I was credentialed as a “licentiate,” somewhat equivalent to a transitional deacon. But upon receiving ordination, Brother William would now “outrank” me in the ecclesiastical system, and so that forced the question on us: who would now take the lead?
We briefly discussed a “dual pastoral” model in which neither of us was the ultimate authority. We briefly discussed it, but then quickly rejected it. Why? We knew it wouldn’t work. Although it had been tried in various congregations we knew, neither of us knew of a single example where such a model was ultimately successful. What was the problem? Lack of unified vision and responsibility. Different interested parties within the congregation would play the two pastors off against each other, and — lacking one clear leader or authority — either the congregation would split or one of the pastors would leave.
Brother William summarized it in his characteristic Southern diction: “Can’t be but one pastor in the Church!” — driving home the point that, for the sake of unity, there had to be a central leader with whom “the buck stopped.”
I agreed (and still do). So, when Brother William was ordained, he “leapfrogged” me into the position of senior pastor. I took on the supporting role. It was necessary for the unity of our little church of seventy members or so. How much more so for a Church with over a billion members! There has to be a universal pastor if we are serious about the unity of the church.
During my years of pastoral ministry, I was involved in many ecumenical initiatives that sought to build church unity, including the Promise Keepers men’s movement that attempted to bridge denominational boundaries among Christian men in America. I have been to many meetings and conventions where we talked, sang, and prayed for Christian unity. However, I never felt like anyone was serious about it. It was well and good to have ecumenical prayer meetings, but I knew when push came to shove, you would have to pry everyone’s denominational distinctions out of their cold, dead fingers. If we had been really serious about unity, we would have had to submit our doctrinal differences to a common person or group of persons (a synod or council), and then abide by whatever decision resulted. I knew no one was ever going to do that: not the Calvinists, not the Baptists, not the Lutherans, not the Pentecostals, and so on. We were all convinced of the truth of our own positions. We were all paying lip service to unity, but for real unity to come about, there would have to be (among other things) a universal pastor with whom “the buck stopped.”
So, years later, it didn’t take long for my Catholic friend Michael to convince me of the practical need for a Pope. Since I was already favorably disposed, I was also pretty receptive to the biblical data when he laid it out.
The key biblical passage for the papacy is found in Matthew 16, the famous dialogue between Jesus and Peter:
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered 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.” Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. (Matt 16:13–20)
In verse 18, Jesus gives Simon a new name, “Rock,” which in the original language of the Gospel (Greek) is petros, from which we get the English name Peter. Reading in the original language, the point of verse 18 is clearer:
“And I tell you, you are ‘Rock,’ and on this rock I will build my church.”
Jesus was making Simon into a kind of human foundation stone for the community (the “Church,” Greek ekklesia, Hebrew qahal) that he was establishing on earth.
Now, I knew from my seminary studies that John Calvin and many other Protestant theologians had bent over backwards to avoid the clear statement of the verse that Simon Peter was the human “foundation stone” on which Jesus would build his Church. It was popular to argue that the “rock” on which Jesus would build the Church was Peter’s confession of faith in the previous verse, not Simon Peter himself. Sometimes, the difference in gender endings on the name “Peter” and the word “rock” were pointed out in order to prove that Simon Peter could not be the “rock” on which Jesus built his Church. The Greek reads:
“And I tell you, you are petros, and on this petra I will build my Church.”
There is a difference in ending between the two words. But this means nothing. It only marks the grammatical gender of the word. If you know a European language besides English, you know that nouns in most languages have an assigned gender that is marked by various endings or by the article used with the word. Often the assigned gender of a word makes no sense. For example, in German the word for “young woman” (das Mädchen) is in the neuter gender!
In Greek, the word for rock, petra, is grammatically feminine and takes the ending a, which is feminine. However, you can’t make a feminine noun into a man’s name. So, when petra is given as Simon’s name, the ending is changed to the masculine-os, thus his name is petros. This is a little like adding the ending “-y” on the word “rock” to make the man’s name “Rocky.”
This is all simply a meaningless exercise of Greek grammar, and none of it would be relevant in Jesus’ spoken language. The Gospels are written in Greek, which was the international language of the day, everyone’s second language (like English in modern culture), in order to reach a large audience.
But Jesus usually spoke a different language, called Aramaic, with his disciples. We see a hint of untranslated Aramaic peeking through in Matthew 16, because the phrase “Bar-Jonah” in verse 17 is Aramaic for “son of John.” So, Jesus was originally speaking in Aramaic when he made Peter the Rock of the Church, and in Aramaic the word for rock is kepha, and kepha cannot take any endings in Aramaic. The original spoken words of Jesus would have been:
“And I tell you, you are kepha and on this kepha I will build my Church.”
The word kepha was given a Greek masculine ending (-s) and appears nine times in our Bibles as “Cephas”: John 1:42; 1 Corinthians 1:12, 3:22, 9:5, 15:5; Galations 1:18, 2:9, 11, 14.
The difference in gender of petros and petra is a grammatical issue that arose only when Jesus’ original words were translated into Greek. Nonetheless, I had read convoluted apologetics that tried to make a big deal over it in order to separate Peter as a person from the “rock” on which Jesus would build the Church.
Yet even when I was a Protestant pastor and seminarian, I never bought Calvin’s interpretation that the “rock” of the Church was Peter’s confession of faith rather than Peter himself. That seemed so strained to me. It was so obvious that Jesus was changing Simon’s name in order to signify the fact that he had become the rock of the Church. In my own mind, Calvin had just gone overboard trying to reject the position of the Catholic Church. Now that relations with the Catholic Church under John Paul II weren’t so strained, I thought, we could all agree that Peter was the rock of the Church.
But to me, this meant no more than that Peter was the first Christian, and maybe had an important role in founding the Christian movement. It never occurred to me that this role of “rock” was a kind of office or position that would continue after Peter’s death, with someone else
