Why do Christians need a pope? How do we know Jesus built his Church on Peter? Trent sits down with Steve Ray, author of two books on the papacy, to get the answers.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn: Congratulations are in order to our sound engineer, Nick, who is expecting the birth of his first child any day now, though when this episode airs, the baby may have already been born a week or so ago. So I figured why not ease Nick’s workload a little bit and get some episodes done early so he could take some well-deserved time off to be with family.
Trent Horn: So this week I’m going to be sharing with you a interview I did with Steve Ray on the papacy. You’ll learn what the papacy is, why it’s a blessing to the church and how we can better defend the papacy and explain it to our Protestant brothers and sisters. Great interview for you to check out. And if you want other bonus content, be sure to go to trenthornpodcast.com, you get access to lots of bonus content there. Later in the week we will have the debut of my second Trent Track, which is a Catholic guide to LGBT issues that is free to silver members and hire. Otherwise you get access to our study series. Lots of other sneak peaks that are coming up. Do check that out at trenthornpodcast.com. And without further ado, here is my interview with Steve Ray on the papacy.
Trent Horn: Hello, I’m Trent Horn an apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers. And today we’re speaking with Steve Ray, a convert to the Catholic church and the author of three best-selling Ignatius press books Crossing the Tiber, Upon this Rock and St. John’s Gospel. He’s also produced numerous videos and DVDs, including Peter, Keeper of the Keys. And he is a certified tour guide in the Holy Land, leading pilgrimages through the Holy Land and through other Holy sites across the world. So Steve, welcome.
Steve Ray: Well thank you Trent, always good to work with Catholic Answers and now that you’re there, I’m glad that we get to do this together. I’ve admired you from a distance and it’s nice to work with you now on this project.
Trent Horn: And the feeling is very mutual. And one of the things I’ve admired about your own work, Steve, is the book that you wrote Upon this Rock, a book that deals with a very specialized and an in depth study of the papacy. In particular, the primacy of the bishop of Rome and the acknowledgement that the Pope or the bishops of Rome are the successors of Saint Peter and hold his authority. And so that’s what we’re going to be talking about today is the papacy, probably one of, if not the biggest wedge between Catholics and Protestants when it comes to issues of the faith. So Steve, let’s just start right out just from the ground floor. What exactly is the papacy and why do Protestants reject it?
Steve Ray: The papacy comes from a word, meaning papa. It just refers to the Pope as being the head of the church in the sense of a father.
Steve Ray: He is the center or the source of unity for the church. When every basketball team has a coach, I mean a captain, every police force has a captain, an army has a general. This is the way humanity works. We look to a leader. We look to a source of unity in order to help us have a leader to follow otherwise, but tend to go in different directions. For example, I spend a lot of time in Israel and I’ve worked with flocks of sheep and it’s very important that they have a shepherd that leads them because if not, they’ll go off into little groups off their own. They’ll walk right up and sniff the nose of a wolf or fall into the river and drown. It’s very important because sheep are not very smart animals, that they have a shepherd that keeps them together, moves them along, finds water and food for them and keeps them safe and together in one flock.
Trent Horn: So it’s not as endearing when Jesus calls us sheep. It’s sort of an indirect way of saying we’re not smart enough to take care of ourselves.
Steve Ray: That’s one of the reasons I think that he calls us his sheep. I often say that when I did conferences that he’s making a little comment about our character, yes, that he has to have a shepherd and that’s exactly what the papacy is. It is a shepherd who is the leader. They keep the sheep together and the staff of course, the shepherd staff, it has two ends to it and one end is a hook. The sheep start wandering away. The shepherd can grab the sheep and bring him back. In the other end, if you flip it around, becomes a weapon in a Wolf or other dangerous element comes after the sheep and can use that to defend it off. And that’s exactly what the Pope does. He’s a shepherd of the flock. He keeps the flock together. He is their leader and he represents Jesus Christ himself.
Steve Ray: This is as we get into this a little more of the whole biblical basis for it. We understand that the Pope is like a vice president or a royal steward who represents the King and who does the bidding of the king and takes care of the king’s property.
Trent Horn: So before we get into that though, Steve does this, the doctrine of the papacy, does it also relate very closely to the doctrine of apostolic succession, and explain that a bit more for those who are listening.
Steve Ray: Yeah. Apostolic succession simply means that when the original apostles died that they passed their authority on to another generation, and this way the apostolic authority continues to move through the centuries. We can be certain of it. It’s done through the laying on of hands, which of course is not something we just invented in the middle ages. It’s something that started all the way back with Moses when he laid hands on Joshua and it says that the authority or some of the dignity of Moses went into Joshua and the people followed him.
Steve Ray: There’s this element of laying on of hands. It passes the authority, the apostolic authority that Jesus gave to his 12 and that authority then passes on. It comes from the idea of a government. See, if you have a president, for example, the United States, or if you go back to a royal steward of the time of Israel when they die, it doesn’t mean that the office ends, the office continues. You just find a new man to succeed in that office and that’s exactly what apostolic succession is. When the apostles died, they had laid hands on others, bishops and those that continued to carry their authority and their leadership ahead through the centuries.
Steve Ray: And it’s very much tied to that because as the Bishop of Rome, which takes that place of having the keys, they representative of Jesus Christ, say is deputy here. He has that authority and it was passed on from Peter to Linus to Cletus to Clement and all the way down to Pope Francis today.
Trent Horn: All right, well let’s dive into some of that evidence thing, because I think most Protestants when the issue of the papacy comes up, will simply say, well I believe in the Bible and the Bible doesn’t talk about Pope’s and it doesn’t say anything about that. How do we as Catholics respond to that and what is some of this evidence I guess starting with the New Testament, which is where we would look for it for the idea that there’s this office of the papacy.
Steve Ray: Yes. It is not just the Protestants either as you know but the Orthodox and many other groups, this is really the dividing line.
Trent Horn: The difference of course would be that the Eastern Orthodox believe in Apostolic succession. They just deny that one of the bishops, the bishop of Rome has a primacy over the others.
Steve Ray: Right. There’s no jurisdiction. They do recognize authority and the laying on of hands and Apostolic succession, but they do not accept the papacy of Roman and the Pope having jurisdiction. So that’s divisive too, and that’s a huge section of Christianity. I kind of humorously say sometimes that the papacy brings all Christians together. It’s a source of unity for all Christians, whether we believe it or not, or accept him or not. Because for Catholics, he is a source of unity for the other half of Christendom that are not Catholics, he’s also the source of unity for them because they can’t agree. You can’t find anything that all non-Catholics can agree on except for the one thing that they reject the authority of the Pope. So he’s the unifying factor for all of them as well.
Trent Horn: Yes, that’s true. Because many, I mean, Eastern Orthodox have valid sacraments and many Protestants even believe in some things Catholics believe in, infant baptism, some devotion to marry other things like that. But you’re right, they’re all United in that they do not believe the Pope has this special authority, which we’re going to talk about as coming from the New Testament and the early church itself. So where as Catholic, should we look to start our journey in the New Testament for the source of this belief that there is a special office of the papacy and it’s derived from Peter’s authority?
Steve Ray: I think the main passage that we would go to is Matthew chapter 16 most Catholics know this and most Protestants do as well. “You are Peter, and on this rock I’ll build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it and I gave you the keys of the kingdom.” And so on.
Steve Ray: We’ve heard that so many times. For Catholics, we understand that as Jesus being the King, he is the King with that’s what Gabriel, the Archangel said to Mary in the cave in Nazareth, that “You’re going to be the mother of the son of God.” He’s going to sit on the throne of his father David. So Jesus is a King. There’s been no King on the throne of Israel for 600 years. Now we have a King and Jesus is using the illustration of the way governments worked then especially even the government of Israel and Judah before they were under Rome and Jesus is giving Peter the keys and that represents his authority because the King owns the keys and there are not duplicate copies of these keys. You don’t go to Kmart or Aiko hardware and have duplicates made. There’s only one set of these keys that are owned by the king and the King has the authority to delegate those keys to his second in commander, his royal steward.
Trent Horn: So Steve, are these keys understanding in ancient Judaism in this context, were they purely symbolic or could they actually literally open something?
Steve Ray: When they were used in the kingdom of Israel, they were literal keys. They actually opened the royal treasury. They opened the gates of the kingdom that most of the kingdoms were walled in and they had huge doors that had a hole through them. I mean you have to slide this long key, usually like a two by four key lumber keys that you carried over. And they carried them over their shoulder and they would clank and clang as you walked along because they’re a big lumber keys and you’d slide it through the hole in the gateway and it would flip a latch and they would open. And these keys were literal keys because they opened the royal treasury to the door in and out at night to the kingdom, maybe to the kings royal palaces even. But when Jesus is referring to them, he’s using the words and language of kingdoms and empires, but here they’re used as symbolic keys.
Steve Ray: He’s saying, “I’m going to give you the keys of the kingdom.” In other words, I’m the King and I’m delegating to you my authority, keys were a sign of authority. Sometimes it was a seal, the king’s seal on a wax or some other sign. Under Israel the sign of the kingdom, the sign of that authority was the keys of the kingdom.
Steve Ray: And Jesus is delegating those to Peter here being symbolic. And also in the Vatican today, they’re symbolic keys, but they represent the royal authority that has been delegated. I love the painting in the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo painted where Peter’s giving the keys back to Jesus at the end of time because Michelangelo understood that those keys were delegated to Peter and the successors. But at the end of time, when the King comes back, he gives the keys back to their rightful owner.
Trent Horn: Let’s go through this passage then a little bit more in depth, and I want you to break it down for us to explain to Protestants and even Catholics who may have just given the passage more of a surface reading. So this takes place in Matthew 16 let’s start at verse 13, we’ll go through 19 I’ll stop at different places. So this passage begins here. “Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do men say that the son of man is?” Now, my understanding is to you is there’s an important reference here to understand where the disciples are when this conversation transpires.
Steve Ray: It does. It’s in the North of Israel today. It’s on the right on the Lebanese border. In fact, when I take my groups up there, my favorite place to talk about this passage is at the site and we are right on the Lebanese border. In fact, you can see the fence that goes into Lebanon and it’s a place where there was a pagan… It looks like a Holy site for the pagans. They came there to worship Pan, the God Pan, and they also had at the time of Christ, before the time of Christ, Herod the King. King Herod had built a huge white temple there, made out of white marble imported from Greece. And he made it to the divine Caesar Augustus because Caesar was considered divine.
Steve Ray: And so when you came to this place, there’s a huge rock. This rock is massive. It’s 500 feet long at least and 100 feet high or something, and on the left hand side there’s a big cave. And this huge rock was a place where people came to worship Pan and to worship the divine Caesar Augustus. And right behind the temple, if you’d walk through the temple, there’s this huge cave and people would come there and they would throw their living sacrifices into the cave because it was full of water and they believed that the gods were down there.
Steve Ray: So here you have a big rock, you have a church, a false temple here like it represents almost like a church and you have the gates of hell and they’re coming to worship the wrong Lord with the wrong sacrifices. This is so important to understand the geography when you’re reading this. See my way of understanding the Bible, Trent, is when I read it and it says, Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philip and then asked these questions and does this little dialogue. My first question is always, why did they mentioned that it was Caesarea Philippi. Is there something about Caesarea Philippi that makes this discussion important? So I went there and I studied it and my oh my that whole location explains the words that Jesus is saying. And without knowing that geographical location, you will not get everything out of this passage that we should.
Trent Horn: So we’ll take that into account. This big rock, the gates of hell and the false worship. The passage continues. “And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He, Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” So at this point before Jesus’ response, we see that something special is happening with this fellow, Simon Peter, whatever his name is, I suppose.
Steve Ray: Yes. The way I read that Simon Peter blurted out, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” Here he receives a revelation from God. He has recognized something and Jesus says in the next couple verses, I hate to jump ahead, but that didn’t come from his brain.
Trent Horn: Yeah, why don’t we go to that then, let’s read the next verse.
Steve Ray: Okay.
Trent Horn: And Jesus replies, and Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven.” So as you were saying.
Steve Ray: Yes, it’s a revelation. Peter receives a revelation. It wasn’t Thomas or James or John that got the revelation. It was Peter. And I think this is significant because it’s after he gets the revelation. It’s almost as though the father has chosen Peter and by him speaking these words, Jesus recognized that he was the one, he was the one that was going to be given this royal authority. And so he says, “Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah.” And he’s emphasizing the fact of his that Simon is from the flesh. He’s the son of John. But the revelation didn’t come from the flesh. It came from God, our father in heaven who revealed this to you. And so they’re asking, it was Jesus. They said, well, it’s in the editorial of the Jerusalem post. There’s rumors, there’s speculations, but nobody knows who you are Jesus.
Steve Ray: There’s all kinds of discussion and Jesus then stops and looks right at them and says, “Who do you say that I am? You’ve been with me three years. Who do you say that I am?” And that’s when Simon whose name was Simon. He didn’t have the name Peter yet. He was going to get it now. Simon says, that’s why Jesus says Simon Bar-Jonah.
Trent Horn: Okay.
Steve Ray: Simon says, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.”
Trent Horn: Exactly. And so then now we get to the key verse, Matthew 16:18 we have this entire context to read into it. Then Jesus says, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church and the powers of death or the gates of Hades in some translations shall not prevail against it.” Now help us break down this verse and then maybe we’ll talk about some of the objections and alternative interpretations Protestants have towards it.
Steve Ray: Okay, I’m going to say first that what’s happening here is Jesus has just said, “Who am I?” And Peter has defined him. “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” It’s a definition we still use today. I think that Jesus, if we heard the whole conversation, I have a little tongue and cheek here, said to him, “Peter, thank you for defining me. You’ve just defined to me now I’m going to return the favor and I’m going to define you. You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church.”
Steve Ray: So Peter defines Jesus. Jesus returns the favor now and defines Peter. The problem is that when we read this in English, we read the word Peter and upon this rock, and we do not see the wordplay. When we read the Bible in English and in America where there is no longer kingdoms, we have democracies and when we’re speaking in English, which is far removed from Greek and Hebrew of the Bible, and we’re 2000 years separate, different cultures, we are at a great disadvantage because we’re not reading the Bible in the language that it’s spoken of. Because when you read it in the language of Greek or even Aramaic, which underlies that language, you see the word play. There’s a tremendous wordplay here that we missed when we read it in English.
Trent Horn: Yeah, and so tell us a bit then about this wordplay that’s happening that where does the word Peter come from and how is it related to the other word rock in this verse?
Steve Ray: The way I explain this when I’m up there and in my books is that Peter is a name for rock. It is a Greek word for rock. It’s so common to us because there’s so many. Everybody knows people named Peter, but there was no name Peter then. This is an invention of a new name, and the word for rock is Petra in the Greek, and it’s a feminine noun.
Steve Ray: No, we don’t do this in English either, but if somebody knows Spanish, they know that all the nouns are either masculine nouns or feminine nouns. They have different endings on them to let you know what their feminine or masculine noun. The word rock is a feminine noun, Petra. Jesus wants to name Simon a new name, which is rock, the foundation stone. But he can’t say Petra because that’s feminine. It’s like you can’t just go take this 250 pound fishermen and introduce them and say, “Here’s my friend Petra.” This is feminine. You can’t do this.
Trent Horn: It would be like calling him Patricia.
Steve Ray: Yes. Or like calling me Stephanie.
Trent Horn: Right.
Steve Ray: So what Jesus did is he creates a new word. He takes the word Petra with a feminine. He puts a masculine ending on it, which then makes it a masculine word. It’s a new word. Never ever been used before. And he designates that as the new name for Simon and that is Petros. That is rock with a masculine ending. So now when you read this in the Greek, it says, “You are Petros and on this Petra, I will build my church.” Ah, says I Steve Ray the Baptist 20 years ago, there’s two different words there, Petros and Petra. So it must be two different things. You Catholics must be wrong. But when you look at this, you understand why Petros and Petra, it’s still a tremendous word play. But if we dig deeper here, we realize that Jesus wasn’t speaking in Greek when he said this. This is the way Matthew translated it. Jesus is speaking in the language, the vernacular of the Jews of the time, which was Aramaic. And we can tell even by the whole structure of this passage that he’s speaking in Aramaic, Simon Bar-Jonah.
Trent Horn: Because Bar is the Aramaic word for son.
Steve Ray: Yes. So you could tell that already he’s using Aramaic when he’s speaking, but Matthew is translating it into Greek. It’s what we have in the New Testament today. Jesus is speaking Aramaic. It would have said, you are [Aramaic 00:20:16] and on this [Aramaic 00:20:18] I will build my church. There is no change in the words, it’s exactly the same word. And if you go back to John chapter 1:42 where Jesus first meets Simon, he says, “Well, hello Simon, how are you? Guess what? You’re the one that’s going to be called Cephas. And John knowing we didn’t know what that means puts in parentheses which means rock. When Jesus first meets Simon, the first thing he says to him is, I’m going to rename you someday and your name is going to be rock.
Steve Ray: And now we come to the passage in Caesarea Philippi where that comes true and he says, now is the time that you’re going to get that new name. I’m going to name you kēpā and on this kēpā I will build my church and Matthew translating it into Greek says, “You are Petros. And on this Petra I will build my church.” And then we translate it into English and we lose it even more. “You are Peter and on this rock I’ll build my church.”
Trent Horn: So I mean we can always ask when Protestants get into this to try to say the rock is not Peter. A very basic question even for Catholics who are just starting out defending the faith. Could be to ask the question, well, okay, the difference in Greek and this or that. Why is Jesus bothered to rename Simon at all and give him this name rock? Why did he even bother to do that?
Steve Ray: Well, in scripture, we don’t do this today. Our names do not represent so much today as they did in the old days. Your name represented you. It was something of your character, may be your dignity and even office. When his name is Simon, that’s his name, but Jesus changes his name and there’s a great precedent for this in scripture because we knew of a man from Genesis who was named Abraham, which means father. But when God called him to be the father of all those who believe by faith in the people of Israel, he changed his name from Abram to Abraham, which means father of nations.
Steve Ray: It’s a new dignity. It’s a new calling. It’s a new position. When somebody gets a name change in the Bible, it’s very, very significant because it says something about either their character, their dignity, their office, or some new calling that they have. So when Jesus names him, “Peter, your name’s Simon, but I’m going to give you the name of rock because from now on you are going to be the rock foundation of the church. The church is going to be built on you or the office, which I am establishing here and you’re going to fill.” So what happening by giving him a new name, he’s giving him a new dignity and a new office. And that is very significant in biblical terms.
Trent Horn: Well, let’s talk about two at least to come to my mind. Alternative interpretations of this passage to respond to the first being, the idea that the rock doesn’t refer to Peter, it just refers to Peter’s confession of faith and it’s that faith the church will be built on, not Peter himself.
Steve Ray: This is interesting because what Protestantism does, and I know this because I used to be a Protestant evangelism. We do this thing called either or. It has to be it’s either Peter himself or it’s his confession or his faith.
Steve Ray: Catholics say, “Why do you divorce two things.” It is Peter himself, the rock and his confession. The catechism says both and it doesn’t see that as a contradiction because it’s both Peter himself and his confession and his faith. It’s the confessing Peter. In other words, it’s Peter confessing that it doesn’t have to be one or the other, but if you say that it’s not Peter, it’s only his confession, then we have a big problem. Not only because it goes contrary to the wordplay, this whole thing that’s going on in this passage, but it goes contrary to the way it was interpreted and understood by the whole early church.
Trent Horn: And we’ll certainly get to that soon. One last interpretation. I think many Catholics can be flummoxed when Protestants will say, well, in the Old Testament, God is called the rock. In 1st Corinthians 10:4 Paul says the rock was Christ and another passages says that the church will be built on Christ, the cornerstone and using all these different verses will try to say the rock in this passage is God or Christ and not Peter or even his confession. How would you respond to that?
Steve Ray: Well, I think it’s pretty obvious that that’s not the case because in John 1:42 Jesus said, “You are going to be named rock. He says that to Simon, the first time he meets him, “You’re going to be named rock.” This is going to be the rock. It’s not what you say. It’s not your confession, it’s you. And when Paul, we’ll get into this in a little bit later too, but when Paul addresses Peter or refers to him later in his epistles, he doesn’t refer to him as Simon.
Steve Ray: He refers to him as Cephas, which is that Aramaic word for rock. So it is Peter who is the rock. And if you take all of the scripture in context, you cannot just say that it says confession or something other than Peter because in this passage, Peter has the name rock and he is that rock. Now in 1 Corinthians chapter three of course it says that Jesus Christ is the foundation and I know that there is no other foundation. So as a Protestant I would’ve said, “We’ll see there Paul says in first Corinthians three that there is no other foundation other than Jesus Christ. He’s the rock foundation.” But those are different stories. Here we’re seeing Jesus as the builder. Peter is the rock, but in the other story in 1 Corinthians chapter three Paul is the builder. Jesus is the foundation and we are the rocks.
Steve Ray: See, there are different metaphors being used and you can’t mix the metaphors. I learned that in grammar school, so you have to take each one and read it in its context and see what it’s saying. Jesus of course, is the only foundation, but he’s sharing his rockness with Peter, he’s the King and what’s he doing? He’s delegated Peter to work with him. So he’s sharing his rockness, his foundation. And Peter then becomes a rock. He becomes the foundation along with Jesus. And again, it’s not either or it’s both and.
Trent Horn: All right, and then let’s finish the passage here in verse 19 the relevant portion. Jesus continues to say to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Why is this passage significant especially with its reference to the Old Testament in it?
Steve Ray: This is a parallel. I love the way Jimmy Akin breaks this down, that there are two statements being made. One is that he’s the rock foundation and now he’s been given the keys. These are two major blessings and they’re both corresponding to each other. Oh let me first say what I used to say as a Baptist, what are the keys of the kingdom of heaven?” I said, it’s the gospel. If you go and tell somebody that they need to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and savior, leave the Catholic church and really get saved. What have I done? I’ve just used the keys of the gospel. The keys of the kingdom are the gospel. That’s what it is. So everybody has the keys. We all have the gospel we can give it. Problem is Jesus didn’t say, I’m given all you all the keys here.
Steve Ray: In Greek it’s singular. I’m giving you Peter, the keys and what you bind on earth. So what did this mean to a Jew? Now when I’m reading it as American speaking English, it may be one thing, but it’s not important. What’s important is what did the Jews understand it at the time. They had kingdoms, their kingdoms were run by Kings. The kings had royal stewards who were under their authority. That’s number two in command, second, the vice president and so to speak even more so. And the king would delegate his keys to the royal steward. The king could sleep in the morning. He could go out to battle. He didn’t have to worry about who’s going to open up the gates in the royal treasuries and conduct the affairs of state that was delegated to the royal steward.
Steve Ray: The man with the keys. Go back to Isaiah 22 and I think we’ll get into that in a minute. But Isaiah 22 is a great example of Eliakim who is the royal steward now, and he says, “You have the keys of the kingdom. What you close, no man will open and what you open no man will close.” This is related to the gates of the royal city. So Jesus is saying, “I am the king and I am going to be ascending into heaven soon. And when I do, I’m going to leave you in charge. I’m going to give you the keys of my kingdom and you can administrate and you can run my kingdom on earth in my absence. And this is the keys of the kingdom. And while you’re doing that, I’m giving you the authority to bind and loose.” And that is judicial terminology from the time of Jesus.
Steve Ray: Some of the most common words used among rabbis and judges, to bind means that they could make laws, they could excommunicate someone from the kingdom and losing meant that they could release someone from laws or they could include someone into the kingdom. These were judicial terms and Jesus is setting up a kingdom and he’s making his judges the apostles, giving them the authority to do what judges and administrators do in a kingdom. That’s all the wording right here, it is Jewish terminology you can’t understand it in American context.
Trent Horn: So I think we’ve seen some pretty powerful evidence in this passage. Why don’t you just summarize for us what some of the other evidence in the New Testament there is that Peter held a special place of authority over the other apostles?
Steve Ray: Well, I think there’s a couple of them that are quite significant besides just the whole organic growth of the church, which we’ll mention in a moment, but in Luke 22:31-32 again, we read this passage where at a great disadvantage because in the Greek, not only in their masculine feminine nouns, but the verbs also are singular or plural. Kind of like when you go down South and you say you, if it’s one person, you say you, if it’s a little group of people, it’s y’all. And if it’s a whole bunch of people, it’s all y’all. Down South it’s so easy up North where I live in Michigan, you don’t do that.
Steve Ray: When I say you, I have to define whether it’s a one, two or a lot of people. In this passage because of the Greek plural and singular nouns it says, “Simon, Simon. Behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail and you, once you have turned against, strengthen your brothers.” You have you or your about six times in here, and we don’t know whether they’re singular or plural in the English. But when you read it in the Greek, here’s what it says, “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded permission to sift all of you like wheat. But I have prayed for you.” Singular Simon, “That your faith may not fail even if the others does, and you singular Simon Peter when once you have turned again, strengthen all of your brothers.”
Steve Ray: See the plural and the singular is so significant here that Satan has demanded all of them to sift them as wheat. But Jesus didn’t pray for the rest of them. He prayed singularly for Peter because Peter’s strength was going to stand and when the temptation and the problem was over the strong Peter who had that gift from God is now going to encourage and strengthen all of his other brothers, the other apostles.
Steve Ray: So here it shows a primacy of Peter. Another one is Matthew chapter 10 or 12 I think it’s chapter 10 where it starts out listing the apostles. It says, and primarily or in the first place, Peter, and then it lists all the others and Judas Iscariot is last.
Trent Horn: Yeah, Matthew 10:1-4.
Steve Ray: One through four and that right there too also gives us the idea even in the wording of Matthew, first of all in primary place, Peter, Simon Peter, and then the others, Now-
Trent Horn: I think the funniest thing I hear Steve, when this is brought to process that I’ve read, why is Peter’s name first? I’ve heard them say, well, maybe Peter was just the oldest and the eldest tend to be listed first, but that seems pretty ad hoc and contrived of an explanation.
Steve Ray: If that would be the case, then John would be the last one listed because he is very apparently a young teenage whippersnapper this whole time. He would have been the youngest one listed, so-
Trent Horn: Right. But he’s listed forth in this list.
Steve Ray: Right. That means he’s the fourth oldest, which even in all the great artwork shows him as being very young, even having a feminine look to him to show his youthfulness so that argument would fall flat on its face based on its own argument. Another passage though that I really, I just love this one and I love to do tell this one while I’m standing on the shore of Galilee with our pilgrims and I say just 100 yards out the distance of a football field, the apostles were out there fishing. Jesus calls them in, there’s way too much to say about that passage, but Jesus takes Peter aside and he says, “Do you love me?” Peter says, “Yes, I do.” He says, “Then tend my lambs.” A second time he says that and he says, “Shepherd my sheep.” And a third time, “Shepherd my lambs.”
Steve Ray: This is a threefold commission and in the Bible the number three is very important. Three means ultimate. It means something very final, something very significant, important, if something is done or said three times. And so here Jesus is appointing him to be a shepherd and in the Old Testament context to tend, Jesus is saying, tend my sheep, feed my sheep. The word tend means to govern. It’s used of the kings and the prophets and the priests of the Old Testament. They were the shepherds and their job was to tend and to feed the people of Israel. Jesus is using that Old Testament terminology relating to Peter, even by using it, putting him in the place of leadership. He’s saying you are to tend them, which means to govern and you are to feed them, which means to teach. Those are the two things that Pope does, isn’t it?
Steve Ray: He governs and he teaches, those two things Jesus appoints Peter to do here. And it’s very clear to anybody who understands Old Testament context or the way Jews lived and what they did and how Shepherd’s work that he’s appointing Peter here to be his head shepherd.
Trent Horn: So let’s continue our investigation of the evidence for the papacy and for Peter’s primacy. And later we’ll talk about his charisma of infallibility. Let’s look at the early church and the evidence that Peter in his office had a special place of authority and that there is this office of the papacy. I guess where we start our earliest record of the early church would actually be the book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles. Why don’t you tell us a little bit how that portrays Peter in this book and how it lends evidence for the fact that Peter had special authority?
Steve Ray: Peter is the one that stands up and addresses the crowds. Peter is the one who takes the lead. He is the head apostle here quite literally. In fact, in the whole book of Acts, you do not find the words of any other apostle except Paul who comes along later. The only words of an apostle that you see in the book of Acts are coming from the mouth of Peter. Not John, not Thomas, not James, only the words of Peter because his words are significant. He is the head apostle. He is the head of the church. He is the one who has been given the primacy over the church, the majordomo, the vizier, so to speak, in the Old Testament terminology or the steward of the house, he’s been put in charge.
Steve Ray: When Jesus goes to heaven, he’s seated at the right hand of the throne of God. He takes his place as king and as soon as he does that, Peter stands up and takes his place as the representative of the king. The Royal steward with the man with carries the keys. He is the one directing the church. He’s the one that gets the church started with the work of the Holy Spirit of course, and the other apostles with him and he begins to teach. He tells them what they need to be baptized and so on. He stands up, he becomes the leader and the head of the church.
Trent Horn: I hope you all enjoyed that interview with Steve Ray, part two will be coming up this Thursday on the Counsel of Trent podcast. Be sure to check that out. Mark your calendars and please pray for our sound engineer to enjoy time off with his wife and two lovely children. Thank you guys for being here and I hope that you have a very blessed day.
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