The Primacy of Peter: Theology and Ideology—II

Extract

In the light of what has been said in the first part of this article, it may be useful to examine briefly the text of Matt. 16, 17-19. It is remarkable that most of the interesting exegesis of this passage has been the work of Protestant scholars, notably O. Cullmann in his Peter: Apostle and Martyr, and also J. Ringger, ‘Das Felsenwort. Zur Sinndeutung von Matt. 16, 18, vor allem im Lichte der Symbol- geschichte’ in Roesle-Cullmann, Begegnung der Christen, 1959, together with numerous articles on key-concepts by J. Jeremias now available in English in the translation of Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. As to the propriety of looking at these verses in isolation, we may quote the remark of the Catholic exegete, W. Trilling (Das wahre Israel, 3rd ed., 1964): ‘This language, dense with imagery, of a kind also found in the Qumran writings, is in itself foreign to Matthew’ (p. 156). It may be that within the perspective of a modern jurisdictional theology of the primacy, the symbolic sense of the text was not easily accessible to Catholic scholars before Protestant exegetes opened the way to an understanding of it in some respects closer to patristic exegesis.

In summary, then, the whole passage is an instance of anticipated eschatology, in which the Messiah invests an individual with his own messianic powers over the messianic community.

v. 17. In response to his messianic confession, Simon is greeted with a ‘beatitude’ or ‘macarism’, for in him the eschatological event of the last times has been anticipated by ‘apocalypse’.