Posted on 06/02/2018 6:34:56 AM PDT by Salvation
Question: A Protestant told me recently that Peter can’t be the rock since Jesus is described as the rock and cornerstone of the Church, and he showed me a couple of places where Jesus is described as the cornerstone and even a stumbling block to unbelievers. Is there an answer for this? — Allen Desome, Washington, D.C.
Answer: Of course Jesus, Peter and others who are called “rock” or stone are not literally chunks of stone. What we have in such attestations is the application of a metaphor. Scripture, like any lengthy document uses many metaphors, similes and analogies. Such things can be true in different ways.
In the Scriptures we see that Peter is called “the rock” by Jesus (Mt 16:18). Jesus is also called a stone (1 Pt 2:6). And the apostles and prophets are called foundation stones and Jesus as the cornerstone (Eph 2:20). The Book of Revelation describes the Twelve Apostles as foundation stones (Rev 21:14). So there are a number of “stone” references that need not be mutually exclusive.
Jesus is the deepest and surest foundation of the Church. That the Apostles, prophets and, in a special way, Peter are rock is understood in a subordinate sense. That is, they are rock and foundation for the Church on account of the grace and support of Jesus.
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The Protestant to whom you refer fails to see the context and metaphorical sense of the texts and terms. He also fails to see that Jesus, while not abandoning his Church as her true head and foundation, does assign Peter a unique status to be the visible and identifiable rock on which the Church will be built. Peter (and his successors) is the rock, but he does not stand in midair. He is supported by Christ and his grace and affirmed by him as the visible rock and head of the Church. The Protestant approach is to see the Church as invisible. But Jesus did not establish an invisible Church. It is visible and with a visible rock and head: Peter and his successors.
My thought is that this is fundamentally dishonest.
Cephas means rock in both Hebrew and Aramaic, what it meas in Greek means nothing.
The Bible was written in Greek but most scholars agree that Jesus spoke in Aramaic.
John 1:42
And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone.
The interpretation stone is Greek but if you look in the dictionary you will see that Cephas means rock.
So i will repeat myself, what it means in Greek means nothing.
If you don’t believe in the divine, God-breathed inspiration of Scripture and Divine Providence, then there’s nothing to say.
If you believe in these things, then you understand that God preserved this text in Greek because he willed for us to have it in Greek. One reason for Greek’s superiority: it is clearer, linguistically, than Aramaic.
The author has evidently never heard of divine providence.
So lets not sell the chief Apostle short because of our distrust of the Catholic Religion.
Good theology for me. All through the First Covenant's Hebrew/Aramaic text God alone is figuratively equated with rock-like stedfastness and authority. Should David, who attributed such qualities to God, and who is to be the Viceroy of Christ his Lord over the millennial Kingdom of Heaven on the earth, kow-tow to Simon bar Jonah in that phase of God's covenantal relationship to mankind?
For David, it is Christ Alone Who is The Rock.
If you don’t believe in the divine, God-breathed inspiration of Scripture and Divine Providence, then there’s nothing to say.
That is an excellent point I hadn’t even considered. Yes, even in the Old Testament the Rock is not a sinful or fallible image. It is a divine image.
Psalm 61:2
From the end of the earth I call to You when my heart is faint; Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
2 Samuel 22:2
He said, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer;
2 Samuel 22:3
My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge; My savior, You save me from violence.
2 Samuel 22:47
“The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock; And exalted be God, the rock of my salvation,
Psalm 18:2
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
The irony again is not lost on the reader.
Couple this one with the msgr talking about context, context, context.
The RCs may get there one day.
There are so many more divine rock allusions in the OT, but here is just one additional example. It equates the rock to our Redeemer.
Psalm 19:14
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.
"And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood
hath not revealeditunto thee, but my Father which is in heaven" (Mat 16:17 AV).
Actually, Peter's responses out of his soulish, foolish, carnal mind were generally those ones prompted by Satan who was yet his master, even though he professed following Jesus. In that same context, Jesus had to strongly reprove Simon for his asinine domineering uninvited counsel:
"But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men" (Mat 16:23 AV).
Scripture is the scalpel with which Simon's statement of revealed truth (which you call his "confession," but was not) is carved away from him , for our sake, and attributed to The Heavenly Father by His Son.
The story, its grammar, and its context is written for our instruction, that we may never, ever confuse Simon with the True and Sole Head of the Church, invisible to us but apparent to all in the sphere of The Heaven (see Heb. 12:22,23,24), to which all graciously saved faithful saints belong, and no one else.
I find it interesting that those who insist that the Holy Spirit inspired the NT in Greek also insist that the Holy Spirit did not inspire some of the OT books written in Greek.
I have not read all of Augustine, so correct me if I am wrong. But didn’t Augustine believe that Jesus appointed Peter to be the leader of the Catholic Church?
In fact, that error is demonstrated inasmuch as the foundation of the synthetic "critical" "eclectic" Greek text, never seen by human eyes before prior to 1891, was three corrupted texts which did not even agree with each other, as opposed to the Byzantine/Majority Textform.
"Older" may mean simply that a manuscript was rejected by authorities closer to its writing, and preserved only through determined disuse as not worthily authentic. Such is particularly true of the Sinaitic codex, found in the St. Catherine's monastery burn barrel by Tischendorf.
Eleven
What about all the other references mentioned?
Excellent post.
No ... next question.
Such as?
Here we go again...
Peter himself called Jesus the Rock, not himself.
I’m gonna believe the Apostle himself over the Romanists, thanks.
Here’s another one:
Isaiah 44:8
‘Do not tremble and do not be afraid; Have I not long since announced it to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me, Or is there any other Rock? I know of none.’”
When you purposely conflate the institutional church with the Ekklesia which Jesus established based upon the revelation spoken by Peter under the leadership of The Holy Spirit, you are deceiving people. Is it okay for a Preist to deceive people?
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