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the words petros and petra were synonyms in first century Greek.

Then there is no reason to differentiate, and one or the other would have been used - Why use both in the very same sentence?

The more likely sense is in the terminology of construction (as Christ is speaking of building a Church), wherein "petra" is the foundation, or possibly cornerstone, and "petros" is a building stone... a part of the wall.

There is no great difference between building stones. All are more or less the same thing. What is important is Peters confession that Jesus is the Christ. That describes the nature of the "building stones" which Christ will select to build with.

It is the fact that the confession is enabled by the Father - THAT is the salient point... There is no difference among Christ's followers.

That Peter was named is a special thing. For he was the first to confess his Lord. But he is only the first of many such building stones... those hardy stones which form the walls which hell cannot prevail against.

This silly succession nonsense should stop. It is futile, vain, and carnal. There were 120 disciples at Pentecost. It is unknown where all of the twelve went, not to mention the full 120. IF a laying on of hands is necessary to transmit some needful thing, how many times has such exponentially occurred from the hand of each and every one? God only knows... And that, it seems, is how He wants it (that none should boast).

roamer: Then there is no reason to differentiate, and one or the other would have been used - Why use both in the very same sentence?

Sigh.... you haven't read the posts, have you? Let me repeat that more clearly for you. Because, as I posted earlier:
1. Jesus spoke Aramaic

2. What Jesus said to Simon in Matthew 16:18 was this: ‘You are Kepha, and on this kepha I will build my Church.’

3. Kepha means a rock, the same as petra. (It doesn’t mean a little stone or a pebble

4. When you understand what the Aramaic says, you see that Jesus was equating Simon and the rock; he wasn’t contrasting them

5. If kepha means the same as petra, why don’t we read in the Greek, ‘You are Petra, and on this petra I will build my Church’? Why, for Simon’s new name, does Matthew use a Greek word, Petros, which means something quite different from petra?" Greek and Aramaic have different grammatical structures.

In Aramaic you can use kepha in both places in Matthew 16:18. In Greek you encounter a problem arising from the fact that nouns take differing gender endings.

"You have masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns. The Greek word petra is feminine. You can use it in the second half of Matthew 16:18 without any trouble.

But you can’t use it as Simon’s new name, because you can’t give a man a feminine name

. You have to change the ending of the noun to make it masculine. When you do that, you get Petros, which was an already-existing word meaning rock.

Is that clear enough -- you use two because of the grammatical structure in KOINE GREEK.

STOP trying to use English grammar to explain texts which were spoken in Aramaic and written in Koine Greek -- both the grammar systems differ from English.

If you spoke a language other than English or Spanish (which are both relatively simple grammatically), you would see that grammar can differ wildly across languages)

This problem with using English to try and explain what was written in a different language leads to translation issues and is one of the key failing of the current 5th and 6th generation protestant groupings (not to mention the earlier ones) —> hence why sola scriptura fails so badly and so baldly

the words petros and petra were synonyms in first century Greek.

Then there is no reason to differentiate, and one or the other would have been used - Why use both in the very same sentence?

The more likely sense is in the terminology of construction (as Christ is speaking of building a Church), wherein "petra" is the foundation, or possibly cornerstone, and "petros" is a building stone... a part of the wall.

There is no great difference between building stones. All are more or less the same thing. What is important is Peters confession that Jesus is the Christ. That describes the nature of the "building stones" which Christ will select to build with.

It is the fact that the confession is enabled by the Father - THAT is the salient point... There is no difference among Christ's followers.

That Peter was named is a special thing. For he was the first to confess his Lord. But he is only the first of many such building stones... those hardy stones which form the walls which hell cannot prevail against.

This silly succession nonsense should stop. It is futile, vain, and carnal. There were 120 disciples at Pentecost. It is unknown where all of the twelve went, not to mention the full 120. IF a laying on of hands is necessary to transmit some needful thing, how many times has such exponentially occurred from the hand of each and every one? God only knows... And that, it seems, is how He wants it (that none should boast).

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ABSOLUTELY INDEED!