I don’t believe your church…I can at the very least hold God to His Word when I appear before Him.
I don’t think YOU are going to hold GOD to anything, my friend.
However, since you refuse to believe us because we are Catholic, I would like to present you with a dozen or so Protestant scholars.
PROTESTANT SCHOLARS ON PETER THE ROCK
“You are Simon son of John. You will be called
Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter)." (John 1:42)
“Jesus replied, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." (Matthew 16:17-19)
W.F. Albright (Protestant) 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)
Albert Barnes (Nineteenth-Century Presbyterian)
“The meaning of this phrase may be thus expressed: ‘Thou, in saying that I am the Son of God, hast called me by a name expressive of my true character. I, also, have given to thee a name expressive of your character. I have called you Peter, a rock. . . . I see that you are worthy of the name and will be a distinguished support of my religion”
Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament, 170].
John Broadus (Nineteenth-Century Calvinistic Baptist)
“As Peter means rock, the natural interpretation is that ‘upon this rock’ means
upon thee. . . . It is an even more far-fetched and harsh play upon words if we understand the rock to be Christ and a very feeble and almost unmeaning play upon words if the rock is Peter’s confession”
Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, 356].
Craig L. Blomberg (Baptist)
“The expression ‘this rock’ almost certainly refers to Peter, following immediately after his name, just as the words following ‘the Christ’ in verse 16 applied to Jesus. The play on words in the Greek between Peter’s name (
Petros) and the word ‘rock’ (
petra) makes sense only if Peter is the Rock and if Jesus is about to explain the significance of this identification”
New American Commentary: Matthew, 22:252].
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)
(cont.)
Boy are you trying really hard. I’m no expert on Greek/Hebrew either. But I do have a Strong’s Greek/Hebrew Concordance. It says something really interesting about those two words.
