Quoting
@Derf "Matthew 16:18 KJV — And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
And (this follows something else He just said) I say also (again, He's adding to something He's already told them) unto thee, That thou art Peter (so the "thee" is Peter, the man Simon (Simon is one of the names of the 12 patriarchs, was Peter a Simeonite?), and Jesus is changing his name to Peter right here in this verse), and (again He is adding to what He just said) upon this rock (obv you are right, there in the Greek are two different morphologies of the root Greek word for rock; one with the linguistic affix "OS", which is the masculine affix, which makes sense, because he's Peter, and his pronouns are 'he-him', and the point made here also is that Jesus and Peter were speaking Aramaic and not Greek, and Matthew was even recording his notes which would contribute to His Gospel account later on, in Aramaic, and even if Matthew did not record notes in Aramaic, but only wrote his Gospel account later on from the Holy Spirit invigorating his memory, he wrote in Aramaic, and even if Matthew was written originally in Greek, the actual, ontological conversation was in Aramaic, and in Aramaic, there is no morphological difference between the reason given by Evangelicals as to why in the Greek they are morphologically different, which is because words get different affixes depending on their pronouns, and in English 'rock' doesn't have for us an affix for pronouns, but in Greek it does, and in Aramaic it doesn't, which means that the actual ontological conversation was c. "You are the rock, and upon this rock") I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
I can barely read this run-on sentence
Yeah big time—agreed. But come on—you like Paul—Paul is the king of giant run-on sentences lol.
, but basically, you're saying "because I can read my belief into this one verse, therefore it must be Peter who is the rock Jesus will build His church upon"....
All right. Well, I admit this—I shouldn't have focused on the masculine feminine thing. I realize now that the best way to argue my point is to just say how remarkable it is that Jesus named Peter AFTER HIMSELF, now that I can see your whole argument set out plainly. Clearly you've established that Jesus and God is the Rock, is called Rock, as in "my rock". And so therefore, it comes down to whether or not Peter is literally the same word that is used in the rest of Scripture, especially in the Septuagint, being the Greek language context of all the Greek used in all the New Testament—or if it's different.
Clearly morphologically Peter is different from petra. Petra versus petros. Morphology's different.
So therefore this is unsurprising under your claim, which is a point for you. All throughout the Greek Septuagint God is called petra, metaphorically. And then Peter shows up in the New Testament, and he's called petros, not petra. If puts me on the defensive, meaning that it serves as a defeater. A defeater doesn't have to succeed or obtain in order to nonetheless be a defeater, a defeater needs to merely provide an initially highly plausible challenge to the claim in question, and certainly when I'm saying that Jesus is literally calling Peter the very same thing that all throughout the Bible, God is called, and Christ Himself is called by this word rock, in Greek, petra—this term is applied to God and to Jesus, and now Jesus is applying THE SAME WORD to Peter—obv if Peter is SPELLED WRONG this is a defeater against my claim.
Because my claim is pretty big, no? I'm claiming that all your work you've done to pretty clearly show that the word rock is applied to God and Christ, all throughout Scripture, only underscores how deeply SIGNIFICANT it is that Peter's called 'Peter', because Christ is calling him what is only used metaphorically for GOD, up to that point. At least according to the Bible. We don't really know if other things besides God were also called metaphorically rock. That's extra-Biblical information that we don't have. Within the Bible alone (the Septuagint), rock is used metaphorically about God alone, and then, so my claim goes, Jesus calls Peter that very same 'rock'.
So that is a hugely significant claim. Because if Jesus called Peter petra it's all over, right? If He said, you are petra and on this petra, then you'd all be Roman Catholic simpliciter, right? I mean that's how big this point is, no?
.... Completely ignoring the fact that instead of eisegeting my beliefs into scripture, like you're doing here, I went and used other scripture to interpret this verse, showing that God, not a man, is called the rock and salvation in Hebrew (for Jesus is God); that Jesus said that someone who listens to His words is like someone who builds his house upon rock (the same petra Jesus used); that Paul stated plainly that the Rock in the Old Testament was Christ; and that Peter himself, who you claim is the one Jesus was going to build his church upon, said that JESUS was the chief cornerstone, (literally the most important stone in any building, for without it, the building would collapse), a petra laid in Zion.
The word for stone as in cornerstone is not the same word as rock in English, are they the same in Greek? That's interesting if they are.
So who's right?
You, who reads his beliefs into the text?
Or Peter, Paul, Jesus, and the rest of the Biblical authors?
You are right. I'm just saying that it's monumentally significant that Jesus calls Peter petra.
You say "well, they were speaking in aramaic."
Because it's relevant. See below. There's a Mr. Rock, and Mrs. Rock, they're called petros and petra, and if ever we're going to name a boy rock, in Greek, we're going to call him Mr. Rock and not Mrs. Rock. I mean if we're going to give him a name. Not if we say, "So-and-so is like a rock", we don't have to change the pronouns, since this metaphor serves a different purpose, we're not comparing So-and-so to a rock and then for some reason referring to So-and-so AS rock from now on. That's a different context. In the context where you're going to CALL someone something, and the word you're going to call them has pronouns, or has an option between Mr. and Mrs., all of us change the name to suit the subject, if our daughter is named Daniel, why aren't we calling her Danielle? How about Paul versus Pauline? Georgina or George? We do this with names, but not with words.
Irrelevant. The words used have certain meaning to them. You can't just change their meaning to suit your beliefs.
Yeah, and I mean, if petros and petra are not the same word—and they're clearly morphologically not the same word, for sure, but I've given a reason why maybe they are nonetheless in their linguistic deep structure, the ontologically same word—if they are not the same word, then you're 100% right and I'm 100% wrong, no other option. I admit it. So it definitely all comes down to whether or not basically, Jesus DID call Peter petra. Did that happen, yes or no? (I'm asking rhetorically.) Morphologically no. petros and petra are not the same, things that are different are not the same. If they were speaking Aramaic however, this serves as a defeater for your view. It doesn't mean the defeater prevails, or succeeds, or obtains, but it does have some initial plausibility.
Cephas is the Hellenized form of the Aramaic word for rock.
Oh! And one final point: if Peter truly was the one Jesus was referring to, when he said "the gates of hell will not prevail against the church founded upon it," then it wouldn't be very reliable, would it... Since just a few chapters later, Peter literally denied Christ...
That doesn't negate Jesus's words though, is all. It is a bad look for Peter, for sure, but why would we immediately forget what Jesus just said beforehand? just because of some stumbling that Peter did. Everybody stumbles, and when we stumble, oftentimes we can get back up again, and Peter did too.
That's not a very firm foundation, one that would allow the church to withstand the gates of hell...
Roman Catholic simpliciter theology of the papacy is nuanced, but I think it could use some updating for the sake of keeping up with linguistics. The chair of Peter is in some sense the throne of David and the seat of Moses, at least in a New Covenant context and or sense. Under this view, Jesus is merely giving this throne and seat to Peter for safekeeping. Isaiah 22:22 is a precedence or type of what He's doing, or what He's talking about doing. He hasn't done it yet, in Matthew 16, He's saying He's GOING TO do it, but He hasn't yet. So Peter stumbling and denying the Lord, and everything else Peter did before the passion and cross, he wasn't the pope yet, Christ Himself ofc was the reigning monarch, and He was Really Present still.
In Isaiah 22:22 the throne of David is ontic, it's ontologically real, even though only what might be called the king's vicar or prime minister, was sitting on it. He was a servant, sitting on the king's throne, while the king was away. The king's throne is real, but the guy on the throne isn't the king, but, he's able to discharge the king's powers. That's his position. Or office. And any number of other synonyms; role, job, responsibility, etc.
That's what Jesus gave to Peter. He made it clear He was giving it to all His Apostles too—don't worry, I'm not forgetting that. It had to be that way, since what would happen when Peter dies? to Christ's throne? The surviving Apostles had to decide what to do with Peter's chair. So they all had to possess the seat of Peter—they didn't all OCCUPY it, but they had CUSTODY of it, they were all collectively the custodians or maybe even guardians of it. Peter himself sat on the seat while he was alive, but the seat itself, that office of prime minister or vicar of the king, was given not only to him but to all the Apostles.
When Jesus says He's going to call Simon or Simeon "Rock", He wasn't even so much renaming him as starting to refer to him by his new role, like a captain of a team might be called "Captain" now, instead of his original name. Like your name is JR, if you become the captain of TOL somehow maybe we now call you Captain or Cap. New name, totally different from your original name, but with Captain we know that's a leadership nickname.
What we don't know exactly is why Peter was given the name rock, because like you've demonstrated over and over again, rock was only applied in the Bible metaphorically to God and Jesus Himself, before Jesus called Peter rock.
But as I said above, if Peter isn't really a new name so much as an indication that Peter's in a new position now, or is serving a new role, then "rock" means this throne and seat, and Peter being called rock means he and he alone is going to be allowed to sit on it, and wield its powers, while Jesus is away, seated at the right hand of the Father, while His enemies are made into His footstool.
That rock is what Jesus is going to build His Church on, according to Roman Catholic simpliciter theology of the papacy.
No. JESUS is the rock that He built His church upon. Scripture affirms this throughout.
And that is now what I have said too. Agreed?
