Commenting on the reception of Matt 16:18-19 in early Christianity, Tom
Bissell correctly noted that:
Unfortunately for
Catholicism, Peter’s authority was never a settled matter in early
Christianity. This notion that Jesus’s key to the Kingdom of Heaven gave Peter
special duties—and later, lent the Roman church its authority—was resisted by a
number of early Christians. No one appealed to the crucial passage of Matthew
until 256, during a debate between a Roman and a Carthaginian bishop. Many
church fathers—including Origen, Eusebius, and John Chrysostom—understood the Petros petra passage in Matthew to mean
that Jesus would build on Peter’s confession
to Jesus rather than Peter the man. After all, the powers granted to Peter were
given to the other apostles as well, at least according to the synoptic gospels
and Acts. Not until the fifth century, with the pontificate of Leo the Great,
who called himself the “unworthy heir” of Peter, was the doctrine of “Petrine
supremacy” put forth to all Western churches with the full wind-tunnel
authority of the papacy behind it. (Leo’s naked power play had roots in his
outrage that Constantinople had been granted equal stature with Rome.) The doctrine
would endure for a thousand years before questions about what Peter’s authority
actually meant—and whether it allowed a string of whore-mongering and busily procreative
popes—eventually tore Western Christianity in two. (Tim Bissell, Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve
[London: Faber & Faber, 2016], 135-36)
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