Annotation CCLXXI

”Then, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter.” — Galatians 1:18

Peter superior to the other apostles.

Chrysostom, in the commentary on the epistle to the Galatians, explaining this: “WHAT,” he says, “could be more modest than the mind of Paul? After so many and such benefits [done], although he had no need of Peter, nor stood in want of him, but was equal [to him] in honor (for I will say nothing more here) — yet he went up as [it were] to a greater and elder [one]; and the sight of Peter alone moved him to set out thither.” To the same sentence Chrysostom seems to allude [in] homily 18 on the epistle to the Romans, saying: “FOR neither, if God had been about to repel his people, would he have chosen Paul for himself out of the Israelites — to whom he would grant all preaching, to whom the affairs of the world, all the mysteries, and the universal dispensation.” Germa-

—Germain de Brie [Germanus Brixius], the interpreter [translator] of Chrysostom’s homilies on Paul, and Erasmus, the interpreter of the Chrysostomian commentary on the epistle to the Galatians, admonished [us] that these passages are to be read cautiously — judging, as I think, that from these the supreme power of Peter over all the Apostles is undermined [weakened]. But the very sense of the words, and the occasion, openly prove that Chrysostom here speaks not of the primary authority and jurisdiction of Peter over all the Apostles, and over the whole Church; but of the honor of the apostolate and the dignity of evangelical preaching, in which Paul was in nothing inferior to Peter. For, making mention of Peter’s monarchy, [in] the 55th homily on Matthew, he says: “THE pastor and head OF THE CHURCH — which, so many and so great billows breaking in, remains immovable — is a fisherman-man.” Hither pertain [the things] which thou hast [in] Annotation 269 of this book.