Peter’s Confession at Caesarea Philippi

Mark sets the scene on the road among the villages of Caesarea Philippi, the city that the tetrarch Philip had built at the sources of the Jordan (Josephus, Antiquities 18.28). Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” They answered that some said John the Baptist, others Elijah, others one of the prophets. He asked, “But who do you say that I am?” and Peter answered, “You are the Christ.” Jesus ordered them to tell no one (Mark 8:27–30). Luke tells the same exchange without naming a place (Luke 9:18–21).

Matthew’s account is longer. Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”, and Jesus replies that this has been revealed to him by the Father. He goes on: “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my assembly, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” “Assembly” renders the Greek word usually translated “church”. He promises Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven and says that what he binds and looses on earth will be bound and loosed in heaven (Matthew 16:13–20). The saying plays on the name Peter, in Aramaic Cephas, which means rock (John 1:42). Two chapters later the same words about binding and loosing are addressed to the disciples in the plural (Matthew 18:18).

In all three Gospels a prediction of suffering follows the confession. Jesus at once begins to teach that the Son of Man must suffer, be rejected and killed, and rise again. In Mark and Matthew, Peter protests and is rebuked: “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus then tells his hearers that anyone who would follow him must take up his cross (Mark 8:31–38) (Matthew 16:21–28) (Luke 9:22–27). John’s Gospel has a comparable confession by Peter at Capernaum (John 6:66–69).

The churches read Matthew’s saying differently, and the difference bears on how the church is governed. The Catholic Church teaches that Christ built his church on Peter, who because of the faith he confessed remains its rock, that he gave Peter the keys, and that this office continues in the bishop of Rome as Peter’s successor (Catechism of the Catholic Church 552) (Catechism of the Catholic Church 881–882). The Orthodox patriarchs, replying to Pope Pius IX in 1848, wrote that the church is founded on the rock of Peter’s confession, which they call the answer of the apostles in common, and that the command “Feed my sheep” gave Peter no prerogative over the other apostles (Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848) § 11). The Lutheran confessions likewise take the rock to be “the ministry of the confession which Peter made” and not his person, and hold that the keys belong to the whole church (Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope 22–29).