To anyone interested, it appears as though my friend has no response, but will not accept that the papacy is biblical. This was my last response to him:
While I do think that Mt 16 is likely the best example from the Bible of Peter’s unique role, I definitely do not think that the Church’s interpretation lives or dies by this verse alone. If you’d like, I can give you a list of nearly fifty examples of Peter acting in a unique role in the NT. In order to not overwhelm this conversation with too many examples I’ll only provide them if you ask for them. In addition, the Catholic Church was around before any of the books of the NT were written, and much, much earlier than when the canon of the NT was decided. Therefore, since the Church existed before the Bible, your claim that “[we] go into that passage with that presupposition” does not hold, since the belief existed before the passage did. Even secular historians attest to the fact that the Catholic Church began in the year 33 AD.
I enjoyed hearing Dr. Hall’s interpretation. I’ve heard this interpretation before, but not with the knowledge of Greek that Dr. Hall brings to the table. I must admit that, at first, I was unsure of how to directly address his interpretation since I do not know Greek. Given this fact, I’ve chosen to address them under the assumption that the points that Dr. Hall made about the function of these words in Greek is indeed true (I do not doubt that he would know how to understand the function of the words in the sentence given his credentials). Dr. Hall essentially made two points, which I will address here:
- Dr. Hall’s first point: Since petra can only refer to a feminine object or person, or an abstract idea, petra must refer to Peter’s confession of faith.
There are several angles that I can go at this from. The first is that, given Dr. Hall’s statement that it seems likely that petra refers to something abstract, he wrongly concludes that this abstract idea must be Peter’s confession of faith. We know that at Jesus and (then called) Simon’s first meeting, Jesus told Simon his name thereafter is to be Peter, which means rock (John 1:42). This is a metaphor, because Jesus is not actually telling Simon that he is physically going to become a rock. Metaphors are an abstract way of saying something that is true, but on a non-physical level. Therefore, Peter metaphorically being the “petra” in this sentence holds according to Dr. Hall’s exegesis.
Furthermore, there are multiple additional contextual and grammatical reasons for believing that Peter is the “petra” in Mt 16:18. The first is that from the grammatical point of view, the phrase “this rock” must relate back to the closest noun. Peter’s profession of faith (“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”) is two verses earlier, while his name, a proper noun, is in the immediately preceding clause. As an analogy, consider this sentence: “I have a car and a truck, and it is blue.” Which is blue? The truck, because that is the noun closest to the pronoun “it.” This is all the more clear if the reference to the car is two sentences earlier, as the reference to Peter’s profession is two sentences earlier than the term rock. In addition, the word “and” shows a continuation - “You are Peter, AND upon this rock…”. If the true meaning of this passage was to distinguish Petros (Rock) from petra (rock), then the text would indicate it in some kind of way such as this: “You are Peter, BUT upon this rock I will build my church”.
Contextually, it makes the most sense that Peter is the “petra” from Mt 16:18 as well. In verse 13 Jesus asks the apostles “Whom do men say that the Son of man is?”, to which Peter replies “You are Christ, the Son of the living God”. A couple verses later, Jesus says, “you are Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church”. What we see here is that Peter first identifies Jesus as the Christ, and then Jesus responds by identifying Peter as the rock upon which he will build his church.
You never responded to my question why Protestant Bible scholars would admit to Jesus founding the Church on Peter. This is not something that is in any way favorable for their theology, so it seems most likely that they came to this conclusion based on the actual meaning of the text.
Lastly (and I’ve made this point previously without you answering it), many hold that Matthew was written in Aramaic—we know this from records kept by Eusebius of Caesarea—but it was translated into Greek early on, perhaps by Matthew himself. In any case the Aramaic original is lost (as are all the originals of the New Testament books), so all we have today is the Greek. Without the tradition of the Catholic Church, there is no way for anyone to know what language the original manuscripts were written in, since all of the originals are lost. I’ve shown to you from the Bible that Jesus spoke to the apostles in Aramaic, which was the common language of the time. Based on these two reasons, it makes overwhelming sense that Aramaic is the language that we ought to examine this passage in for its truest meaning. In Aramaic, like in English, there is no gender assigned to nouns. The verse would have read, “You are Kepha (Rock), and upon this kepha (rock) I will build my church.” There is no possibility here for a distinction to be made, because both of the words used in Aramaic are “kepha”.
Therefore, your claim (and Dr. Hall’s claim) that the different endings of Petros and petra poses a problem holds little water in Greek, and none in Aramaic.
