Peter and the keys: Matthew 16 and the question of the papacy

Matthew is the first Gospel in the canon and, by the church's early tradition, was written by Matthew, the former tax collector among the Twelve (Matthew 9:9). Eusebius reports that Papias (about AD 130) said Matthew compiled the sayings of the Lord in the Hebrew language, and later fathers say he wrote for Jewish believers. Most scholars date the Gospel between about AD 60 and 90. Many hold that it used Mark, and critical scholars disagree about its author and place of writing. It is clearly written for readers who know the Old Testament, and it presents Jesus as the promised Messiah and king, with five long discourses. Chapter 16 is the hinge. Up to this point Jesus has been teaching and healing and has met growing opposition. From 16:21 he 'began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer'.

The event takes place in the region of Caesarea Philippi (16:13), a city at the foot of Mount Hermon in the far north, rebuilt by Philip the tetrarch and named in honour of the emperor. It had an ancient shrine to the god Pan, with a spring and a cave that the Greeks associated with the entrance to the underworld. The setting is a pagan one, far from the temple in Jerusalem, and Jesus asks his disciples who they say he is. The passage is the main New Testament text in the debate about the papacy and in the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant disagreement about how the church is ruled.

Matthew 16 is Gospel narrative with a dialogue at its centre, and it must be read in order. The confession (16:16), the blessing and charge (16:17-19), the passion prediction (16:21) and the rebuke (16:22-23) are one scene. The man called 'rock' in verse 18 is called 'Satan' and 'stumbling block' in verse 23. A reading that uses verses 18-19 without verses 21-23 leaves out Matthew's own arrangement.

The saying in verses 17-19 is spoken in Semitic idiom. Jesus almost certainly spoke Aramaic, in which 'Peter' and 'rock' are the same word, Kepha (the form 'Cephas' appears in John 1:42; 1 Corinthians 15:5; Galatians 2:9). Matthew's Greek has two words, Petros and petra, differing in gender because a man's name takes a masculine form. For many years Protestant writers argued that petros meant a small stone and petra a large rock, so that Jesus distinguished Peter from the rock. Most scholars today, Protestant and Catholic, do not rest on that distinction.

The passage must also be read alongside Matthew 18:15-20, which uses the same 'bind and loose' language of the church's discipline, and with the Old Testament background of the key in Isaiah 22:22. The class sets out the readings of 'rock' and 'keys' as their own defenders make them.

16:13-16. Jesus asks, 'Who do people say the Son of Man is?' The answers are John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. These are honourable views, and all of them put Jesus in the category of a prophet. Then he asks the disciples, 'But what about you? Who do you say I am?' Simon Peter answers, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' Christ is Christos, the Greek for Messiah, the anointed king. 'Son of the living God' places Jesus in a relation to God that no prophet had. 'Living' contrasts the true God with the idols of that region.

16:17. Jesus says, 'Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by My Father in heaven.' The knowledge is a gift of revelation. 'Flesh and blood' means human reason and report.

16:18. 'And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.' Simon already bears the name Peter in the Gospels (John 1:42; Mark 3:16), and here Jesus gives the name its meaning. The play on words is deliberate: 'you are Petros, and on this petra I will build.' 'Church' is ekklesia, the assembly or congregation, the word the Greek Old Testament uses for Israel gathered. It is Jesus' church ('My church') and he is the builder. 'The gates of Hades' (Hades is the realm of the dead) occurs in Isaiah 38:10 and Psalm 107:18 in the sense of death's power. The promise is that death will not overcome the church. Gates are defensive, so some read the picture as the church storming death's gates, which will not hold.

16:19. 'I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.' The keys recall Isaiah 22:15-25, where the steward Eliakim receives the key of the house of David in place of Shebna and opens and shuts. A key means authority to admit. 'Bind and loose' is rabbinic language for forbidding and permitting, and also for imposing and lifting a ban. The Greek verbs are in a form that many translate 'will have been bound' and 'will have been loosed', and scholars debate whether heaven's decision comes first or follows. The same words are used in 18:18 and addressed to the disciples, and the context there is discipline in the church.

16:20-23. Jesus tells the disciples to say nothing about his being the Christ. Then he begins to speak of suffering, death and resurrection. Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes him: 'This shall never happen to You!' Jesus answers, 'Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me. For you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.' The word 'stumbling block' is skandalon. Peter, who spoke by revelation of the Father, now speaks as the tempter spoke in the wilderness (4:8-10). The chapter shows that Peter's authority is not his own insight.

The other texts. In Luke 22:31-32 Jesus tells Simon that Satan has asked to sift all the disciples, and that he has prayed for Simon that his faith not fail, and that when he has turned back he is to strengthen his brothers. In John 21:15-19 the risen Lord asks Peter three times whether he loves him, after three denials (John 18:15-27), and tells him to feed his lambs, tend his sheep and feed his sheep, and then foretells his death. In Acts 15 Peter speaks at the council in Jerusalem (15:7-11) to recall that God chose that the Gentiles hear the gospel through him (the Cornelius story, Acts 10), but James gives the judgment (15:13-21), and the decision is made by the apostles and elders together with the whole church (15:22). In Galatians 2:7-9 Peter is entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised, and James, Cephas and John are called pillars. In Galatians 2:11-14 Paul opposed Peter 'to his face' at Antioch because he withdrew from table fellowship with Gentiles.

The passage teaches who Christ is and what the church is. Christ is the Messiah and the Son of God, revealed by the Father. The church is his own, built by him, and death cannot overcome it. The same truth is told elsewhere: no one can lay a foundation other than the one already laid, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 3:11), and the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20). In Revelation 21:14 the wall of the city has twelve foundations carrying the names of the twelve apostles. On the Catholic reading Peter is the foundation in Matthew 16:18. Elsewhere the foundation is the apostles as a body. Peter's own letter calls Christ the living stone and believers living stones (1 Peter 2:4-8), and Paul says of the rock that followed Israel in the wilderness that the rock was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4).

The keys and the binding and loosing are given to Peter in 16:19 and to the disciples in 18:18 (the verbs are plural), and John 20:21-23 records the risen Lord's commission to the disciples to forgive and retain sins. In Acts, Peter opens the door with the gospel to the Jews (Acts 2), to Samaria (8:14-17) and to the Gentiles (Acts 10), which many take as the exercise of the keys. The question is whether Peter's place is a unique, founding one that ended with the apostles, or a ministry that continues in successors.

The New Testament shows Peter as the first among the Twelve in the lists (Matthew 10:2) and a main speaker, and also as a fellow elder (1 Peter 5:1), as corrected by Paul (Galatians 2:11), and as one of three pillars at Jerusalem (Galatians 2:9). It does not say that Peter was bishop of Rome, though it places him in 'Babylon' when he writes (1 Peter 5:13), a name which many take to mean Rome. Romans, written before Paul's arrival, greets many in Rome and does not mention Peter (Romans 16).

The passage is about the identity of Christ. Peter confesses him as the Christ and Son of the living God, which fulfils the promises of an anointed king (Psalm 2:7; 2 Samuel 7:12-14, promise) and which the Father reveals. The one who says 'I will build My church' is doing what the promised son of David was to do: he is to build a house (2 Samuel 7:13, promise, fulfilled in him), and the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone (Psalm 118:22, quoted in Matthew 21:42 and 1 Peter 2:7). The builder of the church is Christ, not Peter.

The keys belong first to him. The Isaiah text about Eliakim (Isaiah 22:22) is applied directly to Christ in Revelation 3:7: 'the key of David' that opens and no one shuts. Christ says that he holds the keys of death and Hades (Revelation 1:18). The gates of Hades cannot prevail because he has passed through death. The chapter shows this by turning at once to his coming death and resurrection (16:21).

The shepherd of John 21 is Christ's own: he says 'My lambs' and 'My sheep'. Peter is told to feed what belongs to Christ, who is the good shepherd (John 10:11) and the chief shepherd (1 Peter 5:4). Luke 22:32 shows Christ praying for Peter, and the strength of Peter's faith depends on that prayer and not on Peter. The rock and the stumbling block are in one man in one chapter, and the contrast leaves Christ as the one who does not fail.