Saints Peter and Paul – What Our Church Celebrates on June 29

This is not just a simple feast, like we usually observe for other saints: to remember their life in Christ and, as much as we are able, to follow their example. In the embrace of the two apostles, as depicted in the well-known icon, our Church has seen the union of faith and works; in other words, it has regarded these apostles as both symbol and model of its Tradition.

There has been – and still is, among some heretics – the opinion that the foremost apostles follow different traditions and express different theologies: the Apostle Peter – it is said – emphasizes works as the path to salvation, which brings him closer to the Jewish tradition, while the Apostle Paul emphasizes primarily faith, and thus is the revolutionary and the true Christian. Many have seen Peter as a model of Roman Catholic theology, which indeed places excessive emphasis on good works, to the detriment of faith, while Paul, on the other hand, has been associated with Protestantism, which minimizes works in favor of faith.

The Theology of the Apostles

For us Orthodox Christians, such a fragmented understanding of the theology of these apostles is a great error. This is because both apostles ultimately express the same vision of faith. Peter does not preach one Christ and Paul another. Both bear witness to the same experience: salvation in Christ, for which they gave their lives in martyrdom. The Spirit of God, who enlightened them, was and is the same. When the Apostle Paul, for example, emphasizes faith as the premise of salvation, he is expressing the common testimony of the other apostles as well, led by Peter (see, for example, 1 Peter 1:5–9; 21 ff.), according to which “the righteous shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17). But this faith is expressed through the works of faith—that is, through human repentance and the fruit of faith: love. “Faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6), as Paul concisely puts it, means that true Christian faith comes alive and is activated when it follows the path of love. It is a different formulation of the teaching of the Apostle James, according to which “faith without works is dead” (James 2:18). Otherwise, faith alone could even be considered demonic, for “even the demons believe—and tremble” (James 2:19).

The Works of Faith

Therefore, faith and the works (of faith) go hand in hand in the Christian tradition, and any separation of faith from works is interpreted as the result of a confused soul and the divided mind of heretics. This inner division, which heretics experience due to the sin that works within them, leads them to see the theology of the apostles Peter and Paul as fragmented. In other words, even in this case, the psychological principle is confirmed: in trying to understand the world, a person projects their own being onto reality—what they live internally, they project externally.

To the possible objection that, historically, there was a confrontation between the two great apostles—when the Apostle Paul, “when Peter came to Antioch, opposed him to his face, because he was to be blamed. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision” (cf. Galatians 2:11 ff.)—the answer remains the same: the disagreement was about Peter’s approach toward the Gentiles, not about the faith and truth he lived by. That is why our Church—as has been said—has always shown and continues to show their unity, including through the icon of their feast, in which they are depicted embracing one another.

Thus, the great feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, which our Church also marks with a fast (the fast is held for them, not for the next day—the Synaxis of the Holy Apostles), reminds us of the fundamental truth of our faith: we cannot be saved and we cannot be united with Christ if, alongside our faith in Him, our whole life is not set into motion. Simply put, our love for our neighbor (which mainly means our personal involvement) is the most important proof of our true faith.