“Peter and Paul” Distorts Peter’s Life & Paul’s Teaching

This is a movie I liked when I first saw it (that year coincided with my call to be an apologist and doing street witnessing). It formed my impression of what St. Paul was like, just as Jesus of Nazareth (1977) played a big role in my initial Protestant conversion to Christ that year. We recently watched it again.

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First, the good points: of course, Sir Anthony Hopkins is superb, as always, as Paul. Every Christian needs to see this fabulous portrayal. Robert Foxworth plays Peter (rather plainly, as it were). 95% of it is good acting and an accurate, dramatically effective presentation of three-quarters of the Book of Acts. It provides a realistic view of what it feels (and felt) like to be a Christian under serious persecution. Overall, I like it, and recommend it for others to see.

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But it has several serious flaws, and exhibits the usual (Protestant or Protestant-influenced) bias against Peter and in favor of Paul. This is what I particularly wanted to address. I thought I heard at some point that it was a Lutheran production, and/or funded by Lutherans, but I couldn’t confirm that. Here are my criticisms and pointing out of demonstrable errors of fact, over against the biblical account:

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1) First of all, in a film called Peter and Paul one would rightly assume, I think, that both men would be adequately portrayed, and a good summation of their lives presented. In the case of Paul, the film does that, and gives a fairly accurate depiction of his missionary journeys. But it is almost grotesquely biased towards Paul and almost hostile to Peter. Peter is virtually a bumbling, vacillating, unimpressive fool, which may have been true (at least at times) before he received the Holy Spirit — no different from the other disciples before the Resurrection –, but was not so after.

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The movie deliberately skips over the first seven chapters of Acts, where Peter appears in many momentous scenes. He preaches on the Day of Pentecost, presides over mass baptisms, raises the dead, heals with his shadow, judges Ananias and Sapphira (who were struck dead by God), receives a revelation about receiving the Gentiles, presides over the Jerusalem Council, and is clearly presented as the heroic leader of the early Church.

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This movie, however, shows none of that. It shows him being freed from jail by God, but of course that is God’s doing, not Peter’s. If we were to go by this film alone, Peter sat on his hands for many years, kept fishing, spent a little time at Antioch, and if he did anything, it was always by Paul’s lead and inspiration. He kept hanging around Jerusalem, went to “Babylon” (the film took that literally, but most commentators think it was a code word for “Rome”), and then suddenly grew a spine right before he went to Rome. The film didn’t show him saying much at all at the Jerusalem Council, but Paul had a big speech and is presented as the leader. That is almost the opposite of the biblical account in Acts 15.

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2) The film invented fictional accounts of Peter being jealous of Paul, and Paul being bitter over a neglect from the Church leaders in Jerusalem for “eight years.” None of that is remotely present in the Bible. So why make it up? To be fair, it also showed that Paul had a ferocious temper and has him stating with regret several times that he suffered from pride, which may conceivably have been true (especially the temper), but I don’t recall the New Testament stating much, if anything, about either.

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3) Paul is portrayed over and over talking about “faith alone” which he never does (not in those words). The phrase “faith alone” only appears in James, where it is condemned. Paul actually taught a very Catholic view of grace, faith, and works as one harmonious whole: salvation comes by grace through faith, with works included in the equation as part and parcel of faith, or the other side of the same coin. One would never know this from the film.

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4) The worst flaw is a ridiculously fictional supposed scenario whereby Paul vehemently opposed the ruling of the Jerusalem Council: that the Gentiles should “abstain from the pollutions of idols and from unchastity and from what is strangled and from blood” (Acts 15:20, RSV). The film makes out that Paul thought this decision was a scandalous retreat back into salvation by works, in cahoots with the Judaizers. I’m not sure, but I think it was implied that this was the downfall of the Galatians (Paul rebuked them roundly in his letter).

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There is not the slightest bit of truth in any of that. The decree of the Jerusalem Council was consensus: with Peter and James, as well as Paul. It’s not Pelagianism or any other kind of error. It was directly confirmed by the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:28). Paul not only didn’t oppose this at all; he actively proclaimed it, with Timothy:

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