The case for Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox as Peter, Paul, and John
The third article of a trilogy
It is evident from the life of the Apostle Peter, as it has been handed down to us in the Church, primarily through the Gospel accounts but also through his epistles, that he has the capacity to hold a chief position among the apostolic church community for the boldness and courage with which he proclaims doctrines faithful to who Jesus Christ is. But contrary to that, he also has the capacity to withstand Jesus to His face as a challenger, as an adversary — as superior in wisdom even, as if that were even possible. The calling to be chief apparently comes with the temptation of not knowing where one’s chiefdom ends. Peter withstands Jesus to the face and openly contradicts Him in front of all the other apostles in such a way that he needs to be rebuked by the Lord with the words, “Get behind Me, satan” — satan meaning adversary, and “get behind Me” referring to the fact that Peter in that moment had ceased to follow Jesus as a disciple should. The betrayal is then of course underlined repeatedly when the would-be chief apostle angrily denies knowing “the man” at the time of the Lord’s great suffering. Peter has the capacity for all that darkness.
Now, a church community following after the personality type of Peter will share the same capacities both for virtue and for wickedness. That Peter personally overcomes his demonic tendencies once they are revealed to him does not ensure that those with claim to his legacy at moments in Christian history will always be so heroic, as if they have not the free will inborn in human nature. They do so have free will, and can fulfill the typology of Peter in either capacity, for good or for ill. That the gates of hades shall not prevail against the Church (Matt. 16:18) does not mean more than what is promised throughout Old Covenant history, namely that “A remnant shall be saved” (Is. 10:22; Rom. 9:27). Holy Scriptures recount a long succession of falls and apostasies leading up to the Messiah’s appearing, with ever dwindling returns in faithfulness. In the end, the Virgin Mother of God, St. John the Baptist, the myrrhbearing women, and a few fishermen of uncertain faithfulness are all that’s necessary for the Lord to fulfill every promise He has ever given to mankind — and that on account of nobody’s merit but of the largesse of the Lord in His overabundant love for mankind.
It is evident from the life of the Apostle Paul (on the other hand), as it has been handed down to us in the Church, primarily through his own epistles and the history recorded in Acts by the Holy Evangelist Luke, that he has the capacity, as both faithful Judean recipient of the Torah and freeborn Roman citizen, to spearhead the evangelization of the Nations, the sharing of Christ’s triumph beyond the borders of those Judeans to whom the sacred Torah was entrusted, unto the reconstitution of holy Israel as one body justified, sanctified, and glorified by means of both baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the communion of the Lord’s Supper, that all may be one in Christ Jesus, the Lord’s death and resurrection being made typologically present in the salvation of the Seventy Nations through the faithfulness of Abraham, in fulfillment of all the Scriptures. But contrary to that, he also has the capacity, by his own admission, to set himself up as the enemy of the community of the faithful, persecuting them wherever they are found, working tirelessly so that the light of the Lord’s gospel be banished from this world — all with the greatest conviction that in doing so he is serving the God of the Bible. Paul has the capacity for all that darkness.
Now, a church community following after the personality type of Paul will share the same capacities both for virtue and for wickedness. That Paul personally overcomes his demonic tendencies once they are revealed to him does not ensure that those with claim to his legacy at moments in Christian history will always be so heroic, as if they have not the free will inborn in human nature. They do so have free will, and can fulfill the typology of Paul in either capacity, for good or for ill. When I said this about Peter, it was more or less obvious I was alluding to the Roman Catholic Church, for their very vocal claims to Petrine legacy. For their propensity for evangelization, for spreading the name of Christ to the plurality of hidden corners in the world, worthily or not, the Protestants likewise fulfill the typology of Paul, if not necessarily the virtue of Paul. Regardless of the Peter-as-satan Roman Catholic corruption from which the Protestants originally rebelled, in rebelling from apostolic authority and sacramental unity, Protestants in their approach to faith lean implicitly on dialectical reason for interpretation in such a way so as to compel a secular byproduct, a cultural element inimical to the community of the faithful and hostilely so. This hostility is also inherently present in their own human-generated doctrinal failings, which proliferate rather disunity, and in their misrepresentation of how love works are propped up dialectically by secular forces as indeed representative of Christian belief, for all the easy excuses they provide humanists not to follow Christ — excuses, even, to persecute those striving to follow Christ.
These assessments of Christian religious bodies obviously and admittedly come from an Orthodox perspective. Peter and Paul are indeed archetypal, but they don’t cover the entire apostolic community in their symbolism. As the Synoptic Gospels, the Book of Acts, and St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians make clear, the dodecad of apostles can be and often is contracted into a triad of pillars: Peter, James, and John. I wrote about this triad last fall, and how it corresponds to the triadic paradigm of Tabernacle worship (see link directly above). I built on that interpretation in a follow-up article once already, when I focused on the primacy of Peter in the context of the schism between Christian East and West (see link directly below).
The ideas informing these writings naturally desire a threefold expression, so here’s the third part, comparing the typological symbolism of Peter, James, and John to the relationship between Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians (with all due respect to the Non-Ephesine and Non-Chalcedonian churches, whose division typologically falls along the lines of an Antiochian–Alexandrian polarity which is a separate, intra-oriental dynamic I’ve covered elsewhere). In the context of this article, however, Peter, James, and John become Peter, Paul, and John. For we’ve already seen how James, occupying the sabbath position of this 6–7–8 triad, is changeable, being the son of Zebedee and elder brother of John in the Gospels, but replaced after his early martyrdom by the brother of the Lord and bishop of Jerusalem in Galatians and Acts. Symbolically Paul is another possible occupant of this position. Even as the Apostle James son of Zebedee is significant as the first of the Twelve to be baptized in martyric death for the Lord, and the brother of the Lord resurrects his symbolism in being thrown from the pinnacle of the Temple and rising unharmed, so the Apostle Paul is he who dies daily (I Cor. 15:31), he who becomes to those without the Torah as one without the Torah (being not without torah to God, but under the torah to Christ), that he might gain them that are without the Torah (I Cor. 9:21), raising them unto the new life that is in the risen Christ. In other words, St. Paul the Pharisee’s sojourns among the Gentiles are typologically comparable to Christ’s sabbath-day sojourn with the dead in Hades. So when I compare Protestants to the role Paul plays among the Apostles, it is not a different role from that performed by either St. James in the triad previously discussed.
Thus, Protestants conform to the virtue-neutral typological role of Paul, Catholics conform to the virtue-neutral typological role of Peter, and Orthodox conform the virtue-neutral role of the Apostle John.
For it is evident from the life of the Apostle John, as it has been handed down to us in the Church, primarily through the Gospel accounts, including his own Gospel, as well as his epistles and the Book of Revelation, that he has the capacity to remain faithful to Jesus for the entirety of the Lord’s Passion, never fleeing from His presence, even as the Lord is crucified and mocked by the powers of this world, even when the Lord wills to expire on the cross and be stabbed with a spear. And as the Lord hangs on the cross about to pass on, the holy Apostle John is shown to have the capacity to be named the son and therefore protector of Mary the Lord’s widowed mother, the woman who virginally bears the Lord’s body into the world even as the Church does when officiating the Mystical Supper. As such John the Beloved, who leans on the Master’s breast at supper, is remembered by the Church as a virginal figure himself, virtually untouched by sin and therefore capable of (ςʹ) the profoundest theological insights and proclamations, evidenced in His Gospel; (ζʹ) the most ardent expressions of love and disambiguations from all antichrists, as evidenced in his epistles; and (ηʹ) the most prophetic eschatological visions of the liturgical worship of the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, the Alpha and the Omega, He who is, and was, and is to come, the Lord Jesus Pantocrator.
Bully for us Orthodox, no? Yet notwithstanding his constant virtue, the Apostle John is not without capacity for darkness as well, as if he had not the free will inborn in human nature. He does so have free will, and his capacity for transgression is revealed in a couple key Gospel stories that are very illuminative of the temptations facing Orthodox Christians.
At one point in Christ’s ministry, it is requested of the Lord that the brothers James and John, the sons of Zebedee, be seated in a place of privilege at the Lord’s right hand and left hand in His kingdom. This request rouses the indignation of the other Apostles, working division among them. The Evangelist Mark says it was James and John themselves that approach Jesus with this will in mind (Mark 10:35). As James is the older brother, presumably he takes the lead, and so John’s virginal reputation is given some cover in the story. This is even more the case in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, where it is specified that the brothers’ mother is the one that approaches and makes her will known on behalf of her sons (Matt. 20:20). Given how journalistic reporting is known to work, it’s not hard to imagine that both accounts in their way are truthful to the event as it happened, and in either case it’s true that the vanity of human motherhood is what — in part — is motivating the request.
There’s also at work the true desire to be both near and useful to the Lord in His kingdom, and as the following dialogue reveals, this desire is indeed to be fulfilled on behalf of the sons of Zebedee, even if in a way they cannot yet imagine. For Jesus responds to their request by saying they know not what they ask for (they are ignorant). Are they able to drink of the cup He drinks of, and be baptized with the baptism whereof He is baptized? They say they can, and Jesus affirms that they will. But to sit at the right hand and left hand of the Master is determined by God the Father, which is to say, privilege is not determined after the fashion of humans. Jesus then proceeds to heal the division that vanity has wrought among the Twelve by elaborating on the distinction between human and divine dominion, saying whosoever will be foremost among them in authority will be the servant of all, “Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45).
So as I said, the presence of his mother and older brother give the beloved disciple John some cover here for the offense, and we can imagine a cocktail of blameless ignorance and filial and fraternal faithfulness leading to his participation in it, should we find it appropriate so to think. Nevertheless, the story demonstrates at least one way that the virginal disciple is yet susceptible to transgression: the vainglorious desire to be seated in authority over others, or else the thoughtless disregard for others in one’s desirous approach to the Lord.
I absolutely see this temptation in Orthodox souls such as my own, in the desire that heterodox Christians be subjugated to us Orthodox after the fashion of human dominion — or else in the indifference to the distance from others gained in one’s pursuit of proximity to the Lord, as if our salvation in the Lord does not occur specifically through ministry to our neighbor. This last one’s a sticky point for a lot of potential converts from heterodox Christianity, as from pastoral experience we know that for some people it is expedient to delay conversion for the sake of family and loved ones whom Christ loves ever so much more than we do, while for others it is necessary out of love for God to convert even at the cost of causing scandal among one’s kith and kin. Ultimately there’s no replacing discernment and humility for knowing what to do in the battle against the competing vices in our souls. But when it comes to the vainglorious seeking of dominion over others as if Orthodox needn’t be willing to endure martyrdom for the benefit of Catholics and Protestants, the matter is more black-and-white. Vainglory: bad. In refutation of anti-synodal claims of papal supremacy on behalf of Roman Catholics, Orthodox simply cannot counter with something amounting to an alternate papal supremacy of their own, fulfilling the typology of the Apostle John not in virtue but in transgression, as though assenting to maternal vanity and thus becoming the cause of division among the apostolic community.
But there’s another relevant Gospel story besides that one, one only recorded by St. Luke. When Jesus and His disciples are making their way through Samaria on their way to Jerusalem for Passover, messengers are sent to prepare for their arrival in a village. The Samaritan village, however, refuses them entry on account of their sectarian differences. This is when James and John — again John is given quasi-cover by the presence of his older brother — approach Jesus and ask naively whether He wants them to call down fire from heaven upon them, as once did Elijah to King Ahaziah’s captains of fifty (4 Kgdms. 1). Hearing this, Jesus turns and rebukes the two sons of Zebedee sternly, beginning again by pointing out their ignorance: “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” Then He says, “For the Son of Man is come not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9:55–56).
Jesus is willing to endure torture and death for the salvation of His enemies, out of a godly love for them that is beyond our imagination to conceive. Yet He calls His disciples to the same love He shows mankind, that we may be like Him. Anger against neighbors is flatly unacceptable, even if they refuse you hospitality on account of your righteous faithfulness. The judgment of others, even when it is providentially expedient for the sake of the Lord’s mercy, as it was in the case of Elijah and the captains of fifty, is never something to be relished, or called upon with any zeal. This is a complex matter. The Lord’s withholding of judgment in love, even to the point of allowing Himself to be wrongfully executed, itself constitutes a burning light upon the consciences of the wicked more inflammatory than any fire sent from heaven (and that’s what the story of Elijah in 4 Kgdms. 1 ultimately symbolizes). So the Lord’s judgment, yes, is something we ardently look for, call upon, and praise, that the Lord may set His creation in proper order, that all darkness be cleansed away, that the Lord’s will be done, as in heaven so on earth. There are many Psalms, prophecies, and prayers composed to this effect. Yet where that judgment must needs entail the destruction of sinners, no delight can rightfully be taken in that aspect of the action. Indeed such prideful delight in the destruction of others comprises an aspect of the darkness that needs to be cleansed away for the sake of the Lord’s judgment, that His merciful love be shed as light upon all the world.
Thus these two temptations threaten the virginity of John and therefore of the Orthodox: the temptation to seek pride of place over others, negligently provoking the indignation of others, and the temptation to disdain or judge others, to return inhospitableness for inhospitableness. The former represents an enticement of the epithymetic, appetitive aspect of the soul, and the latter an enticement of the thymic, incensive aspect of the soul, in our relationship to our neighbors. John will always be right with God, not because John loves God but because he is loved of God. But where he threatens not to be right with God is in not being right with his neighbors, the epithymetic and thymic pitfalls of which he needs to be led away from through instruction.
And I want to spotlight James’s presence in these stories of instruction, too. James and John are the two members of the main triad that aren’t Peter, the protos, the hegumen. So in being called to be subject to the primacy of Peter — which is, again, to be understood in the sense of the primacy of the body or purification in the spiritual life, or of the primacy of the courtyard in the Tabernacle religion — James and John both are particularly susceptible to temptation in these epithymetic and thymic directions. And thus in my analogical schema, these Gospel stories are warning Protestants as much as Orthodox away from these pitfalls, perhaps even more so. Symbolically James and Paul — and, I aver, the Protestants — occupy the same typological position in analogical triads. So when Orthodox Christians who are less than purified of the passions reject Roman Catholic authority, regardless of the unworthiness of Roman Catholic authority to be accepted, they commonly do so in a way that is in practicality no more virtuous than Protestant rebellion — and I’m sure Roman Catholics pick up on that (their claims of supremacy certainly incentivize them to, anyways) and remain unconvicted in their conscience.
So the inclusion of James in these stories should both be a warning to Protestants, and a sign to Orthodox that their temptations are bound up with their relations to a primacy that is not their own. If Peter sins, ceasing to proclaim doctrines faithful to who Jesus Christ is and thereby challenging the Lord as an adversary vicar, that is at no time an excuse for John to stray from his calling in type or in virtue. And I talk about Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox as a general pattern, but do know that, as is always the case with typology, the pattern is a fractal: this Peter–Paul–John social dynamic is observable in any Christian communal setting where elements of sacrificial leadership, redemptive apostleship, and theological prophethood are in play.
I want to make that fractality clear in part to ward off a certain possible misunderstanding of what I’ve been saying. In talking about Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox in terms of the pattern of apostolic pillars Peter, Paul, and John, I do not at all mean to suggest some kind of Anglican version of ecumenism whereby they all, Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox, are actively participating in the one Body of Christ as active members, like the two-lung theory for East and West. That would be like dismissing the differences between Judeans and Samaritans in the time of Christ. But I need to dwell for a minute on exactly this point.
After the exile of the ten northern tribes of Israel by the Assyrians, the new settlers in the region, to be known as the Samaritans, syncretized their Gentile pagan worship with what they perceived to be the religion of the land, adopting a corrupted form of the Torah polemically averse to Jerusalem. As such they represented an illicit union of Israelite and Gentile that fulfilled a foretype of the Church that was to come, but did not do it well, did not do it virtuously. Nevertheless, when interacting with obtuse Judeans, the Lord sees fit to robe Himself in Samaritan imagery, as when He comes from the maligned Galilee in the North, or especially in the parable of the Good Samaritan, where He just plainly, if parabolically, describes Himself as a dirty Samaritan to a pharisaical Judean audience. As such He is utilizing the positive ecclesial typology of what being a Samaritan represents, without claiming the modal corruption. In the same manner, that the ten northern tribes of Israel were lost to history due to their corruption, absorbed into the uncircumcised Nations out of which Israel was originally carved, does not at all preclude the prophetic use of Israel in all twelve of her tribes as an eschatological appellation of the assembly of the saints, gathered in the baptism of Christ from among the Judeans and the Gentiles.
Now, in the New Covenant, the substance of divine revelation changes dramatically, but the patterns of human sin change not at all. And so history proceeds parallel to what came before.
The northern tribes were exiled and replaced by Samaritans who came to observe a corrupted Torah — and the Latin Roman West fell to Germanic barbarians who came to embody a corrupted church.
The southern kingdom to whom the Torah remained entrusted, if unworthily, eventually falls to the Babylonians and endures a punitive exile designed to preserve a remnant — and the Eastern Roman Christians to whom the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church is entrusted, if unworthily, eventually fall to the Turks (and the Tatars) and endure a punitive dominion designed to preserve a remnant.
The Judeans are released from exile to a dubious freedom dominated by Hellenic culture and Roman power — and the Orthodox churches are released from their dhimmitude to a dubious freedom dominated by European culture and American power.
Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the Seleucids ravage Judea — and Vladimir Lenin and the Communists ravage the Church.
The Idumean client-king of the Romans Herod the Great renovates and expands the Temple; ex-Soviet KGB officer stationed in Germany Vladimir Putin builds up the Orthodox Church; and here we are today.
I’m sure Catholics would take issue with this history, just like I know Samaritans take issue with Judean Scriptures.
My larger point is to explain what I mean as an Orthodox Christian when linking Catholics and Protestants with the ecclesial roles occupied by the Apostles Peter and Paul. I’m not saying they actively play those roles as members of the Church, anymore then the tribes of Ephraim and Reuben were actively participating in Israel from the time of their exile and dissolution (at the very latest) until 8:59 on the morning of Holy Pentecost. Eschatologically those tribes remain ever present, but historically, for a long time, they were only there as potential. Likewise with Catholics and Protestants, I see the potential there for joining the Orthodox in one theanthropic Body, due to the typology observed underlying the warped modality of their behavior. But according to the Johannine-type prophetic witness of Orthodox teaching, it is not possible to identify Catholics and Protestants as activating that potentiality due to the manifest corruption of their beliefs and practices.
They’re Samaritans. But the holy teachings of the Church passed down through the ages make it sufficiently clear how I as an Orthodox Christian am to relate to Samaritans. I am not to worship with them, no, but neither am I to disdain them as though they are not fellow human beings and creatures of God made according to His image. They are performing roles in type that I am to reverence as intentional by God, even if it is by a modality corrupted by passions not worthy of reverence. There is fundamentally, absolutely no cause for any self-righteousness in me whatsoever. Not thinking myself worthy of any place of privilege among them, nor considering the potential of their destruction with anything but the utmost grief and sorrow, as if it were my own, I must abide in all the humility and love of our Savior, who came not to be served but to serve, who came not to destroy but to save.
But being servants of heterodox Christians does not in any way mean Orthodox Christians should be servile to their heterodoxy. It cannot. If the typology of the Apostle John is to be fulfilled, above all it is imperative that John remain true to Christ, and never abandon Him, even when all his brothers flee. This cannot occur in pride but in humility. This cannot occur in anger but in love. I will be held accountable for all the shortcomings in my faithfulness. May the Lord have mercy on my soul. I beg the Lord’s forgiveness, and the forgiveness of all those I have offended.
I may fail the typology of John, and it might just be because I first of all fail the typology of Peter, in the sense of courtyard sacrifice, in the sense of purification, in the sense that all this typology has a place within every person’s heart, as well as being reflected in world history. I may fail the typology of John, but I trust in the Scriptures that that typology will persist among the faithful, according to the Lord’s provision. The resurrected Lord says to Peter about John, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” (John 21:22). It’s a very good question, a stunningly good question: What is that to thee, O Peter? And the Lord condenses what the practical response needs to be in the words, said immediately to the chief apostle, “Follow thou Me.” He still needs to tell him, as if gazing at the whole of Church history to come, “John — John’s going to remain in the position I place him. But you, you — don’t be an adversary.”
Thank you for writing, this was very profound. I will endeavour to read the earlier entries as well.
Amen!