Elena LaVictoire's Library tagged apologetics →  View Popular

Now you might say, "That's as plain as the nose on your face.
What's the excitement of that discovery?" Well, non-Catholics
frequently claim that it's Peter's faith that Jesus is speaking of, or
Peter's confession that Jesus is speaking of when He says, "this
rock." Or other Protestants object and say, "No, Jesus says, 'And you
are petros.'" You are petros, you are rock, and on this petra, the
Greek word for large rock, "I will build my Church." So some
Protestants object to the Catholic view and say, "What Jesus is really
saying is. 'You're a little pebble and on this rock, namely Christ,
the Rock, (1 Corinthians, 10:4 and so on) I will build my Church.'"

Now the closer I studied the more I realized that those positions
were untenable, simply untenable. And I'm going to share in a few
minutes the fact that most conservative anti-Catholic Protestant
scholars today will admit that readily and candidly. The more I dug,
the more I found that the evidence pointed to the fact that Jesus was
speaking of Peter. Peter is the Rock. Peter just said, "You are the
Christos," so Jesus says, "You are the Petros." There is a little
parallelism there. "You are the Son of the Living God" and "You are
the son of Jonah, Simon Bar-Jonah; you are the Petros."

Now people could say, "Wait a second. There is a distinction in
the Greek language between petros," Peter's name and petra. Petros
can mean stone, whereas petra can often mean "big rock." The problem
with that is two-fold. First of all, Jesus probably didn't speak
Greek when He was with the disciples. I mean that is held by 99.9
percent of all scholars. It's overwhelmingly unlikely that Jesus in
His normal conversations spoke Greek. What's almost certain is that
He spoke Aramaic and in the Aramaic there is only one word that could
possibly be used and Kouman and other scholars have pointed to the
fact that if Jesus spoke Aramaic, He only could have said, "You are
Cephus, and on this Cephus I build my Church." So given our knowledge
of the Aramaic language, there is no possibility for Jesus to have
made the distinction between "little stone" and "big rock." The
Aramaic language doesn't allow it.

Well, somebody could say, "The Holy Spirit inspired Matthew to use
two different words. Well, that's true, because "petra" is the word
in Greek that is normally used for "large rock," but - I should say
petra is the Greek word that means "large rock" but it's in the
feminine form. In other words, the gender of this Greek word, petra,
large rock, is feminine. You do not apply a feminine form of the word in
order to name a male. You adopt it by giving the masculine form. In
other words what Matthew was doing, guided by the Holy Spirit, is
something that was rather obvious and practically necessary. That was to
take the Greek from Jesus' saying and start by saying, "I will build my
Church on this massive stone, this 'petra' in the feminine but then to
show that Peter gets the name, "Rock" in its proper masculine form.

Dr. France says, "That's just not tenable." When you study this
you realize that all of the evidence in the text shows that this is
one of the original sayings of Jesus. He goes on to say, "Jesus'
beatitude of Peter or His blessing is given to Peter alone. The
other disciples may have shared his insight but Peter,
characteristically expressed it. Matthew often illustrates Peter's
place at the head of the disciples' group. He was the spokesman, the
pioneer, the natural leader." He goes on to talk about how Peter is
referenced to the Rock. France says, "It describes not so much Peter's
character, that is the Rock. He did not prove to be rock-like in terms
of stability or reliability but rather the name Rock or Peter points
to his function as the foundation stone of Jesus' Church."

This is a non-Catholic. This is an Evangelical Protestant who has
absolutely no interest in supporting the Church's claims but he says,
"The term Peter, Rock, points to Simon and not his character because
he could be very unstable, but rather his official function as the
foundation stone of Jesus' Church. The word-play is unmistakable." He
says, "It is only Protestant over-reaction to the Roman Catholic
claim, of course, which has no foundation in the text, that what is
here said of Peter applies also to the later Bishops of Rome." In
other words France is saying, "We can't apply this to the Popes, the
later Bishops of Rome." I'll overthrow that opinion in a few minutes,
I think, but France is very candid in saying, "Look, it's only because
we Protestants have over-reacted to the Catholic Church that we are
not frank and sincere in admitting the fact that Peter is the Rock. He
is the foundation stone upon which Jesus is going to build the
Church."

One of the greatest Protestant Biblical scholars of the century
supports this -- W. F. Albright, in his Anchor Bible Commentary on
Matthew. I opened it up. I was surprised to see, "Peter as the Rock
will be the foundation of the future community, the church. Jesus here
uses Aramaic and so only the Aramaic word which would serve His
purpose. In view of the background in verse 19, one must dismiss as
confessional interpretation any attempt to see this rock as the faith
or the confession of Peter." In other words, Professor Albright is
admitting as a Protestant that there is a bias in Protestant anti-
Catholic interpreters who try to make Jesus' reference to the rock
point only to Peter's faith or confession. "To deny the pre-eminent
position of Peter," Albright says, "among the disciples or in the
early Christian community is a denial of the evidence. The interest in
Peter's failures and vacillations does not detract from this pre-
eminence, rather it emphasizes it. Had Peter been a lesser figure, his
behavior would have been of far less consequence. Precisely because
Peter is pre-eminent and is the foundation stone of the Church that
his mistakes are in a sense so important, but his mistakes never
correspond to his teachings as the Prince of the Apostles." We will
see."

Albright goes on in his commentary to speak about the keys of the
kingdom that Jesus entrusted to Peter. Here's what he says, "Isaiah
22, verse 15, undoubtedly lies behind this saying of Jesus. The keys
are the symbol of authority and Father Roland DeVoe rightly sees here
the same authority vested in the vicar, the master of the house, the
chamberlain of the royal household in ancient Israel. In Isaiah 22
Eliakim is described as having the same authority."

Now let's just stop here and ask, "What is he talking about?" I
think it's simple. Albright is saying that Jesus in giving to Peter
not only a new name, Rock, but in entrusting to Simon the keys of the
kingdom, He is borrowing a phrase from Isaiah 22. He's quoting a verse
in the Old Testament that was extremely well known. This, for me, was
the breakthrough. This discovery was the most important discovery of
all. Let's go back to Isaiah 22 and see what Jesus was doing when He
entrusted to Peter the keys of the kingdom.

By the way, I do not find hardly any Catholic defenders of the
faith these days with awareness of this particular point. This was the
point above all points for me. It was the point that the defenders of
the Catholic faith in the 16th and 17th Centuries were very aware of,
but for some reason amnesia has set in upon many defenders and
interpreters not aware of how crucial this particular passage is. In
Isaiah 22 beginning back in verses 19 and 20, we have some very
interesting background. This is where Jesus goes for a quotation to
cite this passage.