Why do some believe that the church was built on Peter?

Question

In Matthew 16, Jesus makes the statement, "You are Peter...and upon this rock will I build my church"

Peter (petros)....means small stone...or pebble.
Rock (petra)....means bedrock...or solid ground.

In the preceeding verses, Jesus asks the question, "Who do you say that I am?" And Peter answers, "You are the Christ...the Son of the living God".

This is the "solid foundational truth (petra)" that Jesus was referring to.

He never said He was going to build His church uopn a fallable man like Peter.

So what say you for thinking this?

Folks,
Peter himself said in 1 Peter 5 to submit yourselves to the elders and overseers.

No mention of a pope....sorry to dissapoint you.

Since when is the book of Matthew written in Aramaic?

Answer 1

I fail to see in Matthew 16 where Jesus says, "Thou art Peter, and thou are the first pope of the church." For those who want to make Peter the rock that the church is built upon, (by the way, the other apostles are too according to Ephesians 2:20), fine, but please don't make the giant blind leap and call him the first pope. That is a bit of a stretch to say the least. He didn't seem to think himself that in his writing of I and II Peter written in the mid sixties. He call himself a "fellow elder" in I Peter 5. Not one time does he ever say he is a pope. That papal system of infalliblility is idolatrous in that Christ Jesus is the only infallible one. For any human being to be voted or elected in as infalllible is a joke, pompous, erroneous, and takes away from the glory of the only Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus. No one denies that the spoken language in the time of Christ was Aramaic, but the New Testament documents were all written in Greek and that is how God wanted His Word to be communicated. Whether the Rock was Peter or his confesstion "Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God", Christ is still the only head of the church and Savior of His people.

Answer 2

Pastor Billy says: no man would be known by the feminine than again times have changed. You weave quite a web there primo-meister. petra is the feminine and so the scriptural authors changed it to the masculine petros. Regardless Jesus would have spoken to Peter in Aramaic and the Aramaic is preserved in the Gospel of John as Kepha which translates Cephas meaning only one thing, rock.

learn the narrative of when and where Jesus tells Peter he will be the rock the Church is built on.

go to http://www.ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/file_index.asp?SeriesId=-6892289&pgnu=

download the audio file
The Unifying Authority of Peter
Host - Marcus Grodi with guest Steve Ray

Answer 3

It become literal. Peter had the authority to regulate church doctrine together with nutritional regulations and circumsion by revelation. the priority is that did not advise that any bishop of Rome become ever an Apostle with Peter's authority. This turned right into a declare made by utilising later bishops centuries after Peter. the region of Senior Apostle would have lengthy gone to James and then John, no longer to an section administrator. at the same time as each and every of the Apostles died the keys were withdrawn from the earth till the restore.

Answer 4

This Greek question has been answered probably a billion times, but here we go again. If you know the first thing about many European languages (including Greek) then there is feminine and masculine form. It is against proper usage to call the name of a man in feminine form, it is just NOT DONE.
Therefore the translators stumbled on a usage problem and had no choice but to do this. In the Aramaic, the word "kephas" is used in both instances.

One more thing that is interesting, Peter's tomb just so happens to be directly under St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican -- "upon this rock I will build my Church" Hmmmmm.

* And Char, to answer your question -- Christ knew that He had to give teaching authority because He knew what a mess of things could occur from private interpretation, like there is today in the thousands upon thousands of denominations. This is a TOTAL necessity.....without an infallible teaching authority then nobody knows who is right and who is wrong. Yeah yeah you can give the old argument that Jesus is who is right and we should follow Him, which is correct, but just look at all the different belief systems and theologies out there today. We all know that any person on earth can make almost any scripture mean what they want it to. Can you say without a doubt that you follow Jesus correctly? With this authority we know what the correct doctrine is, and don't have to worry about the tons of different doctrines out there. With this totally necessary authority we know without a shadow of a doubt that we are following Christ correctly.

Answer 5

I can read Greek. Your analysis is flawed. And here's the one small problem with this: they weren't speaking Greek to one another.

They were speaking Aramaic.

In Aramaic, both petros and petra represent one Aramaic word - just one: Kephas.

In other words, "You are Kephas, and on this kephas I found my church." There can be no mistake - Peter is being singled out.

If anything the petros/petra distinction is a bit of sly cleverness on the part of the Greek author accentuating this point, not trying to shy away from it. The words are substantially similar in meaning (the distinction is not as great as pebble and stone), and is actually using this slight distinction to drive the word play home.

And though we do not have Aramaic Matthew with us today, we actually do know that it was written in Aramaic. The scholars of the 2nd and 3rd centuries all said this: Iranaeus, Origen, Cyril, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, and Jerome, for instance.

Take Jerome, who gave us the Latin version of the Bible still in use today, and whom protestants rely on to make their case for their Old Testament canon. He not only said that Matthew was written in Aramaic, he'd seen the Aramaic original.

But regardless of the fact that the manuscript comes to us today in Greek: they WERE speaking Aramaic. That - however uncomfortable a fact it may be - remains a fact.

As to the point, mentioned elsewhere, that Peter was an elder - the Greek word is actually "episkopos", which today means bishop. Anyone with knowledge knows that in fact this is exactly what a pope is - a bishop. You always see him with a bishop hat on his head, and a bishop staff (crozier) his hand. Yes, the others were given "bind and loose" authority - they were given it with Peter as their head.

Matthew is not the only place this is pointed out. In the Gospel of John, three times Jesus tells Peter, "feed my sheep," and then tells Peter about his future death in Rome. Peter concluded his ministry in Rome by being crucified upside down, so since that time, the Roman bishop is considered to have his office.

There are no serious church historians who deny Peter's leadership of the church after the ascension. One need only read the first few chapters of Acts, and it is plainly obvious. He is the one boldly speaking at Pentecost. He is the one assigning the first deacons (St. Stephen and the others.) He is the one who starts doing the Jesus-like healings in his name.

Answer 6

I'm not a total expert, but I'd say the confusion simply lies in the mistranslation of Petros and Petra. The name Peter has vaguely similar entomological roots and would be easy for someone unskilled in Koine Greek to misinterpret.

Answer 7

Up until the 4th Century CE, there was not a single christian sect that ever believed Simon (Peter) the Zealot was ever the founding patriarch of Christianity.

The Orthodox Churches of the East, the first churches always considered James the Just, the brother of Jesus was the first legitimate Patriarch (Pope) until his murder. All the early christian writers testify to this being the truth.

In contrast, the role of Simon (Peter) the Zealot was clouded in mystery, particularly when one of the key leaders of the rebellion against the Sadducees and Romans in the siege of Jerusalem was Simon (Peter) the Zealot.
See:
http://one-faith-of-god.org/new_testament/apocrypha/josephus_wars/josephus_wars_0110.htm

But in the 4th Century, the Roman christian bishops found themselves in increasingly more powerful position than their Eastern counterparts. Desperate to become the controllers of all christianity, they faked a false history concerning papal succession- claiming Peter was the first Pope, ignoring the historic first Bishop Linus and then creating imaginary Popes up until the end of the second century.

Answer 8

The Rock was Peter's confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God. THAT is what Christ built His church on - the confession, NOT the person. Why would Christ who is God incarnate build His church on a mortal man?

Answer 9

Peter spread Christ's word after he was gone. So you could say the church was built on (by) Peter. Peters remains are under the Vatican. So you could also ask yourself when was Mathew 16 really written? Did you know that the book that was written closest to Christ's lifetime was written 40 years after his death? Who knows what was really said.

Answer 10

Jesus is the way the truth and the life no man comes to the Father but by Him.