Theology Today - Vol 17, No. 2 - July 1960 - ARTICLE

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"Thou Art Peter"
By George A. F. Knight

SOME wit once called the Reformation the Rejudaissance of Christianity. This Rejudaissance was the rediscovery of the Hebraic element in the Bible, and a recognition of the remarkable fact, if we would only reckon with it, that the only Bible which the early Church had was the Old Testament. The corollary of that fact is the recognition that the basis of Christian theology is to be found in the Old Testament.

How few exegeses of the important New Testament crux in Matt. 16: 18, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church," begin at that necessary point. The great majority of exegetes look upon the word "rock" as a theological idea that takes on significance only in terms of the future, and of the outcome of the promise which our Lord here makes to Peter. Thus, in looking to the future alone, they entirely ignore the past, the whole story of God's self-revelation through his extraordinary relationship with Israel, the story of the formation by grace of the people of God. They do not set themselves alongside Peter, the Jew, and ask themselves just what Jesus' strange language would have meant to him. As a good Jew, Peter knew well his Old Testament. When Jesus used the word "rock," Peter would immediately interpret the word in terms, not of apostolic succession in the unknown future (!), but of what the word means in the Old Testament. If we then, in our turn, seek to understand the word in this way, we can sweep aside all the problems which normally beset the exegete, such as whether the utterance was truly our Lord's or was the theological creation of the early Church, and come straight to the heart of the matter. What then did the word "rock" mean for a first century Jew when it was used with religious overtones?

Of course any religious significance it held was purely secondary. "Rock" is a natural phenomenon first of all. The Old Testament

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uses two words for natural rock, namely, sela' and tsur, without really distinguishing between them. In the book of judges we read of men taking refuge in rocky fastnesses, as do the wild animals. A neighbor of Israel's, Edom, was in the habit of doing so as a nation. Their capital city was called Sela', later Petra, the rock city, an impregnable fastness hewn out of the living rock. Present day color photography in travel journals reveals the ancient city in all its beauty and romance. No wonder that the Hebrews learned to associate the idea of "rock" with that of security and unchangeableness. No wonder, again, that they learned to use this picture of the rock as a valuable description of the nature of their faithful God. God is actually called sela' some ten times in the Psalms and elsewhere: "The Lord is my rock"; and tsur some twenty-nine times in all. In Numbers 1: 5 we find a man called Elizur, which must mean "God is rock." The name that we translate as "Almighty," namely shaddai, very probably stems from a root known in Assyrian to mean "mountain." So our modern translation, though largely a guess till recent years, is a good one. For a great rocky mountain is obviously the best possible image of the concept of almightiness. In Num. 1: 10 and 12 the terms tsur and shaddai are actually used as parallel, and therefore as synonymous descriptions.

Biblical Hebrew possesses also a third word for rock, namely keph, used only in the plural. Both times it occurs (in Jer. 4: 29 and job 30: 6) it is in the plural, and is used of natural rock. The word is, of course, identical with the well-known Aramaic word behind the English name Cephas, namely kepha, and may be a borrowing from the Aramaic. The Aramaic Targums normally use kepha to translate the other two Hebrew words. By New Testament times, however, keph seems to have developed from meaning merely "natural rock" to include the rocky bank of a river. Perhaps our Lord had this double entendre in mind when spoke his parable about the house built upon a rock (Matt. 7: 24-27). The rock was thus none other than God himself.

Right from the beginning of Israel's story as the covenant people of God, Yahweh had walked in their midst. Although the heaven of heavens could not contain him, he had declared himself to be found within the Tabernacle in the wilderness period of Israel's story. Then once Solomon had built a house for the Name of the Lord to dwell in, Yahweh had been present with his people, "roaring

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from Zion" as Amos said (Amos 1: 2), in the mystery of the darkness of the Holy of Holies. But that very sanctuary was set over the rock which Arauna had used as a threshing floor in the days of David, the same rock which is visible today under a Muslim roof in the old city of Jerusalem. Thus, in a new and visible pictorial sense, Yahweh was the rock on which the whole life of the people of Israel was built. In poetry the rock of Jerusalem could be spoken of as "the mountain of God's inheritance" (Ex. 15: 17), and many Psalms echo the conception, seeing the mountain upon which Jerusalem lay, with the outcrop of rock on the top in the Temple building, as the symbol of the God on whom Israel's whole life depended. That outcrop of rock Ezekiel called "the navel of the earth" (Ezek. 38: 12), and the upper stage of the altar raised upon it the very "mount of God" (Ezek. 43: 12). In the coming day of the Lord, moreover, from out of that rock would How rivers of living water (Ezek. 47: 1-12; Joel 3: 18; Zech. 13: 1, 14: 8) such as would bring life even to the dead. But then, of course, it is God alone who can raise the dead to life.

Basing his pictorial message upon Israel's awareness of the significance of Arauna's threshing-floor, Isaiah is able to give theological con-tent to the idea. In Isa. 8: 13-14 he can say: "The Lord of hosts...shall be for a sanctuary [i.e., a rock of refuge like Petra, the rock city]; and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both houses of Israel." Note that here he equates the images of rock and stone. Men do not stumble over rocky mountains, but over outcrops of stone. But the change to the word "stone" is necessary and important for the further theological development of the concept, as we shall see. For in post-exilic times Zechariah remembered that Isaiah had suggested that Israel was to be to the Gentiles what God had been to her. She was to be as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land (Isa. 32: 2), or a place of refuge to the poor of the earth even as God had become Israel's own rock of ages and place of refuge. But Israel was only a stone, and not the original rock that is God alone. Nevertheless the laying of the stone was God's doing, as he set within Israel's midst a portion of himself, so to speak, and summoned Israel to be the stone that a stumbling block can be: "Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation . . ." (Isa. 28: 16).

In Zechariah's vision of the "chosen Jerusalem" after the return

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from Exile (Zech. 3: 1-2), we find the figure of the stone taking a prominent place. The high priest, Joshua, who appears before Yahweh in this vision, is, of course, the inclusive representative of the whole people of God. There he stands clothed in filthy garments, the representative of the sinful people of God who thus far have failed the call of God to be his instrument for the redemption of the world. But God is not balked by the sin of man. Joshua is given a clean raiment, signifying God's forgiveness and renewing love. And now the true relationship of the people of God to Yahweh, through their representative High Priest, is made clear. God sets a stone (Isaiah's stone, obviously) before the eyes of Joshua, now engraved with the seven eyes of God, and it becomes the new foundation of the new Temple that is about to be built. Now it was to stand on the top of the mountain on which Jerusalem was built. Babylon had been the great enemy of Israel. Babylon too had become a great mountain, a mighty rock (Zech. 4: 7), yet not one stone or any outcrop of rock therefrom would be used to build the house of the Lord. Jeremiah indeed was sure that the rock that was Babylon was about to be destroyed (Jer. 51: 24-26). On the other hand, the stone which God was laying in Zion was one given by grace alone (Zech. 4: 7), and so Joshua was to "bring it forth to the light" (with the LXX) and let all Israel see the wondrous doings of the Lord. God's grace would not, however, end at the laying of the foundation stone in Israel's life. The people of God in their turn were now to be built on or into the Temple of the Lord (Zech. 6: 15), and so take on the rock-like qualities of him who is the basis and foundation of all that Israel is meant to do and be.

Israel was meant both to be a rock of refuge to the weary and a stone of stumbling to the wicked, as God had already showed himself to be in Israel's life. Jeremiah recognized this even before the fall of the Babylonian empire. He could speak of God's using Israel to break in pieces the rock which, he said (as we saw above), represented this mighty human empire (Jer. 51: 21-25).

The earlier chapters of the book of Daniel are a midrashic exposition of the theological significance of the exile in Babylon. We see this, for example, in Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in chap. 2. The great image, which is the kingdom of Babylon, and all the empires of this world that set themselves up to be gods in their own right, is there broken by the stone that is cut

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without (human) hands. God it was, of course, who had hewn Israel from the rock that begat him. This stone was now to become a great mountain and fill the whole earth, just as God had promised the patriarchs of old that he would do with Israel.

Now, would not Peter, at Caesarea Philippi, remember all this, as a Biblically minded Israelite, and would not a vision of all the various images connected with the word "rock" spring to his mind when he heard his Lord declare that on this rock he would built his Church? Had God not already begun to do so when Israel, the stone cut without hands, had been laid upon the rock of ages, and from it had partaken of the qualities of that rock? And what were those qualities? Were they not (a) to be a refuge to the weary, and (b) to be the rock of offense against which the Babylons of this world would stumble and fall? In other words, was Israel not given (a) the power to bind on earth and (b) to loose on earth, just as God the rock does in heaven (cf. Matt. 16: 19)? That is to say, was the rock of which Christ spoke not the very people of God whom God had chosen from the foundation of the world to be his Church? What connection, then, could this Old Testament figure have with the person of Peter himself?

In the first place, we ought to recognize the reality of a prior truth: that the early Christian Church took over from the Septuagint the name kurios, the Greek translation of the divine name Yahweh, and applied it to Christ. When they called Christ Lord, they were therefore identifying him with the Covenant God of the Old Testament, and thus actually with the Creator of the ends of the earth. Now, it was this Lord who had been a rock unto his people in Old Testament times. In fact, he was the rock from which all Israel was hewn, Israel's fortress and her God. Israel could look back to the wilderness period and recall how Moses had struck the rock, and remember how from it had come forth living waters (Ps. 78: 16). They could say this, because the Hebrew expression for "running water" is actually the words "living water." So the rock in the wilderness was no less than God himself, understood parabolically. God is the living God. Therefore anything that issues from him must itself also be living. Ezekiel's river that issued from the rock at the Temple could give life even to the Dead Sea.

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This is picture language, but it is language that conveys truth just as truly as does a series of theological abstractions. The Hebrews saw the striking of the rock as a parable. It was God himself who was the rock; so it was God who followed his people with living water whithersoever they went. Yet now, in the New Testament, we find St. Paul, making use of a rabbinical development of that parable, actually declaring that that rock was not God, but Christ (I Cor. 10: 4). I can suppose that St. Paul dared to make this assumption only because he had heard of the words uttered by our Lord himself, and later to be incorporated in the Fourth Gospel. There Christ claimed to be the living water, on the ground that he himself was the Temple where the Presence of the living God was to be found on earth. Paul then offers an identity of function between God as rock and Christ as rock.

I Peter 2 deals with the same issue. The chapter begins by quoting Ps. 34: 8, "If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is good," the Lord of course being no other than Yahweh in the original. Peter, however, takes it for granted that the Lord is Christ, whose living waters one may even taste. Thereafter the whole passage continues with reference to Christ. Throughout it Christ is still the living Lord, even as God himself is the living God. On the other hand, in order to keep up the parable of his nature and relationship to his Church, I Peter now speaks of Christ as the living stone. Where does he find the word other than from his memory of that day at Caesarea Philippi, when he hailed his Master as Son of the living God? Here the word in Greek for stone is lithos. This is not identical with the petra of Matt. 16: 18, where we have Christ's reply to the declaration of Peter's faith. Then why does Peter use it instead of the word that he had heard Christ himself use? I believe there is a simple answer to this question on two counts: (a) The foundation stone of the Temple, which Isaiah had spoken about of old, the stone set upon the rock that is no less than God himself, that stone was a hewn stone, cut into the shape required for the foundation of the edifice that was to rise upon it. Lithos is the Greek word for a hewn stone, petra being rather the natural rock from which it comes. The two ideas can overlap, however, when we recall the language used in Daniel 2. There we read of a stone, hewn, but not by human hands. This stone came from God alone, and so was hewn from the living rock that is God himself. (b) We

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have a parallel case in point. The early Church found difficulty in speaking of Christ as the Wisdom of God (quite apart from any misunderstandings of the word occasioned by Gnostic thought) even though it had at hand the hypostatic picture of Wisdom in Proverbs 8 of Holy Writ. Its difficulty lay in the fact that both hochmah and sophia are feminine nouns, and as such are difficult to associate with the Jesus of Nazareth whom the Church knew in the flesh as a male. In consequence, they turned instead to use the masculine terms dabhar and logos as descriptions and definitions of him who had come from God. So too I believe in the case of this word lithos. It too is a masculine noun, and therefore more appropriate to use than the feminine form of petra. Moreover, the early Church had the precedent before its eyes that Isaiah, long before, had equated the feminine noun 'ebhen (stone) with the masculine one, tsur (rock) within the one verse (Isa. 8: 14), and applied them both equally to God. It is unlikely that Peter would ignore the exegesis which he could so easily pick up from a reading of this basic passage. Naturally Peter would be deeply conscious of the mystery of the words of Christ to him at Caesarea Philippi, and would surely have searched the Scriptures in the intervening years to see what those words must have meant to Christ himself.

Behind Matt. 16: 18 lies, of course, our Lord's original utterance in Aramaic. But Aramaic has only one word, kepha, for the two Greek words, the masculine petros, the name of a man, and the feminine petra-"Thou art Petros, and on this petra..." This fact hasled some commentators to make the following equation, Petros:Petra::kepha:kepha. What such scholars forget, however, is the argument I am now advancing. It is that Peter himself, as we learn from his own epistle, must have made use of those Old Testament passages we have examined in order to interpret to his own satisfaction the double use of the word kepha; and perhaps our Lord himself even went on to expound to Peter exactly what he meant when quoting thus from the Old Testament, doing so in a conversation which naturally has not been transmitted to us in its fullness.

I Peter 2: 4 next suggests that this stone, which is none other than Christ himself, is now the new foundation (not "corner-stone," as many have envisaged it) on which the other stones that comprise the people of God are laid. They in their turn have the function of becoming identified in purpose with this living foundation stone.

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Peter had used this picture, according to Acts 4: 11, at the very beginning of the Christian story, when the little primitive community was trying to think through what was the meaning of the Church. Of the Christ who had just been crucified and risen again he says there, quoting from Isaiah once again, as well as from Psalm 118: 22, "This is the stone which the builders rejected, and has become the headstone of the corner." (By the way, it is here, in Ps. 118, that the "headstone" imagery has crept in. Isaiah uses it of the bottom corner stone, while the Psalm speaks of it as the top corner stone, almost, as some think, as the key-stone of the arch. But I Peter surely uses the pictorial imagery as Isaiah had originally meant us to see it.)

This stone again is not only "living," it is unique. This word lies behind the words "elect" and "precious." Thus it refers, not to Peter, but to Christ. This we realize when we recall that the eklektos has already in the Old Testament been identified with the Servant of the Lord in Isa. 42: 1: "Behold my servant, whom I uphold; my elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him, and he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles"-all of which are functions of the stone set in Zion. In his Commentary on I Peter, Selwyn points out the interesting parallel to be found in the Western reading of John 1: 34, where we have the words of John the Baptist: "And I saw and bare record, that this is the Son of God." The Western text reads the last phrase as δτι οΰτός έστιυ ό έκλεκτός τού θεού, "that this is the Elect of God," Peter's very own word in I Peter 2: 4, though we are to remember that this quotation is from the Fourth Gospel, and not from Peter at all! On the other hand (Peter continues) all the other stones are to be built onto this unique stone that God would lay in Zion, so that all the stones together, along with and upon the stone, would become a "spiritual house," built (banah) from sons (banim), and thus, since it was composed of living stones and not bricks, become an "holy priesthood." This means that even the sinner Peter is included in the Servant People of God, the unique community. Now, have we noticed that Peter's quotation is a composite one from Isa. 28: 16, Ps. 118: 22, and Isa. 8: 14? In the first passage Isaiah uses the word 'ebhen, as does the Psalm, but the second Isaiah reference employs the other noun, tsur, which is rather "rock" than "stone." And so Peter, like Isaiah as we said before, must consciously be equating

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rock and stone in his own mind as he gives us a mental picture of this living edifice. I take it that the epistle was written after long thought and deep meditation and even profound discussion with other Christians.

We are now left with the figure of a "corporate stone," of a building comprising countless individual stones laid upon the foundation stone that is joined as one with the rock upon which all stand together. The whole building thereupon partakes of the quality of the original rock on which it stands. And what is that special quality? Faithfulness, or trustworthiness, is surely the special quality of rock. The Deuteronomist who had called God the rock (Deut. 32: 4) also called him the "faithful one," ne'eman. "Faithful" comes from the root 'aman, a verb which means to establish a pillar or a house firmly and surely. This was true not only of a house of stone; it was true in a figurative sense as well. In II Sam. 7: 16 David was promised a sure house, meaning a dynasty that would never cease to reign. It was "sure" because it was founded on God who is ne'eman, the Amen, the Sure One himself. Isaiah had said of the sure foundation stone, "He who builds his faith on it will not be in a hurry" (Isa. 28: 16). In the New Testament Paul, in I Cor. 3: 11, now says of this Son of David, "For other foundation can no man lay, than that which is already laid, even Jesus Christ." So this corporate stone comprises Christ, along with those who have been built upon him who is the sure foundation.

I Peter next makes implicit reference to Nebuchadnezzar's dream which we have already cited. He declares (2: 8) that the people of God has now become the "stone of stumbling" and the "rock of offence," "even to them that stumble at the word," the functions that we saw were those to be given to Israel in Daniel's interpretation of the dream. Peter thus now identifies the Church to which he is writing with the Israel of God in the Old Testament. On the other hand, however, we have seen that it is Jesus who is to be the stone of stumbling. This is declared in the Prologue to the Gospel of Luke, comprising, as it does, passages which represent in poetic garb the theological understanding of the Christ by the early Church as the latter sought to expound him in terms of Old Testament theological ideas. Declares Simeon: "Behold this child is set for the fall and rising of many" (Luke 2: 34). It was Jesus, then, who was to be the stone of stumbling against which many would kick their

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foot, it was Jesus who was in himself the judgment that had come into the world.

So now we are faced with a paradox. On the one hand, it is Jesus who has come to judge both Israel and the world. But, on the other hand, Jesus is called upon to accomplish what the people of God in Daniel were called upon to do themselves, that is, to be the stone of stumbling to others. The resolution of the paradox must, I think, develop thus: Jesus is the unique Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father. Accordingly, it is only because in his utter humility the unique one has identified himself with Israel, and has been baptized by John into the heritage of wrath under which Israel herself lives, that Israel can in any sense be regarded as one with him, and so be called upon to perform the same function as Jesus came to earth to do. This, we recall, is Paul's argument in Rom. 9: 32.

III

We are now in a position to return to the text we want to elucidate. It would be manifestly absurd to attempt in a single paragraph an exegesis of a passage about which many books have been written, especially significant being Professor Cullmann's Peter, Disciple, Apostle, Martyr (1953). But I would take issue with much of what others have written upon this crux interpretum by roundly declaring, as I have said before, that when the Holy Spirit enlightened Peter's mind as to who his Master really was, it would be Biblical categories of thought that would enter Peter's mind. I shall seek to express these Biblical ideas in the form of theses, and thus be in the goodly succession of the Reformers!

1. God himself is the foundation rock, rock of all rocks, from whence all else is hewn.

2. Jesus Christ, as the foundation-stone of the people of God, is the representation before the eyes of Peter of the eternal purpose of God, namely, that all men should find refuge in his love. Thus when Christ says: "Thou art Petros," a masculine word, he is simply meaning "Peter" in the form of a pun, such as is very common in the Hebrew of the Old Testament. This is because he goes on to say: "On this petra," that is, God, "will I build my Church."

3. Peter's act of faith is to be understood in terms of the Hebrew word he'emin, the Hiphil from the root 'aman which we have examined above. This Hiphil of the verb implies: placing one's

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total trust and confidence on him who is totally reliable and trustworthy, as is the rock that is God.

4. Peter thereupon becomes a lithos himself, a living, hewn stone, hewn not by human hands, but by grace alone, and is now laid upon the foundation which is Christ the living stone, who in his turn represents in Jerusalem the Temple-rock which is God himself. Peter is therefore now the first of many living stones, but only next after Jesus Christ, who is the first of all. These many stones are all the sons of God (banim) now built (banah) together to be a spiritual house.

5. In the book of Daniel, however, it was all Israel, the Old Testament people of God as a whole, which was this living stone. On the analogy of this passage, then, Peter is the second member of the reconstituted people of God that together form the living edifice. This means that it is now the Church which rests upon the rock that is the source of all rocks.

6. It is not Peter's faith that becomes the rock on which the Church now rests. It is the faithfulness of God, the reliability, the rocklike trustworthiness of God, onto which Peter steps, as when he was sinking in the Lake of Galilee. Then it is he finds a sure refuge, the reliability of the saving action of God in Christ.

7. The Roman Catholic and the Protestant exegeses of this important and crucial passage alike are thus both and equally wrong. The Roman Catholic view is that it is Peter who is given the power of the keys and thus is in the position to become the first Bishop of the Church on earth. But we have seen that it is not an individual, but the people of God as a whole which is given this power, yet only because as a whole they rest upon the living stone that is Christ.

The Protestant view is that it was Peter's act of faith which turned him into the rock. Thus, it is argued, all individual believers down through the centuries since his day may follow Peter's example, confess their faith in Christ, and become rocks in their turn as well. By means of this argument both the unique position of the Pope and the question of Apostolic Succession as High Anglicans know it are successfully by-passed, and in their place the modern Western cult of individualism is successfully enthroned.

If our study has meant anything, it has shown us that neither Apostolic Succession nor Protestant individualism is to be discerned in the answer which our Lord gave to Peter. What there most

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certainly is, on the other hand, is a vision of the purpose of the living God in that he has chosen a people from every nation under the sun to be his instrument for the redemption of the world. Moreover, it should be clear that Peter could not have chosen Christ, so that in doing so his faith turned him into a rock. We know that a matter of only a few weeks later Peter's faith failed him wholly, and his so-called rock-like qualities became in the High Priest's courtyard nought but sinking sand. No, it was Christ who had chosen Peter. "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit." Thus it is only in so far as Peter was in Christ that he in turn found the meaning of faith, and discovered that he was being built upon that stone which, identified in its turn with the Israel of God's choice, was one with the rock of offence that Israel was called to be. Only in that sense, then, does Peter have the power of the keys.

The people of God are two things at once. They are that people of the Covenant who are continuous with the Israel of old from the days of Abraham. But they are also that eschatological people which are born from above. John the Baptist knew this full well, as we see from his utterance: "God is able of these stones ('abhnaia) to raise up sons (benaia) unto Abraham," that is, sons built like living stones into the divine edifice.

Without directly seeking to take issue with Cullmann, I would ask a question regarding his statement, "Peter was named rock by Christ, not as a person, but only as a believer" (p. 163). Does Cullmann here take his stand with Martin Luther who, alone of the Reformers, wholly equated petra with fides? But in Matt. 16: 18 our Lord is speaking neither of persons nor of believers, as Peter himself in his epistle shows us he clearly understood. And certainly it is quite beyond the bounds of any true exegesis based upon the Old Testament background of the verse to discover that Peter is here named the first Bishop.

No, the rock is none other than God-in-Christ. We recall the Jewish tradition about a builder who could not at first find a firm foundation but only swamp. At last he discovered a rock beneath the swamp. Even so, says the tradition, God passed over the preceding generations as unsound, till he saw Abraham, and said: "I have found a rock"; therefore he called Abraham "rock," as it is said (Isa. 51: 1), "Look unto the rock whence ye were hewn." So he

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called all Israel "rocks." This story is told in connection with Deut. 32: 4: "The rock, his work is perfect." Now, Abraham could of course never have been perfect; God alone is perfect. So when the Rabbis called Abraham rock, they were well aware that Abraham himself was not the rock of salvation. God alone is that. Did our Lord know of this story, by the way, when he said of Abraham (John 8: 56) that Abraham rejoiced and was glad to see his day-the day of the coming of Christ? Anyway, the Evangelist places the parable of the rock at the close of the Sermon on the Mount, in which the people of God are summoned to be "perfect" even as Abraham had been summoned also to be perfect.

The last point I would make is this. The post-Pauline author of Eph. 2: 20 is well aware that the Church did not begin with Peter. This we see in the following statement, "We are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief comer stone." Certainly Peter was himself an apostle. But he was not an Old Testament prophet. The prophets long preceded Peter in point of time. God needed them as much as he needed the apostles if the Church was to be built up as an edifice of living stones. Peter here is therefore not the first bishop of the new Church that Christ was only then creating. The people of God comprises both the Israel of old and the Church of the New Testament in Christ. It is both together, then, again "in Christ," that possess the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven.