Peter and the Papacy

Catholic Answers ^

[NYer]

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 the Rock

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. 

 

Look at the scene

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. 

 

Promises to Peter

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. 

 

Who is the rock?

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. 

 

Another alternative

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. 

 

Look at the Aramaic

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. 

[Mrs. Don-o]

"The whole weight of the rest of Scripture tells us that Jesus/God is the Rock."

That is a fact, and I don't see that anyone has denied it: I have not, and neither have any other Catholics as far as I know.

"The Catholic church took ONE verse of somewhat ambiguous interpretation, and builds a whole doctrine out of it...

Actually, Jesus SPOKE one verse which was not at all ambiguous--- Matthew 16:18 ---- where Jesus re-names Simon "Rock" and goes on to say "upon this Rock I will build My Church." Why not consider the implications of what Jesus said directly, in a theological sense?

We have taken interesting excursions into the grammar of the verse and the lexical meaning of "Petros" and "petra", to make sure that the basic meaning was plain, as stated. There are two or three FReepers who wanted to challenge this, supposedly relying on standard lexicons (I won't mention their names because I don't particularly want to ping them) --- but when I produced evidence that standard lexicons, like Strong's, and the NAS (North American Standard) Exhaustive Concordance provide support for the Petros=petra=boulder position, behold, I get no answer. All of a sudden the standard lexicons don't matter! One FReeper told me, "That's just word-play."

At that point, their lack of respect for evidence rendered further discussion futile.

But back to the theological sense: the Lord's affirmation of Simon Bar-Jonah with the name of "Peter", "Rock", should point to the idea that something big is going on here, precisely because this such an unprecedented and norm-shaking declaration. It's not to be brushed away: it's actually much bigger than you might think at first glance.

What we have here is, in agreement with whole weight of the New Testament, the realization that we are, in union with Christ, and by His ordaining, part of His mission, His ministry, even His identity.

I say "we," not just Peter. because Peter himself applies the term "stone" to Christ Himself and to us as believers:

1 Peter 2:4-6
And coming to Him as to a living stone
which has been rejected by men,
but is choice and precious in the sight of God,
you also, as living stones,
are being built up
as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood,
to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God
through Jesus Christ.
For this is contained in Scripture:

"BEHOLD, I LAY IN ZION A CHOICE STONE,
A PRECIOUS CORNER STONE,
AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM
WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED."

This is really quite wonderful, and quite congruent with the whole body of Scripture.

Christ/God is the Good Shepherd, Yet Jesus says to Peter, "Feed My lambs, feed My lambs, feed My sheep.

A Messianic foreshadowing (Isaiah 22:22) prepares us for Jesus bearing the keys; yet Jesus says to Peter, "I give you the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew 16:19).

Only God can forgive sins, yet Jesus says to the disciples on the evening of His resurrection, "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them." (John 20:23)

Only Jesus offers spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God, but in 1 Peter, cited above, we are told of a "spiritual priesthood" which will offer up "spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."

This parallels the prophecy in Malachi 1:11---

"From the rising of the sun
even unto the going down of the same
my name shall be great among the Gentiles;
and in every place
incense shall be offered unto my name,
and a pure offering:
for my name shall be great among the Gentiles,
saith the LORD of hosts."

What we've got here is a gift of things utterly divine, into human hands: into Peter's hands--- it is often him by name --- but into our hands as disciples as well, offering incense and a Pure Offering.

Christ/God is the only Rock (a dozen places in Scripture), yet Jesus says to Peter, "You are Rock, and upon this Rock I will build my Church." That is the marvel of it: Christ's work and mission, and his very flesh and blood and Self being shared among all His faithful ones. As He shared in our humanity, so we, His Body, come to share in His divine nature. Peter understood this --- Peter who was given by the lips of Jesus a divine name: the Rock.

2 Peter 1:4
Through these, he has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire.

"This should give any serious student of God’s word at least a pause to consider if the Catholic claims are legitimate."

Metmom, I couldn't have said it better, myself.

[boatbums]

I find it so very odd that they do not seem to think Jesus is enough. Why is that?

Those of us who came out of the Roman Catholic religion did so because we recognized through the illumination of the Holy Spirit that Jesus IS enough and we had been deceived into believing He wasn't. When ANY religion - and Catholicism isn't alone in this - teaches that you must do certain rituals, works, acts, prayers, devotions and deeds in order to have a semblance of hope that you might be allowed into heaven at some point after your physical death, then they are preaching an accursed gospel and have fallen from grace. Our salvation and justification is by the grace of God which He gifts to us through faith in Jesus Christ and NOT by our works.

[Cronos]

There’s no parsing. The simple fact is that Jesus Christ said - “you are rock and on this rock I will build My Church”. This is not supremacy.

[Cronos]

Mother of Jesus Christ who is God incarnate, ergo Mother (bearer) of God incarnate

[rwa265]

Did you by any chance see Jeopardy today? The category was Bible MVP’s and the clue was: This fisherman was picked specifically by Jesus to be the “Rock” of his new church.

The response was “Who was Peter”?

Alex Trebek said “good”.

[BipolarBob]

“you are rock and on this rock I will build My Church”.

Rock was talking to rock. There are two rocks (one lower case and the other upper case) involved. There is more than one way to interpret this sentence from the words alone. You (your Church) picks the one way that takes away glory from Jesus (The Rock) and gives it to Peter (rock).
If you think Martin Luthers attempted reformation of the RCC was upsetting, then when Jesus comes back to finish the job there will be weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

[Cronos]

There was one word rock, declined for locative — petros in locative is petra in Koine Greek

[WVKayaker]

BB, shake the dust...

Look! Squirrel! (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain TRUTH!)

[Cronos]

Remember as I've said above -- there is the case of locative, so this is one word but in nominative and locative: "you are {nominative case} and on this {locative case}...."

you can replace this with table :) and it is "mensa pones super mensam es" -- you see the declension ending of -m?

[BipolarBob]

you see the declension ending of -m?

I hear the broken record, you see the tree but miss the forest. You have your Papacy thanks to one ambiguous verse. That's a long way to build a bridge from what you have to go on.

[Cronos]

No, I hear a broken record from you not acknowledging a lack of grammar. You said “petros and petra are two different words” — and I showed to you that they are not two different words, rather the same word in two different grammatical cases.

[WVKayaker]

and I showed to you that they are not two different words, rather the same word in two different grammatical cases.

Actually, the distinction does not validate your premise, even if true. I can find a number of sources which disagree with all your drivel. Anybody can post anything, but that doesn't make it so.

Bottom line is to allow Roman Catholics to die in ignorance and worship their goddess mary until the sun sets on their dead body! Unfortunately, that flies in the face of Scripture (again!). We Christians are obligated to point out the errors of the Roman Catholic cult...

Peter was a fisherman. He became a disciple. That's all...

I am a disciple, too! I owned a rocky lot in West Virginia. I have started churches. Does that make me an apostle?

[Cronos]

Actually the distinction does validate my premise that these are the same word in two grammatical cases where Christ clearly says "you are rock and on this rock I will..." -- now as to the premise of what He meant by that you can argue, but as to the grammatical sense of the sentence it is clear -- Simon is the rock on which He will build His Church

Simon was a fisherman, Peter was a fisher of men. He wasn't smarter than or more righteous than or more learned than the other disciples -- he was impetuous, cowardly during Christ's ministry and didn't seem to display any qualities to justify this above statement. Yet Peter is the most mentioned apostle and in the end you see this dumb ox :) calmly obey his Master and head back to be martyred. THAT is the lesson of Peter -- blind trust in JEsus Christ, Lord, God and Savior

Peter was not a monarch over the other apostles but first mentioned among equals, primus inter pares. That is the role for the Papacy among the other bishops. Note though that this is amogn the other bishops who maintained orthodoxy through council, so the wayout beliefs of a Oneness Pentecostal would be non-orthodox

[WVKayaker]

That is the role for the Papacy among the other bishops.

More assumption and less detail, as usual. There is nothing that creates a role of pope. There is everything to suggest it is error to assume such.

Peter is dead. Mary is dead. Jesus is still in control... and gives us through His Holy Spirit, not some guys in funny hats and costumes, hoarding riches from the world.

[Cronos]

Doesn’t make you Jesus Christ’s apostle — unlike you, Simon Peter WAS Jesus Christ’s apostle.