripture and doctrine. But we also talked about the "little tradition," meaning how people really practice their religion and hand it on.

Paul has been schooled in the great tradition. Peter comes out of the little tradition. Galileans were, as far as we can tell, quite observant. They obviously cared about Jerusalem and made pilgrimages and gathered on the sabbath. But if you're a fisherman, it's different. You don't come out of the learned tradition. You come out of the faith that people practice.

So how did Peter end up with the reputation as the rule-bound guy, the authoritarian one?

Part of it is that Peter is connected with Rome, and Rome is connected with imperial Christianity after Constantine. That authority is attached to a structure. But I think a lot of Peter's authority was simply his personal character.

Early Christianity is a movement that begins from below, in that the only authority has to come from charisma, or being endowed with God's Spirit. Jesus himself had no structural authority. He was not a priest's son. He was not a Levite. He didn't have training as a scribe.

In the Hebrew Bible God is always intervening by raising up prophetic or charismatic figures who do not necessarily enjoy official authority. But once you get an authority pattern that's more institutional, it's easy to see how Peter, because he's a symbol of that, became associated with authority that's handed down, not earned by the individual's charisma.

Does Peter, since he's a symbol of the papacy, hinder ecumenism?

It's helpful that Peter is not a monolithic figure, so various traditions can respect and revere him as a bold person of faith and as someone to whom we owe our knowledge about Jesus.

There is sometimes this oversimplification of the history of Christianity as coming from Jesus and from Paul. There was the historical Jesus, and then there's Paul, who somehow is supposed to have founded Gentile Christianity and the sacraments and theology. Everybody else is missing.

But there was Peter, James, and other traditions of early Christianity. There were actual people who knew Jesus and who carried on the movement--of which Peter is the main one. They had something to say about how non-Jews came into the Christian movement and about preserving the traditions about Jesus. So in remembering the diverse sets of experiences and people who are part of this story that we're the heirs of, Peter is important.

There are different opinions about Paul's attitude toward women. What about Peter?

First of all, Peter's mother-in-law lived with him. She got up and made a meal for the guys as soon as Jesus healed her of the fever (Matthew 8:14). That always gets a chuckle from the grandmothers in the audience.

Presumably his mother-in-law had died by the time of Paul's writings. But Peter's wife did travel with him. So all we really know about Peter and women is that he was married and that he had taken care of his mother-in-law. He was not a celibate male. Peter probably had perfectly normal cultural relationships with women, whatever would be expected at that time.

How is Peter portrayed differently in the four gospels?

The Gospel of John is quite different in a number of ways. In the other gospels Peter is the first person who gets called by Jesus. But in John's gospel Peter's brother, Andrew, encounters Jesus as a consequence of having been a disciple of John the Baptist. Then Andrew brings Peter to Jesus.

In the others John the Baptist gets tossed in jail, then Jesus begins his public ministry, and it's a really neat succession story. But John has a sloppier overlap in the beginning, with all these people running into each other in circles around John the Baptist and then re-encountering one another when things get too hot in Jerusalem. That makes Peter less of a solo figure and more part of a group.

Also in John, there's very little instruction of the disciples during the public ministry of Jesus. But then there are these long, instructive discourses at the Last Supper (chapters 13-17), when the figure of the beloved disciple gets introduced. The writer plays the beloved disciple off against Peter, with the beloved disciple always represented as closer to Jesus or able to perceive Jesus' true intentions.

Some have seen this as an argument against Peter's position. But it could also possibly be simply a memory of some other figure this community owes its tradition to. It also could be a way of dealing with the problem of how to move from the Peter who seems to misunderstand so much to the Peter who feeds the sheep. Doesn't there have to have been somebody who perceived the inner truth of Jesus more directly?

On the other hand, certain things John doesn't cut out, like the foot race to the tomb, in which the beloved disciple arrives first but can't go in because the tradition (also mentioned in Luke) is that Peter went in first.

So one interpretation is that Peter is not any less beloved than the beloved disciple. In the end he is going to suffer for Jesus. But another interpretation is that without a representative of Jesus' true purpose in the ideal beloved disciple, John couldn't make the case for the Christian movement.

How is Peter transformed in the gospel accounts?

Obviously you have his initial enthusiasm: "We've latched onto this person that we think is the Messiah." Then Jesus starts to talk not about a triumphal arrival at Jerusalem but about suffering. Although Peter is the spokesman, he's the same as his compatriots in not being able to process that. Still, trying to understand what Jesus is all about becomes a major problem for Peter.

I always remind people that Peter is young and physical. He's been out doing his trade all his life. But then suddenly on Good Friday he finds himself in the courtyard of an elite, wealthy house. There's no way that wouldn't be disorienting, not to mention soldiers and fear of death. He possibly panicked; maybe he did have it all wrong about Jesus, in which case going down with the ship isn't going to save anything.

Then after the Crucifixion it appears as if everything was pretty much lost. There's that brief period of the renewed experiences of Jesus that are part of the Resurrection. But what do those mean?

For the disciples Easter doesn't solve everything. They've got 50 days to Pentecost. So they stay in Jerusalem, in hiding. When the disciples start preaching in Jerusalem, Peter has to process both his own willingness to confront people and this move out to non-Jews.

Then at some point Peter is forced out of Jerusalem, and the story becomes very foggy, with a lot of gaps. We don't know what all happens before he winds up in Rome. By that time, though, he's quite an old man.

But by the end of his life, he's a revered figure, somebody who had known Jesus, of whom there were fewer and fewer around.

And then he is crucified in Rome?

That all seems to be later legend. We don't have any concrete accounts of his martyrdom. We have Jesus in John's gospel saying to Peter that someone will "take you where you do not wish to go," which seems to be a reference to his death.

Another part of the legend says that Peter was leaving the city, and he runs into Jesus who sends him back. That could be borne out of the small detail of Peter's original denial. The use of crucifixion echoes Jesus, but it being upside down references his not being worthy to be killed in the same way as Jesus. The legend says he asked not to be crucified.

What about the more recently discovered Gnostic writings? How is Peter portrayed in them?

The fact that those Gnostic groups have different traditions about Peter shows how important the figure of Peter is in the early Christian community.

In the best known Gnostic writings, the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary, Peter seems to represent a kind of orthodox Christianity that is opposed to the idea of individual Christians having their own enlightenment experience about Jesus. Mary Magdalene is the prime example of that individual experience, and she is sometimes portrayed as running up against Peter.

But there are also Gnostic texts in which Peter is the hero or in which Peter is remembered as having received revelations from Jesus or as the person who reassembled the disciples after the Crucifixion.

So, in a sense, these writings don't change the range of pictures of Peter you could draw. And they show that it's still important to deal with Peter.

"Live at 10": How popular media cover the Bible

It seems like every year around Christmas or Easter, there's a Newsweek or Time cover story about the history of Christianity. Last year it was the so-called tomb of Jesus. What do you think of how the mass media cover scripture or church history?

There's not much credibility in the media's coverage of scripture and church history, but some of it is a problem simply with doing television and other electronic media. Every historian will tell you that. The story has to be pared down to something that can be visually represented and to a storyline that's pretty black and white.

Of course, you can't go back and interview the actual people. So you can't fault the media for wanting to tell a story, but they can't tell the story with the complicated hypotheticals. And, of course, it's a better news story if it reverses some other story. So if you have a discovery that is more typical of most discoveries, one that helps us refine or go on telling the story that we've been telling, that's not as interesting.

Do you think popular culture presentations of controversies like Mary Magdalene in The Da Vinci Code do damage with misinformation? Or do they raise people's interest in the scriptures and church history?

It is a headache to have to debunk all the misinformation. Scholars and others have put a lot of energy into debunking The Da Vinci Code myths. But it is true that it sparked a renewed interest in scripture. One theology professor's dissertation on Mary Magdalene ended up at Wal-Mart. So she certainly sold a lot more copies of what was a very good dissertation on Mary Magdalene that way.

This interview was conducted by HEIDI SCHLUMPF, managing editor of U.S. CATHOLIC.