Seven Reasons Why Peter is the Rock
by Tim Staples - Catholic Answers
Few texts have been the occasion for the spilling of more ink than
Matthew 16:17-19:
And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
For Catholics, this text is clear. All twelve apostles were present, yet
Jesus promised to give to
Peter alone the keys of the kingdom, symbolizing
the authority of Christ—the authority of heaven—over the kingdom of heaven on Earth, which is the Church. Yet millions of Protestants believe that there is a distinction in meaning in the Greek text between the two “rocks” that would eliminate Peter from consideration for being
the rock.
“Thou art
petros and upon this
petra I will build my church . . .” The first rock,
petros, is claimed to refer to a small, insignificant rock: Peter. The second,
petra, is claimed to mean a massive boulder: that would be either Jesus or Peter’s confession of faith. The argument concludes Jesus did not build his church upon St. Peter but either upon himself or Peter’s faith.
Below are seven reasons, among many others we could examine, why Peter is undeniably the rock:
1) Matthew, we have pretty solid evidence, was originally written in Aramaic. Both Sts. Papias and Irenaeus tell us as much in the second century. But even more importantly—and more certainly—Jesus would not have spoken his discourse of Matthew 16 in Greek. Greek was the dominant language of the Roman Empire in the first century, but most of the common Jewish folk to whom Jesus spoke would not have been fluent in it. Aramaic was their spoken language.
Moreover, we have biblical evidence—John 1:42—that also points to Jesus using Aramaic in the naming of Peter: “[Andrew] brought [Peter] to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, ‘So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas’” (which means Peter).
The name
Cephas is an anglicized form of the Aramaic
Kepha, which means simply “rock.” There would have been no “small rock” to be found in Jesus’ original statement to Peter.
Even well-respected Protestant scholars will agree on this point. Baptist scholar D. A. Carson, writes, in
The Expositor’s Bible Commentary:
[T]he underlying Aramaic is in this case unquestionable; and most probably kepha was used in both clauses (“you are kepha” and “on this kepha”), since the word was used both for a name and for a “rock.” The Peshitta (written in Syriac, a language cognate with a dialect of Aramaic) makes no distinction between the words in the two clauses.
2) In Koine Greek (the dialect of Greek used by the authors of the New Testament),
petros and
petra are masculine and feminine forms of words with the same root and the same definition—
rock. There is no “small rock” to be found in the Greek text, either.
So why did St. Matthew use these two words in the same verse?
Petra was a common word used for “rock” in Greek. It’s used fifteen times to mean “rock,” “rocks,” or “rocky” in the New Testament.
Petros is an ancient Greek term that was not commonly used in Koine Greek at all. In fact, it was never used in the New Testament, except for Peter’s name after Jesus changed it from Simon to Peter.
It follows that when St. Matthew was translating, he would have used
petra for “rock.” However, in so doing, he would have encountered a problem.
Petra is a feminine noun. It would have been improper to call Peter
Petra. This would be equivalent to calling a male “Valerie” or “Priscilla” in English. Hence,
petros was used instead of
petra for Peter’s name.
3) There are several words the inspired author could have used for
rock or
stone in Greek.
Petra and
lithos were the most common. They could be used interchangeably. A connotation of “large” or “small” with either of them would depend on context. The words simply meant
rock or
stone.
Craig S. Keener, another Protestant scholar, on page 90 of
The IVP Bible Background Commentary of the New Testament, states: “In Greek (here), they (referring to petros and petra) are cognate terms that were used interchangeably by this period…” D. A. Carson points out the big/small distinction did exist in Greek, but is found only in ancient Greek (used from the eighth to the fourth century B.C.), and even there it is mostly confined to poetry. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek (used from the fourth century B.C. to the fifth century A.D.). Carson agrees with Keener and with Catholics that there is no distinction in definition between
petros and
petra.
One of the most respected and referenced Greek dictionaries among Evangelicals is Gerhard Kittel’s
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. In a most candid statement about Matthew 16:18, Dr. Oscar Cullman, a contributing editor to this work, writes:
The obvious pun which has made its way into the Greek text . . . suggests a material identity between petra and Petros . . . as it is impossible to differentiate strictly between the two words. . . . Petros himself is this petra, not just his faith or his confession. . . . The idea of the Reformers that he is referring to the faith of Peter is quite inconceivable. . . . For there is no reference here to the faith of Peter. Rather, the parallelism of “thou art Rock” and “on this rock I will build” shows that the second rock can only be the same as the first. It is thus evident that Jesus is referring to Peter, to whom he has given the name Rock. . . . To this extent Roman Catholic exegesis is right and all Protestant attempts to evade this interpretation are to be rejected.
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