Tag Archives: Apostle Peter

Then He Appeared to More Than 500

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Christ appears to the Twelve and displays his wounds after the Resurrection as St. Thomas makes a prostration before him. (6th cent. mosaic from Ravenna, Italy.)



Christ died for our sins… was buried and raised on the third day according to the Scriptures and appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve; and then he appeared at one time to more than five hundred brothers and sisters… then he appeared to James, indeed to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me…. (1 Cor. 15:3-8)

St. Paul quotes a brief statement of belief–a creed–which underscores that Christ died, was buried, and rose from the dead. To underscore the reality of the Resurrection, the apostle reminds the Corinthians of the people who saw Christ after the Resurrection.

We would have no idea of these people who had seen Christ after the Resurrection if St. Paul had not mentioned them here; none of these appearances are mentioned in the Gospels or other New Testament texts except the appearances to “the twelve” and St. Paul’s description of his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. We have no record of a private appearance to Peter, who is referred to by his Aramaic nickname, Cephas. We have no record of a private appearance to the Apostle James. We have no record of a crowd of 500 people seeing the risen Christ. But we take the word of St. Paul that all these appearances happened.

Christian folktales developed as people told these stories and filled in some of the details. Most of these details simply underscore what we already know from the gospels: Peter is charged with looking after the other apostles, James is charged to look after the Jerusalem community, the 500–perhaps in Galilee, gathered by the apostles after the women at the tomb were told to send the apostles back to the countryside where Christ would meet them–were witnesses as the crowds who heard the Sermon on the Mount or were fed by the five loaves and two fish.

There are other stories of Christ meeting people after his Resurrection. Although there is no written record of these meetings in the New Testament, there is no reason to doubt that these meetings occurred; these meetings are just as likely as the meetings we would be unaware of if they had not been mentioned by St. Paul.

One of these other meetings that was not recorded in writing was said to have been when Christ met his Most Pure Mother on the morning of the Resurrection. Christ is said to have reassured his mother that it was truly him, not a phantasm or ghost. He also underscored the importance of St. Peter in the community.

Many of these appearances of Christ after the Resurrection–including those we know about in the New Testament, especially to St. Mary Magdalen and the other Myrhhbearing Women–became important to the Church as various people claimed to be apostles and began preaching messages that did not agree with what the core community believed. Fundamental to understanding who was an apostle was the question: Did this person meet Jesus after the Resurrection? Without such a meeting, the person’s claim to apostleship was unlikely to be recognized.

Read more about the importance of these post-Resurrection appearances in determining whether someone was an apostle or not here.

“Was Paul Crucified for You?”

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A Byzantine style icon of Christ crucified, with Adam’s grave in the hill beneath the Cross as St. John the Divine and the Mother of God stand on each side of Christ. The sun, moon, and angels are aghast at what they see happening on Golgotha. Christ’s eyes are closed, his body slumped against the Cross, and the footrest beam twisted diagonally which all indicate that Christ is already dead.

…each of you says, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (I Cor. 1:12-13)

The parish in Corinth was torn apart by various factions, each claiming to be faithful to a different Christian teacher who was prominent or famous in one way or another. How did these factions differ? What did they teach that put them in opposition to each other?

The names of the teachers that each faction claimed to be faithful to are probably familiar. “Cephas” was the Apostle Peter. Apollos was a well-educated Jewish man from Alexandria (Egypt) who was “mighty in the Scriptures” (Acts 18:24) who knew something of Christ but was really taught everything he knew about Christianity by Priscilla at Ephesus (Acts 18:26); he was eventually made the first bishop of Crete (Titus 3:13).

We know that Peter and Paul had intense disagreements about how much of Jewish practice should be embraced by Gentile converts to Christianity. Priscilla and Apollos were dear co-workers with the Apostle Paul; how much could they have disagreed with each other?

If we read the New Testament carefully, we discover that there was not a simple dichotomy between “Jewish Christianity” vs. “Gentile Christianity.” There seem to have been four distinct styles of Christianity with four differing sets of what should be expected from Gentile converts.

Group One insisted that Gentile converts observe the whole Mosaic Law, including circumcision. The missionary work of this group (the “false brothers” of Galatians 2:4) was deeply antagonistic towards St. Paul.

Group Two did not insist on circumcision but did require Gentile converts to keep certain practices of the Mosaic Law (esp. kosher food). We see this reflected in the council described in Acts 15. This group looked to the Apostle Peter [Cephas] and St. James, the “brother of the Lord,” as their leaders.

Group Three did not require circumcision or other practices of the Mosaic Law (kosher food) but did see them as having a certain ongoing value, nevertheless. This seems to have been the group most reflective of the Apostle Paul’s own attitude.

Group Four did not require circumcision or other practices of the Mosaic Law (kosher food) and saw no abiding significance or value in Jewish cult or feast days. These views were more radical than those of the Apostle Paul and seem to be reflected in the sermon of St. Stephen (Acts 7), who insisted that God does not dwell in the Temple and refers to Mosaic Law as “your law” and “their law.”

The factions in Corinth seem to reflect these basic distinctions. As St. Paul discusses the problems in Corinth, we see how the factions are rooted in these differing attitudes toward Jewish practice and expectations of Gentile converts to the Church.

For more about these differing groups of “Jewish Christianity” see Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity by Raymond E. Brown and John P. Meier. (Paulist Press. 1983, 2004)

St. Michael and the Dragon: Victory in Heaven

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The war in heaven depicted in “Las Huelgas Apocalypse,” Spain AD 1220; the commentary of Beatus of Liebana.

Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back and he did not prevail…. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world…. (Apocalypse 12:7-9)

The Archangel Michael (Jude 9) is the captain of God’s armies and the champion of the Chosen People (Daniel 10:21, 12:1); in the Old Testament, he is the most powerful figure, second only to God. Although Satan does occasionally appear in heaven (Job 1), he is definitively cast down and overthrown here.

The dragon is identified both with the serpent who tempted Eve and with the adversary, the accuser who demanded that God allow him to test the sincerity of both Job and the Apostle Peter (Luke 22:31). Satan wanted to ruin them both but did not succeed. Satan, the dragon, wants to ruin the human race. He wants to ruin the entire creation. His jealousy goads him to want to destroy everything (Wisdom 1-2) but in the end, his jealousy destroys only himself.

Often the spear that St. Michael uses to fight the dragon with is a wooden lance; it is by the wood of the Cross that the dragon is overthrown. The archangel Michael’s victory is the heavenly and symbolic counterpart of Jesus hanging-dying on the Cross. The martyrs, as members of the Body of Christ, who testify-witness about the victory of the Cross, share in this victory but the victory is demonstrated by their dying as Christ died on the Cross. The events described in chapter 12 of the Apocalypse—the woman clothed with the sun, the dragon, the war in heaven—are the central events of the Apocalypse, around which everything else revolves, because they are the representation of the central events of earthly history.

“I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven,” says Jesus (Luke 10:18); therefore the apostles are able to cast out devils who possess humans. The Lamb, “who was slain from the foundation of the world,” is both eternally the victor and the one who wins the victory at a particular time-place in the world. Both the eternal victory and the victory in time are true; neither victory cancels or outweighs the other.

The dragon is not simply THE Devil, a single angelic personality. The dragon is all the enemies of God at once; in Ezekiel 29:3 and 32:2-3, we read that the Pharaoh of the Exodus is “like a dragon in the sea,” a great water monster who attempts to devour the Chosen People. The dragon is the Roman system which attempts to eradicate the Church. The dragon is everything and everyone who attempts to deny the victory of the Cross.