Annotation CLX

”But he denied him, saying, Woman, I know him not.” — Luke 22:57

Whether Peter denied the Godhead of Christ.

Ambrose, in book 10 of the commentaries on Luke, excusing Peter’s denial, says that he did not deny him [Christ] to be God, but denied [knowing] him [only] as a mere man. For he speaks thus: “The first voice is that of Peter denying — by which, however, he seems not to deny the Lord, but to have separated himself from the treachery of the woman. But consider what he denied: that he was assuredly of those who were with Jesus the Galilean, or, as Mark put [it], with Jesus the Nazarene. Did he deny that he had been with the Son of God? This is to say: ‘I know not the Galilean, I know not the Nazarene’ — [him] whom I know [to be] the Son of God. Let men have the names of places: [his] native region cannot name the Son of God, whose majesty [the place]

whose majesty no place includes,” etc. This same [thing] Hilary held, in canon 2 on Matthew. Jerome, in book 4 on Matthew, disapproving this opinion, says: “I know that some, out of pious affection toward the Apostle, so interpreted this passage as to say that Peter denied not God, but man; and that the sense is, ‘I know not the man, because I know [him to be] God.’ How frivolous this is, the prudent reader understands. Thus they defend the Apostle so as to make God guilty of a lie. For if he did not deny [him], then the Lord lied, who had said:¹ ‘Amen I say to thee, that this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.’ Observe what he says: ‘Thou shalt deny me, not the man.’” These [things] Jerome [says]; to whom Theophylact, in the commentary on this passage, subscribes much more freely with these words: “Certain [men] feign I know not how foolish a defense for Peter, boldly saying that Peter denied, but said, ‘I know not the man’ — that is, ‘I know not [him as] a mere man, but [as] God made man.’ Their foolish argument I will leave to others: for they make the Lord a liar, and are contrary to the context of the gospel, and can in no way make the sequence of the narrative cohere; and, moreover, why did Peter weep, if he did not deny?”