The Ecclesial Gospel

Matthew is the only Gospel to use the word ekklēsia, “church” — once for the Church universal (“on this rock I will build my church,” Matt. 16:18) and once for the local congregation (“tell it to the church,” Matt. 18:17). This file examines the texts that have earned Matthew the name of the “ecclesial Gospel”: the confession of Peter and the keys, the procedure for binding and loosing in the community, and the Great Commission with its promise of the abiding presence — read with the Fathers and against the Roman and Reformed interpretations.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

“You Are Peter, and on This Rock”

At the turning-point of the Gospel, at Caesarea Philippi, Peter confesses, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and the Lord answers him: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death 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. 16:16–19). This passage — found only in Matthew — is the single most contested text in the history of the doctrine of the Church, and its interpretation divides the confessions.

The Orthodox reading, grounded in the Fathers, holds that the “rock” on which the Church is built is the faith Peter confessed — the confession of Christ as Son of the living God — and Peter as its confessor and type, not Peter as the holder of a transmissible primacy of jurisdiction over the whole Church. Chrysostom comments that the Lord built his Church “upon his faith in his confession,” and the play on Petros / petra expresses Peter’s role as the confessor of the rock-faith (John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, Homily 54 [on Matt. 16:18]; NPNF I/10). Augustine in his Retractations records his own settled view that the rock is Christ whom Peter confessed (Augustine, Retractations 1.21). The keys and the binding and loosing given to Peter here are given to all the apostles two chapters later (Matt. 18:18) and to the gathered disciples after the resurrection (John 20:23), so that the authority is the Church’s, exercised by the apostles and their successors, the bishops. [Disputed: the Roman Catholic tradition reads Matt. 16:18–19 as conferring on Peter personally a primacy of jurisdiction transmitted to the bishops of Rome (so the dogmatic constitution *Pastor Aeternus*, First Vatican Council, 1870); the Orthodox and the Reformation traditions reject this reading, the Orthodox holding the rock to be Peter's confessed faith and the keys to belong to the whole apostolic college and episcopate (the patristic catena assembled in, e.g., Veselin Kesich, "Peter's Primacy in the New Testament and the Early Tradition," in *The Primacy of Peter*, ed. J. Meyendorff, 1992). The exegesis itself is the locus of the dispute.]

“Tell It to the Church”

The second use of ekklēsia belongs to the fourth discourse, the “community discourse” of Matthew 18, which gives the Gospel its claim to be the most ecclesial. There the Lord lays down the procedure for reconciling a brother who has sinned: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone… But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you… If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matt. 18:15–17). The passage presupposes a structured, disciplined community — a body with the authority to admonish and, in the last resort, to exclude — and it grounds that authority in the same words of binding and loosing given to Peter: “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” (Matt. 18:18). It is sealed with the promise of Christ’s presence in the gathered community: “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). This chapter is the New Testament’s clearest charter of the local church’s discipline and the authority of the assembly, and it is wholly characteristic of Matthew that the Gospel which alone names the ekklēsia should also alone provide its order.

The surrounding chapter sets that discipline within mercy. It opens with the child set in the midst and the warning against scandalizing the “little ones” (Matt. 18:1–10), continues with the parable of the lost sheep sought out (18:12–14), and after the discipline-procedure turns to forgiveness — Peter’s question “how often shall I forgive?”, the answer “seventy times seven,” and the parable of the unforgiving servant (18:21–35). The community’s power to bind and loose is thus framed front and back by the imperative of mercy and the seeking of the lost; discipline exists for restoration, not for exclusion. Chrysostom reads the whole discourse as a school of humility and forbearance among the brethren (Chrysostom, Hom. Matt. 59–61; NPNF I/10).

The Great Commission and the Abiding Presence

The Gospel closes with the risen Lord on the mountain in Galilee and the Great Commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:18–20). This is the Gospel’s missionary and ecclesial charter, and it is dense with the Church’s life: the universal authority of the risen Christ; the mandate to disciple all nations; the Trinitarian baptismal formula, the earliest in the New Testament and the form used in the Church’s baptism to this day; the teaching of “all that I have commanded” (the whole Gospel as catechesis); and the promise of the abiding presence. That last clause closes an inclusio opened in the first chapter, where the child is named Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matt. 1:23): the Gospel that began with God-with-us ends with “I am with you always.” For the Orthodox tradition the Commission is read as the founding charge of the Church’s mission and sacramental life — baptism into the Holy Trinity, the apostolic teaching, and the perpetual presence of the risen Lord with his Church (see Ecclesiology).

The Most Ecclesial Gospel

Taken together, these texts — the confession and the keys (Matt. 16), the discipline and the gathered presence (Matt. 18), and the commission and the abiding presence (Matt. 28) — make Matthew the Gospel of the Church in a way the others are not. It is the Gospel that names the ekklēsia, gives it its order and its discipline, grounds its mission and its baptism, and promises it the presence of its Lord to the end of the age. This ecclesial richness is among the reasons the Church placed Matthew first and drew on it most heavily for catechesis and canon law; the Gospel of the called publican became, fittingly, the Gospel of the gathered community of the called.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Gospel according to Matthew 16:16–19; 18:15–20; 28:18–20. With John 20:23. Cited by chapter and verse.
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, Homily 54 (on Matt. 16:18); Homilies 59–61 (on Matt. 18). Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 10.
  • Augustine of Hippo. Retractations 1.21 (the rock is Christ confessed by Peter).
  • Meyendorff, John, ed. The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992 (esp. V. Kesich on Peter in the New Testament).
  • First Vatican Council. Pastor Aeternus (1870) — for the contested Roman reading.