=conRep12;13416981]It’s hard to stomach because of his arrogance and condescension, let alone the blatant ignorance or willful misrepresentation of Catholic history and Catholic doctrine, but his interpretation is a new one I haven’t heard before. We all know the verse, Matthew 16:18, and Catholics and Protestants have been arguing about the “rock” for 500 years, but I’ve never seen an argument that the “it” against which the gates of Hell shall not prevail isn’t the Church. I thought we just argued about the nature of the Church, not whether Hell would prevail against it. Unless I’m misunderstanding what he’s saying, it seems to me like he’s saying Christ never promised to protect the Church against Hell, but only the foundation of the Church which is the belief in Christ’s divinity and death and resurrection. This interpretation also seems to ignore 1 Timothy 3:15 wherein the Church is “the pillar and ground of the truth”.