Alright, for my counter-essay, I shall begin by taking each of my opponent’s points and going over them , one by one.
(1) If Jesus instituted the papacy through his words in Matt. 16:18, then these words were understood to bear significant ecclesiological weight by the Christian community before the composition of Luke’s Gospel. [Premise]
I find this premise acceptable.
(2) If these words were understood to bear significant ecclesiological weight by the Christian community before the composition of Luke’s Gospel, then Luke recorded this understanding of these words in his parallel to Matt. 16:18. [Premise]
(3) Luke didn’t record this understanding of these words in his parallel to Matt. 16:18. [Premise]
These premises, though interesting, I cannot concede because the writer of St. Luke’s Gospel (who I will just call Luke for clarification) is known for writing two documents. One is the Gospel of Luke. The second is known as the Acts of the Apostles. I would like to suggest a counter-premise in this regard: Luke did not have need to write the text of Matthew 16:18 in his Gospel, because he would later document and expand upon this doctrine through looking at his next text, the Acts of the Apostles. This would be a more suitable document to chart out the authority of St. Peter and the other Apostles within. Furthermore, if we are to assume that if a title or a concept is not equally found in the Synoptic Gospels (such as comparing Matthew and Luke) in the same wording, then that particular instance of the terminology must not have been important to the early Christian communities, then we would have to exclude such titles as “Lamb of God” which is only found in the Gospel of John (and Revelation) and not in the rest of the Gospels, for example. And we know how important that title is amongst Christians today. Nevertheless, we do not look towards the Gospel of Luke to find such a title in order to consider it important amongst Christians. We would also have to exclude the large amount of evidence which shows an overwhelming support of the Petrine office by those of the early Church (Church Fathers come to mind, here).
(4) Therefore, these words were not understood to bear significant ecclesiological weight by the Christian community before the composition of Luke’s Gospel. [(2), (3), M.T.]
To accept this premise, as I have stated before, we would have to find a source for the large amount of support for the Petrine office which we find historically. And where would we find this source? To bring up an example my opponent mentioned to me before, if we start out with two premises, 1) John did not murder Jack, and 2) John did murder Jack, and if we find John’s fingerprints all over the gun which killed Jack, then it would be much more plausible to accept Premise 2 than Premise 1. And I believe that there is a very large amount of evidence which supports my premise rather than my opponent’s.
However, I point out that if this premise were true, then we would find that this would be the predominant view amongst Christians later in history. However, we can tell that this is not the case:
The Diatesseron
"Simon Cephas answered and said, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah: flesh and blood has not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say unto thee also, that you are Cephas, and on this rock will I build my Church; and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it" (The Diatesseron 23 [A.D. 170]).
Clement of Alexandria
"[T]he blessed Peter, the chosen, the preeminent, the first among the disciples, for whom alone with himself the Savior paid the tribute [Matt. 17:27], quickly gasped and understood their meaning. And what does he say? ‘Behold, we have left all and have followed you’ [Matt. 19:27; Mark 10:28]" (Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 21:3–5 [A.D. 200]).
Tertullian
"Was anything withheld from the knowledge of Peter, who is called ‘the rock on which the Church would be built’ [Matt. 16:18] with the power of ‘loosing and binding in heaven and on earth’ [Matt. 16:19]?" (Demurrer Against the Heretics 22 [A.D. 200]).
"[T]he Lord said to Peter, ‘On this rock I will build my Church, I have given you the keys of the kingdom of heaven [and] whatever you shall have bound or loosed on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven’ [Matt. 16:18–19]. . . . What kind of man are you, subverting and changing what was the manifest intent of the Lord when he conferred this personally upon Peter? Upon you, he says, I will build my Church; and I will give to you the keys" (Modesty 21:9–10 [A.D. 220]).
The Letter of Clement to James
"Be it known to you, my lord, that Simon [Peter], who, for the sake of the true faith, and the most sure foundation of his doctrine, was set apart to be the foundation of the Church, and for this end was by Jesus himself, with his truthful mouth, named Peter" (Letter of Clement to James 2 [A.D. 221]).
The Clementine Homilies
"[Simon Peter said to Simon Magus in Rome:] ‘For you now stand in direct opposition to me, who am a firm rock, the foundation of the Church’ [Matt. 16:18]" (Clementine Homilies 17:19 [A.D. 221]).
Origen
"Look at [Peter], the great foundation of the Church, that most solid of rocks, upon whom Christ built the Church [Matt. 16:18]. And what does our Lord say to him? ‘Oh you of little faith,’ he says, ‘why do you doubt?’ [Matt. 14:31]" (Homilies on Exodus 5:4 [A.D. 248]).
Cyprian of Carthage
"The Lord says to Peter: ‘I say to you,’ he says, ‘that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. And to you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven . . . ’ [Matt. 16:18–19]. On him [Peter] he builds the Church, and to him he gives the command to feed the sheep [John 21:17], and although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair [cathedra], and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. Indeed, the others were that also which Peter was [i.e., apostles], but a primacy is given to Peter, whereby it is made clear that there is but one Church and one chair. . . . If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he [should] desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church?" (The Unity of the Catholic Church 4; 1st edition [A.D. 251]).
Ephraim the Syrian
"[Jesus said:] Simon, my follower, I have made you the foundation of the holy Church. I betimes called you Peter, because you will support all its buildings. You are the inspector of those who will build on Earth a Church for me. If they should wish to build what is false, you, the foundation, will condemn them. You are the head of the fountain from which my teaching flows; you are the chief of my disciples. Through you I will give drink to all peoples. Yours is that life-giving sweetness which I dispense. I have chosen you to be, as it were, the firstborn in my institution so that, as the heir, you may be executor of my treasures. I have given you the keys of my kingdom. Behold, I have given you authority over all my treasures" (Homilies 4:1 [A.D. 351]).
Ambrose of Milan
"[Christ] made answer: ‘You are Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church. . . .’ Could he not, then, strengthen the faith of the man to whom, acting on his own authority, he gave the kingdom, whom he called the rock, thereby declaring him to be the foundation of the Church [Matt. 16:18]?" (The Faith 4:5 [A.D. 379]).
Jerome
"‘But,’ you [Jovinian] will say, ‘it was on Peter that the Church was founded’ [Matt. 16:18]. Well . . . one among the twelve is chosen to be their head in order to remove any occasion for division" (Against Jovinian 1:26 [A.D. 393]).
"Simon Peter, the son of John, from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, brother of Andrew the apostle, and himself chief of the apostles, after having been bishop of the church of Antioch and having preached to the Dispersion . . . pushed on to Rome in the second year of Claudius to overthrow Simon Magus, and held the sacerdotal chair there for twenty-five years until the last, that is the fourteenth, year of Nero. At his hands he received the crown of martyrdom being nailed to the cross with his head towards the ground and his feet raised on high, asserting that he was unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Lord" (Lives of Illustrious Men 1 [A.D. 396]).
Pope Innocent I
"In seeking the things of God . . . you have acknowledged that judgment is to be referred to us [the pope], and have shown that you know that is owed to the Apostolic See [Rome], if all of us placed in this position are to desire to follow the apostle himself [Peter] from whom the episcopate itself and the total authority of this name have emerged" (Letters 29:1 [A.D. 408]).
Augustine
"Among these [apostles] Peter alone almost everywhere deserved to represent the whole Church. Because of that representation of the Church, which only he bore, he deserved to hear ‘I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven’" (Sermons 295:2 [A.D. 411]).
"Some things are said which seem to relate especially to the apostle Peter, and yet are not clear in their meaning unless referred to the Church, which he is acknowledged to have represented in a figure on account of the primacy which he bore among the disciples. Such is ‘I will give unto you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,’ and other similar passages. In the same way, Judas represents those Jews who were Christ’s enemies" (Commentary on Psalm 108 1 [A.D. 415]).
"Who is ignorant that the first of the apostles is the most blessed Peter?" (Commentary on John 56:1 [A.D. 416]).
These are all examples of early Christians who had held to the concept of Peter as being the Rock, and that he was the Leader, the First of the Apostles.The reason why I bring these quotes up is to express that we would have to thus find justification for their reasoning, which would be heterodox or at least uncommon if we accepted the above premise. However, if we accept the Catholic premise, that the words of Matthew 16:18 would be the bedrock for the Papacy, then the evidence coincides with the premise.
(5) Therefore, Jesus did not institute the papacy through his words in Mat. 16:18. [(1), (4), M.T.]
This premise I obviously disagree with due to the previous responses to your other premises. However, I would like to note that the relation between the Gospel of Matthew to the Gospel of Luke avoids explaining why Matthew wrote this verse. I cannot find any other justification for writing these words if they have no actual importance, as the appeal to Luke’s Gospel is suggesting. We should look at what Matthew 16:18 says, and we should look at why Matthew uses these words and what they mean for us today.
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