Peter and the Papacy

There is ample evidence in the New Testament that Peter was first in authority among the apostles. Whenever they were named, Peter headed the list (Matt. 10:1-4, Mark 3:16-19, Luke 6:14-16, Acts 1:13); sometimes the apostles were referred to as "Peter and those who were with him" (Luke 9:32). Peter was the one who generally spoke for the apostles (Matt. 18:21, Mark 8:29, Luke 12:41, John 6:68-69), and he figured in many of the most dramatic scenes (Matt. 14:28-32, Matt. 17:24-27, Mark 10:23-28). On Pentecost it was Peter who first preached to the crowds (Acts 2:14-40), and he worked the first healing in the Church age (Acts 3:6-7). It is Peter’s faith that will strengthen his brethren (Luke 22:32) and Peter is given Christ’s flock to shepherd (John 21:17). An angel was sent to announce the resurrection to Peter (Mark 16:7), and the risen Christ first appeared to Peter (Luke 24:34). He headed the meeting that elected Matthias to replace Judas (Acts 1:13-26), and he received the first converts (Acts 2:41). He inflicted the first punishment (Acts 5:1-11), and excommunicated the first heretic (Acts 8:18-23). He led the first council in Jerusalem (Acts 15), and announced the first dogmatic decision (Acts 15:7-11). It was to Peter that the revelation came that Gentiles were to be baptized and accepted as Christians (Acts 10:46-48).

Peter’s preeminent position among the apostles was symbolized at the very beginning of his relationship with Christ. At their first meeting, Christ told Simon that his name would thereafter be Peter, which translates as "Rock" (John 1:42). The startling thing was that—aside from the single time that Abraham is called a "rock" (Hebrew: Tsur; Aramaic: Kepha) in Isaiah 51:1-2—in the Old Testament only God was called a rock. The word rock was not used as a proper name in the ancient world. If you were to turn to a companion and say, "From now on your name is Asparagus," people would wonder: Why Asparagus? What is the meaning of it? What does it signify? Indeed, why call Simon the fisherman "Rock"? Christ was not given to meaningless gestures, and neither were the Jews as a whole when it came to names. Giving a new name meant that the status of the person was changed, as when Abram’s name was changed to Abraham (Gen.17:5), Jacob’s to Israel (Gen. 32:28), Eliakim’s to Joakim (2 Kgs. 23:34), or the names of the four Hebrew youths—Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah to Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Dan. 1:6-7). But no Jew had ever been called "Rock." The Jews would give other names taken from nature, such as Deborah ("bee," Gen. 35:8), and Rachel ("ewe," Gen. 29:16), but never "Rock." In the New Testament James and John were nicknamed Boanerges, meaning "Sons of Thunder," by Christ, but that was never regularly used in place of their original names, and it certainly was not given as a new name. But in the case of Simon-bar-Jonah, his new name Kephas (Greek: Petros) definitely replaced the old.

Not only was there significance in Simon being given a new and unusual name, but the place where Jesus solemnly conferred it upon Peter was also important. It happened when "Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi" (Matt. 16:13), a city that Philip the Tetrarch built and named in honor of Caesar Augustus, who had died in A.D. 14. The city lay near cascades in the Jordan River and near a gigantic wall of rock, a wall about 200 feet high and 500 feet long, which is part of the southern foothills of Mount Hermon. The city no longer exists, but its ruins are near the small Arab town of Banias; and at the base of the rock wall may be found what is left of one of the springs that fed the Jordan. It was here that Jesus pointed to Simon and said, "You are Peter" (Matt. 16:18).

The significance of the event must have been clear to the other apostles. As devout Jews they knew at once that the location was meant to emphasize the importance of what was being done. None complained of Simon being singled out for this honor; and in the rest of the New Testament he is called by his new name, while James and John remain just James and John, not Boanerges.

When he first saw Simon, "Jesus looked at him, and said, ‘So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas (which means Peter)’" (John 1:42). The word Cephas is merely the transliteration of the Aramaic Kepha into Greek. Later, after Peter and the other disciples had been with Christ for some time, they went to Caesarea Philippi, where Peter made his profession of faith: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16). Jesus told him that this truth was specially revealed to him, and then he solemnly reiterated: "And I tell you, you are Peter" (Matt. 16:18). To this was added the promise that the Church would be founded, in some way, on Peter (Matt. 16:18).

Then two important things were told the apostle. "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matt. 16:19). Here Peter was singled out for the authority that provides for the forgiveness of sins and the making of disciplinary rules. Later the apostles as a whole would be given similar power [Matt.18:18], but here Peter received it in a special sense.

Peter alone was promised something else also: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 16:19). In ancient times, keys were the hallmark of authority. A walled city might have one great gate; and that gate had one great lock, worked by one great key. To be given the key to the city—an honor that exists even today, though its import is lost—meant to be given free access to and authority over the city. The city to which Peter was given the keys was the heavenly city itself. This symbolism for authority is used elsewhere in the Bible (Is. 22:22, Rev. 1:18).

Finally, after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and asked Peter three times, "Do you love me?" (John 21:15-17). In repentance for his threefold denial, Peter gave a threefold affirmation of love. Then Christ, the Good Shepherd (John 10:11, 14), gave Peter the authority he earlier had promised: "Feed my sheep" (John 21:17). This specifically included the other apostles, since Jesus asked Peter, "Do you love me more than these?" (John 21:15), the word "these" referring to the other apostles who were present (John 21:2). Thus was completed the prediction made just before Jesus and his followers went for the last time to the Mount of Olives.

Immediately before his denials were predicted, Peter was told, "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again [after the denials], strengthen your brethren" (Luke 22:31-32). It was Peter who Christ prayed would have faith that would not fail and that would be a guide for the others; and his prayer, being perfectly efficacious, was sure to be fulfilled.

Now take a closer look at the key verse: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church" (Matt. 16:18). Disputes about this passage have always been related to the meaning of the term "rock." To whom, or to what, does it refer? Since Simon’s new name of Peter itself means rock, the sentence could be rewritten as: "You are Rock and upon this rock I will build my Church." The play on words seems obvious, but commentators wishing to avoid what follows from this—namely the establishment of the papacy—have suggested that the word rock could not refer to Peter but must refer to his profession of faith or to Christ.

From the grammatical point of view, the phrase "this rock" must relate back to the closest noun. Peter’s profession of faith ("You are the Christ, the Son of the living God") is two verses earlier, while his name, a proper noun, is in the immediately preceding clause.

As an analogy, consider this artificial sentence: "I have a car and a truck, and it is blue." Which is blue? The truck, because that is the noun closest to the pronoun "it." This is all the more clear if the reference to the car is two sentences earlier, as the reference to Peter’s profession is two sentences earlier than the term rock.

The previous argument also settles the question of whether the word refers to Christ himself, since he is mentioned within the profession of faith. The fact that he is elsewhere, by a different metaphor, called the cornerstone (Eph. 2:20, 1 Pet. 2:4-8) does not disprove that here Peter is the foundation. Christ is naturally the principal and, since he will be returning to heaven, the invisible foundation of the Church that he will establish; but Peter is named by him as the secondary and, because he and his successors will remain on earth, the visible foundation. Peter can be a foundation only because Christ is the cornerstone.

In fact, the New Testament contains five different metaphors for the foundation of the Church (Matt. 16:18, 1 Cor. 3:11, Eph. 2:20, 1 Pet. 2:5-6, Rev. 21:14). One cannot take a single metaphor from a single passage and use it to twist the plain meaning of other passages. Rather, one must respect and harmonize the different passages, for the Church can be described as having different foundations since the word foundation can be used in different senses.

Opponents of the Catholic interpretation of Matthew 16:18 sometimes argue that in the Greek text the name of the apostle is Petros, while "rock" is rendered as petra. They claim that the former refers to a small stone, while the latter refers to a massive rock; so, if Peter was meant to be the massive rock, why isn’t his name Petra?

Note that Christ did not speak to the disciples in Greek. He spoke Aramaic, the common language of Palestine at that time. In that language the word for rock is kepha, which is what Jesus called him in everyday speech (note that in John 1:42 he was told, "You will be called Cephas"). What Jesus said in Matthew 16:18 was: "You are Kepha, and upon this kepha I will build my Church."

When Matthew’s Gospel was translated from the original Aramaic to Greek, there arose a problem which did not confront the evangelist when he first composed his account of Christ’s life. In Aramaic the word kepha has the same ending whether it refers to a rock or is used as a man’s name. In Greek, though, the word for rock, petra, is feminine in gender. The translator could use it for the second appearance of kepha in the sentence, but not for the first because it would be inappropriate to give a man a feminine name. So he put a masculine ending on it, and hence Peter became Petros.

Furthermore, the premise of the argument against Peter being the rock is simply false. In first century Greek the words petros and petra were synonyms. They had previously possessed the meanings of "small stone" and "large rock" in some early Greek poetry, but by the first century this distinction was gone, as Protestant Bible scholars admit (see D. A. Carson’s remarks on this passage in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Books]).

Some of the effect of Christ’s play on words was lost when his statement was translated from the Aramaic into Greek, but that was the best that could be done in Greek. In English, like Aramaic, there is no problem with endings; so an English rendition could read: "You are Rock, and upon this rock I will build my church."

Consider another point: If the rock really did refer to Christ (as some claim, based on 1 Cor. 10:4, "and the Rock was Christ" though the rock there was a literal, physical rock), why did Matthew leave the passage as it was? In the original Aramaic, and in the English which is a closer parallel to it than is the Greek, the passage is clear enough. Matthew must have realized that his readers would conclude the obvious from "Rock . . . rock."

If he meant Christ to be understood as the rock, why didn’t he say so? Why did he take a chance and leave it up to Paul to write a clarifying text? This presumes, of course, that 1 Corinthians was written after Matthew’s Gospel; if it came first, it could not have been written to clarify it.

The reason, of course, is that Matthew knew full well that what the sentence seemed to say was just what it really was saying. It was Simon, weak as he was, who was chosen to become the rock and thus the first link in the chain of the papacy.

It's just that petros and petra did not mean "small" vs "big." Not in Koine Greek.

In Attic Greek, maybe: but that's 500 years beside the point.

As for Jesus' next phrase: He would have said "upon Me" if He meant "upon Me." The point here is that He was talking about "THIS" Rock, which would apply to the man he had just named "Rock."

Jesus (God) is the Rock in the ultimate sense; so the sense of this commission of Peter is that Peter is to have a share in Jesus' ministry.

Whch I hope we may all have. I pray for it every day.

I am not contradicting the teaching of Rome. It is important to realize that metaphors frequently have multiple applications, which is because metaphors convey meaning allusively, not propositionally.

That's why the Catholic Church so often goes for the both/and meanings, or even moreso the classical four senses (literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical.)

What ruffles my feathers is when people get so twisty-tailed around that they force an opposite meaning:

Like, "I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I am NOT building My Church."

IF Peter was THE ROCK the Church was founded upon, now would be the time to clarify. Jesus needed the confessions/ministry of all twelve Apostles and treats no one greater/lesser than the other. Jesus dealt fairly and equally so there would be no dissent amongst them.

AND......

When James and John were asking Him to allow them to sit at His right hand, THAT would have been the time to clarify who was in charge, to tell them, *No, you guys. You all need to listen to Peter.* And He didn't.

And He told later them that when the HOLY SPIRIT came, HE would lead them into all truth, another time Jesus could have taken the opportunity to clarify instructions about Peter. And He didn't.

You might want to take a look at CCC 552

Why didn't you POST it?

Oh; I see!!

It kinda CONFLICTS with what was already posted.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

552 Simon Peter holds the first place in the college of the Twelve; Jesus entrusted a unique mission to him. Through a revelation from the Father, Peter had confessed: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Our Lord then declared to him: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." Christ, the "living Stone", thus assures his Church, built on Peter, of victory over the powers of death. Because of the faith he confessed Peter will remain the unshakable rock of the Church. His mission will be to keep this faith from every lapse and to strengthen his brothers in it.

424 Moved by the grace of the Holy Spirit and drawn by the Father, we believe in Jesus and confess: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. On the rock of this faith confessed by St. Peter, Christ built his Church.

It must be nice to have it BOTH ways!

We do seem to be talking past each other.

Jesus IS making a point or a pun. I didn't disagree.

What I disagree with, is people trying to lock Jesus into an opposite point from the one He actually made.

God didn't name Abram "Abraham" to indicate he was NOT to be the father of a multitude.

God didn't name Jacob "Israel" to indicate he had NOT or would NOT "wrestle with God."

God didn't name Simon "Peter" to indicate that he would NOT be athe Rock on which He would build His Church. Since we are all part of the Body of Christ, members of one Body, we all have some share in the mission and ministry of Christ.

I’m just trying to establish something here about how the metaphor works. “Peter” is obviously not literally a 1,200 pound boulder;

But Jesus is...That's the point of Petros and Petra...

I don't believe you are going to establish much of anything...This argument has been fought, and lost by your religion for centuries...You guys certainly are persistent tho...

This is so obvious it's getting embarrassing to keep explaining it.

Yah, we're just not as bright as you...But we are bright enough to read and understand what those people who actually ARE experts on the issue who completely disagree with what you have to say about it...

And we are bright enough to know that Jesus never intended that we should be gnawing on a femur or kneecap, and drinking blood...

"Are you telling Him how to talk?"

No, I'm telling YOU how He DID talk.

It's even more strikingly clear because eight times in Paul's Epistles (four times in Galatians and four times in 1 Corinthians) we have the Aramaic form of Simon’s new name preserved for us. In our English Bibles it comes out as Cephas. That isn’t Greek. That’s a transliteration of the Aramaic word Kepha (rendered as Kephas in its Hellenistic form, because the 'C' is always a 'hard C' in Greek, pronounced as "K".)

"And what does Kepha mean? It means a rock, the same as petra/Petros. That's why Paul uses the word: because it means the same.

And what does it mean? Petros = Kepha = Cephas = Rock.

It doesn’t mean gravel, or a little stone, or rubble, or a lump, or a pebble.

So on Paul's authority --- eight times --- we have the explanatory information that the name given to Peter was Cephas (in Aramaic). What Jesus said to Simon in Matthew 16:18 was this: ‘You are Kepha, and on this kepha I will build my Church.’

Strong's: Petros: "a stone" or "a boulder," Peter, one of the twelve apostles

Strong goes on to say,

"c. metaphorically, a man like a rock, by reason of his firmness and strength of soul: Matthew 16:18 (some interpretations regard the distinction (generally observed in classic Greek; see the commentaries and cf. Schmidt, Syn., chapter 51, §§ 4-6) between πέτρα, the massive living rock, and πέτρος, a detached but large fragment, as important for the correct understanding of this passage; others explain the different genders here as due first to the personal then to the material reference. Cf. Meyer, Keil, others; Green, Critical Note on John 1:43).

So there's the distinction I've been pressing for 2-3 days: that the alleged "petros=little rock, petra=big rock" distinction, is generally observed in "Classic Greek" --- which is the Attic, not the N.T. Koine.

Koine Greek is the language the Gospels and Epistles were written in. Vindicated by the Lexicon King!

I am amazed at your ability to press on without evidence, and against evidence.. Read what Strong's Lexicon says, quoted here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3285355/posts?page=794#794

And when I was talking about a 1,200 pound boulder, I was talking about a metaphor. Literally, neither Jesus nor Peter is a 1,200 pound boulder. Simon-Peter-Kephas is a man. Jesus is the God-Man.

Neither one is a literal ... what shall I say? ...massive mineral monolith.

Really, you should quit now. You've nothing more to say. And as for me, I am grateful to have been challenged to look up a half-a-dozen excellent and dispositive resources and references. Now time for me to eat a very important hamburger.

"No, I'm telling YOU how He DID talk."

I have doubts on that. If Jesus told them all He was building a Church based on Peter or Peters confession ALONE, then they would have been asking questions. If Jesus was giving Peter the keys to the Kingdom ALONE, they would have been asking a LOT of questions. They didn't because they UNDERSTOOD His speech they same way I do. Jesus is The Rock. The Gospel is the Key. 12 Apostles - 12 gates. Peter is no greater or lesser than the others but he is mentioned first a lot (for a reason but not for greater authority reasons).

As for Jesus' next phrase: He would have said "upon Me" if He meant "upon Me."

And he would have said 'upon You' had he been referring to Peter...But he didn't...

The point here is that He was talking about "THIS" Rock, which would apply to the man he had just named "Rock."

That would have been some pretty bad English, and Greek...Jesus called Peter a rock and Jesus knew well that he himself was the rock spoken of in the scriptures...

Jesus was contrasting the rock of Peter with the rock of Himself...

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