Хто такая скала ў Матфея 16:18?

Some have asserted the word “rock” in Gospel of Matthew (Кіраўнік 16:18) refers exclusively either to Jesus Christ or to Peter’s profession of faith, but not to Peter himself.

To support their position, they point to the fact that two different forms of the noun appear in the Greek rendering of the verse—petros і petra. Insisting the former means “small stone” and the latter “large stone,” they contend that Jesus actually said, “You are Small Stone [Petros], and on this large stone [petra] I will build my church.”

Канешне, this interpretation twists Jesus’ simple and clever play on words into a disjointed conundrum. Fortunately, there is a better explanation for the discrepancy. To begin with, Saint Matthew’s Евангелле was written either in Hebrew or Aramaic, not in Greek.¹ That Greek assigns gender to words posed a certain difficulty for the scribes, who later translated the Евангелле into that language, as petra, a feminine word, was unfit to serve as the Apostle’s name.

As a way around this problem, petra was given a masculine ending, making it Petros. The choice of the scribes on this matter is ultimately irrelevant, аднак, since Jesus spoke Aramaic, not Greek. І, as Gospel of John (1:42) proves, Jesus did not call Peter “Petros,” but Але (rendered phonetically in Greek as Кефа), the Aramaic word for “large stone” or “rock.” What Jesus said in Мацей 16:18, затым, is simply, “You are Rock [Але], and on this rock [kepha] I will build my church.”

That Peter is the “rock” of the Church does not undermine the truth that Jesus is the Church’s true foundation per St. Паўла Першы ліст да Карынцянаў (3:11), anymore than calling Abraham the “father of many nations” in Быццё, 17:5, undermines the Fatherhood of God (“call no man ‘Father’” in the Евангелле паводле Мацвея, 23:9).

Consider that Peter calls Jesus “that living stone” and in the next breath exhorts the faithful to be “like living stones” (бачыць Peter’s First Epistle, 2:4, 5).

Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) declared, “Of this one and only Church there is one body and one head—not two heads, like a monster—namely Christ, and Christ’s vicar is Peter, and Peter’s successor” (Unam Sanctam).

Peter and the Apostles are the foundation of the Church (бачыць Мацей, 16:18; The Кніга Адкрыцці, 21:14; і Ісая, 51:1-2) only inasmuch as God conferred this quality upon them.

Peter’s rock-likeness is wholly dependent upon Christ’s rock-likeness; Christ’s rock-likeness is inherent to His divinity. As a rock, Peter is subject to Christ; Christ the Rock is subject to no one and nothing.