I could go on and on but now I would like to get to the technical portion of Mr. White's arguments. In regard to Matthew 16:18, he writes:
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.Notice how White argues from silence. Yes, Jesus "could have easily said," but the fact that he did not say "and upon you the rock" does not prove or even suggest that he didn't want Peter to be the referent. Moreover, there are perfectly plausible reasons why he didn't say "you the rock.". Here are some:
Then we run into the phrase at issue. [kai epi tautee tee petra] is indeed singular; there is only one "rock" in view. The issue is, to what does [tautee tee] 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,"...But again, he didn't. Instead, he switches from direct address to the demonstrative "this."
1) To say "you...you...upon you the rock" is a bit awkward, if not bad grammar. In fact, there is no place in Scripture where a second person pronoun is placed before a metaphor for clarification on the identity of the metaphor. Thus, Mr. White is asking for something that Scripture itself does not feel obliged to do.
2) Since in Matthew 16:18 Jesus has already assured us that he is addressing
Peter by the use of the two singular personal pronouns ("you"), there is
no reason, unless he wanted to engage in redundancy, to use a third personal
pronoun. In fact, since Jesus has already established the person whom he
wishes to emphasize (Peter), he now has the literary license to use another
form of speech (a demonstrative with a metaphor) to give theological
substance to the "you" he just introduced one clause earlier. Since Jesus
happens to be in Caesarea Philippi which housed a rock structure, and Peter's
name happens to mean "rock," gee, I wonder what would have made Jesus use
the metaphor "rock" in his statement?
3) If, as Mr. White insists, the referent for rock is the faith of Peter but not Peter himself, where is the precedent for such an interpretation in Scripture? Where does Scripture ever employ the word "rock" for a non-person or mere volitional capacity such as faith? Nowhere. Scripture never equates "rock" and "faith" together. When "rock" is assigned to a referent it is always a personal being.
4) Where does Scripture ever suggest that the Church is to be built on the faith of someone as opposed to the person, or persons, themselves? Nowhere. Ephesians 2:20 says, "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets," not "built on the foundation of the faith of the apostles and prophets." Faith is but one part of a person's relationship to God, and thus we can understand why Scripture never singles it out as the foundation of the Church.
5) Why is Peter as the referent for "rock" so hard for Mr. White to
see when we have the crystal clear testimony of John 1:42, "You are Simon
son of John. You will be called Cephas (which, when translated, is Peter)"
NIV. Mr. White knows that "Cephas" in Aramaic means nothing but "rock."
Thus, if the name "Peter" is identified as a "Cephas," what conclusion
can we come to other than Peter is a genuine rock? Also significant is
that in John 1:42 Jesus says "You are Simon son of John," which happens
to be the same wording he uses in Matthew 16:17 ("Blessed are you Simon
son of Jonah [John]"). It doesn't take much intelligence to see that Simon's
name is being changed to Peter in both passages, and the only difference
in the name exchanges is that John 1:42 couples the exchange with the addition
of the word "Cephas" while Matthew 16:18 couples its exchange with the
word "rock," but we're supposed to believe from Mr. White's analysis
that it is just a coincidence that
"Cephas" is equivalent to "rock." Go figure.
6) If Jesus said "You are Peter BUT upon this rock I will build my
church," we could understand how the demonstrative "this" could be pointing
to someone or something other than Peter. Since "but" (Greek: "alla") serves
to separate two clauses or phrases, the intensity of the demonstrative
(i.e., "this very" rather than "this") would then serve to intensify the
separation between Peter and rock. In this scenario one could admit
that Peter is a rock, "but" there is a greater or another rock upon which
the church would be built. But if "and" (Greek: "kai") is used in place
of "but" then the intensity of the demonstrative serves to join even more
forcefully the nearest noun, that is, to join Peter to the word "rock."
Thus, it is no surprise that Jesus says, "You are Peter AND upon this rock,"
not "...but upon this rock." Moreover, according to the companion
passage in John 1:42, Jesus, in Matthew 16:18 could have said "You are
Cephas and upon this rock." In this case there would be absolutely no room
to argue against "rock" referring back to "Cephas," since both mean the
same thing. Since in saying "Cephas which when translated is Peter,"
John 1:42 shows us that "Cephas" is equivalent to "Peter," thus Peter is
equivalent to rock. This is a simple syllogism: If (1) Cephas = rock; and
(2) Cephas = Peter; then (3) Peter = rock.
7) As I argued in "Jesus, Peter and the Keys," another thing that compels us to identify Peter as the rock is what Jesus did not say. He did not say, "upon THE rock" or "upon A rock," both of which would have made the identity of the rock that much more ambiguous. Of "this," "the," and "a," the word "this" is the only one that would substantially limit the identity of the rock to Peter. This is especially noticeable when we add the words "this same rock" or "this very rock" to the sentence to clarify any apparent ambiguity, as I suggested in "Jesus, Peter and the Keys." The KJV translators had no problem translating the Greek "tautee tee" as "this same" or "the same" because they recognized the demonstrative force this adjective could carry (cf., 2 Cor. 9:4-5; 8:6; 1 Cor. 7:20; Acts 13:33), as did other translations such as the NIV, NEB, and NASB in other verses of Scripture.
8) The attempt by Mr. White to divorce Peter from his faith/revelation
is not well supported by the testimony of the early fathers. In our papacy
debate, we pointed out to Mr. White that the preponderant evidence shows
that the fathers understood Peter's faith and Peter's person as one. If
Mr. White would like us to reproduce that evidence we would be happy to
do so. This makes perfect sense in light of #5 above. Since in John 1:42
Jesus had already assigned the word "rock" to Peter's person, not any sort
of faith/revelation, then this should serve as the exegetical precedent
in assigning the identity of the word "rock" in other places that use Peter's
given name, i.e., Matthew 16:18. In other words, in John 1:42 there is
no faith/revelation elicited from Simon that prompts Jesus to change his
name to Peter, yet we know from John 1:42 that Simon is definitely given
a name that only means "rock." Thus, there is simply no biblical precedent
to conclude that his name change in Matthew 16:18 must necessarily be due
to something other than Peter's person. We understand, of course, that
the "person" encompasses all that Peter is, including his faith/revelation
given from the Father, but this cannot be separated from his person, and
it cannot exclude
any other aspect of his person. Attempts to do so are simply not supported
by Scripture.
9) Regarding my argument on page 25 of "Jesus, Peter and the Keys" that nouns do not have person and thus one cannot say that "you" must be divorced from "rock" in Matthew 16:18 based on the grammatical argument of "person," Mr. White writes:
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 [tautee tee]. 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.Let's examine Mr. White's little tirade. First, I suspect that Mr. White realizes that he got caught with his grammatical pants down by claiming that an indirect address is equivalent to "third person." English grammars do not define indirect address in terms of "person." Hence, to argue, even on an elementary level which Mr. White claims he is doing, that "Next, note that
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!
Mr. White continues:
Does he [Sungenis] 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 pointedHere we find Mr. White doing his usual grandstanding to his audience. The reality is that I touched on many of the "real issues" in "Jesus, Peter and the Keys," having contributed over 20 separate pieces to the book, some of considerable length. By the way, one piece I am quite happy to have included was a rebuttal to Mr. White's arguments concerning the "imperative mood" of Acts 15:13 in which the bishop James says, "Listen to me, brothers" and of which Mr. White claims that by this "command" James is exerting indisputable authority over the assembly of elders and bishops at the Jerusalem council, which, in turn, does not place Peter at the top. This is one of the most lame arguments I have ever heard from a Protestant apologist. You will find my rebuttal on pages 96-97 of "Jesus, Peter and the Keys." It shows that Mr. White does not know Greek as well as he thinks he knows it.
these things out to him in the Boston College debate earlier the same year!
10) If Mr. White chooses not to accept these explanations, then he must
give us a compelling reason why the reference to "rock" in Matthew 16:18,
since Peter's name means rock (as proved from John 1:42), cannot, under
any circumstances, refer to Peter. I have never heard him declare, verbally
or in writing, that Catholicism possesses a perfectly plausible explanation
of
Matthew 16:18. He can claim all he wants that "rock" refers to Peter's
confession, but what he must answer is this: if he requires his students
NOT to see even the possibility that Peter is the rock of Matthew 16:18,
what specifically in the text of Matthew 16 prohibits us from identifying
the rock as Peter? If there is nothing that prohibits us from doing such,
and if there
is nothing in the text that requires us to divorce Peter's person from
Peter's faith, then Catholicism has a perfectly plausible explanation of
this passage. On the other side, the level of difficulty with the passage
has been proven by no less than two competing Protestant interpretations
of the account, one saying that the rock refers to Peter's confession,
the other saying that rock refers to Christ. With such diametrically opposed
explanations, we must insist that the text is not as clear as Mr. White
presumes it to be. So much for sola scriptura. Hence, unless there is some
overwhelming and compelling evidence to doubt the historic Catholic interpretation,
then we're just going to continue on as before and Mr. White can go pound
his Protestant sand.
Regardless, let me offer again to Mr. White that I will debate him, anytime and anywhere, on this or any other subject. Let this serve as an open invitation to him.
Robert Sungenis
June 17, 1997
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