Annotation CXVIII

”He began to curse and to swear, [saying,] I know not the man.” — Matthew 26:74

Whether Peter denied that Christ is God.

Hilary, canon 31 on Matthew, on that sentence — “My soul is sorrowful even unto death” — speaking of Peter’s denial, seems to signify that he did not deny God, but [only] man. For thus he says: “Christ knew that the disciples would be terrified, put to flight, [and] would deny him. But because the blasphemy of the Spirit is remitted neither here nor in eternity, he feared lest they deny [him to be] God — [him] whom they were about to behold beaten, spat upon, and crucified. Which reasoning was preserved in Peter: who, when he was about to deny, denied thus: ‘I know not the man’ — because ‘anything said against the Son of man shall be forgiven.’”¹ And below, in canon 32, expounding that [saying] “I know not the man,” the same [Hilary] more clearly repeats [it] in this manner: “But it must be carefully considered under what condition Peter denied — although this has been treated above. For first he says that he does not understand what [the accuser] means; in the next [denial], that he did not adhere to him; but in the third, that he does not know the man. And truly he was now almost without sin denying [to be] a man [him] whom he had, as the first, acknowledged [to be] the Son of God: yet because, from the infirmity of the flesh, he had shown himself even ambiguous, he wept most bitterly — recalling the fault of that trepidation, and that he had not been able to avoid [it] even [though] forewarned.” Again, in the exposition of Psalm 52, he so excuses Peter as to say that in this denial he did not lose faith, but preserved the firm and unshaken constancy of believing. This same [thing] Ambrose seems to hold, in the commentaries on Luke; and Pope Leo, Sermon 9 On the Lord’s Passion; and Bernard. Read above, Annotation 183 of book 5.