“What “difficulty?” That Christ is the rock?”
Actually, as I pointed out earlier, Christ the foundation and Barnes cites two passages where Jesus is called the rock. However, this passage reads:
“15He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.”
Now note, immediately before and after “on this rock I will build my church”, Jesus is talking to Peter: “you are Peter” and “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven”.
So unless Jesus was stupid or deliberately misleading, the phrase in between was NOT referring to himself, but Peter.
Does that mean the Catholic interpretation is correct?
Well, the difficulty Barnes spoke of was, as Barnes wrote, “had it not been that the church of Rome has abused it, and applied it to what was never intended, no other would have been sought for...”
Barnes went on to comment, “But Christ did not mean, as the Roman Catholics say he did, to exalt Peter to supreme authority above all the other apostles, or to say that he was the only one on whom he would rear his church. See Acts 15, where the advice of James, and not of Peter, was followed. See also Galatians 2:11, where Paul withstood Peter to his face, because he was to be blamed—a thing which could not have happened if Christ, as the Roman Catholics say, meant that Peter should be absolute and infallible. More than all, it is not said here or anywhere else in the Bible, that Peter should have infallible successors who should be the vicegerents of Christ, and the head of the church.”
So the claim Barnes agreed with Catholics is simply weird. He expressly disagreed with Catholics, and noted it very plainly. I doubt Mad Dawg agrees with Barnes, or that wagglebee does - but it is a respectful disagreement, with Barnes and with me. Respectful because we are honest about our disagreement, and neither expects the other to shout “WOW! I never saw that passage before...”
Matthew Henry gives three meanings to rock: Christ, Peter, and the confession.
But Barnes is right. It does violence to the text to pretend that Peter is just another bystander. It does violence to history to forget that Peter opened the door of the Kingdom to the Jews at Pentecost, and to the Gentiles in the home of Cornelius.
And I suspect I could find many Baptists who recognize the truth of that...in fact, I know it, since I’ve taken part in discussions about this passage in more than one Baptist Sunday School. Only Cathophobics refuse to give Peter credit when it is deserved. And only the delusional can go from there to claim that Barnes and I are beating a path to Rome with this commentary!
And for those who haven’t heard of Barnes: “BARNES, ALBERT (1798-1870), American theologian, was born at Rome, New York, on the 1st of December 1798. He graduated at Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y., in 1820, and at the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1823, was ordained as a Presbyterian minister by the presbytery of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, in 1825, and was the pastor successively of the Presbyterian Church in Morristown, New Jersey (1825-1830) and of the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia (1830-1867).”
I dunno...
I can see that it makes sense to not be Peter but either his profession or Christ. Besides, Peter referred to Jesus as the rock in his letter, I Peter. I don’t see that anywhere in Scripture that the rock means anything but God/Jesus. Maybe I’m missing it, but I don’t recall it.
Nevertheless, even if it is Peter, I agree that someone took it too far and abused it to justify the papacy and establish the authority of the Roman Catholic church.
Thanks, that was a great post! Obviously, I disagree with the final conclusions, but it’s nice to see that the basics are acknowledged.
I will be among the first to acknowledge that the Vatican was incredibly corrupt during the time leading up to the Reformation and remained that way for a several decades after that. There were popes, cardinals and bishops who were incredible evil men and it was not at all surprising that men such as Martin Luther began to address this hypocrisy. However, the Church has never claimed that popes were perfect or inerrant, papal infallibility simply states that in very rare instances the Church is protected from teaching error. If you look at evil men like Alexander VI you will find that they NEVER taught any doctrinal error, because they didn’t actually teach anything, all they did was take.
Err... we don’t say that “meant that Peter should be absolute and infallible.”