And I say unto thee,
That thou art Peter (πετρος), and upon this rock (πετρα) I will build my
church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matt 16:18)
While I am critical of much of Roman
Catholic dogmatic theology, such as the
Mass, Mariology,
and the
Veneration of Images, I do try my best to use good, informed arguments
against these and other beliefs. For instance, you will never see me bring up,
as an argument against the truth claims of Catholicism, morally questionable
popes, the recent child abuse scandals, etc. One argument I do not think is a
good one to use is that, Peter cannot be the "rock" of Matt 16:18 as Jesus
is called the "rock" and/or the person whom the church is built upon
elsewhere:
According to the
grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the
foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he
buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid,
which is Jesus Christ. (1 Cor 3:10-11)
And did all drink the
same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them:
and that Rock (πετρα) was Christ. (1 Cor 10:4)
Now therefore ye are
no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of
the household of God. And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone (ἀκρογωνιαίου).
(Eph 2:19-20)
Ye also, as lively
stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up
spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. (1 Pet 2:5)
Does this mean, ipso facto, Peter cannot
be the “rock” of Matt 16:18? The answer is no. This is, to be
honest, a bogus argument. Consider the following points:
Firstly, to read the “rock” and like-terms
from the above passages back into Matt 16:18 is a common but fallacious
practice of “mixing
metaphors.” Reformed Protestant scholar D.A. Carson noted:
The objection that
Peter considers Jesus the rock is insubstantial because metaphors are commonly
used variously, till they become stereotyped, and sometimes even then. Here
Jesus builds his church; in 1 Corinthians 3:10, Paul is “an expert builder.” In
1 Corinthians 3:11, Jesus is the church’s foundation; in Ephesians 2:19–20, the
apostles and prophets are the foundation (cf. also Rev 21:14), and Jesus is the
“cornerstone.” Here Peter has the keys; in Revelation 1:18; 3:7, Jesus has the
keys. In John 9:5, Jesus is “the light of the world”; in Matthew 5:14, his
disciples are. None of these pairs threatens Jesus’ uniqueness. They simply
show how metaphors must be interpreted primarily with reference to their
immediate contexts. (D. A. Carson, "Matthew," in Frank E. Gaebelein,
ed., The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Volume 8: Matthew, Mark, Luke
[Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1984], 368)
Pointing out the problems with such an
approach, Catholic apologist Steve Ray noted:
In this metaphorical
description [in Matt 16:18], Jesus himself could not be the foundation,
because in this illustration he presents himself as the builder. The
following is very important. In Scripture Jesus is variously depicted as the foundation
(1 Cor 3:11), the builder (Mt 16:18), the cornerstone (Acts 4:11), and the temple
itself (Rev 21:22). We also see the apostles and/or believers as the foundation
(Eph 2:20; Rev 21;14), the builders (1 Cor 3:10), the stones, λιθος, not πετρα (1 Pet 2:5), the building
(1 Cor 3:9), and the temple (Eph 2:21). Many illustrative metaphors are used to
explain various aspects of the Church. One cannot simply substitute one
descriptive figure of speech for another in any one illustration, thereby
mixing metaphors. IT does great violence to the textual illustration itself and
is a good example of roughshod “proof-texting”, wrongly “dividing the word of
truth” (2 Tim 2:15). (Stephen K. Ray, Upon This Rock: St. Peter and the
Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church [Modern Apologetics
Library; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999], 36 n. 38)
Secondly, absolutizing 1 Cor 10:4, one
must claim that the person of Jesus was transubstantiated into a literal rock
during the time of their sojourn in the wilderness, as the Greek states Christ “was”
(ην) the rock. Instead, Paul is borrowing from Jewish traditions about the
rock that travelled with the Israelites in their sojourn, and, as such was a
continuing miracle, it is attributed to Christ's divine power, thus Paul is
speaking analogously here. For more, see the discussion in Not
By Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura.
Thirdly, such an argument assumes that
only the person of Jesus can be called the rock/πετρα. However,
other figures are called “rock” in the Bible. One notable example is Abraham:
In Isa 51:1-2, we read:
Hearken to me, ye
that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord: look unto the rock
whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto
Abraham your father and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and
blessed him, and increased him.
The Hebrew for "rock" here is צוּר, and the LXX uses
πετρα, the same word for "rock" in Matt 16:18 and 1 Cor 10:4. Now, absolutizing
1 Cor 10:4 in the same some critics of the Papacy and/or the Petrine
interpretation of Matt 16:18 does, it would mean the following:
(*) Only Christ is called
πετρα
(*)
Abraham is called πετρα in Isa 51:1-2
(*) Ergo, Abraham was
an Old Testament Christophany (i.e., a pre-incarnation appearance of the pre-mortal
Jesus in bodily form)
Of such, such is an absurdity, but it does
show the problematic nature of such an eisegesis-driven approach to the Bible.
That Abraham is the “rock” in Isa 51:1 is
readily admitted by Protestant scholars, not just biased Catholics. Consider
the following examples:
The
Jewish Midrash on v.1 reads as follows: “When God looked on Abraham who was to
appear, he said, ‘Behold, I have found a rock on which I can build and base the
world,’ therefore he called Abraham a rock” (SBK, 1:733). Cullmann has
suggested that this passage and its midrashic interpretation may lie behind
Matthew 16:18, with Peter—representing the apostles as the first Christian
believers—paralleling Abraham’s place as father of the faithful, but for the
new covenant. Just as Abraham’s faith in God was a pattern for the OT community
that succeeded him (and, of course, for Christians, too), so that of Peter and
his fellow apostles in Christ would lead to the building of the church (see O.
Cullmann, Peter, Disciple, Apostle,
Martyr [London: SCM, 1953]. p. 193).
God’s promise to Abraham included a land as well as
a people (cf. Gen 17:1–8). The capital city of that land is now in ruins and
its environs reduced to a wasteland, but God will comfort her (v.3; cf. 40:1–9)
by transforming her land and giving her a voice to praise him. Genesis has been
in view in the reference to Abraham and Sarah (v.2); and it is mentioned again
when the prophet alludes to the Garden of Eden, an allusion incidentally that
was clearly meaningful to the first readers of the prophecy. (Geoffrey W. Grogan,
"Isaiah" in Frank E. Gaebelein, ed., The Expositor's Bible
Commentary, Volume 6: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1986], 294)
Look to the rock from which you were hewn—The allegory is
explained in the following verse: “The rock from which you were hewn” refers to
their ancestor, Abraham. The phrases are somewhat elliptical and both omit ממנו (“from
which”). (See Ibn Balaam [ed. Goshen-Gottstein], 206; Saadyah Gaon, 114; Ibn
Ganaḥ, Sefer ha-Riqmah, 287; Ibn
Ezra; Kimchi.) For the expression חצב אבן, see 2 Kgs 12:13; and for the verb חצב, see Isa 5:2; 22:16. (The root here in the
archaic qal passive is sui generis.)
It also appears in the first line of a Hebrew burial inscription: ברך חצבך, “Bless
those who hewed you” (see R. Deutsch and M. Heltzer, Forty New Ancient West Semitic Inscriptions [Tel Aviv, 1994], 27,
no. 7a, line 1) and in the Siloam Tunnel Inscription, החצבם, “the excavators” (KAI 189:4, 6; and see the following hemistich). (Shalom M. Paul, Isaiah
40-66: Translation and Commentary [Eerdmans Critical Commentary; Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2012], 358)
One final point for consideration is that
of John 1:42:
He brought him to
Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon the son of John; you
shall be called Cephas" (Κηφας), which is by interpretation, A stone
(Πετρος).
The NASB renders this passage:
He brought Simon to
Jesus, who looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John. You are to
be called Cephas" (which is translated Peter).
This passage should also be noteworthy to
Latter-day Saints, as in the JST, it reads "Cephas, which is, by
interpretation, a seer, or a stone" (cf. Mosiah 8:16), emphasising the
important role the person of Peter would play in the early NT Church. To quote
again from Reformed scholar D.A. Carson:
But, says Jesus, You
will be called Cephas: doubtless in Aramaic the expression was kêpā’,
a word meaning ‘rock’. The terminal ‘s’ in ‘Cephas’ reflects an attempt to give
the Aramaic word a Greek spelling (a pattern also adopted by Paul, e.g. 1
Cor. 9:5; Gal. 1:18). Because most of his readers cannot be expected to know
any semitic language, John provides the translation, ‘Peter’. (D.A. Carson, The
Gospel According to John [The Pillar New Testament Commentary; Nottingham:
Apollos, 1991], 156)
As a group of Catholic apologists also
noted:
What linguistic usage
in John 1:42 indicates that Jesus was using Cephas to be equivalent to Peter as
rock, but not as a stone? In John 1:41, the Aramaic messias is
interpreted to mean the Greek christos. Likewise, in the next verse, John
1:42, in a parallel way to the previous verse, the Aramaic kepha or kephas
(anglicized as “Cephas”) is translated into the Greek as petros (anglicized
as Peter in English Bible versions). The parallel use of Aramaic and Greek in
the two verses leads one logically to the translation: kepas = petros
= “rock.” That petros may have meant stone, or even little stone in
Greek at some other point in time is not apparent or relevant in the definitional
usage of Aramaic and Greek in the foregoing two verses of John’s Gospel.
“Understanding that
Jesus spoke [to Peter] in Aramaic (e.g., he called him Cephas, which is
[anglicized] Aramaic, in John 1:42) and that Matthew was originally written in
Aramaic as well, if Jesus had intended to characterize Peter as a “little stone”
as opposed to a massive rock in John 1:42 or Matthew 16:18, there were perfectly
adequate Aramaic words which could signify such a diminution. For example, evna
in Aramaic means ‘little stone.’” Robert A. Sungenis, “Will the Real Rock
Please Stand Up?,” letter to authors, June 1994, 4. (Scott Butler, Norman
Dahlgren, and David Hess, Jesus, Peter and the Keys: A Scriptural Handbook
on the Papacy [Santa Barbara, Calif.: Queenship Publishing Company, 1996],
26-27)
As we see, arguing that Peter cannot be
the “rock” of Matt 16:18 because of passages such as 1 Cor 10:4 rests on poor
logic and lousy eisegesis. If one wishes to hold to an interpretation of πετρα being something
other than the person of Peter (Christ or Peter’s confession, for e.g.) one
will have to look elsewhere to make their case. This argument should be
retired by those who care about meaningful exegesis.
