Today in Church History

✦ Feast Day c. 1 BC–c. AD 64

Feast of Peter the Apostle

Peter's primacy is not primarily administrative, it is theological. Christ said "on this rock I will build my Church" to a man who had just confessed his divinity. The authority is inseparable from the confession. Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Cyprian all identify the Roman succession with Peter still present in his successors, not as a metaphor but as a theological structure. The chain of personal ordination from Peter to Linus to Clement is unbroken and documented within living memory of the apostles.

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✦ Feast Day c. AD 5–67

Feast of Paul the Apostle

Paul understood his mission as the transmission of what he received: "I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received" (1 Corinthians 15:3). He is not the originator of the Gospel — he is its transmitter. This is the Apostolic model of tradition that Irenaeus and Tertullian systematise: received and delivered, not invented. The irony is that the man who said "even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8) is also the man most often cited by those who want to overturn the received tradition.

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History has always been on her side.