Q for Mormons (NDM) Gates of Hell

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As far as the Paul VI thing, I’ve heard it several times. A couple of times on Catholic Answers, and at least once at a conference by Fr. Pavone or Fr. Corapi, or someone of that caliber. I understand he was ready to cave.

As far as the Peter is the Rock thing. You are still rationalizing from a preconceived notion against it. In other words, with an attempt to discredit the previously held interpretation. I do not have that burden since the implications of the Scripture were already in place when the Scripture was written, and that is what I accept. I am quite sure the writer was not expecting to have to convince someone a couple thousand years later of what was so obvious at the time. I’m sure the early Christians in their wildest dreams could not imagine the mess that is Christianity today.
 
Very true, I don’t buy into that interpretation, but that was sort of the purpose of this thread I thought, to explain how Mormons can reconcile what seems to be a rather explicit endorsement of the RC church. Just for the heck of it, let’s take another look at the quote:

15 He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
18 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.
19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

It might also surprise you to hear another (Mormon) interpretation of that particular passage: The “rock” that is referred to in verse 18 is the Holy Ghost and the inspiration it bring to men. I’m not so sure about the one though, especially when 19 is about a sealing power that you usually associate with priests and the ceremonies they perform on your behalf, e.g marriage, baptism, Last Rites, etc. But I believe there’s only two churches: the church of God and the church of the devil and that they’ve been around since the foundation of the earth. Peter got that sealing power but the church as a whole does not recieve it.
 
Hi rmcmullan,
I think the problem with the LDS interpretation of that passage is that in a natural reading, the focus throughout the passage is on Peter (kephas in Aramaic, the native language of Jesus and the apostles). In Aramaic verse 18 would read
“And I say also unto you, That you are kephas, and on this kephas I will build my Church”, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it".
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The LDS interpretation is linguistically unnatural. The focus in vs 15, 16 and 17a is on Peter as the rock. then suddenly in the middle of verse 17, Jesus is talking about the rock as something else, then in verse 18 he is talking about Peter again. Jesus wasn’t nearly that confused in his speech.

Protestants, Mormons and other detractors get hung up on the greek masculine and feminine renditions of Petros and petra. But they fail to consider that Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic, not Greek, when they were conversing amongst themselves. The surviving Aramaic manuscripts read the way the Catholics read it. When the text was translated into Greek, it was necessary to conform to the extremely strict Greek grammar, which would not allow a rendering true to the Aramaic.

Fortunately, the Apostolic Fathers of the 1st and 2nd centuries, who learned their faith from the 12 apostles and the other original disciples of Jesus and knew exactly what Jesus meant. They wrote it down and we stand by it even today.

God love you,
Paul

P.S.: St. Patrick must be spinning in his grave at a fine Irish boy like you joining the Mormons! 😃
 
Augustini

Very interesting. I suggest you re-read Fatima. It is very enlightening. It is also scary how close we came to both the destruction of the Catholic Church and the anihilation of the world.
 
Alma147 said:
I’ve read most of the messages, but didn’t see a response from a Mormon. If there was one, I’m sorry for reading too quickly.
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Alma it would seem two of your mormon brothers and sisters posted here…zerinus and mcmullen …did you not think their answers where “mormon”?
 
PaulDupree, thanks for that detailed explanation, but some of it I’m just going to have to take your word for, I was never so good at other languages. But I am always a little uncomfortable with such a semantic analysis, everything most people say has a context that surrounds it and it’s sometimes difficult to deduce the context from what is said.

I probably have already said enough and should zip it but let me blather on: Even if I grant you everything you say, that Matt 16:15-19 is an explicit endorsement of the church that started with Peter and that the priesthood authority was never lost and that the church was never “overcome by the gates of hell” (I’m being too generous! ha) it’s still a problem for me. It still depends on what you think overcome by the gates of heck means. You can take quite a beating without being overcome.

We claim that John the Baptist and then later Peter, James and John came (as resurrected beings) to ordain the early church founders to the same priesthood.
 
but you keep ignoring the context of Peter and “the rock”. Jesus uses a play on words to illustrate a point. the context becomes obvious when ther linguistics are considered. little rock you are the rock on which i will build my church, etc.
 
Okay, let me lurch into an entirely different direction and confuse everybody here. So if the Angel Moroni appeared to the Pope, you’d all be reading the book of Mormon and building temples?
 
rmcmullan said:
Okay, let me lurch into an entirely different direction and confuse everybody here. So if the Angel Moroni appeared to the Pope, you’d all be reading the book of Mormon and building temples?
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no, we would be helping the holy father to get professional help. Even in LDS doctrine, Moroni didn’t have any authority. What keys did he posses? he couldn’t baptize, ordain or anything other than reveal the location of the plates. That gives us no reason to believe that the plates have any more validity than the popol vu. (pre-columbian native american “scripture”)

From a Catholic perspective public revelation is complete and thus Moroni would be seen as not acting in accordance with the Gospel due to his attempt to produce additional scripture.
 
majick275 said:
but you keep ignoring the context of Peter and “the rock”. Jesus uses a play on words to illustrate a point. the context becomes obvious when ther linguistics are considered. little rock you are the rock on which i will build my church, etc.
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What??? …'splain, Lucy.

Jesus said, “You are Kepha and upon this Kepha I will build my Church”.
 
yes kepha an kepha. Peter is a rock. The church is a building made of rocks. Peter isn’t the whole church. He is the First rock that JESUS uses in the construction. upon THIS rock (Peter) I will build my church. (obviously many rocks to come)
 
majick275 said:
yes kepha an kepha. Peter is a rock. The church is a building made of rocks. Peter isn’t the whole church. He is the First rock that JESUS uses in the construction. upon THIS rock (Peter) I will build my church. (obviously many rocks to come)
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I think that the premise of this argument ignores something very important. It includes a “play” on words. Since I don’t have an Aramaic version handy, (I would be very interested to see the two words in Aramaic) and the Greek texts do have a sense of validity about them, we should ask why is a play of words there at all if Jesus meant to teach that the Church would be built on Peter? The fact is, a feminine dative noun and a masculine nominative noun mean different things. If the Lord intended to say He would build his Church on “Petros” why is He reported as having said “petra” instead?

The idea that Christ had reference to the concept of receiving divine information (rather than Peter being the subject) is illustrated by what follows His comment on the source of Peter’s knowledge: God the Father. Jesus next says, “Kago” which is a combination of “And” and “I,” in essence saying, "You got that from My Father in Heaven, AND FURTHER I SAY, you are Peter and upon this rock (receiving revelation) I will build my Church.

Alma
 
you are interjecting Greek into an aramaic conversation. When you look at the aramaic you don’t have the greek connotations.
 
majick275 said:
you are interjecting Greek into an aramaic conversation. When you look at the aramaic you don’t have the greek connotations.
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As I said above, I don’t have an Aramaic NT, but I’d love to see one. Absent that, the next best source is Greek and Greek doesn’t support your thesis. Your argument pre-supposes that the the Greek isn’t a valid translation of the Aramaic. Care to post the Aramaic original?

Alma
 
There aren’t two words in Aramaic. It’s the same word.

As for the Greek, it’s not a play on words. Greek is a gendered language, like Spanish, French, and Italian, and unlike English. The word for “rock” is “petra,” a feminine noun. It would never be appropriate to call a man by a feminine name, and so it was translated as “Petros” instead.
 
Alma147 said:
I think that the premise of this argument ignores something very important. It includes a “play” on words. Since I don’t have an Aramaic version handy, (I would be very interested to see the two words in Aramaic) and the Greek texts do have a sense of validity about them, we should ask why is a play of words there at all if Jesus meant to teach that the Church would be built on Peter? The fact is, a feminine dative noun and a masculine nominative noun mean different things. If the Lord intended to say He would build his Church on “Petros” why is He reported as having said “petra” instead?

The idea that Christ had reference to the concept of receiving divine information (rather than Peter being the subject) is illustrated by what follows His comment on the source of Peter’s knowledge: God the Father. Jesus next says, “Kago” which is a combination of “And” and “I,” in essence saying, "You got that from My Father in Heaven, AND FURTHER I SAY, you are Peter and upon this rock (receiving revelation) I will build my Church.

Alma
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In other parts of the New Testament the name Christ used is retained (in the Aramaic). Look at where Jesus calls him Cephas or Kepha (depending on the transliteration). The new name He gave Simon simply means “Rock”. See Jn 1:42.

God was careful and deliberate whenever He changed someone’s name and it always had significant meaning.
 
Brad_Haas said:
There aren’t two words in Aramaic. It’s the same word.

As for the Greek, it’s not a play on words. Greek is a gendered language, like Spanish, French, and Italian, and unlike English. The word for “rock” is “petra,” a feminine noun. It would never be appropriate to call a man by a feminine name, and so it was translated as “Petros” instead.
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and in first century Greek there was no nuanced difference in the meaning of the two. They both simply meant “rock”.
 
Brad_Haas said:
There aren’t two words in Aramaic. It’s the same word.

As for the Greek, it’s not a play on words. Greek is a gendered language, like Spanish, French, and Italian, and unlike English. The word for “rock” is “petra,” a feminine noun. It would never be appropriate to call a man by a feminine name, and so it was translated as “Petros” instead.
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The reason there aren’t two words in Aramaic is because there is no original Aramaic. All existing versions have come from the Greek. While it sounds like a good argument to appeal to an Aramaic text, it’s a vacuous argument because all Aramaic versions are translations of Greek texts.

The claim that the word for “rock” is “petra” is also mistaken. Adjectives will reflect gender but not nouns. Nouns have a gender that defines the word. “Petros” means a rock or a stone, it isn’t a masculine declension of a feminine word. The feminine “petra” means a rock ledge or a mass of rock. In a gendered language, you can’t change the gender without also changing the meaning of the word. For example masculine “melo” in Italian means “apple tree” while the feminine form “mela” means “apple.” If you were to call a man an “apple” you would use the feminine form “mela” because if you called him a “melo” it would mean “fruit tree.” That’s why “petros” and “petra” aren’t different forms of the same word, they’re different words.

Alma
 
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