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John 1:42 - You will be called Kephas (big rock in Aramaic)...

I'll take a different approach. First; Garry Wills; what Jesus meant;

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But didn't Jesus say he was founding a church on Peter? The words are these: "You are Peter [Petros], and on this stone [petra] I will build up my gathering [ekklsia]. And I will give you the keys of heavens' reign. Whatever you tie on earth will have been tied in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven" (Mt 16.1819).

But Jesus in the same gospel gives the same power not to Peter exclusively but to the followers as a body: "In truth I tell you (hymin, plural) that whatever you tie on earth will have been tied in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven" (Mt 18.18). From this Augustine concluded that Peter is just "a representative of the church"and in fact the community as a whole had the power to include or exclude members in the early gatherings.

Peter's qualification is not that he is the wisest, steadiest, or strongest of the followershe is far from that. He is favored as the woman of ill repute was: "Her great sins are forgiven her, as her great love shows" (Lk 7.47). So Jesus forgives Peter his triple denial by asking three times, "Simon Peter, do you love me more than all else?" (Jn 21.1517). The idea that Peter was given some special power that could be handed on to a successor runs into the problem that he had no successor.

The idea that there is an "apostolic succession" to Peter's fictional episcopacy did not arise for several centuries, at which time Peter and others were retrospectively called bishops of Rome, to create an imagined succession. Even so, there has not been an unbroken chain of popes. Two and three claimants existed at times, and when there were three of them, each excommunicating the other two, they all had to be dethroned and the Council of Constance started things over again with a new appointment in 1417.

Yet Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Church, wrote in 1998 that it is an infallible teaching of the church that Anglican bishops and priests are fake bishops and priests, dispensing fake sacraments, because they are outside the apostolic succession. That is, they have not a lineage guaranteed by papal elections, supposedly guided by the Holy Spirita line in which bribery, intimidation, and imperial interference were often the deciding factors. In this famous succession, the papacy was often bought, and once was sold for money (by Benedict X).

Popes were for a long time appointed by various temporal rulers. Popes were heretical (Liberius, Honorius), they waged wars, they ran governments (with their full complement of armies, spies, and torturers), and they granted indulgences for those killing heretics (the Albigensians) or infidels.

This succession is what excludes saintly Christians of non-Catholic gatherings as not "valid," not connected with the mythical chair of Peter as bishop of Rome. Jesus said, "Where two or three are met together in my name, there am I in their midst" (Mt 18.20). Why do Anglicans, met together in Jesus' name, need a bishop from Rome when they have Jesus in their midst? Benedict XVI's stand brings to mind the disciple John in Luke's gospel: John said, "Master, we found a man casting out devils in your name, but we stopped him since he was not of our company." But Jesus answered him: "Do not stop him, since anyone who does not oppose you supports you." (9.4950)

The exclusionary attitude of Benedict is just one example of the way the religion Jesus opposed has taken over the gatherings claiming descent from him. It was a tendency that showed up even in his own lifetime. When a blind beggar called out to Jesus, his followers told him to shut up, but "Jesus halted, and said, 'Call him over'" (Mk 10.49). Or again: Some brought children for him to caress; but the followers rebuked them. Jesus, however, saw what was happening, and was angry at it. He said, "Let the children through, do not block them. The subjects of God's reign resemble these. In truth I tell you, whoever does not approach God's reign as a child will not be let into it." And he hugged them, with a blessing as he caressed. (Mk 10.1316)

Exclusion returned with the reinstitution of a "Christian" priesthood, along with revived holiness codesconsecrated altars and consecrated men and "consecrating fingers," with the extrusion of the laity (especially women) from altars, from secret conclaves, from decision making, from control of the believers' money. The "rood screen" separating clergy from laity was a great barrier in the Middle Ages and it survived for a long time in the "communion railing."

Women, returned to the unclean status given them by menstruation under Jewish (and other) law, were not allowed inside the sanctuary of a churcheven the altar cloths had to be carried out to the nuns who washed them. For these groups, Jesus cleansed the Temple in vain.

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Garry Wills; what the gospels meant;

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In Matt hostile confrontations with the Pharisees and Sadducees (16:112) follow the miracles that Jesus has been doing. The disciples' behavior brings criticism from Jesus. He warns them about the leaven (teaching) of the Pharisees and Sadducees, but they do not understand. Jesus confronts them for their lack of faith, particularly because they do not perceive the meaning of the bread miracles. Finally they do understand. Yet Jesus' disciples have considerable faith as seen in the climactic confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi and the first prediction of the passion (16:1323). Beyond Mark's account (8:2730) where Peter confessed him to be the Messiah, in Matt 16:16b19 Peter now confesses that Jesus is the Son of the living Goda revelation from the Father in Heaven, not a matter of human reasoning. This revelation constitutes Peter an apostle, the rock on which Jesus will build his church, a church that even the gates of hell will not prevail against. In 16:19 Jesus gives Peter the keys of the kingdom, so that whatever he binds/looses on earth is bound/loosed in heaven. There are debates about what this binding/loosing means. Matt's picture of the exaltation of Peter because of his professing what God revealed to him does not cause the evangelist to eliminate Jesus' subsequent chastisement of Peter as Satan who thinks on a human level because he does not accept the notion of Jesus' suffering in the prediction of the passion. If anything, Matt sharpens the Marcan reproof, for 16:23 adds, "You are a scandal to me." This sobering correction leads into directives to the disciples about the suffering required for discipleship (16:2428). Encouragingly, however, the suffering of the present is contrasted with future glory. The account of the transfiguration (17:113) also shows unique Matthean features. That Jesus' face shone like the sun (17:2) echoes the description of Moses in Exod 34:2935 and heightens the parallelism to the great theophany on Sinai. Peter himself will make the three booths. The voice from the cloud in 17:6 repeats more exactly what the voice from heaven said at Jesus' baptism (3:17) pertaining to divine sonship.

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Back to my first excerpt; how does one enter the reign? It's not thru a formal RCC process (or otherwise an apostolic succession/sequence of rules);

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"I am the path, and the truth, and the life. None arrives at the Father but through me" (Jn 14.6). Heaven's reign is, simply, Jesusfinally, when the Father exalts his Son on the throne of judgment, but also now, when the Father's love is to be found only in him. Entering into the kingdom is the act of union with Jesus.

This is not a political activity. It is certainly not an action of ecclesiastical politics, of a churchly rule or realm. Jesus was opposed to religion in any sense but this meaning of heaven's reign. Heaven's reign unites believers with the Father by uniting them with Jesus, who says, "I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I in you" (Jn 14.20). This, and nothing else, is the heavenly reign: "Remain in me, as I remain in you. As a branch cannot be fruitful on its own, without remaining on the vine, so you can bear no fruit but by remaining in me. I am the vine, you the branches. The one remaining in me, as I in him, will be richly fruitful; but severed from me, you can do nothing. Whoever does not remain in me is like a severed branch that withers, the kind men gather and throw into the fire, where it burns. If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you desire and it will be given you. My Father's glory consists in this, in your being richly fruitful, in your being my followers. As the Father has loved me, so love I you. Remain in that love. You will remain in it if you follow my instructions, just as I have followed my Father's instructions and remain in his love. I have told you this to make my joy yours, and to complete your joy. This is my instruction: Love one another as I have loved you." (Jn 15.412)

One enters the heavenly reign by only one avenuelove. That avenue not only leads to Jesus. It is Jesus. "I am the path" (Jn 14.6). Augustine's words on this verse say it all: "Where should we go but to him? And how should we go but by way of him? So he goes to himself through himself, and we go to him by way of him, and both of ushe and wearrive at the Father."

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There's a lot of things here that I don't understand.

The first one uses a kind of caricature of the concept of apostolic succession. I don't think the confession of St Peter is so intimately tied to the idea of apostolic succession.

I am also not sure why you bring up entering into the reign of heaven by rules. I don't think any church teaches that, RCC or otherwise.

It seems strange to me to quote St Augustine against things like apostolic succession or for his words to be used to buttress arguments against a hierarchical structure when he himself was a bishop and a defender of apostolic succession.

For example - his letter here -

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Now, even although some traitor had in the course of these centuries, through inadvertence, obtained a place in that order of bishops, reaching from Peter himself to Anastasius, who now occupies that see - this fact would do no harm to the Church and to Christians having no share in the guilt of another; for the Lord, providing against such a case, says, concerning officers in the Church who are wicked: "All whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not." Thus the stability of the hope of the faithful is secured, inasmuch as being fixed, not in man, but in the Lord, it never can be swept away by the raging of impious schism; whereas they themselves are swept away who read in the Holy Scriptures the names of churches to which the apostles wrote, and in which they have no bishop. For what could more clearly prove their perversity and their folly, than their saying to their clergy, when they read these letters, "Peace be with you," at the very time that they are themselves disjoined from the peace of those churches to which the letters were originally written?

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It's the next substantive part of the same chapter of the book I excerpted, and context, while difficult in a religion discussion on an internet message board, matters. Garry is a RCC member, I'd note, but I think the tenets of RCC dogma/theology (including it's exclusivity/primacy), which were ostensibly set aside for purposes of a protestant viewpoint in this thread, are pertinent.

One can belittle anyone else's theology/church/christology, but the bottom line is, the question of Peter as 'the rock' as the previous poster to me put it, is highly debatable in the context of the verse, and imho even more so in other gospels.

I like the idea of Apostolic succession as a guard against heresy. It was an excellent point to score against Marcion and other gnostics during the early days of the Church when the Apostles were part of living memory. The argument seems much weaker 2000 years later. We know for fact that money, politics, intrigue, and violence sometimes decided who would be pope or patriach. So it's not like we have a carefully cultivated dynastry passed down from one amazing person to the next. Which is what I would expect if everyone was truly a successor to their apostle.

The idea also loses a lot of power when they are at least 5 major branches of Christianty that came legitimately claim it, and they are not in communion with each other. You have the RCC, Eastern Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Church, the Anglicans and six if you count the Lutherans. All can trace an unbroken line to the Apostles and yet each considers the others heretics in some form or fashion. So Apostolic succession clearly isn't protecting the true faith in any meaningful way.

If you're implying that I belittled anyone's theology, please forgive me as it was absolutely not intentional.

I think we're probably on the same side of this interpretive issue. The church fathers interpret it quite differently as well, sometimes the same father speaking of it one way and another depending on what they were talking about when they are using the verse.

During Vatican I there was a US Archbishop who opposed the papal supremacy arguments and he prepared this review of patristic uses.

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If we talk about the Rock as in the church was built on Peter; this interpretation is followed by seventeen fathers, among them, by Origen, Cyprian, Jerome, Hilary, Cyril of Alexandria, Leo the Great, Augustine.

The second interpretation understands from these words 'on this rock will I build my church', that the church was built on all the apostles, whom Peter represented by virtue of the primacy. And this opinion is followed by eight fathers - among them, Origen, Cyprian, Jerome, Augustine, Theodoret.

The third interpretation asserts that the words, 'on this rock', etc, are to be understood of the faith which Peter had professed - that this profession of faith, by which we believe Christ to be the Son of the Living God, is the everlasting and immovable foundation of the church. This interpretation is the weightiest of all, since it is followed by forty-four fathers and doctors; among them, from the East, are Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, Chrysostom, Theophylact; from the West, Hilary, Ambrose, Leo the Great; from Africa, Augustine.

The fourth interpretation declare that the words 'on this rock', etc, are to be understood of the rock which Peter had confessed, that is, Christ - that the church was built upon Christ. This interpretation is followed by sixteen fathers and doctors.

The fifth interpretation of the fathers understands by the name of 'the rock', the faithful themselves, who, believing Christ to be the Son of God, are constituted living stones out of which the church is built.

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Not going into a personal/deep debate here as it's the wrong forum, no problem. There is a wide range of interpretations available for that text, imho, and as well between high and low christologies, to use a very broad term. Two things I am confident of are that (a) my analyses of the texts are not perfect and (b) if God wanted it to be settled it would be.

This is a delicate matter I've been blasted as a heretic about elsewhere, so I am not really willing/ready to go into it further. Take care!