- Jesus didn't exist, so it makes no difference
- Jesus thought that the end of the world was coming soon, so there's no way he was engaged in succession planning and the whole section was added later
- Jesus didn't think the world was ending soon (amuse yourselves by going down the dispensationalist rabbit hole) but this section was added later to support the evolving reality of Bishops of Rome as the top leaders of the church
- Jesus didn't think the world was ending soon and was quoted accurately -- and was engaged in succession planning (basically the Catholic position)
- Jesus was quoted accurately but was really saying that he, Jesus, was the rock on which the church would be built (basically the Protestant position)
And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I
will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I
will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on
earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed
in heaven.
The text looks pretty clear, although the Greek word for "Peter" is not the exact same word as "rock" (The Greek word that is translated "Peter" basically means "rock" or "stone"). Let's substitute "Rock" for "Peter": "And I tell you that you are Rock, and on this rock I will build my church...". It's even clearer when you construct it like that. And that next phrase: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. -- it seems inarguable that Jesus is naming Peter as his successor. And that's what the Catholics believe it means. But wait! The Protestants disagree!
The main Protestant argument against Peter as a Pope is presented here in a quotation from Oswald J. Smith:
The Greek word for Peter is ‘petros,’ meaning ‘a little
stone.’ The word for rock is ‘petra,’ meaning ‘The Rock.’
What Jesus said was, ‘I will build my Church on The Rock.’ He himself was
The Rock. He never said He would build His Church on Peter, ‘a little
stone.’ That would be too faulty a foundation. In 1 Peter 2:5-8,
Peter himself speaks of believers as stones and of Jesus as a rock. So,
in Eph. 2:19-21, Jesus is the Corner Stone, the Foundation. The Church,
therefore, is built not on Peter or his successors but on Jesus Christ
Himself—The Rock.
I was exposed to this argument many years ago, and I believed it, mainly because the minister who related it sounded like he knew what he was talking about. But it all rests upon making a distinction between"petros" and "petra". I'm no Greek scholar, but I do know that word endings are much more significant in Greek than they are in English. Petra, translated "rock" is, in Greek, a feminine noun. Giving Simon (Peter's original name) a feminine nickname doesn't sound likely to me, so the "os" ending made Petros a masculine name. There's also the matter of the language that Jesus was speaking - it wasn't Greek. The word translated "Peter", as well as the word translated "rock" are both kepha in Aramaic, the common language in Jewish lands. The Protestant argument, like a lot of attempts to make the Bible coherent, twists logic into a pretzel and makes language and grammar sit up and beg.
This doesn't mean that I think that Matthew 16:18-19 is legitimate succession planning. Even if Jesus existed (I lean toward the existence of someone upon whom the biblical Jesus is based) the Synoptic Gospels portray Jesus as preaching that everyone should get themselves right before God because the world would be ending very, very soon.
As I said in another article, there is nothing in canonical scripture to indicate that Peter was the sole leader, or even that he was ever in Rome. Paul is documented as having much greater influence in building the church through missionary activity and James, Jesus' brother, is implied to have been the leader in Jerusalem. It seems likely to me that Matthew 16:18-19 was a later addition to lend support to the evolving reality on the ground which had the Bishops of Rome asserting themselves as first among equals, if not absolute rulers of the growing church, and retconning an unbroken line of bishops stretching back to Peter. It makes sense that creating the idea that someone was spiritually in charge was a way to reign in the various sects and the contradictory "scriptures" (at least more contradictory than the ones we ended up with) that were all competing for attention. It looks at odds with how things operated in The Acts of the Apostles, but how long could that "all things in common" small-scale churches in people's homes continued? Things change and evolve to fit changing circumstances, and somebody cooked up some quotable quotes to baptize what they already decided to do.
Granted, there is no scriptural model for the top-down hierarchical structure with a Pope at the top. But it's in The Bible now, and the Protestants can either accept it or accept that the Bible isn't inerrant.
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