The promised apology

This is my promised apology…

“Okay, Minion, you were right, and I was…less right” – Megamind

Okay, not that kind of apology… On Monday, when I put up the “Lectionary Notes” for yesterday’s Mass Readings, I said that later in the week I would try to do a slightly more apologetics-related post concerning Matthew 16.

Since this is an apologetics entry, if you haven’t read my Ecumenical Apologist post, I would invite you to read that first since it explains something of my perspective and my attempted approach with posts like this.

I was running a little low on time this week so I dug through my email and found a correspondence from a few years ago with a non-Catholic whom we will call “Jay”. Jay raised the question of the Pope early on in our correspondence, but I had resisted talking about the issue of the Papacy until we had covered some more fundamental issues (authority, the canon etc.).

Anyway, here’s what I said in response to his statements about Matthew 16…

Dear Jay,

Thanks for your last email…

Pope Fiction

Matthew 16 is certainly one of the main passages referred to when talking about authority.  This was the passage which convinced me of Petrine Primacy and Apostolic Succession – something I had struggled with for a long time…

It’s worth saying before I work through this passage that it isn’t hard to find Evangelical, even anti-Catholic scholars who will agree with about 90% of what I’m about to say.  I’m not saying this because I think that you’ll listen to them, only to make the point that rejection of Peter as the rock is not automatic by the entire non-Catholic world (W.F. Albright, Gerhard Meyer, Donald Carson, R.T France, Herman Ridderbos, …).

Can you smell what The Rock is cookin’?

You quite correctly emphasize that verse 17 (“…flesh and blood did not reveal this to you…”) shows Peter’s confession was a gift from the Father.  Verse 23 (“Get behind me Satan!”) only serves to emphasize Peter’s general lack of natural ability.  Peter isn’t entitled to lead the Church because of his intelligence, strength or impeccability – it’s all about God and the special gift that He gives.  Jesus didn’t call Simon “rock” because of his rock-like character, any more than Yahweh called Abram “father of many” because of his large family.

[You said that in all other parts of Scripture the only “rock” referred to is God Himself.] Actually, Isaiah 51:1-2 describes Abraham as the rock from which Israel was hewn.  But even if this passage didn’t exist, just because God is described as “the rock” in other parts of scripture it doesn’t preclude the possibility of “rock” later being applied to a human – particularly when that person also receives it as a name and it is given to him by God Himself!  In the same way, surely God alone is the shepherd of His sheep? Yet Jesus tells Peter to “feed my lambs” (Jn 21:15).

You are also quite right when you say two different words are used for “rock” in this passage: “petros” and “petra”.  However, it is actually debatable as to whether these two words meant two different rock sizes in first century Greek (it appears to be the case in Attic Greek, but in Koine Greek?) 

However, first things first – in what language would this dialogue have been?  It would most likely not have taken place in Greek, but in Aramaic, where there is but one word for rock: kepha (John 1:42).  So literally Jesus would have said: “You are kepha and on this kepha I will build my church”.  Here there is no possible distinction or suggestion of differing rock size.  This is the same Aramaic word Paul uses in his letters when referring to Peter (1 Cor 1:12, 3:22, 9:5), even though Paul himself wrote in Greek.

But why did the Holy Spirit lead Matthew to use two different words when he wrote his Gospel?  Well, for a start, some early sources contend that Matthew’s Gospel was originally written in Aramaic or Hebrew and then subsequently translated into Greek, but even if we dismiss that, the answer is simple – the writer of the Greek had no real choice…

[In English, unlike in other languages, inanimate objects do not have gender. For example, in French, “house” is feminine (“la maison”) whereas “bed” is masculine (“le lit”). There are some rare cases of something similar in English, such as when sailors refer to ships as “she”].  In Greek, “Petra” is a feminine  noun and therefore inappropriate for use as a man’s name (it would make it something like “Rockelle” or “Rockette”), so the author of the Gospel simply changed the gender, rendering “petra” as “petros” (and thereby changing “Rockelle” or “Rockette” to “Rocky”).   Even with this gender change in the Greek, the wordplay Jesus is using is unmistakable.

Also, had differing rock sizes been important to the author of this Greek Gospel, “lithos” (1 Peter 2:4-5) could have been used and this would have worked rather better as it’s already a male noun.  

I got flow…

However, even if we push all this aside, if we decide to designate Jesus as the rock and downplay Peter, we break the flow of the passage:

 “Simon, you are greatly blessed by the Father…you are but a tiny pebble but on this massive rock (me) I will build my Church…and I’m going to give you the keys to the kingdom“

The flow of blessings makes much more sense if we assume Peter is the rock:

 “Simon, you are greatly blessed by the Father…you are the rock on which I’m going to build my church…and I’m going to give you the keys to the kingdom”

The keys to the issue

Even if you disagree with everything I’ve said so far, you have to agree that Jesus gave Peter “the keys of the kingdom” because it is absolutely explicit in Matthew 16.  Personally, this is what made sense of the papacy for me.  So, what do we make of these keys?

The Davidic Kingdom

The central thrust of Matthew’s Gospel is how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Davidic Kingdom.  Therefore, when I looked back into how the Davidic Dynasty operated, the significance of the keys suddenly became clear.  In Isaiah 22:22 (which Jesus closely parallels in Matthew 16) we see that in the original Davidic Kingdom there was a chief steward. This chief steward was the prime minister who administered the royal household and the affairs of the kingdom.  The king was still ultimately in charge, but this minister had tremendous power – he was a shepherd and father-figure in the kingdom.  You might even call him the King’s “vicar”…

So where do the keys fit in?  The keys symbolized authority passed from the king to the minister.  Now, there were other ministers in the kingdom, but this chamberlain had far more power in “binding”, “loosing”, “opening” and “closing”.

Also, this wasn’t an honor just given to one man at one time in history, but it was an office in the kingdom. The keys were passed from one prime minister to the next, conferring authority onto their next holder.

The New Kingdom

Returning to 28 AD, we see Jesus setting up the new Davidic Kingdom, conferring on Peter an amazing grace – giving him the keys, a sign of his primacy among the ministers of this new kingdom.  It was an office which would be filled by the men who came after him.  [There is strong patristic support for this] .

This idea of an office is also seen in the Book of Acts when Peter says that, following Judas’ death, his office/episkope/bishoprick should be filled. This is not debated among the Apostles. A space is vacant and must be filled! The idea of conferred authority isn’t new either – Jesus told His listeners to obey the Pharisees because they sit on the “seat of Moses” (Exodus 18:13, Matthew 23:1-3).

Talking heads

Now, [Jay], you make lots of statements about Jesus Christ being the head of the Church.  What does Joe Catholic say?  He gives a hearty “Amen!” Of course Jesus is the head of the Church – he’s the King of the Kingdom.

However….this doesn’t preclude authority being given to the offices held by the Lord’s ministers here on earth. The Catholic Church teaches that this special grace has been given to the magisterial teaching authority of the Church and, in particular, to one man.  A man who is “set apart”, a “shepherd”, a “father”, the “vicar” of Christ…and who is the “servant of the servants of God”, who teaches from the seat of Peter, and who is today is Pope Benedict XVI.

God bless,

David.

So that’s what I wrote…hopefully giving my answer with gentleness and respect.

As I said at the beginning of this post, you can only really talk about the Papacy once you’ve discussed the general issues of authority in the Church and the Canon of Scripture itself. Hopefully I’ll organize myself and finally write about those issues soon…