Matthew 16 is really pretty clear. Christ says, speaking to Peter, "You are "Rock" (Petros in Greek; Kepha in Aramaic) and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven ...")
Except for the brief digression whose subject is the church, the subject of the whole sentence is Peter, Cephas, "rocky". If Christ wanted to emphasize in this passage that he himself is the rock to the exclusion of all others, he picked a rather strange time to rename Peter, "rock", and a rather strange mode of speech which left that concept not only unspoken, but not even vaguely implied.
And no, he was not renaming Simon "pebble". He was speaking Aramaic, where Simon's new name was Kepha, "rock". And even if you (against all available historical evidence) think that two first century Palestinian Jews would have spoken Greek to each other, "Petros" is merely "petra" ("rock") switched to a masculine declension.
I think that the descriptive "rock" for God (or anyone else) is intended to emphasize God's utter dependability and trustworthiness, two qualities which Jesus was attempting to encourage Peter to embrace ... ultimately with success.
And I would further say that the position of Peter within Christianity is not that of Abraham in Judaism. It's considerably less, closer to the position of Aaron in Judaism, even down to becoming a temporary traitor in a time of crisis.
I am curious to know the Catholic view of the importance of a Name for God vis-à-vis the Jewish view.
I am also curious to know why the name “God is the Rock” was omitted in the Vulgate (Deuteronomy 32:4)
I’d greatly appreciate it if you could share anything you have on those points as well.
The ‘key’ (pun intended) to understanding what Jesus said to Peter regarding keys is found sown in Luke 11:52, where Jesus rebukes the lawyerly Pharisees and Scribes who had not only withheld the ‘key’ to knowledge for the Jewish common man and woman but had also hindered those seeking to comprehend the spiritual things. The Leaders of Israel did this to maintain their power, their prestige, their importance. Thus the keys to salvation and righteousification (King James Version likes justification) are to be given to those faithing in Jesus as their Deliverer, and Jesus tells this to Peter in a metaphor of binding and loosening, as in understanding opened and mysteries revealed for a true following of The Savior.
The Keys to Hell and Death are retained by Our Savior because He is The Deliverer, The Propitiation, The Propitiatory. He has redeemed those who will allow Him to be their Deliverer, thus many are called but few are chosen because so few will let Him do it.
Keys open and close things and confirm authority (in the sense of Jesus’s day, the ancient times of Kings and Princes in the flesh; we are now up against princes and powers but we have been given the authority, the keys, to defeat these through Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit) ... The Way IS Christ and upon the solid foundation of the Spirit of God revealing the mysteries Christ built His ekklesia, in contrast to the Pharisees and Scribes seeking to built an edifice upon their holding the keys, the authority, rather than opening the mysteries to those seeking an intimate relationship with God.
Using one of Christ’s own metaphors, when a mason starts to build a stone or brick wall or box, he establishes a corner that is solidly founded (Jesus, the Chief of the Corner) and from thence he establishes straight, plumb, and level lines along which to run his courses ... these straight, level, and plumb references are the keys given to establish the ekklesia and are the hallmarks of Divine Authority in transfer to the ekklesia, the believers, the faithers.