Transcript

Greg Serita, a Seventh Day Adventist who hosts the channel Bible Flock Box, just put out a video against St. Peter being the rock on whom the church is built, and this forms one of the reasons for believing the doctrine of the papacy.

So, in today's episode, we're going to examine the linguistic and exegetical errors that Greg makes in his case.

First, Greg offers the well-worn objection that in giving Simon the name Peter, which means rock, Jesus was actually talking about a totally different rock upon which he would build his church.

Jesus was actually making a distinction between Peter and the rock the church would be built upon.

He said, You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.

Furthermore, when you go to the original Greek that the New Testament was written in, Peter's name is translated from the word petros, which means a stone or a small rock, kind of like a pebble.

And the word rock, which the church was to be built upon, is translated from petra, meaning a massive rock like a bedrock or boulder.

A pebble is a stone that can be moved, while a boulder is enormous and immovable and can serve as a secure foundation.

Arguments like this are made popular in things like William Cathcart's 1872 book The Papal System, but it's based on a flawed understanding of New Testament Greek.

There is no relevant difference between the Greek words petros and petra, they both just mean rock.

The Protestant scholar D.A. Carson says, Although it is true that petros and petra can mean small stone and large rock respectively in earlier Greek, the distinction is largely confined to poetry.

The Protestant reformer John Calvin even said, There is no difference in meaning, I acknowledge, between the two Greek words petros and petra.

Also, take a step back and ask yourself, why did Jesus even bother changing Simon's name to Peter in the first place?

When God changes someone's name in scripture, like Abram to Abraham, the new name reveals their divinely confirmed mission.

How does it make sense for Jesus to change Simon's name to Rock, say, You are Rock, but then do a 180 and say, You are a worthless rock, a pebble, and it is on the other massive rock that is not you that I will build my church?

What makes more sense is just that Jesus loved puns, and he gave Peter a name that reflected his role in the church.

You see Jesus' punniness in Matthew 23:24, where Jesus tells the Pharisees, You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

In Aramaic, a gnat is a galma and a camel is a gamla.

The Pharisees strain liquids to not eat an unclean galma, but they allow themselves to eat a giant unclean gamla instead.

Classic.

Plus Jesus was probably speaking Aramaic to the apostles, not Greek.

In Matthew 16:17, Jesus refers to Simon with the Aramaic expression, Bar Jonah, Son of Jonah.

John 1:42 describes Jesus' promise that Simon would be given the new name Kephas.

In the early Eastern church, the Syriac translation of the Bible, which is linguistically similar to Aramaic, did not use different words to translate petros and petra.

It's just Kepha each time.

The Lutheran scholar Oscar Cullmann says it's an obvious pun, and that Petra equals Kepha equals Petros.

The Protestant scholar Craig Keener says, Jesus plays on Simon's nickname, Peter, which is roughly the English Rocky.

Peter is rocky, and on this rock, Jesus would build his church.

The rock upon which the church is built is not Peter, but rather Peter's confession, the declaration that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

This truth is the foundation of the church and this is the immovable bedrock of faith.

I agree, the rock upon which the church is built is Peter's confession of faith.

The catechism says in paragraph 424, Moved by the grace of the Holy Spirit and drawn by the Father, we believe in Jesus and confess, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' On the rock of this faith confessed by St. Peter, Christ built his church.

But Oscar Cullmann says that the interpretation of the rock solely referring to a confession of faith is, in his words, Inconceivable given that in this passage, quote, 'There is no reference here to the faith of Peter.' Biblical symbols can have more than one meaning.

So to make his case, Greg has to show that Peter is not the rock.

He can't just show that something else is the rock in Matthew 16:18, that it can refer to Peter's confession of faith along with Peter himself.

He has to show that it's not Peter.

In order to do that, he makes several errors.

Greg claims, for example, that because scripture refers to other things as rocks or foundations, this means St. Peter is not the rock or he is not the foundation of the church in any way.

These include referencing Psalm 18:2, The Lord is my rock, Christ the foundation in First Corinthians 3:23, and Christ being the cornerstone in First Peter 2. But it's wrong to say that because Christ is figuratively called a rock in one passage that means Christ is every figurative rock in scripture.

He can't be because Isaiah 51:1 says that Abraham was a rock from which the Jewish people were hewn.

Also, the church can have more than one foundation since Ephesians 2:20 speaks of the saints and members of the household of God built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

Greg even cites this verse later in his video, but the point sails over his head.

Even though the apostles were significant in the establishment of the early church-They were not the foundation.

Jesus is the foundation, the stone that gives stability and alignment to the entire structure.

Without him, the church would collapse.

No, it clearly says in Ephesians the apostles are a foundation of the church.

The church would collapse without Christ, but that doesn't mean Christ did not institute any other authority structures in his church.

He even says the apostles speak on his behalf in Luke 10:16 when he tells them, He who hears you, hears me and he who rejects you, rejects me.

Christ is the church's ultimate foundation, but the church is not built only on this indestructible slab.

It is also supported by the apostles that Christ chose as well as the successors the apostles chose, which is obvious from the testimony of the early church, which did not place the church's authority in sola Scriptura, but in the bishop, the successor of the apostles.

That's why St. Ignatius of Antioch said to follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the Father.

And Clement of Rome said the apostles chose approved men and that they should succeed them in their ministry.

Nowhere in scripture is Peter called the Pope or the Bishop of Rome.

Peter never claims such a title.

Instead, Peter writes in First Peter chapter five, verses one through four that he is a fellow elder among the church leaders and he encourages them to shepherd the flock with humility, pointing always to Christ, the chief shepherd.

First, saying Peter isn't a pope because he isn't called pope is like saying God isn't a trinity because he's not called a trinity in scripture.

Pope is a pastoral title that means father, and St. Paul calls himself a spiritual father to the Corinthians.

When it comes to St. Peter's letter, which itself is evidence of his supreme authority, Peter is heeding his own advice to, quote, Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, that he writes in First Peter 5:5.

Peter's address to his fellow elders in the church, fellow priests, does not undermine his authority over the other priests any more than the United States president's address to my fellow Americans undermines his presidency because he's the president and he's a fellow American.

The pope is still a priest even though he has authority over other priests.

Besides, St. Paul referred to himself as a servant, using the Greek word diakonoi, which in other contexts refers to the deacons, but that doesn't mean that Paul was merely a deacon.

He even said that he was the very least of all the saints in Ephesians 3:8, but that did not detract from Paul's authority as an apostle.

Moreover, the idea of apostolic succession, the belief that authority is passed from Peter to later popes, is not supported by the New Testament.

The true idea that the office of apostle would be a temporary office in the church is not supported by the New Testament alone, and the false idea that all revelation God wants us to know would be clearly written down in scripture alone is itself not in scripture.

So that idea refutes itself because of its absence from scripture.

What scripture does show is that Christian authority is found in the written word of God, the unwritten word of God lived out in the church's sacred tradition, and in the elders or the leaders of the church that we must submit to.

Finally, Greg ends his video with an appeal to make Christ not just the ultimate foundation for our faith, but essentially the only foundation.

As believers, we must build our faith and our lives on the true foundation, Jesus Christ.

This is the only foundation that will last, the only rock that will withstand the tests of time and eternity.

Consider the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter seven, verses 24 through 27 once again.

The storms of life are inevitable.

Whether it be personal trials, societal pressures, or end time events, only those whose lives are built on Christ will endure.

The church that Jesus promised to build will stand firm because it is built on the unshakeable foundation of his divinity, his teachings, and his redemptive work.

If you took Greg's advice literally, you could end up being a heretic.

If Jesus' words are the only foundation that will last, then why should we care about St. Paul's words or St. Peter's words or St. John's words or the words of whoever wrote the letter to the Hebrews?

In 1899, Louis Klopsch, the editor of Christian Herald Magazine, got the idea of publishing Jesus' words in the Bible in red and the idea has now become very popular in certain Bible translations.

It's also given rise to so-called red letter Christians who try to emphasize Jesus' words over other words in sacred scripture, thus creating a false two-tier system of scripture.

Also, if you make Jesus' words and his teachings the foundation of your theology, you'll have a really hard time proving Protestant theology, something even Protestant theologians admit.

In 2010, Reformed pastor John Piper gave a talk called Did Jesus Preach the Gospel of Evangelicalism?

He later said he would have called his talk Did Jesus Preach Paul's Gospel?

Because I would agree, Jesus did preach Paul's gospel, but it's certainly not obvious he preached the gospel of evangelicalism.

Protestants recognize this because Jesus actually didn't preach that gospel.

They derived that primarily by focusing just on what Paul wrote in isolation from what Jesus said.

In his book, The Roman Catholic Controversy, James White says regarding the doctrine of justification We must allow the primary expositor of this issue, in this case the Apostle Paul, to speak first.

His epistles to the Romans and Galatians must define the issues.

But in his book, Did Jesus Teach Salvation By Works, the evangelical author, Allen Stanley, asks an important question: Why is it that Jesus must be reconciled to Paul, as if Paul were the benchmark?

If anyone should be the benchmark, should it not be Jesus himself?

So ironically, if Gregg just focused solely on the words of Jesus and his teachings, he would see that in order to be saved, we must be born of water and spirit, or be baptized.

We must eat Jesus' flesh, which is true food and true drink, and we must remain united to Christ the vine, lest we become dead branches that are gathered up and burned, or that we could lose our salvation.

So some Protestants only focus on Jesus when they want to undermine the church's ongoing apostolic authority, but then they forget about Jesus and go straight to Paul when they want to defend doctrines like justification by faith alone.

Instead, the Bible makes it clear that the authority we should submit ourselves to is the one church that Jesus Christ established.

We should submit to our elders who have authority over us and know that the church of the living God, as St. Paul said, is the pillar and foundation of truth.

Paul even admonished Christians who claim to follow a single person rather than the church, including those who said they only wanted to follow Jesus.

He writes in First Corinthians, Each one of you says, 'I belong to Paul,' or 'I belong to Apollos,' or 'I belong to Cephas,' or 'I belong to Christ.' Is Christ divided?

Was Paul crucified for you?

As Paul makes clear in his writings, all Christians belong to one body, and this body is not divided by the things of this world like countries or geography or incompatible theologies.

And it's not divided by the things of the next world either, like death, because Christ has conquered death.

But what provides this unity in worship and doctrine across time and space is a sacred order, the Greek is for this is hierarchy, a sacred order that Christ instituted in his church starting with the apostles and continuing into their successors in the present.

And if you'd like to learn more about this, I recommend my colleague Joe Heschmeyer's book, Pope Peter: Defending the Church's Most Distinctive Doctrine.

Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.