1 Peter 5:1 is not a proof text against papal primacy.

exhort you as your fel­low elder,” St. Peter writes, and it’s hard to know who first tried to use this verse as a proof-text against papal pri­ma­cy. Why, Peter him­self says he’s just one among many! So why does the pope lord it over the whole Church?

One thing it’s not hard to know is that the Church Fathers are full of asser­tions that Peter does have pri­ma­cy, and not one of them ever cites 1 Peter 5:1 to refute the idea. If the text does deny papal pri­ma­cy, appar­ent­ly none of the Church Fathers were aware of it. Dear read­er, you’re wel­come to search an index of Scrip­ture ref­er­ences in the Church Fathers if you think you can find any of them cit­ing 1 Peter 5:1 to deny the pri­ma­cy of Peter. Sure­ly they were aware of the text—Cyprian refers to it, as do Ter­tul­lian and Jerome—but none of them think it means that Peter is no more than the equal of all oth­er bish­ops.

In fact, Cypri­an is one of our ear­li­est attes­ta­tions for the pri­ma­cy of Peter:

The Lord speaks to Peter, say­ing, “I say unto you, that you are Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not pre­vail against it. And I will give unto you the keys of the king­dom of heav­en; and what­so­ev­er you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heav­en, and what­so­ev­er you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heav­en.” And again to the same He says, after His res­ur­rec­tion, “Feed my sheep.” And although to all the apos­tles, after His res­ur­rec­tion, he gives an equal pow­er … yet, that He might set forth uni­ty, He arranged by His author­i­ty the ori­gin of that uni­ty, as begin­ning from one [On The Uni­ty of the Church 4].

The suc­ces­sors of the apos­tles do have equal­i­ty, but only inso­far as it derives from their union with Peter.

Like­wise St. Clement of Alexan­dria calls Peter “the cho­sen, the pre-emi­nent, the first of the dis­ci­ples.”

Like­wise St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Cat­e­chet­i­cal Lec­tures [2:19], calls Peter “the chiefest and fore­most of the apos­tles.” St. Cyril repeats this in CL 17:27; Peter is “the chief of the Apos­tles and the bear­er of the keys of the king­dom of heav­en.”

The Cat­e­chet­i­cal Lec­tures have sig­nif­i­cant author­i­ty here because St. Cyril, the bish­op of Jerusalem, wrote them in order to instruct new con­verts. And he’s teach­ing them the pri­ma­cy of Peter as an arti­cle of faith. No one thinks to say, You know what? 1 Peter 5:1 proves that’s wrong.

And there’s a good rea­son no one thought to say that: The text does not mean that. It does not mean what the anti-Catholics think it means. They read far too much eccle­si­ol­o­gy into the word “fel­low” in “fel­low elder,” and com­mon usage of the term does not sup­port their mis­read­ing. A sim­ple exam­ple is any U.S. pres­i­den­t’s reg­u­lar use of the expres­sion “my fel­low Amer­i­cans” or “my fel­low cit­i­zens.” The pres­i­dent hard­ly means that he has no spe­cial author­i­ty over his “fel­low Amer­i­cans.” He only means to empha­size what unites him to those he leads: He’s an Amer­i­can, he’s a cit­i­zen.

So too with 1 Peter 5:1. The first pope is empha­siz­ing uni­ty, not absolute epis­co­pal equal­i­ty. That he is unit­ed with them as a bish­op does not imply that he has no more author­i­ty over them than any oth­er bish­op.

If I’m wrong here, then some­one needs to dig up some cred­i­ble author­i­ty for the anti-Catholics’ strained exe­ge­sis of the text.