When I was a Protestant, I was startled to learn that the consensus of New Testament scholars accept the Catholic view of Matthew 16:18: the person of Peter is the rock. The fact that mainstream Protestants aren’t aware of this also startled me (and still does).
There are, of course, attempts to dispute the consensus. Here’s one: if Peter (Petros) is the rock (petra) of Matthew 16:18, then why doesn’t Matthew use Petros twice? The assumption is that it makes more sense for petra to refer to something else, like Christ himself.
The verse reads like so: “And I tell you, you are Peter [Petros], and on this rock [petra] I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” If Matthew intends petra to refer back to Peter, it appears as if his switch from Petros to petra is unnecessary. Is Matthew an incompetent writer?
Let’s begin with some basic facts about the verse. Baptist scholar Craig S. Keener notes that “by Jesus’ day the Greek terms Petros (Peter) and petra (rock) were interchangeable, and the original Aramaic form of Peter’s nickname that Jesus probably used (kēphas) means simply ‘rock.’” Jesus would have vocalized the Aramaic word kēphas twice for both “Peter” and “rock,” revealing his intention to use a pun. Michael J. Wilkins and Leander E. Keck therefore stress that to our English eyes, the saying should read, “You are Rock, and on this rock I will build my Church.”
But doesn’t the Aramaic make it all the more perplexing that Petros isn’t repeated here in order to reflect the repetition of kēphas?
I think the answer is remarkably simple: Matthew is trying to preserve Christ’s Aramaic pun in his written Greek Gospel. To clarify this point, consider an analogy from World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and one of its best known stars: Dwayne Johnson, also known as “The Rock”:
- The Rock is The Rock of the WWE.
- The Rock is the rock of the WWE.
If Matthew used Petros twice, it would look like the first sentence above. To Greek-speaking Christians, it might read: “You are Peter, and on this Peter I will build my Church.” Think about how we know that “The Rock” is named after “rocks” (object), but when we see “The Rock,” we naturally picture the person as opposed to the object. Having “The Rock” twice makes sentence one a redundant identity statement and not a pun. To have the Greek form of Peter’s name, Petros, also repeated might appear similarly strange in the reader’s understanding.
However, the second sentence lends us a different reading. The second “rock” does not repeat the name “The Rock,” but allows us to see an aspect of The Rock highlighted: he’s of foundational importance to the WWE. It therefore makes perfect sense that the word “rock” would be used both times here but with different nuances. It makes the pun more obvious.
Protestant New Testament scholars W.D. Davies and Dale Allison write, “Why two different Greek words, one masculine, one feminine? An explanation probably lies in this, that kephā’, the Aramaic presumably behind both Πέτρος and πέτρᾳ, ‘was used with different nuances. When translated into Greek, the masculine form petros would lend itself as a more likely designation of a person (Simon), and a literary variant, the feminine petra, for an aspect of him that was to be played upon.’”
Evangelical Bible scholar D.A. Carson likewise states, “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.”
We also shouldn’t forget that although Jesus would have used kēphas both times, he did not write this saying down. He spoke the Aramaic, and so the nuance would have been apparent to the listeners. You can, for example, say aloud sentence one and two of “the Rock” example and find that they both sound exactly the same (“the Rock” sounds the same as “the rock” just as Jesus would have said kēphas twice), but sentence two’s written form better conveys the speaker’s intention of there being a pun.
Regardless, the nuance between Petros and petra is not enough to separate Peter from the rock of Matthew 16:18. In fact, Carson notes that “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!”
Think about it. If Matthew had wanted to make a sharp distinction between Peter and the rock of Matthew 16:18, then it would be mind-boggling for him to use two interchangeable words (Petros-petra) when lithos was available to him. In fact, I think the objection can be reversed: he’d have to be an incompetent writer to build a stark separation upon two virtually identical words. The Catholic interpretation, however, is the simplest and most natural explanation of Matthew’s use of Petros and petra.
Marvin R. Vincent explains that “the reference of ‘petra’ to Christ is forced and unnatural. The obvious reference of the word [petra] is to Peter. The emphatic this [upon this rock] naturally refers to the nearest antecedent [Peter]; and besides, the metaphor is thus weakened, since Christ appears here, not as the foundation, but as the architect: ‘on this rock will I build.’”
The Catholic position shows that Matthew is a competent writer. He is preserving Christ’s Aramaic pun in its Greek written form. This position has widespread support from the scholarly community, is the simplest explanation, and is closer to Christ’s original discernible intent.
We may therefore still conclude with the eminent Lutheran scholar Oscar Cullmann that “it is thus evident that Jesus is referring to Peter, to whom he has given the name Rock. He appoints Peter, the impulsive, enthusiastic, but not persevering man in the circle, to be the foundation of his ecclesia. To this extent Roman Catholic exegesis is correct and all Protestant attempts to evade this interpretation are to be rejected.”