Having considered yesterday Saint Peter’s great proclamation
of faith that Jesus is the Christ, the long awaited New King Solomon (Matt
16:16), and having witnessed Our Lord’s expected response to this proclamation,
that of building the house of the Lord upon the Rock (as King Solomon did in
the Old Testament), let us turn this today to the common Protestant attack upon
the Catholic interpretation of this text.
Pay close attention to the linguistic gymnastics which a Protestant must
go through, as well as the linguistic response that a Catholic must make to
unravel the mess (a pen and paper may help to keep it all straight).
The Protestant author, Oswald J. Smith, D.D., a well known
anti-Catholic, asks the question as follows, “Did Jesus say he would build his
Church on Peter?” To this Oswald
responds,
Jesus
did say, and I quote . . ., ‘Thou are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
Church” (Matt 16:18). But He did not say
He would build His Church on Peter . . . The Greek word for Peter is ‘petros,’
meaning ‘a little stone.’ The word for
rock is ‘petra,’
meaning ‘The Rock.’ What Jesus said
was, ‘I will build my Church on The Rock.’
He himself was The Rock. He never
said He would build His Church on Peter, ‘a little stone.’ That would be too faulty a foundation. In 1 Peter 2:5-8, Peter himself speaks of
believers as stones and of Jesus as a rock.
So, in Eph. 2:19-21, Jesus is the Corner Stone, the Foundation. The Church, therefore, is built not on Peter
or his successors but on Jesus Christ Himself—The Rock.
How can we respond to such an attack? First, before confronting the linguistic
assault, let us remember that context is essential. In response, we should begin by explaining
the context of the passage as we considered it last week. After the initial catechesis regarding Jesus
as the King, we turn to the interpretation quoted above. In the Greek text of Matthew 16:18 there is a
peculiarity that can be confusing. The word
used for Peter, as Oswald notes, is Petros,
whereas the following word translated as rock is petra. “Thou art Petros
and upon this petra I will build my Church.” Why is there a difference? In the original Aramaic in which the text was
written, there is only one word that would be used for “rock” in this case, and
that is kepha, a masculine noun. “Thou art Kepha
and upon this kepha I will build my
Church.” Translating the text into Greek
is where the difficulty occurs. In
Greek, the word for rock is petra, a feminine
noun, and according to Greek grammatical rules, a man cannot be named with
a feminine case ending. Thus, to deal
with this problem the translator was forced to replace the feminine ending of petra
(-a) with a masculine ending (-os), modifying a Greek word to fit the
particular circumstance. The exact
translation into English would read, “thou art Rock and upon this rock I will
build my Church,” leaving no room for misunderstanding. Therefore, since we see that Mr. Oswald’s
argument regarding Matt 16:18 has no linguistic basis, we can now address the
second part of his argument.
Reading Mr. Oswald’s argument carefully, we see that he
identifies Peter with the believers mentioned as stones in 1 Peter 2:5-8, thus
making Peter simply one of the believers with no special character as the
foundation stone. Unfortunately for
Oswald and other Protestants who make this argument, the Greek word used in 1
Peter 2:5-8 is not Petros as Oswald
would have you believe but rather lithoi (pl.),
the generic word for “stone” in Greek, having a range of possible
meanings. In fact, when reading the
context of this passage in Greek, we learn that Jesus, the corner stone, is
also identified by the same Greek word (lithos,
sing.) as that of believers. According
to Oswald’s interpretation, we would be forced to conclude that Jesus is
actually, ‘a little stone,’ an interpretation that even Oswald would reject as
absurd.
But, is not Jesus the Corner Stone and the Rock of our
Faith, as Mr. Oswald states (cf. Eph. 2:19-21; 1 Cor 3:11)? The answer is, yes. Jesus Christ became man for one reason: to
give us a share in his own life (cf. 2 Pet 1:4). Through baptism into Christ we become part of
the body of Christ. Each one of us is
given a certain character proper to Christ alone. ‘One is an eye, one is a foot, another is a
hand’ all members of the One Body of Christ, which is the Church (cf. 1 Cor
12:12-31). Based upon this Catholic and
Biblical understanding of our salvation, a salvation of participation in divine
life, it is to be expected that Jesus would give a share in his character as
the foundation stone to the one who is chosen to receive this gift.
Let us stand upon this sure foundation, which is Peter, and
let us rest assured that this house, the Catholic Church, will not fall, for it
has been built by the Wise Builder who builds upon the Rock; “and the rain
fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it
did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock” (Matt 7:24-25).
