How can you believe that the Church was founded upon Peter?

[Aquarius]

mercygate:

The real question is how many people could read at ALL in Europe in the 15th Century.

When was the first non-Latin bible published after 1000AD?

 

[mlchance]

Aquarius:

When was the first non-Latin bible published after 1000AD?

What an odd question. Well, here’s an answer: The Gospels were translated into Saxon around the year 1000. There were French translations as early as the 12th century. Large sections of the Old Testament, including the entire Pentateuch, were translated into English about 1010.

Moving back even earlier, Ulfilas translated at least most of the New Testament into Goth, which didn’t have a written language before he invented one for the purposes of teaching the Goths about Christ.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[askeptic]

vern humphrey:

The Oxyrhinos paprii seem to establish an earlier date for Matthew. And the idea that Matthew wrote after the Jewish War is based on the assumption that the predictions of the destruction of the Temple were after the fact and not real predictions, not on any solid evidence.

I googled “oxyrhinos paprii” and nothing came up, might you have mistyped it? Please provide a link to this reference. Thanks.

That’s an anachronistic argument – it assumes that there was an argument at the time that required Mark to include such a statement – and there wasn’t. For almost a thousand years no one questioned Peter’s authority and that of his successors.

Are you telling me that Aryans, Monophysites etc. all acknowledged Peter’s authority?

Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of the four. There are many things he did no write about. If he was writing from Peter’s dictation, remember that Peter was semi-literate, and probably produced his memoirs in a rather disjointed fashion, making them difficult to redact.

The shortest of the four which also happesn to omit the virgin birth, the whole idea that Mary was a virgin (there are in fact passages about Jesus’ brothers, which seem to imply that Mary had other children), and the shorter ending of which doesn’t even have post-resurrection appearances.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

15th century Europe–that is to say, the 1400s–saw the arrival of the printing press. 15th century Europe was pretty solidly Catholic; it is 16th century Europe that saw the rise of Protestantism with Martin Luther in 1519 onwards. 15th century Europe had the Hundred Years War going on between England and France. 15th century Europe had Isabella and Ferdinand driving the Moors from Spain and sending Columbus on his voyages. 15th century Europe was just beginning to recover from the 14th century ravages of the Black Death (Bubonic Plague), the wiping out of approximately 1/3 of the continent’s population, economic leaps–and plunges, the collapse of feudalism, the rise of the merchant class (Jacques Coeur and his department stores), the rise of bankers, incipient worries about Turkey and attacks from Asia (Kubla Khan in the previous century), and early deforestation and the beginnings of land enclosure.

Very few women could read. More men could. In a time when the average life expectancy hovered between 30 and 35, maternal mortality rates were over 50%, and even a simple cut could (sans antibiotics) lead to blood poisoning, limb amputation, and death; when the majority of people, even the wealthy, lived much closer to the land and had a much harder time simply being able to feed and clothe themselves adequately, the idea that Joe Serf, Jeanne Peasant, or even Sir Thomas or Dona Isabella would be able to find even 15 minutes out of a day to sit down and read–even in the vernacular–from an expensive book–is pretty much a late 20th early 21st century “retroview”–the idea being that because WE read regularly, our parents did, etc., that somehow everybody else in history, did, should, or COULD (and that if they DIDN’T, it was because some wicked person or group KEPT THEM FROM IT–cue ominous music here)

 

[mlchance]

askeptic:

IAre you telling me that Aryans, Monophysites etc. all acknowledged Peter’s authority?

The Arians (not Aryans) were a fourth-century heretical movement. The Monophysitists date from the fifth- and sixth-centuries. Is it your contention that Mark’s Gospel, composed in the 1st century, ought to have reminded Roman Christians who their bishop was because these groups, who arose centuries later, might have rejected Peter’s authority?

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[Atreyu]

There seem to be three possible interpretations of “this rock” in Matthew 16:18:

• rock = Peter (which actually means rock)
• rock = Christ
• rock = Peter’s confession of Christ

As far as I am aware, all three interpretations are mentioned by early church fathers, and all three interpretations are valid according to Catholic theology. Personally I believe that all three interpretations are valid; that it is an all/and situation, as opposed to an only one/or situation. The grammar of the passage leaves no doubt that there is significance to Christ changing Simon’s name to Rock, immediately followed by saying “upon this rock I will build my church”.

Christ is the Rock, and this is indeed backed up many many times in the Bible. Yet Peter is also the rock. Roady, I have a question for you. In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul writes:
10By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. 11For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
But then in Ephesians 2, Paul writes:
19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.
My question is, what is the foundation of the Church, according to Paul?

My answer to this question is as follows. Christ is the foundation of the Church. The apostles and the prophets are the foundation of the Church, with Christ as the chief cornerstone. But the word “foundation” taken in these two passages have slightly different connotations. Do you agree with this? If you do, then I can take my argument further and say, Peter is the rock upon which Christ builds His Church. Christ is the Rock. Both of these points are backed up by the Bible. But the word “rock” has slightly different connotations in each context.

Generally I’ve never seen any Protestant argue that the Church is not built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, as this clearly flies in the face of Ephesians 2. But I’ve seen Protestants fighting tooth and nail to refuse to admit that the “rock” in Matthew 16:18 is Peter. Why do they do it?! Why is it ok for the foundation of the Church to be the apostles and the prophets, but it’s not ok for the rock upon which it is built to be Peter? I don’t get it.

Oh and askeptic, Cephas is the Greek transliteration of the
Aramaic (or, Hebrew?) word for rock: Kepha. The Greek for rock is feminine petra or masculine petros. The Greek of Matthew 16:18 goes something like: “you are Petros and upon this petra I will build my church”. One of the arguments often made by Protestants is that because the Greek uses two different words for rock, therefore the word petra means something different to petros (Simon), and they emphasise that petra is a big rock, and petros is a small pebble. But Christ would almost certainly have been speaking in Aramaic, saying “you are kepha, and upon this kepha I will build my church”. Furthermore, in the Greek used at the time of the writing of Matthew (koine Greek I think it is?), there is no difference in meaning between petros and petra; it simply would have been inappropriate to call Simon petra which is feminine.

 

[askeptic]

mlchance:

The Arians (not Aryans) were a fourth-century heretical movement. The Monophysitists date from the fifth- and sixth-centuries. Is it your contention that Mark’s Gospel, composed in the 1st century, ought to have reminded Roman Christians who their bishop was because these groups, who arose centuries later, might have rejected Peter’s authority?

– Mark L. Chance.

No, it was my response to someone’s claim that not for at least 1000 years did anyone question Peter’s authority.

But your logic is flawed, does Mark need to write something just because it is being questioned, or because he wants to proclaim the truth to the Romans? He wrote about the Resurrection and Crucifixion and a number of other things to proclaim the truth, the establishing of the Church by God upon Peter is equally as important.

Plus, Mark already relates the entire passage nearly word for word but omits 4 lines of very important information. Does that make any sense at all? Aside from the crucifixion and resurrection those 4 lines are the most important thing in all of the Gospels.

Maybe an alternative explanation is that Mark didn’t write it because he never heard about it, that Luke didn’t write it because he never heard about it, that Matthew copied the passage from Mark word for word and inserted those four lines for one reason or another, perhaps to advance Peter’s claims to authority.

Or perhaps Matthew never wrote it, but later Church leaders inserted it to justify their authority.

It is still very surprising that Peter was at once apostle to the Jews and the bishop of Rome (Paul said he was the apostles to the gentiles, and went to Jerusalem to consult with Peter and the others).

 

[Brian_Ingram]

askeptic:

The NAB commentary gives reasons for the late date of Matthew(specifically presence of references to the Jewish war which happened around 70 AD etc.), I don’t know what “Patristic witness” means, but I would like to hear justifications of earlier dating of Matthew.

The word Patristic relates to the writings of the early church fathers. Jesus uttered a prophecy about the imminent destruction of Jerusalem. The NAB disingenuously says that this is proof that it was written after the event. Following that logic are all the prophecies in the Old Testament about the messiah fulfilled by Christ therefore written after the event?

Acts is acknowledged, as being written after the gospels yet mentions nothing about the Jewish Temple having been destroyed. While one might argue that it would not be noted in every work or perhaps not in the Gospels, it is unthinkable that Acts would pass over this, if this work was written subsequent to this event. The destruction of the Temple and sack of Jerusalem was a confirmation of prophecies by Jesus and would have made a theological statement to the early Church about Judaism and Christianity and would not be passed over. A reading of the Jewish historian Josephus who witnessed the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem will leave no doubt that this was the end of a world and would not have passed unmentioned in the NT.

There is no mention of the death of Peter and Paul in the book of Acts. These are the two central figures of this work and both were martyred under Nero in the 60’s. St. Luke would not pass over this, if Acts was later than the 60’s. And remember, Acts is clearly written after the Gospel of St. Luke, who wrote his after Matthew and Marks, and so whatever date is given to Acts assumes the Gospels are earlier.

There are certain references in the Gospels, such as in John 5, which strongly suggest that we are in pre-Temple destruction times when the Gospels are being written.

There is testimony from the patristic period which supports the existence of an Aramaic version of the Gospel of St. Matthew, which proponents of late dating dismiss out of hand.

The issue of dating is important in that it often reflects deeper issues below the surface. Often, those who advocate late dating are implicitly rejecting some of the historicity of the Gospels, arguing instead that many details reflect the early Church and not the words or actions of our Lord. So too there are certain assumptions in late dating which are not verifiable and are to often insisted upon as universal: e.g., that there must have been decades of oral tradition before the Gospels were written, at least in final form; that longer Gospels are later Gospels; that certain structures within the Church only existed relatively late.

Finally, some of those who hold to late dating may have an agenda. One finds that in matters which such scholars do not care to acknowledge as historical, such as the direct commissioning of Simon as Peter, the Rock of the Church, they relegate to a later period in the Church and argue that our Lord never made such a statement but that this reflects the practice which arose in the early Church.

To make this assertion misunderstands the nature of the early Church, if for example the Bishop of Rome tried to falsely make claims of pre-eminence based on Matthew 16 then you would have schism and revolt in the early Church, such was not the case.

Pax

Brian

 

[mlchance]

askeptic:

But your logic is flawed…

No, it isn’t. Your is. To wit:

askeptic:

Mark…wrote about the Resurrection and Crucifixion and a number of other things to proclaim the truth, the establishing of the Church by God upon Peter is equally as important.

According to what authority?

askeptic:

Plus, Mark already relates the entire passage nearly word for word but omits 4 lines of very important information. Does that make any sense at all? Aside from the crucifixion and resurrection those 4 lines are the most important thing in all of the Gospels.

Again, according to what authority? If you don’t have an authoritative source for this repeated claim, you’re simply begging the question.

askeptic:

Maybe an alternative explanation is that Mark didn’t write it because he never heard about it, that Luke didn’t write it because he never heard about it, that Matthew copied the passage from Mark word for word and inserted those four lines for one reason or another, perhaps to advance Peter’s claims to authority.

Or perhaps Matthew never wrote it, but later Church leaders inserted it to justify their authority.

Those are certainly alternative explanations. Do you have any evidence for any of them? If not, your alternative explanations are mere supposition based on arguments from silence, which are just as logically spurious as begging questions.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[askeptic]

And while conservatives date the gospels as early as possible to give them more credibility, skeptic scholars tend to date them much later. Given that we do not have the original manuscripts, some of these arguments are worthy of consideration:

Even John, in its narrative structure and passion story, is now considered by many scholars (see Robert Funk, Honest to Jesus, p.239) to be based on Mark or some other Synoptic stage. Gone is the old pious view that the four Gospels are independent and corroborating accounts. Instead, their strong similarities are the result of copying. This means that for the basic story of Jesus’ life and death we are dependent on a single source: whoever produced the first version of Mark. By rights, our sources should be numerous. Christian missionaries, supposedly led by the Twelve Apostles, fanned out across the empire; oral transmission, we are told, kept alive and constantly revitalized the story of Jesus’ words and deeds. Written versions of that story should have sprung up in many centres, truly independent and notably divergent. Yet when Matthew comes to write his own version of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion, all he can do is slavishly copy some document he has inherited, adding a few minor details of his own, such as the guard at the tomb. Luke does little more.

But equally important is attestation. When do the Gospels start to show up in the wider record of Christian writings? If Mark is as early as 70, and all four had been written by 100, why do none of the early Fathers—the author of 1 Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, the author of the Epistle of Barnabas— writing between 90 and 130, quote or refer to any of them? How could Ignatius (around 107), so eager to convince his readers that Jesus had indeed been born of Mary and died under Pilate, that he had truly been a human man who suffered, how could he have failed to appeal to some Gospel account as verification of all this if he had known one?

Only in Justin Martyr, writing in the 150s, do we find the first identifiable quotations from some of the Gospels, though he calls them simply “memoirs of the Apostles,” with no names. And those quotations usually do not agree with the texts of the canonical versions we now have, showing that such documents were still undergoing evolution and revision. Scholars such as Helmut Koester have concluded that earlier “allusions” to Gospel-like material are likely floating traditions which themselves found their way into the written Gospels. (See Koester’s Ancient Christian Gospels and his earlier Synoptische Uberlieferung bei den apostolischen Vatern.) Is it conceivable that the earliest account of Jesus’ life and death could have been committed to writing as early as 70 (or even earlier, as some would like to have it), and yet the broader Christian world took almost a century to receive copies of it?

As for Acts, written by the same author who wrote the final version of Luke, there is no reference to it before the year 170—more than a century after the date often assigned to it. Some, such as John Knox (Marcion and the New Testament, 77-106, 124), view Acts as a response by the church of Rome in the mid-second century to the gnostic Marcion’s view of things. The author of Acts drew on kernels of tradition about the primitive Palestinian church, but these have been recast to fit the new plot line. There are huge discrepancies between Acts and what Paul tells us in his letters. Scholarship has been forced to admit that much of Acts is sheer fabrication, from the speeches to the great sea voyage, the latter modeled on similar features in Hellenistic romances. With its discrediting as history, the true beginnings of Christianity fall into a murky shadow.

Source: pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/partthre.htm

 

[Brian_Ingram]

askeptic:

And as I said to the other individual, if Mark was based on Peter, and if he was writing for the Romans, then it is all the more curious that this tidbit is omitted. If Peter was the Bishop of Rome, then isn’t it all the more important to tell Romans this fact? Isn’t it just as important to let the Romans know that Christ established a Church upon Peter as it is to let the Jews know? Plus, if Mark actually knew Peter, wouldn’t he also know that Peter is the rock on whom the Church is built. That’s far too important not to write about.

Firstly if the Gospel of Matthew was written before Mark then it is enough that it had already been written. Most scholars Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox clearly acknowledge that Peter was leader of the early Church it was not in Peter nature to proclaim in his own teachings his own importance.
In regards Mark knowing or not knowing if Peter was the rock on what the Church was built again it is not Marks words in his Gospel that you are reading but Peters, Mark was not a personal witness to Christs teachings as was Matthew.

askeptic:
John 21:
This is by no means explicit, it doesn’t mention any Church, it doesn’t mention “keys to the kindgom” or the power to “bind and loose” and doesn’t preclude the possibility that Jesus said the exact same thing to every other apostle.

Furthermore, John was written around 90AD, after all the synoptic Gospels and 60 years after Jesus’ death.

Usually Christ addressed the Apostles as a group, the exception being Peter however Christ addressed him personally with the others listening on.

In regards the date of John gospel it was written before the temple distructiuon, the words feed my sheep refers to the Church.
You seem to be saying Christ in saying one thing to an apostle and something else to another is the author of confusion.

Pax

Brian.

 

[Brian_Ingram]

askeptic:

And while conservatives date the gospels as early as possible to give them more credibility, skeptic scholars tend to date them much later. Given that we do not have the original manuscripts, some of these arguments are worthy of consideration:

Source: pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/partthre.htm

You need to do some Patristic studies on the matter and go to the source material not someone’s opinion.

Frankly the sceptic scholars guide to biblical history leaves me a confirmed sceptic on their qualification to rationally and honestly discuss the issues.

Pax

Brian

 

[Ignatius]

I don’t understand the problem. Why does starting the Church in Antioch preclude Peter from being the first Pope in Rome? People, even people without divine guidance, have achieved more than one or two major accomplishments in a lifetime.

Peace and grace to you.

Your brother in Christ.

 

[askeptic]

Brian Ingram:

You need to do some Patristic studies on the matter and go to the source material not someone’s opinion.

Frankly the sceptic scholars guide to biblical history leaves me a confirmed sceptic on their qualification to rationally and honestly discuss the issues.

Pax

Brian

Well, the quotes I posted actually concerned the supposed absence of gospel material from the fathers. (Presumably someone like Clement, Ignatius, or Polycarp is considered a father of the Church?)

 

[imroc]

Roady:

…But that the true and valid church is built upon Christ…

Where in scripture does it say this?

 

[mlchance]

So, askeptic, do you have any evidence for any of your assertions regarding what is important enough to warrant mention in Mark’s Gospel or for any of the “alternative explanations” you’ve offered? If not, your positions are mere supposition based on arguments from silence, which are just as logically spurious as begging questions.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[Brian_Ingram]

askeptic:

Well, the quotes I posted actually concerned the supposed absence of gospel material from the fathers. (Presumably someone like Clement, Ignatius, or Polycarp is considered a father of the Church?)

**Polycarp, **spoke of Sacred Scriptures, as the Oracles of the Lord. quotes from the New Testament about 50 times." **Clement **of Rome, whom Paul styles his ‘fellow-labourer’ , termed the Scriptures “The True Sayings of the Holy Spirit.” Irenaeus, of the second century, makes about 1200 citations or references from the New Testament; **Tertullian, **also of the second century refers to or quotes from the New Testament about 2500 times; **Clement **of Alexandria, another of the second century Fathers, cites from or refers to the New Testament 800 times.

It should be remembered at that time there was no chapter or verse in the NT scriptures

Pax

Brian

 

[askeptic]

mlchance:

So, askeptic, do you have any evidence for any of your assertions regarding what is important enough to warrant mention in Mark’s Gospel or for any of the “alternative explanations” you’ve offered? If not, your positions are mere supposition based on arguments from silence, which are just as logically spurious as begging questions.

– Mark L. Chance.

Do you have any evidence suggesting that Mark believed Jesus founded a Church upon Peter, or that Mark believed that Jesus was miraculously born from the Holy Spirit’s action in Mary’s womb?

Silence is telling. Suppose you were writing around 70 A.D. and knew that God became man (the fact that Jesus was not born from a man and a woman, but from Holy Spirit acting upon Mary is pretty important here), knew that God established a Church, an infallible authority with the power to bind and loose souls, upon one man Peter, whom you knew and under whom you wrote.

And yet when you were writing an account of these events you would actually write a very detailed description of the scene when the Church was founded but skip over the actual beginning of the Church and move on. Would it make sense for you to never mention the virgin birth, and even to suggest that Jesus had biological brothers and sisters?

Does that sound reasonable to you?

By the way, have you recently read all of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, because if not I think you should.

 

[askeptic]

**Polycarp, **spoke of Sacred Scriptures, as the Oracles of the Lord. quotes from the New Testament about 50 times." **Clement **of Rome, whom Paul styles his ‘fellow-labourer’ , termed the Scriptures “The True Sayings of the Holy Spirit.” Irenaeus, of the second century, makes about 1200 citations or references from the New Testament; **Tertullian, **also of the second century refers to or quotes from the New Testament about 2500 times; **Clement **of Alexandria, another of the second century Fathers, cites from or refers to the New Testament 800 times.

It should be remembered at that time there was no chapter or verse in the NT scriptures

Pax

Brian

But were they quoting the Gospels or Paul’s letters? Can you provide evidence of those people quoting the Gospels or Acts?

 

[mlchance]

askeptic:

Silence is telling.

Quite right. I asked you for evidence. You provided none, whereas evidence to the contrary of your position has been amply stated and routinely ignored by you in an intellectually dishonest effort to prop up your rather pedestrian attack on the Church.

– Mark L. Chance.