The Rock, the Keys and the Pearly Gates Papal Infallibility: Part I  David Elliot Originally published in Issue VII of Vulgata, May 2002.  We are still waiting for Part II from Dave.  You may click here to e-mail him demanding that he complete the second half of his argument.  This half is "The Rock" the second half was to be "The Keys".  However, it should be noted that this half stands alone well.

Not too long ago, at one of those luxury dinners where the rich preen themselves like peacocks in a mahogany fire-lit hall over salmon on pumpernickel and hundred dollar champagne, someone sarcastically remarked that so-and-so was "as infallible as the Pope".  Instantly a gnat-like cloud of spooky little prejudices and cryptic generalizations seemed to descend upon the group of listeners.  There were images of medieval Popes with gaunt scarecrow features, preposterous kingly robes, halcyon eyes that could wither flesh, skulls clutched in prune-like hands, and voices like Triton ordering all Europe to doom and perfidy.  This, at least, was the overwhelming perception, secularly perennial and gigantic.  And indeed, when the topic of the Papacy comes up in fashionable circles it often acts like a lit match in a gas filled room, for on a historical level at least it combines the best (and worst) of religion with the best (and worst) of politics - the two things that you are not supposed to talk about in polite company.  But just for a moment, let us leave behind the din of bustling Modernity and take a step back into the world where Jesus blazed a trail from Heaven to Earth and back again to see where this Catholic belief in the special role of the Pope comes from.  Let us turn from the "wasteland" of cigarette butts, gaudy cars, smokestacks, TV's, and factory noise to the country of mustard seeds, well-fished lakes, fig trees, florid Galilee, and God in Jerusalem; there to see where this Catholic fancy harks from and whether it dropped from the lips of Jesus Himself or was the later product of Inquisitor or Pharisee.  For like the Eucharist itself, the doctrine of Papal infallibility stands at the edge of a sword: it is either divinely instituted, or diabolically conceived, for any Church that claims such a power either "Has the mind of Christ"  or "Has a demon" , is graced like Mary, or proud like Lucifer.  So let there be no pseudo-ecumenical slush about the Papacy just being a garnish at Christianity's great feast or a minor part of theology's etceteras.  No indeed.  It cuts to the heart of what divides Christendom, and it does much more than cut.  Rightly understood, this doctrine succeeds where all the kings horses and men have failed.  By the grace of God, it can put Christ's Church back together again.

Before laying out the Biblical tableau, a few preliminary objections ought to be dealt with.  The first is occasioned by Protestants who find the very term "Papal infallibility" to be outlandish, unbiblical, and (frankly) uncouth.  They see it as a medieval construct that has been scotch-taped onto the Good Book to the detriment of the pure faith delivered once and for all to the saints.  And indeed this objection seems to carry some weight .  After all, from leather cover to leather cover, from the first page of Genesis to the last of Revelation, the term "Papal infallibility" nowhere appears in the Bible.  Would it not seem, then, that it is a later tradition of men, justly anathematized by the likes of Luther and Calvin?  To this we can only respond that if it is, then it is in good company.  After all, the term "Trinity" never appears in the Bible, but no Christian would deny that it is rightly taught. It is the same with Papal Infallibility.  Both are implicitly taught in Scripture and explicitly defined by the Church, as the laws of a nation are implicit in its Constitution and formalized by its Supreme Court.

No mountains there, then, just molehills.

The second common error has to do with the very nature of the word "infallibility".  Sometimes the term is played off as a brash claim to moral perfection or Godlike omniscience, as if every Pope had to be holy to the fingertips and all-knowing in art, science, weather, and the lottery.  But both of these pictures are wrong.  The Pope need have neither the halo (though he should) nor the crystal ball (God forbid).  When we see the Pope we are not to cry "The voice of a god and not a man",  but "This is the servant of the servants of God".   His office is about service; not spotlight, fatherhood; not dictatorship.  If a given Pope falls from these ideals, it is no argument against the Papacy as a whole, for we are concerned here with the claim to infallibility, not impeccability.  This is a key distinction.  Infallibility refers to the Holy Spirit's protection of the Church from error when the successor of Peter, in his role of "confirming the brethren" (Lk 22:32), solemnly defines a matter pertaining to faith and morals.  Impeccability would mean that he is faultless - a sort of statuesque saint forever glowing on Mount Tabor.  But Popes are sinners too.  Like Peter himself.  Like all of us.  As individuals, they may hold wrong opinions, make mistakes, be cowardly or arrogant; but Jesus Christ, through power of the Holy Spirit and in His omnipotent love, prevents them from teaching error when binding doctrine is proclaimed from the seat of Peter.  Far from leaving us "in the frown", this should bring home to us how much we are loved by God, that we should be so provided for, down to the very jot and title.

It is important to note that the Popes do not add to the deposit of divine revelation (which ended with the death of the last apostle), just that they make explicit what was already implicit in Scripture, or formal what was already believed in Church tradition.  Any view of the Pope, then, as a kind of wizard or warlock who draws dogma out of the air is nonsense.  A man among men (even if specially graced), he can give no new revelation in the tongues of men or of angels.  Infallibility is ultimately a form of divine protection for the Church.  It is like the guard rail at the edge of a twisty mountain road that prevents cars from going over the cliffs.  It is not the Pope saying "Look at me.  I am the chosen of God." It is God saying "Look to him, for the very dust shall give me glory."  Jesus' last words to Peter were "Feed my sheep."  Infallibility is like a footnote adding "Only don't feed them poison."  It does not mean that the Pope as man is infallible, simply that the Holy Spirit uses him at key moments to speak definitively to the Father's children.  This is a power that even the most minor of Old Testament prophets had.  It should not astonish us, then, that it is given to the prince of apostles and to his successors.  This at least is the sense of infallibility, and for such a statement (called ex cathedra, meaning "from the chair" of Peter) to be made, four requirements must be met: I) The Pope must speak formally in his capacity as successor of Peter and Bishop of Rome, ii) He must make a solemn, not a casual pronouncement, iii) It must be addressed to the entire universal Church, not just to a local branch, and iv) It must pertain to matters of faith and morals.  This at least is what the Catholic Church teaches.  The only question is whether it has a Biblical leg to stand on.

What is the crux of the Gospel of Matthew?  What is the hinge upon which that narrative swings?  Surely it is the moment when Jesus of Nazareth, the holy wonder whose words were Honey in the mouth, music in the ear, and a shout of joy in the heart was revealed not only as a prophet (however great), but as the God-man, the Messiah for whom the faithful had cried to God by day and by night.  Imagine the wonder this must have occasioned in His disciples!  Expecting a conquering King, they received a God incarnate.  Digging for coal, they stumbled onto diamond.  We can without credulity picture them lying down by the fire after a full day of evangelizing, demon-casting, and leper-healing, wondering of Christ "Who is this man?  Who in God's name can he be?"  The fate of the whole Universe hangs upon this question, but the disciples will only hear it answered when they arrive at a Galilean backwater called Caesaria Phillippi - and they will only hear it from the lips of Peter.

In Matthew 16, a text that should be onion yellow from overuse in every Catholic's Bible, we find this classic proof text for the role of the Pope in the Church.  Jesus and the disciples have just come to the foothills of snow-capped Mount Hermon (a favourite of King David's) at the base of the Jordan river.  On the outskirts of Caesarea Philippi, at a seemingly innocuous place with seemingly innocuous men, the following dialogue rings out and shall continue to the last trumpet at the end of the world:

"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 gates of Hades 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."  (Mt 16:13-20).

Note a few things.  First, when the long-wondered question "Who is this Jesus?" is finally posed, neither Christ with His human voice, nor the Father with His thunder voice, nor the Holy Spirit in a tongue of fire, answers this question directly.  God Himself demurs, and then God speaks through Simon.  Nor is it his fisherman's shrewdness, or Galilean's intuition that allows Simon to peg the question.  The Father gives him this revelation directly and then he communicates it to the other disciples, setting an important precedent.  Second, Jesus gives Simon an astonishing name change, calling him Peter (which translates as Rock).  Yes, the name sounds as outlandish in the original Aramaic as it does in English.  Imagine being re-named Boulder, or Mountain, and then having someone say to you "Good morning Boulder", or "See you later Mountain" if you want to get the hang of it.  The point, of course, is not irreverence, but novelty.  We are so used to calling Simon "Peter" that we forget how novel a name Peter originally was.  It had never been used as a human name before, so why does Jesus give it to Simon?  What in Galilee was He driving at?

To understand this, we must remember that a name change to a pious Jew pointed not to some idiosyncrasy to be enshrined (such as calling someone "Slim" because they are skinny or "Tiger" because they are hotheaded), but to a solemn change in their status in the order of God's covenant family.  Good examples of this would be when Abram is re-named "Abraham"; the "Father of nations" (Gen 17:5), or Jacob is re-named "Israel" and comes to personify all of God's people (Gen 32:28).  An important theological point to note here is that God's word doesn't merely reflect the inner nature of a thing, it effects the very change that it signifies.  The Father's word is creative; not reflective, it is ontological; not decorative.  (See, for example, Genesis 1, Psalms 147 & 148, and John 1).  So by pronouncing this name-change Jesus is rendering Peter the rock of foundation upon which the Church is built.  And He does this despite Peter's natural frailty.  As we will see, Christ is raising Peter's status to that of chief patriarch of the New Covenant to whom spiritual fatherhood and the promises are given.  In fact, Matthew 16 mirrors, with divine poetry, God's elevation of Abraham to the same role of chief patriarch of the Old Covenant.  Both men respond to God with heroic faith (Heb 11:8), and both men receive a solemn blessing (Gen 14:19); both are given a divine mission of leadership (Gen 12:1-3), have their name changed (Gen 17:5), are called a "rock" (Is 51:1-2; though with Abraham it is not a proper name), and are promised victory over the "gate" of their enemies (Gen 22:17).  In the Old Covenant Abraham was the guarantee that God would not abandon His people to destruction (in dire times the Israelites were always reminding God of His promise to Abraham to multiply their numbers like the sand on the seashore) just as Peter is the visible sign that God will not abandon His people to destruction in the New (thus we remember that the Church built on Peter can never be overcome by the gates of Hell).  God gives us these breathtaking parallels because History is just that: His story.  The same Lord and Father of all works at different points in time with the same loving logic and divine consistency.  This does not mean that God merely repeats Himself.  He "rhymes".

If we were so fortunate as to possess large glossy Bibles with colour illustrations (Vulgata revenues do not allow for such dainties) one further detail from Matthew 16 would be setting heads, both young and old alike, to turning.  It is the practical businessman's concern with location, location, location.  The fact that Jesus, Who had more than Wordsworth's love for nature, chose to re-name Simon "Rock" at the place that He did is extremely significant.  Caesarea Philippi lies in the scenic foothills of Mt. Hermon and was the site of a largely Gentile city.  The ruins of that ancient site lie at the base of a massive rock outcropping that rises to a height of 200 feet and whose southern cliff opens into a fathomless cave where the river Jordan has one of its three major sources.  According to the Jewish historian Josephus,  the locals would lower rocks on ropes down this cave to see how deep into the earth it went, but no one ever reached the bottom.  From ancient times, then, it was considered to be an opening to the netherworld and was known to locals as the "Gates of Hades".  Sound familiar?  The cavity in the cliff would grow wider and wider over the years because of the cave's eroding waters, but these "Gates of Hades" never prevailed against the massive rock foundation.  It stands gloriously to this day.

The analogy would not have been lost on the disciples.  Here they are, at this place of all places, being told that Simon is the "Rock" upon which Christ will build His Church, against which the "Gates of Hades" will not prevail.  And every Catholic says "Amen" to that.  But Protestant critics are quick to argue that Peter himself is not the Rock upholding the Church, but that it is Peter's confession of faith, or Christ Himself, Who is the Rock.  (As G.K. Chesterton noted: "Sometimes a thing is too close to be seen").  Thus they point to the Greek of Matthew's Gospel where the literal rendering of the passage is: "You are Rock (petros), and upon this Rock (petra) I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."  (Mt:16:18).  Now in classical Greek petros refers to a small rock, while petra refers to a large one.  The idea, then, is that Christ is contrasting Peter (the small rock) with Himself (the big rock) - upon Whom the Church is actually built.  I remember hearing David Mainse of 100 Huntley Street elabourate on this passage and say that Jesus was really calling Peter "Rocky", or "Little Pebble".  He spoke it with a smile like the Cheshire cat, but God love him, he was wrong.  Why?  First of all, because as both Catholic and Protestant scholars acknowledge that the daily conversation of Christ and His disciples would have been in Aramaic, not in Greek; and according to the earliest historical sources, Matthew was originally written in Aramaic.  So the petros/petra distinction would have existed neither in the original dialogue at Caesarea Philippi nor in the scroll penned by Matthew, where the Aramaic kephas would have been used.  (And certainly it is no accident that Peter is specifically referred to as Kephas, meaning "massive rock" elsewhere in Scripture).   Why the confusion in the translation then?  Simply because the Greek word petra is feminine, so in order to not give Peter a woman's name, the masculine word for rock, petros, is used.  Furthermore, the linguistic distinction between petros and petra, though important in classical Greek, no longer existed in Jesus' day.   The term lithos was instead used to refer to a small rock, while petros and petra were used interchangeably for a large one.  As Patrick Madrid put it: "A rock by any other name is still a rock."

Does this mean, then, that we are robbing Our Lord to give to Peter in putting the Church in the fisherman's shoes?  By no means.  It is true, as that lovely, well-combed, dry-cleaned suit-wearing evangelical will tell you at your door: in 1 Corinthians 10:4 St. Paul does call Christ the Rock instead of Peter.  But does it follow that Peter cannot, therefore, be the Rock spoken of in Matthew 16?  Not at all.  Scripture often uses the same term for different people in different situations.  In the Book of Isaiah, for instance, Abraham is called the "Rock" from which the Israelites were hewn, but that doesn't mean that God is therefore not the “Rock” of our salvation (Ps 95:1).  And just after the beautiful pardon of the woman caught in adultery Jesus calls Himself the light of the world (Jn 8:12), but that doesn't nullify His previous statement in the Sermon on the Mount that we are the light of the world (Mt 5:14).  The two senses in these examples are not opposed, like square pegs and round holes.  They are complimentary, like salt and pepper.  And it is the same with varying uses of the term Rock in the New Testament.  When Matthew speaks of Peter as the Rock he is referring to the human foundation of the Church.  When Paul speaks of Christ as the Rock, he is referring to the divine foundation of the Church.  Also, the "plain as the nose on your face" fact that it is Simon who is re-named "Peter" (the Rock) makes it amply clear that by "Peter", Jesus meant Simon!  How the argument can be raised that Christ really meant to contrast Simon with the Rock when Simon is from that moment on known by the name of "Rock", is truly beyond me.

At this point the gentle critic may be shaking their head: "This may be enough to establish that the Church is built upon Peter the man, but where in this tangle is the infallibility of the Pope?"  And this ushers us right to our next theme: the keys.  After having called Peter the Rock upon which the Church would be built, Jesus next promises to give to him the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the power of binding and loosing on Earth and out of it.  Like a great black willow on the edge of a riverbank, the roots here go deep.  Too deep, in fact, for a few dashed off lines to compass.  As with the Rock that preceded it and the Gates that follow it, these mysterious keys require thorough treatment.  Scripture, after all, is a mystery to be plumbed, not a Summa to easily reference.  In next month's article we'll move from the Rock of Peter to the keys that work the pearly gates, their ancient roots in the Kingdom of David, the passing on of Papal lineage, Protestant troubleshooting, historical quandaries, and the ultimate triumph of the Holy Ghost.  Far from this being mere book-dust from the ivory tower, though, this question of the Pope and of his role should be a matter of concern to all believing Christians.  With Christ's troops scattered, and the secular onslaught mounting, there is a greater need than ever for Christendom to unite under a single banner.  And from the brawling fisherman of 20 centuries ago to the great Polish bear of today, only the one told by Jesus "Tend my sheep" can do it.