Rather, in order for a person to accept that kind of "Roman reasoning", they have to at least do the following things:
1. Pretend that the meaning of all of the words of Christ must be understood by what it is assumed he said in Aramaic, not what the Holy Spirit records them in Greek as saying, even though it can be shown that the Holy Spirit can provide slightly different renderings of the words of Christ that He inspired previously, as well as the words of others, in providing a fuller revelation of the Truth of them.
And when obviously recording Aramaic words in Matthew 27:33,46, the Spirit explains what they mean in Greek. And as the Holy Spirit choose to inspire the words of the NT in Greek (despite the words of Aramaic primacists and Muslims) thus we must understand the words of Christ in that language. And and there is little doubt among most scholars that Matthew was composed in Koine Greek . As regards Papias who said, "Matthew composed the logia [sayings] in Hebrew style, Hebrew or Aramaic style in the text does not equate to Hebrew or Aramaic script, while the later claim of Jerome that he saw a gospel in Aramaic lacks credibility.
2. Pretend that a possible Aramaic word-play, based on certainty that Jesus said “Kepha/kepha,” and that as there is no distinction between the name “Peter” (Kepha) and the term for “rock” (kepha) then Peter is the Rock upon which Christ built and builds, thru infallible successors, His church.
Yet as David Garland ( (“Reading Matthew: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the First Gospel) writes , based on the study of C.C. Caragounis
The appeal to a hypothetical Aramaic saying is not decisive. Caragounis contends that if an Aramaic word lay behind the Greek petra, it was probably tnra (compare the Syriac version). According to Caragounis, each of the two words in the word-play has a separate referent and a separate meaning (Caragounis, 90). The word-play (Petros, petra) has two foci, similarity and dissimilarity. ”Petros has given utterance to a petra, but the petra is not Petros.” The similarity is “in the sound and general sense.” The dissimilarity is in the meaning of specific reference. Petros, a man’s nickname, refers to a stone; petra refers to bedrock, the content of his confession (Caragounis, 109). The assertion “you are Peter” is a solemn affirmation formula to introduce what follows: “As surely as you are [called] Petros, on this rock of what you have just said I will build my church” (Caragounis, 108-113).
Following on what Garland pointed out, Everett Ferguson, in his “The Church of Christ: A Biblical Ecclesiology for Today” also affirms that in the Syriac language, which is a later form of Aramaic, does indeed make the “kepha/tnra” distinction in existing Syriac translations of the Gospel of Matthew:
The difficulties of applying the rock to Peter come in the text of Matthew 16 itself.
(1) The wording does not naturally lend itself to this interpretation. On the surface level there is the change from the second person of direct address (“You are Peter”) to the third person of indirect address (“on this rock”). If the author of Matthew had wanted to say that Jesus intended to build the church on Peter, there were certainly less ambiguous ways of doing it.
(2) The Greek text of Matthew and some strands of the Syriac tradition (pertinent here because Syriac is a later form of Aramaic) make a distinction between the words for Peter and the Rock. They seem to understand a different referent for Jesus’ words.
(3) Aramaic perhaps could have made a distinction, as Syriac did, either by different words or by the distinction between masculine and feminine (preserved in Greek by different endings).
(4) At any rate, if Jesus used the same word with the same sense in both cases, the wordplay is lost. There is no wordplay if the same word is used twice with the same meaning [“kepha/kepha”]. A play on words requires similarities of sound, different meanings of the same word (possible here if Jesus used the same word, once for Peter and once for another “rock”), or different words with the same idea (again possible here if Jesus used two different expressions represented by different but similar words in Greek). The difference in Greek and some Syriac texts indicate that a wordplay was intended here.
(5) Nowhere else in the New Testament or earliest Christian texts is Peter understood as the foundation stone of the church. Where Matthew uses rock elsewhere in a symbolic sense, the reference is to the teachings of Jesus (Matt 7:24).
Moreover, as Steve Hays states ,
In order to get from Peter to the modern papacy you have to establish every exegetical and historical link in the chain [see link]. To my knowledge, I haven’t said anything here that a contemporary Catholic scholar or theologian would necessarily deny. They would simply fallback on a Newmanesque principle of dogmatic development to justify their position.
[Of which dogmatic development of doctrine see links.]
A direct appeal to Mt 16:18 greatly obscures the number of steps that have to be interpolated in order to get us from Peter to the papacy. Let’s jot down just a few of these intervening steps:
a) The promise of Mt 16:18 has reference to “Peter.”
b) The promise of Mt 16:18 has “exclusive” reference to Peter.
c) The promise of Mt 16:18 has reference to a Petrine “office.”
d) This office is “perpetual”
e) Peter resided in “Rome”
f) Peter was the “bishop” of Rome
g) Peter was the “first” bishop of Rome
h) There was only “one” bishop at a time
i) Peter was not a bishop “anywhere else.”
j) Peter “ordained” a successor
k) This ceremony “transferred” his official prerogatives to a successor.
l) The succession has remained “unbroken” up to the present day.
Lets go back and review each of these twelve separate steps: More .
Furthermore, as Schaff records ,
there are no less than five different patristic interpretations; the rock on which Christ built his Church being referred to Christ by sixteen Fathers (including Augustine); to the faith or confession of Peter by forty-four (including Chrysostom, Ambrose, Hilary, Jerome, and Augustine again); to Peter professing the faith by seventeen; to all the Apostles, whom Peter represented by his primacy, by eight; to all the faithful, who, believing in Christ as the Son of God, are constituted the living stones of the Church. (Volume 1, “Creeds of Christendom,” pg 186, .
The “five different patristic interpretations,” are corroborated by primary-source research by William Webster.
They have to pretend to themselves that there were Calvinists before Calvin...
3. They have to pretend to themselves that there were Roman Catholic churches in the NT before Roman Catholicism, while the church of Rome stands in such contrast to the NT church that it is basically invisible in the NT.
They have to pretend that God did not want to establish any ongoing authority..
4. They have to pretend that God wanted to establish a perpetual assuredly infallible authority to be the final earthly authority, and this Roman authority is like the way He actually established His apostles from the very beginning.
For the FACT is that God never promised or exampled a perpetual assuredly infallible magisterium, nor necessitated one. Both men and writings of God were recognized an established as being so long before a church of Rome presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares.
And rather than the church having begun upon the premise of the assured veracity of the historical stewards of express Divine revelation, and thus the veracity of the apostles being based upon the premise of assured veracity, as is the case with Rome (thus the Assumption is affirmed to be true because Rome decreed it), the church actually began in dissent from those who sat in the seat of Moses over Israel, who were the historical instruments and stewards of Scripture, and inheritors of promises of Divine guidance, presence and perpetuation.
And instead they followed an itinerant Preacher whom the magisterium rejected, and whom the Messiah reproved them Scripture as being supreme, (Mk. 7:2-16) and established His Truth claims upon scriptural substantiation in word and in power, as did the early church as it began upon this basis. (Mt. 22:23-45; Lk. 24:27,44; Jn. 5:36,39; Acts 2:14-35; 4:33; 5:12; 15:6-21;17:2,11; 18:28; 28:23; Rm. 15:19; 2Cor. 12:12, etc.)
5. They have to pretend that God did not want Scripture to be the final earthly authority on Truth, while the fact is that it is abundantly evidenced that Scripture was the transcendent supreme standard for obedience and testing and establishing truth claims as the wholly Divinely inspired and assured, Word of God.
And which testifies (Lk. 24:27,44, etc.) to writings of God being recognized and established as being so (essentially due to their unique and enduring heavenly qualities and attestation), and thus they materially provide for a canon of Scripture (as well as for reason, the church, etc.)
y (like the way He actually established His apostles from the very beginning),
6. They have to pretend that Rome's "apostles" are true successors to those who Scripture, versus "false apostles" which Scripture warns of, as they fail of both the requirements (Acts 1:21,22, 1Cor. 9:1; Gal. 1:12) and attestation of Biblical apostles, (2Cor. 6:4-10; 12:12) while calling for an even greater degree of submission. 7. They have to pretend that the degree of unity in the visible NT church was attained under the premise of perpetual assured veracity as per Rome, versus "in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God,..." (2 Corinthians 6:4) in Scriptural substantiation, and with the signs of an apostle being wrought manifest in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds. (2 Corinthians 12:12)
Thus NT unity - which was limited - can only be expected insofar as leadership manifests that it is of God, even if not attaining fully to the status of Biblical apostles.
no way to establish who was right concerning any of the truths of God.
8. They have to pretend that holding Scripture as supreme and sufficient (materially and formally, respectively) means God did not want to establish any ongoing authority, and "synods and councils, ministerially to determine controversies of faith, and cases of conscience; to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of his Church; to receive complaints in cases of maladministration, and authoritatively to determine the same..." (http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/wcf.htm) But not as assuredly infallible, and supreme over Scripture.
9. They have to pretend that under the Roman means of unity, that of sola ecclesia, then the problem of errant belief due to personal interpretation is not multiplied to the corporate level, thus resulting in such things as an entire church engaging in a common practice that has absolutely zero positive examples of, or in teaching, and is contrary to what Scripture teaches, including attributing to created beings attributes that only God is shown having.
10. They have to pretend that under sola ecclesia the problem of variant interpretations is removed, when in reality it leaves the problem of having no infallible interpreter for the infallible interpreter (that has infallibly interpreted herself as infallible), and the variant interpretations of her.
RCs can and do disagree on how many infallible teachings there are, as well as what magisterial level other teachings fall under, and thus what degree if assent is required. And since it is understood by some RCs that most of what Rome believes and practices has never been stated infallibly, this leaves a great scope of things RCs can disagree on to some degree, and Catholicism overall exists in schism and sects.
13. They not only have to pretend that Catholicism is in unity, but that official teaching and professions of assent to it constitute the evidence of that unity, while in reality not only is her unity very limited and largely on paper, but Scripture teaches that what one does and effects constitutes the evidence of what one believes, and which Rome does in counting and treating even proabortion prosodomite politicians as members in life and death.
13. They have to pretend that Scripture being supreme means that there can be no unity, when the fact is that those who hold most strongly to the supremacy Scripture as literally being the wholly inspired of God testify to greater unity than the fruit of Catholicism.
They would eventually end up with thousands of little "churches"
14. They have to pretend that unity under the alternative to Scripture being supreme - that of sola ecclesia, in which the church is effectively supreme - is Scriptural, and solves the problem of thousands of little "churches" with incompatible beliefs, all declaring their own beliefs to be the "real truth. "
Yet in reality unity under that model is cultic, and is manifest with thousands of little sola ecclesia "churches" with incompatible beliefs, all declaring their own beliefs to be the "real truth," as Rome does, under the cultic premise of their assured veracity, as Rome does.
And under which model the most serious heresies are seen, while those who hold to Scripture being supreme, not men, testify to the most unity in basic core beliefs, and historically have contended against cults which deny them, as well as the additions of Rome's traditions of men.
They have to pretend to themselves that the written New Testament existed long before it really did,
15. They have to pretend to themselves the the teaching and preaching recorded in the New Testament was not dependent upon that which is written, and that holding Scripture as supreme and sufficient means the written New Testament existed long before it really did, when in reality the supremacy of Scripture is abundantly evident in both testaments, and the OT materially provides for the writing of the word of God and its recognition as being so - all without a perpetual infallible magisterial church office.
They have to pretend to themselves that the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ Himself would all teach...mutually exclusive contradictory beliefs..
16. They have to pretend to themselves that there is no contradiction btwn Rome with Scripture or with herself , and that the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ Himself would all teach multiple things not taught in Scripture, and often contradicted by it including an autocratic infallible magisterium which means that the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ only assuredly mean what she autocratically says they do, thus excluding any contradictions of her. .
And that, among other things, in one century teach that those who are "not committed to Peter and to his successors...are not of the sheep of Christ." and that "subjection to the Roman pontiff is necessary for salvation," and that no one is found in the one Church of Christ unless he "accepts obediently the supreme authority" of the pope, and that "the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same," and that theological dissenters are to be tortured (even suspected witness) and killed. And then in another century affirm properly baptized Prots are children of God and part of the Mystical Body of Christ, and that torture is intrinsically evil, and freedom of religion is to be upheld.
In addition to which are the many other contradictions under the sola ecclesia model in Catholicism, btwn Rome and the EO s, etc. as well as that of cults.
People can choose to build their confidence on all those baseless lies (which came from the father of all lies), but that is not a wise and prudent choice to make....(Now I'm moving on to the "Synod" threads.
Since it is Roman lies that are refuted, escaping to "Synod" threads. is fitting.
Outstanding work Daniel. Thanks for posting. :)
Peace,
SR