The Rock and the Keys

“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church… I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 16:18–19). This is the source-critical centerpiece of the collection. It lays out, per METHODOLOGY §4 and without polemic, the Greek and Aramaic of Petros/petra/Kepha; the threefold patristic range on what “this rock” means (the confession or faith, Christ himself, and Peter personally); the keys and the power of binding and loosing given to all the apostles (Matt 18:18; John 20:23); and the Orthodox “primacy of confession” reading set beside the Roman Catholic reading, each stated in its strongest form and attributed to its sources.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Text and Its Words

The promise follows immediately on the confession: “And I tell you, you are Peter (Petros), and on this rock (petra) I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt 16:18–19). Three images are given in sequence: the rock on which the Church is built, the keys of the kingdom, and the power of binding and loosing. Each has been read differently across the traditions, and the differences turn first on language.

The wordplay. In Greek there is a slight difference of form: Petros (masculine, the name) and petra (feminine, “rock,” “bedrock”). Some have argued that Petros means a “stone” or “pebble” and petra a “rock-mass,” so that Peter is distinguished from the rock. But the underlying word the Lord spoke was almost certainly Aramaic, in which there is no such distinction: “You are Kepha, and on this Kepha I will build my church.” The single Aramaic word Kepha stands in both places; the Greek must use a masculine form for the man’s name and the natural feminine for “rock,” but the pun is on one word (Cullmann 1962; this is now the common scholarly judgment). The Peshitta Syriac, an Aramaic version, indeed uses kepha twice. This philological point is, paradoxically, granted by careful interpreters on every side: it tells against the older Protestant attempt to drive a wedge between Petros and petra, but it does not by itself settle what Kepha/rock refers to.

The Threefold Patristic Range on “This Rock”

The fathers did not speak with one voice on what “this rock” means, and Orthodox honesty requires laying out the full range. Three readings run through the patristic literature, often in the same author.

1. The rock is Peter’s confession / the faith he confessed. This is the dominant reading in the Greek East and very widespread in the Latin West. St. John Chrysostom: “On this rock — that is, on the faith of his confession” (Homilies on Matthew 54.2; trans. NPNF I/10). St. Hilary of Poitiers: the Church is built “upon this rock of his confession” (On the Trinity 6.36–37; trans. NPNF II/9). St. Gregory of Nyssa and others read similarly. The Latin St. Augustine, in his Retractations, explicitly leaves the reader free and inclines to the confession-and-Christ reading: he says he had earlier taught that Peter was the rock, but that he more often said the rock was Christ, on whom Peter himself was built, “for the rock was Christ” (1 Cor 10:4) — “let the reader choose” (Augustine, Retractations 1.21.1; cf. Sermon 76.1; Tractates on John 124.5; trans. NPNF I/7, I/5). On this reading the foundation is the truth confessed — “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” — and Peter is the rock precisely as its confessor.

2. The rock is Christ himself. Drawing on 1 Corinthians 10:4 (“the Rock was Christ”) and 1 Corinthians 3:11 (“no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”), many fathers read the petra as Christ, on whom both Peter and the Church are founded. This is one of Augustine’s two preferred readings (Tractates on John 124.5) and appears across the tradition. The point is that the ultimate foundation of the Church is Christ alone; Peter is a rock by participation in the Rock.

3. The rock is Peter personally. A real strand of the fathers — and the reading that the developed Roman theology presses — takes “this rock” to be Peter himself, the man, to whom a unique role is given. St. Cyprian of Carthage speaks of the Church “founded upon Peter” and of “the chair of Peter” as the source of unity, while in the same breath insisting that the same power was given to all the apostles equally (On the Unity of the Catholic Church 4; trans. ANF Vol. 5 — and note the disputed “Primacy Text,” below). St. Leo the Great, the fullest patristic exponent of the personal reading, teaches that Christ built the Church on Peter and that Peter’s authority lives on in the bishops of Rome who are his heirs (Leo, Sermon 3 [on his anniversary]; Sermon 4; trans. NPNF II/12). The Orthodox tradition acknowledges this strand — Peter is called the rock — but reads it in the light of the other two and of the keys given to all (see St. Leo the Great for the developed Roman-see theology in its own voice).

These three readings are not mutually exclusive; the fathers move freely among them, and the same author (Augustine above all) holds more than one. The Orthodox tradition does not deny that Peter is a foundation-stone; it denies that the text establishes a unique, transmissible, jurisdictional supremacy of Peter and his Roman successors over the whole Church.

A Disputed Patristic Text

[Disputed: Cyprian's *On the Unity of the Catholic Church* 4 survives in two recensions — a "Primacy Text" (*Textus Receptus*) that stresses Peter's chair and primacy, and a shorter text. Maurice Bévenot (*St. Cyprian: The Lapsed, The Unity of the Catholic Church*, ACW 25, 1957) argued both recensions are genuinely Cyprianic, the longer being Cyprian's own later revision; Roman Catholic scholars (e.g. John Chapman) read the Primacy Text as supporting papal claims, while Orthodox and many others note that even the Primacy Text is immediately qualified by Cyprian's insistence (in the same chapter and in *Epistle* 71/72 and his stance in the rebaptism controversy against Pope Stephen) that "the other apostles were also the same as Peter, endowed with an equal fellowship of honour and power," and that no bishop is a "bishop of bishops." The recension and its meaning are genuinely contested.]

The Keys and Binding-and-Loosing — Given to All

The decisive Orthodox argument is not about the rock alone but about the keys and the binding-and-loosing, because Scripture itself shows them given to the whole apostolic body. In Matt 16:19 the keys and the power to bind and loose are promised to Peter. But two chapters later the identical power of binding and loosing is given to all the disciples: “Truly, I say to you, whatever you [plural] bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt 18:18). And after the Resurrection the power to forgive sins — the substance of “loosing” — is breathed upon all the apostles together: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld” (John 20:22–23). The conclusion the Orthodox tradition draws is that what was promised to Peter first, as the mouth and representative of the apostles, was given to all the apostles equally — and through them to the whole episcopate. St. Cyprian draws exactly this conclusion: the power was given to Peter first “that he might set forth unity,” but “the rest of the apostles were what Peter also was, endowed with an equal share of honour and power” (On the Unity 4–5; ANF Vol. 5). Origen reads the same: every disciple who makes Peter’s confession becomes a “Peter,” a rock, and receives the keys (Origen, Commentary on Matthew 12.10–11; trans. ANF Vol. 9). The keys, on this reading, signify the apostolic and episcopal authority to teach, to admit and exclude, and to bind and loose sins — an authority of the whole Church’s ministry, not the private possession of one apostle or one see.

The Two Readings Side by Side

The Roman Catholic reading (stated in its strongest form, and dated): “This rock” is Peter himself; on him as a person Christ founded the Church; the keys give Peter a unique primacy of jurisdiction; and this Petrine office is permanent and transmitted to the bishops of Rome as Peter’s successors, who therefore hold a primacy of supreme and universal jurisdiction over the whole Church. This reading is articulated by St. Leo the Great (Sermons 3–5, mid-5th c.), pressed in the medieval period, and defined dogmatically at the First Vatican Council (1870, Pastor Aeternus), which declared the Roman pontiff’s primacy of jurisdiction and (under conditions) infallibility to be of divine institution and grounded in Matt 16:18–19 (Pastor Aeternus, chs. 1–4; Denzinger §§3050–3075). Roman apologists such as John Chapman (Studies on the Early Papacy, 1928) marshal the patristic “Peter” strand in its support.

The Orthodox reading (stated in its strongest form, and sourced): The rock is first the confession Peter spoke and the faith it expresses (Chrysostom, Hilary, and a Greek consensus), and through that confession Peter himself and every confessor of it; the foundation of the Church is ultimately Christ (Augustine; 1 Cor 3:11; 10:4). The keys and binding-and-loosing are given to all the apostles (Matt 18:18; John 20:23) and through them to the whole episcopate; Peter receives them first as the mouth and type of the apostolic college, not as a monarch over it. There is no transmissible office of supreme jurisdiction in the text; Peter’s primacy is a primacy of honor, confession, and witness, exercised within the community of the apostles and bishops, not above it. This reading is set out by the Orthodox theologians of The Primacy of Peter in the Orthodox Church (Afanasiev, Meyendorff, Schmemann, et al., 1992) and rests on the patristic range above.

The difference is not over whether Peter is honored — both traditions honor him supremely — but over whether Matt 16 establishes a unique, transmissible, jurisdictional supremacy. The historical and conciliar dimension of that difference (Peter at Rome, Canon 28 of Chalcedon, the pentarchy, primacy vs supremacy) is carried in Section 07 (see Primacy and the Orthodox Reading).

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible — Matthew 16:16–19; 18:18; John 20:22–23; 1 Corinthians 3:11; 10:4. Cited by book chapter:verse.
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew 54. Trans. NPNF I/10. (“On the faith of his confession.”)
  • Hilary of Poitiers. On the Trinity 6.36–37. Trans. NPNF II/9. (The rock as the confession.)
  • Augustine. Retractations 1.21.1; Tractates on the Gospel of John 124.5; Sermon 76. Trans. NPNF I/7, I/5, and FC. (The rock as Christ / the confession; “let the reader choose.”)
  • Cyprian of Carthage. On the Unity of the Catholic Church 4–5; Epistles. Trans. ANF Vol. 5; and Bévenot, St. Cyprian, ACW 25 (1957) on the two recensions.
  • Origen. Commentary on Matthew 12.10–11. Trans. ANF Vol. 9. (Every confessor a “Peter.”)
  • Leo the Great. Sermons 3–5. Trans. NPNF II/12. (The personal/Roman-see reading.)
  • First Vatican Council (1870), Pastor Aeternus. In Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum §§3050–3075. (The dogmatic Roman definition.)
  • Chapman, John. Studies on the Early Papacy. London: Sheed & Ward, 1928. (Roman Catholic patristic case.)
  • Afanasiev, Nicholas, John Meyendorff, Alexander Schmemann, et al. The Primacy of Peter in the Orthodox Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992. (The Orthodox reading.)
  • Cullmann, Oscar. Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962. (The Aramaic Kepha wordplay.)