Earlier this month, I began a series of “simple cases” for the visible Church, the papacy, and the Eucharist. By “simple case,” I just mean that it’s overwhelming to through a gazillion Bible verses at people. So I’ve tried to highlight just a few passages to read carefully, pray over, and know well. Here’s the “simple case” for the Biblical origin of the papacy:

Assuming that Christ established a visible Church, why be Catholic instead of Orthodox (or Anglican)? Because of the papacy. Jesus built His Church upon Peter. Because of the papacy. Jesus built His Church upon Peter. Let’s start with Matthew 16:13-19:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 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 on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell 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.”

Brother Jordan Scott, O.P., points to a good commentary from Bishop Fulton Sheen:

Fulton Sheen observes that at the pivotal moment when Jesus asked his apostles ‘who do men say that I am’ he tried out all possible forms of Church governance. Was the Church to be a democracy? Who did the multitudes think Jesus was? To which there was a multitude of answers: Elijah, John the Baptist, Jeremiah. Perhaps then the Church would be modelled after an aristocracy: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ But to this question the apostles had no words. Then, speaking up for himself, Peter confessed his faith ‘you are the Christ, the son of the living God.’ The Church of Christ was to be monarchic and its governance left in the custodianship of the fisherman Simon: ‘I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my Church… I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven’ (Matthew 16: 13-20).

Jesus could have set up His Church any way He chose (democracies and aristocracies had existed before this, and besides, Jesus is the all-knowing God), but we can see His choice from the evidence of Scripture.

Further strengthening this point is that Jesus renames Simon to “Peter,” a name meaning “Rock.” So Jesus literally says to him, “You are Rock, and upon this rock I will build My Church.” Now here, there can be a debate over the nuances of the language, so let me just present you the basic Protestant objection, and two things to know in response.

The Objection

Protestants will often claim that no, Jesus says to Peter in Greek: “you are Petros [small rock], and upon this petra [large rock] I will build my Church.” How should you respond?

First: ask, don’t tell. If Jesus doesn’t mean Peter, who is the “petra” or “rock” that He’s referring to? Typically, if they reject the Catholic interpretation, Protestants don’t have a clear idea of what Jesus means. For example, here’s the commentary by the Southern Baptist preacher and Biblical scholar A.T. Robinson (1863-1934):

Jesus makes a play upon the name Peter (Rock). It is not perfectly clear how Jesus means the figure to be applied. He could mean himself (Christ) by “this rock,” if he pointed to himself. […] Jesus could mean Peter himself by “this rock,” as representative of the twelve and as confessing his faith in Christ. […] Or Jesus could mean the confession of trust made by Peter as the rock on which, in truth, the kingdom is built. The matter can never be settled for all minds. [1]

Notice how much this sounds like “some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

Based on what the other person says, you can then respond directly to their argument, rather than to an argument that they’re not making. So if they claim that Jesus means Himself – does it make sense that He would say “upon Myself I will build My Church”? Or if they claim that Jesus calls Peter’s confession of faith “the rock,” why does He rename Simon and not any of the other people who confessed Him as the Christ? After all, we see from John 1 that Peter was hardly the first. The great Lutheran theologian Oscar Cullman admits that

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. He appoints Peter, the impulsive, enthusiastic, but not persevering man in the circle, to be the foundation of His ecclesia. [2]

Second, recognize that Jesus is blessing Peter personally. He calls him out by name (Simon), by a sort of surname (bar-Jona, or “son of Jonah”), says God has revealed the answer to him, gives him the Keys of the Kingdom, and gives him personally the infallible binding-and-loosening power that He elsewhere gives to the assembled Church. This is an extremely personal blessing, and you should read it akin to how we read Genesis 17:4-8,

Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. And I will give to you, and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

So the Catholic interpretation is the most faithful to the text and the context. Even D.A. Carson, the founder and president of the Gospel Coalition (a popular Reformed Evangelical fellowship), said that “if it were not for Protestant reactions against extremes of Roman Catholic interpretation, it is doubtful whether many would have taken ‘rock’ to be anything or anyone other than Peter.”[3]

Third, recognize that the Protestant claims are based upon false linguistic claims. Remember that the Protestant claim is that Jesus said to Peter in Greek: “you are Petros [small rock], and upon this petra [large rock] I will build my Church.”

One reason that this is false is that Jesus didn’t say these words in Greek. He said them in Aramaic, as John 1:40-42 says,

One of the two who heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon, and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him, and said, “So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).

Notice that Andrew confesses Jesus as the Messiah, yet Jesus changes Simon’s name to “Cephas” or Kepha, the Aramaic word for “rock” (not just “small rock”). So the Aramaic blessing would have simply been “You are Rock, and upon this rock I will build My Church.” This is why St. Paul often refers to Peter as “Cephas” – because his name was Aramaic, not Greek.

The other reason this linguistic claim is false is that Petros didn’t just mean “small rock.” In ancient Greek literature, it often means a very large rock. For example, Apollonius of Rhodes, a Greek poet from the 3rd century B.C., used petros to describe a boulder so large that four men couldn’t move it.

So why does St. Matthew translate the Aramaic as “Petros” for Peter and “petra” for the rock upon which Jesus will build His Church? Because petra is the ordinary word for rock (petros is never used in Scripture to refer to a rock; it’s only used as Peter’s name), but it’s a feminine noun. And Cephas’ name had already been translated in Greek as “Petros,” which is the masculine form of the noun. Remember that petros still means “rock”– it’s just a lesser-used word for it.

An alternative route: Luke 22.

Hopefully the case from Matthew 16 makes sense to you. Even if you ignore the identity of the “rock,” you’ve still got Jesus giving Peter individually the binding and loosening power, and the keys of the Kingdom. There’s no grammatical debate over any of that. But just in case you find the whole debate over the “rock” to be intimidating, there’s another way you can get to the same conclusion.

In Luke 22, at the Last Supper, the Apostles are debating about which of them is the greatest, and Jesus says in response “let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves” (Luke 22:26). And then He singles out Peter and says (Luke 22:31-32): “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you [y’all], that he might sift you [y’all] like wheat, but I have prayed for you [singular] that your [singular] faith may not fail; and when you [singular] have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” In other words, Jesus says that authority is for service, and then places Peter in charge of strengthening the rest of the Apostles. So Peter’s relationship to them is a bit like their relationship to the rest of the Church. I think that this is actually the clearest and easiest “proof” for the papacy, because it shows that we don’t think of the pope as a tyrant, but as the “Servant of the Servants of God.”

——

Passages to know: Matthew 16:15-19 and Luke 22:24-34.

[1] A.T. Robinson, Commentary on the Gospel According to Matthew (New York: Macmillan Company, 1911), p. 191.

[2] Oscar Cullmann, “Πέτρος, Κηφᾶς,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. 6, eds. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friendrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1968), p. 108.

[3] D.A. Carson, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 9: Matthew and Mark, eds. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), p. 418.