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| Matthew 16:18 Where the Evidence Leads |
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Matthew 16:18 (where Jesus said to Simon, you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church) may be the most controversial passage of church history. My quest was to find its real meaning with honesty, and allow the evidence to lead me rather than any preconceived bias. I reached an unexpected conclusion.
There are many theories as to what this means. The evidence led me to discard my own ideas and accept a conclusion held by many mainstream Protestant churches. Please feel free to disagree with me, but if you will allow me to present the evidence first, you may find, as I did, that it tells an unanticipated story.
The Rock was Christ Theory
This theory states that Jesus said to Peter that he was a small stone, but on this large rock, meaning Jesus himself, he will build his church. However, the evidence does not support this theory at all for a number of reasons.
1. Petros and Petra
The words for Peter and rock are certainly two different words in Greek. An incompetent Greek scholar may therefore conclude that they mean two different things. Sadly, that is precisely the conclusion to be found in some popular commentaries. For instance Matthew Henry boldly claims that “Nothing can be more wrong than to suppose that Christ meant the person of Peter was the rock. Without doubt Christ himself is the Rock, the tried foundation of the church; and woe to him that attempts to lay any other! Peter's confession is this rock as to doctrine. If Jesus be not the Christ, those that own him are not of the church, but deceivers and deceived.” (Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on the Bible is available in the Public Domain)
If you don’t have good evidence to support your theory, resort to threats and intimidation. Label those who disagree, “deceivers and deceived” so as to scare your audience into agreeing with your less than scholarly deduction. This is a similar conclusion to that made by others whose understanding of biblical Greek seems to be more clumsy. The word for Peter (petros) is masculine and the word for rock (petra) is feminine and some have erroneously concluded that petros only ever means a small stone and petra only ever means a huge crag, but that is wrong.
As Greek poetry from the time proves, the language is flexible enough to allow both petra and petros to mean the same thing, depending on the context, and “word play does not demand the usual meaning of words, especially in metaphorical applications such as the present one. The Aramaic word play on the same word remains the most convincing explanation.” (Hagner, D. A. (2002). Vol. 33B: Word Biblical Commentary : Matthew 14-28. Word Biblical Commentary (470). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.)
We'll discuss the Aramaic in a minute. In the meantime, we don’t need to invent a slipshod conclusion, perhaps based upon a fear that if we follow the evidence we may be forced to agree with the Catholic Church. Following the evidence, has led me to disagree with both Matthew Henry and the Catholic Church.
So, what then is the truth about the two Greek words? I do agree with my Catholic brothers on one point. Jesus spoke in Aramaic, not Greek, and there the same word (kephas) would have been used for rock as Peter. That is why we see in some Bibles that Peter is also called Cephas. The fact is that in the original Greek, the two words Petros (Πέτρος, Peter) and petra (πέτρα, rock) were interchangeable (Matthew, Volume 1, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, By Craig S. Keener).
Why then are there two different words? Some languages have feminine and masculine words. It’s just grammar. Jesus applied the feminine Greek word for rock (petra) to a man by using the masculine form of that word (petros). Up until that time, Peter was not a common man’s name, but Jesus used this masculine form of the word as Simon’s nickname. In the thorough and well researched New International Commentary we read, “The Greek reader would therefore see here a difference in form but not in meaning...” (The Gospel of Matthew, New International Commentary on the New Testament, by R. T. France)
2. Other Contexts
In 1 Corinthians 3:11 we are told that no other foundation exists except Jesus Christ. Yet, in Ephesians 2:20 Jesus clearly identifies all the apostles and prophets as the foundation of the Church, including himself as the cornerstone. Is this a contradiction, on the one hand to say that only Jesus is the foundation, yet on the other hand, to say that the apostles and prophets are also that foundation? No, it is a matter of understanding that these are two different contexts, with two different emphases.
The same is true of Isaiah 51:1-2, where Abraham is described as the rock from which ancient Israel was cut. That does not ignore the obvious, that God was their founder, but includes Abraham’s contribution.
The Rock was Peter’s Faith Theory
This theory states that Jesus neither pointed to Peter, nor to himself as the rock, but to Peter’s faith, evidenced by Peter’s acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah. This theory further goes on to state that all who likewise believe are the true church and likewise have this authority spoken of in the rest of the context.
And not But
Another piece of evidence that Peter was the rock that Jesus intended, is the use of the word “and” rather than “but.” Jesus certainly did point to himself as the rock in other contexts, but that does not mean that he meant the same thing in this context. Some people conclude that Jesus either pointed to himself as the rock, or to Peter’s faith, but the evidence disagrees with that conclusion. We were not there to see Jesus’ gestures, so we must rely upon the language to help us out and the language is very clear.
If Jesus had indeed pointed to himself as the rock in this context, or even to Peter’s faith, it would have been written as, “but on this rock I will build my church.” However, it was not. The wording is, “and on this rock I will build my church.” This evidence clearly indicates that the theories of Jesus’ pointing to himself or to Peter’s faith are false. Peter was the one to make the confession that Jesus was the Christ, and it is natural to see the confessing Peter as the rock, not his faith divorced from him as a person.
Some people worry that this would eliminate Jesus as head of the church and place a man in charge, but that ought not to be a concern. Notice that Jesus said I will build my church. It will still be Jesus who does the building, and it will still be his church.
The Peter as First Pope Theory
This is actually the easiest theory to eliminate from this passage, as there is absolutely nothing at all about any successors to Peter. In fact, there is no statement in the Bible at all regarding Peter and a subsequent papacy. That entire theory rests upon discussions of later church history. In fact an overly formal and authoritarian structure of the Christian Church is nowhere supported in the Bible at all.
The biblical evidence certainly points away from Peter being a pope. In Galatians 2:11 we find Paul strongly correcting Peter, without any indication of deference to him being higher in rank than Paul. There is no New Testament record of Peter having passed on any pope-like authority to anyone, nor any evidence that Christ commanded Peter to do so. Paul wrote to the churches of Rome with authority; Peter did not. Nowhere in the entire New Testament did Peter ever refer to himself having any higher authority than the other apostles.
What it Does Mean
The truth is often very simple. We don't have to complicate it with overinterpretation or avoid it with hasty half-truths. Peter was the first of the apostles to clearly confess that Jesus was the Christ, and as such was the pace-setter. He was given teaching authority, to declare what is permissible and what is not, not authority to change things as many subsequent Christian leaders have presumptuously done. The tense in Greek does not imply that Peter would make decisions and heaven would follow, but that decisions will have already been made in heaven, and Peter would follow.
The New International Commentary states that Peter was the steward or chief administrative officer of the kingdom of heaven, not the owner. The keys that he was given were like those to a storehouse, to provide spiritual nourishment to the household of God. Peter’s leadership in the very earliest phases of the church is quite clear, as he declared the way of the gospel being open to the gentiles and so on. However, Peter is nowhere endorsed in the Bible as one of the popes at Rome.
Conclusion
We do not have to run away from allowing the Bible to have its natural meaning just to avoid any erroneous thoughts of a papacy. Matthew 16:18 neither supports the idea of Peter being the first pope, nor some of the theories invented to run away from it. As so often is the case, the truth is really somewhere in the middle. Peter had the faith to declare that Jesus is the Christ. As such, we can clearly see how he was used early on in the book of Acts at the very first stages of the building of the Church. |
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| To add a comment to "Matthew 16:18 Where the Evidence Leads" |
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| August 23, 2008 |
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| Outstanding, Grant. One of the most scholarly (to me) blogs I've read, it definitely appears as if you've taken an unbiased approach and let the bible (the Spirit of God?) speak for itself. Thanks so much for this post, a great one to start my day! |
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| August 23, 2008 |
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| Thanks guys. This has been a delight to research and uncover. It has been an unresolved question in my mind for a number of years. I'm just so glad that we now have access to such scholastically excellent and thoroughly researched commentaries like the Word Biblical Commentary and the New International Commentary. I hardly ever rely upon simplistic and popularist commentaries any more. |
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| August 25, 2008 |
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| I'll have to look into getting those..... |
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