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The book, Jesus, Peter & the
Keys, attempts to provide responses to some of the arguments
that have been put forward against the unique, and sometimes very
strained, exegetical claims of Rome. In particular, this book
often cites Robert Sungenis, a Westminster Seminary graduate, as
their primary source of Greek scholar. While we are unaware of
any advanced study in the field on the part of Mr. Sungenis
beyond a Master’s degree, and have never been informed that
he has professional teaching experience, published scholarly
works, etc., his opinions on the grammar of the Greek text are
presented as the "final word" by Jesus, Peter &
the Keys (see our summary review elsewhere on this page)
On page 25 of JP&K,
Sungenis is cited in response to an argument that I have
presented a number of times. In fact, Sungenis’ comments on
pages 24 and 25 are taken directly from those he made in our
debate at Boston College in 1995. Beginning on page 24, Sungenis
attempts to strengthen the Roman Catholic identification of Peter
as the rock of Matthew 16:18 by discussing, briefly, the
demonstrative pronoun tau,th|, which is the dative feminine singular form
of ou=toj, meaning "this." He points out that
at times this term can be translated "this very"
as in "this very night your soul is required of you"
(Luke 12:20). While this is quite true, it is also quite
irrelevant, for even the translation "and upon this very
rock I will build My church" does not shed any light
whatsoever upon the identity of the "rock." In
fact, I believe such a translation would argue against the
position Sungenis takes, for there would be no reason to use a
demonstrative pronoun with such emphasis immediately upon saying su. ei= Pe,troj (You
are Peter) if Jesus was identifying Peter and the
"rock." The more tau,th| is emphasized, the less likely the
antecedent is Peter. That is, the stronger tau,th| is
translated, the stronger the disjunction between Peter and
this rock.
The main argument I have presented in
the past, and to which Sungenis and Scott Butler are attempting
to respond in JP&K, is this: when one reads the text
as it stands (i.e., when one does not immediately abandon the
Greek and run to a mythical, unverifiable "Aramaic
original"), one is struck with how strange it is that
Jesus takes the "long way around" to get to making the
equation "Peter = rock" if in fact that is His
intention. It would have been much simpler to say, "You are
Peter, and on you I will build My church." But He
didn’t say that. Instead, here are His words:
kavgw. de, soi
le,gw o[ti su. ei= Pe,troj( kai. evpi. tau,th| th/|
pe,tra| oivkodomh,sw mou th.n evkklhsi,an
As we simply translate the passage
and attempt to ascertain the meaning, we note that Jesus begins
with direct personal address to Peter. "And I say to you
(soi)"
is singular, addressed to Peter and to Peter alone. This is
continued in the first part of the main statement, "You
(su,)
are (singular) Peter." This is known as direct
address. Jesus is speaking in the first person, and Peter is in
the second person, being directly addressed by the Lord. Up to
this point, all is clear and understandable.
Then we run into the phrase at issue.
kai. evpi. tau,th| th/| pe,tra is indeed singular; there is only one
"rock" in view. The issue is, to what does tau,th|
refer? As a pronoun, it has an antecedent, a referent that it is
pointing back to. Rome insists the referent is Peter.* But if it is, why use a demonstrative pronoun
at all? Jesus has used two personal pronouns of Peter already in
this sentence, soi
and su,. He could have easily said, "and upon you
the rock," (evpi. se, or evpi. soi, th/| pe,tra). But
again, He didn’t. Instead, he switches from direct address
to the demonstrative "this." I have expressed this, in
non-technical language, as going from second person, "you,
Peter," to third person, "this rock." "This
rock" is referring to something other than the person
who was being addressed in the preceding phrase, something that
we find in the immediate context. A natural reading of the
passage (one that I truly believe would be nigh unto universal if
history had not fallen out as it did, with only one
"apostolic see" in the West, the continuance of the
Empire in the East, etc.) makes it plain what must function as
the antecedent of the demonstrative pronoun:
15 He said to them,
"But who do you say that I am?" 16 Simon Peter
answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living
God." 17 And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you,
Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this
to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
The confession that Peter gives of
the Messiahship of Jesus is the central thought of the entire
passage. It is the reason for the trip to Caesarea Philippi.
Jesus indicates that Peter has just been the recipient of divine
revelation. God, in His grace, has given to Peter an insight
that does not find its origin in the will of man, but in God the
Father Himself. The content of that confession is, in
fact, divine revelation, immediately impressed upon the
soul of Peter. This is the immediate context of verse 18,
and to divorce verse 18 from what came before leads to the
errant shift of attention from the identity of Christ to
the identity of Peter that is found in Roman Catholic
exegesis. Certainly we cannot accept the idea, presented in Roman
theology, that immediately upon pronouncing the benediction upon
Peter’s confession of faith, the focus shifts away from
that confession and what it reveals to Peter himself and
some office with successors based upon him! Not only does the preceding
context argue against this, but the following context
likewise picks up seemlessly with what came before: the identity
of Jesus as Messiah. Hence, the logical antecedent for tau,th| is
Peter’s confession. Such not only commands the most logical
grammatical sense, but it also commands the obvious teaching of
the rest of the New Testament itself! While Peter falls out of
view by Acts 15, the centrality of the Messiahship of Jesus
continues in the forefront throughout the recorded history of the
primitive Church.
Hence I have suggested that the shift
from the direct address of Peter to the use of the demonstrative
pronoun, pointing us back to something prior, specifically, the
confession of faith, that will function as the foundation of the
Church Christ promises to build, is significant and must be
explained by the Roman apologist who seeks to present an
interpretation that is to be binding upon all Christians.
It is this argument that forms the background of what we find in JP&K,
p. 25:
A Protestant grammatical
argument sometimes made in trying to interpret Matthew 16:18
away from the traditional Christian interpretation centers on
the "person" to whom statements are addressed; that
is, Peter is addressed in the second person but the rock is
referred to in the third person, thereby making for different
referents. Robert Sungenis has a response:
"The first
thing we must point out is that on strict grammatical grounds
nouns do not have person, only pronouns have person. The
pronouns, 'I,' 'you,' and 'he' are first, second and
third person, respectively. Nouns, on the other hand,
have number, gender and case but not person. Hence, it is
not correct to say that 'rock,' which MacKenzie and
Gerstner have claimed is a 'third person' noun, cannot be
matched up with the second person pronoun 'you' from the
phrase 'you are Peter' in Matthew 16:18. One cannot claim
a disjunction between 'you' and 'rock' based on person
since technically speaking no such comparison is
grammatically legitimate. Although one could possibly
advance the argument that nouns have an inherent third
person, this would not prohibit the coupling between
'you' and 'rock.' If MacKenzie's and Gerstner's argument
were true, then they would also have to argue that 'I'
and 'church' in Jesus' statement, 'I will build my
church' could not be linked with one another since the
former is in the first person and the latter would be a
third person. One can plainly see that this would be a
fallacious line of argumentation. In regard to Peter,
Jesus could have said either 'you are Peter' or 'you are
rock' in which the second person 'you' is directly
identified by either of the nouns following." Robert
A. Sungenis, letter to authors, 7 November 1995, 2-3.
There is thus strong
evidence in the Greek language that Peter is the rock upon
which the Church of Christ will be built.
First, we note that the authors of JP&K
are quite in error in stating that anyone is wishing to turn
someone aside from "the traditional Christian
interpretation" of this passage. Unless our authors are
wanting to redefine "traditional" to merely
"Roman," they need to deal with the conclusions of von Döllinger, in his work The Pope and the Council (Boston:
Roberts, 1869), 74:
Of all the Fathers who
interpret these passages in the Gospels (Matt 16:18, John
21:17), not a single one applies them to the Roman bishops as
Peter’s successors. How many Fathers have busied
themselves with these texts, yet not one of them whose
commentaries we possess—Origen, Chrysostom, Hilary,
Augustine, Cyril, Theodoret, and those whose interpretations
are collected in catenas—has dropped the faintest hint
that the primacy of Rome is the consequence of the commission
and promise to Peter! Not one of them has explained the rock
or foundation on which Christ would build His Church of the
office given to Peter to be transmitted to his successors,
but they understood by it either Christ Himself, or
Peter’s confession of faith in Christ; often both
together. Or else they thought Peter was the foundation
equally with all the other Apostles, the twelve being
together the foundation-stones of the church. The Fathers
could the less recognize in the power of the keys, and the
power of binding and loosing, any special prerogative or
lordship of the Roman bishop, inasmuch as—what is
obvious to any one at first sight—they did not regard
the power first given to Peter, and afterwards conferred on
all the Apostles, as any thing peculiar to him, or hereditary
in the line of Roman bishops, and they held the symbol of the
keys as meaning just the same as the figurative expression of
binding and loosing.
And Oscar Cullman in Peter,
Disciple, Apostle, and Martyr (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1953), p. 162, rightly concluded regarding Matthew 16:18,
"We thus see that the exegesis that the Reformation gave . .
. was not first invented for their struggle against the papacy;
it rests upon an older patristic tradition."
But this aside, we turn to
Sungenis’ comments. First, a small issue: he confuses the
late John Gerstner with Norman Geisler, who co-authored Roman
Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences (Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995) with Ralph MacKenzie. Secondly,
he is quite right: on a strict grammatical ground demonstrative
pronouns do not have "person" as in "first person,
second person, third person." However, I note the date on
this letter: November, 1995. This is many months after I
had explained, in public debate, his error in understanding this
argument the way he does. While he tries to recover some in this
attempted rebuttal, he is still in error. He has yet to
seriously interact with the comments I have made on this topic in
the context in which they have been offered. It’s not
like I only recently came up with this argument: we can find me
presenting it in my book, Answers to Catholic Claims
(Southbridge, MA: Crowne Publications, 1990), p. 105. Note that
this is from 1990. Dr. Geisler makes note of this work on
page 208 of his work, the page immediately following the one that
contains the argument Sungenis cites. Dr. Geisler derived the
form of the argument Sungenis cites from my own work. Hence, the
original context in which I presented this argument, and have
expounded this argument, even personally to Mr. Sungenis in
debate, is decisive. I quote from Answers to Catholic Claims:
Next, note that when
Christ speaks to Peter, He does so in the second person; that
is, direct address. Yet, the term "this rock" is
third person (indirect address indicated by the use of tau,th|), making the differentiation between
"Peter" and "this rock" complete, even if
one accepts the Catholic apologists’ contention of an
Aramaic original without differentiation of the genders,
masculine and feminine, of "rock." He is speaking to
Peter, about the "rock." Hence the text
differentiates between Peter and the rock in two ways: the
form of the word, and the person of address.
Please note that I have always
defined my use of "person" by proper grammatical forms,
"direct address" and "indirect address." I am
well aware of the fact that pronouns do not have person. I have
consistently used the term "person" in its English
equivalent, attempting to communicate the fact that Jesus is
shifting in His terminology by referring to something other
than Peter by using tau,th|. It is a hollow victory indeed that only
proves that I do not always use technical terminology when
attempting to communicate a point to non-Greek speaking
audiences.
Hence, leaving the matter of the term
"person" aside and dealing with the argument as I have
presented it above, and as I presented it in 1990 in my published
works, does Sungenis succeed in responding to the argument itself?
No, he does not. In fact, if one removes the terminological
issue, Sungenis fails completely to interact with the argument as
presented! Why is it invalid to point out the insertion of a
demonstrative pronoun when the personal pronouns already used in
the prior portion of the sentence would have made things so much
clearer, if in fact Jesus was just continuing on in
referring to Peter himself? Does Sungenis deny the fact that tau,th| must
have an antecedent, and that it is not immediately
provable that this antecedent is Peter? Does he deny that the
context and flow of the passage must be taken into account to
answer this question? None of the real issues are touched
upon at all by Sungenis, and this despite the fact that I
pointed these things out to him in the Boston College debate earlier
the same year! [I should note that it is possible Mr.
Sungenis did not hear my rebuttal of his comments: both he and
Mr. Butler frequently left the stage for long periods during the
debate, and he may well have missed my rebuttal due to such an
absence. It is not, however, my recollection that he was gone at
this particular juncture.]
We should point out that Sungenis is
completely in error to attempt to correlate the argument
concerning tau,th| with Jesus’ statement "I will build
my church." The passage is not even remotely similar. You
have no demonstrative pronoun, you have no direct address in one
clause, followed by an interruption using a demonstrative in the
second. You have no question as to what the antecedent of the
demonstrative is. In fact, one has to truly wonder how Mr.
Sungenis came up with such an argument, unless he is truly
thinking that anyone, whether myself or Geisler and MacKenzie, are so naïve as to assert that every verb and noun
has to agree in every respect in every clause of a sentence
(person, number, etc.)! Such has never been anyone’s
argument, so why set up and then beat down a straw man?
We can only hope that the authors of JP&K,
and Robert Sungenis, will someday take the time to actually
interact with the argument that has been presented to them now
for nearly seven years. Until they do so, their exegesis of
Matthew 16 will continue to be questionable, having failed to
respond to a meaningful challenge to its validity.
*We are glad that many Roman exegetes
acknowledge that Peter’s confession of faith must be taken
into account in this passage. Indeed, the Council of Trent even
made reference to this! However, modern Roman dogma, in
attempting to elevate the Pope to the height of "Infallible
Head of the Church," has had to rely so strongly on this
singular passage, that allowance of other viewpoints or
interpretations is difficult for the Roman apologist to accept.
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