Well, I’m just a little nobody Protestant so my (name removed by moderator)ut here will mean nothing, but…
The reason Protestants believe two different words derived from the same root word are used is because secular writings, from around or a little before the same time, use these two words clearly giving them different meanings.
Protestant Scholars Agree: Peter is the Rock
W.F. Albright and C.S. Mann
“[Peter] is not a name, but an appellation and a play on words. There is no evidence of Peter or
Kephas as a name before Christian times….
Peter as
Rock will be the foundation of the future community. Jesus, not quoting the Old Testament, here uses Aramaic, not Hebrew, and so uses the only Aramaic word that would serve his purpose. In view of the background of v. 19…
one must dismiss as confessional interpretation any attempt to see this rock as meaning the faith, or the messianic confession, of Peter. To deny the pre-eminent position of Peter among the disciples or in the early Christian community is a denial of the evidence…The interest in Peter’s failures and vacillations does not detract from this pre-eminence; rather, it emphasizes it. Had Peter been a lesser figure his behavior would have been of far less consequence.” (
The Anchor Bible; Matthew [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1971], 195)
Donald A. Carson (Baptist)
“On the basis of the distinction between ‘petros’ . . . and ‘petra’ . . . , many have attempted to avoid identifying Peter as the rock on which Jesus builds his church. Peter is a mere ‘stone,’ it is alleged; but Jesus himself is the ‘rock’ . . . Others adopt some other distinction . . .
Yet 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 . . . The Greek makes the distinction between ‘petros’ and ‘petra’ simply because it is trying to preserve the pun, and in Greek the feminine ‘petra’ could not very well serve as a masculine name . . . Had Matthew wanted to say no more than that Peter was a stone in contrast with Jesus the Rock, the more common word would have been ‘lithos’ (‘stone’ of almost any size). Then there would have been no pun - and that is just the point! . . . In this passage Jesus is the builder of the church and it would be a strange mixture of metaphors that also sees him within the same clauses as its foundation . . .” (
Expositor’s Bible Commentary, [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984], vol. 8:
Matthew, Mark, Luke (Matthew: D.A. Carson), 368)
Oscar Cullman (Protestant Scholar)
“But what does Jesus mean when He says: ‘On this rock I will build my church’? The idea of the Reformers that He is referring to the faith of Peter is quite inconceivable in vew of the probably different setting of the story. 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 [church].
To this extent Roman Catholic exegesis is right and all Protestant attempts to evade this interpretation are to be rejected.” (Oscar Cullman,
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, (ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich), [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1968], 6:108).
R.T. France (Anglican)
“Jesus now sums up Peter’s significance in a name, Peter . . . It describes not so much Peter’s character (he did not prove to be ‘rock-like’ in terms of stability or reliability), but his function, as the foundation-stone of Jesus’ church. The feminine word for ‘rock’, ‘
petra’, is necessarily changed to the masculine ‘
petros’ (stone) to give a man’s name, but the word-play is unmistakable (and in Aramaic would be even more so, as the same form ‘
kepha’ would occur in both places**). It is only Protestant overreaction to the Roman Catholic claim . . . that what is here said of Peter applies also to the later bishops of Rome, that has led some to claim that the ‘rock’ here is not Peter at all but the faith which he has just confessed.** "The word-play, and the whole structure of the passage, demands that this verse is every bit as much Jesus’ declaration about Peter as verse 16 was Peter’s declaration about Jesus. Of course it is on the basis of Peter’s confession that Jesus declares his role as the Church’s foundation, but it is to Peter, not his confession, that the rock metaphor is applied…Peter is to be the foundation-stone of Jesus’ new community . . . which will last forever.” (
Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985], vol. 1:
Matthew, 254, 256)
Donald Hagner (Contemporary Evangelical)
"The frequent attempts that have been made, largely in the past, to deny [that Peter is the rock] in favor of the view that the confession itself is the rock . . . seem to be largely motivated by Protestant prejudice against a passage that is used by the Roman Catholics to justify the papacy" (
Word Biblical Commentary 33b:470).
David Hill (Presbyterian)
“It is on Peter himself, the confessor of his Messiahship, that Jesus will build the Church…
Attempts to interpret the ‘rock’ as something other than Peter in person (e.g., his faith, the truth revealed to him) are due to Protestant bias, and introduce to the statement a degree of subtlety which is highly unlikely.” (
The Gospel of Matthew, New Century Bible Commentary [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972], 261)
The point is that there are multiple keys!
