Annotation LXVIII

”Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” — Matthew 16:18

Whether the Church was built upon [the] Rock [Peter].

Augustine, in the sermon On the Words of the Lord according to Matthew, sermon 13, so expounds this passage as to say that the Church is not founded upon petra [the rock] — that is, upon Peter — but upon the Rock, which is Christ, speaking thus: “Thou art therefore,” he says, “Peter; and upon this rock, which thou hast acknowledged [saying, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God’], I will build my Church. Upon me I will build thee, not me upon thee.” The same [thing] he also has in Tractate 124 on John, on these words: “‘Upon this rock,’” he says, “‘I will build my Church.’ For the rock was Christ, upon which foundation Peter himself also was built. For¹ no one can lay another foundation than that which is laid, Christ Jesus.”

The heretics of our times deride us, because — expounding the proposed sentence of Christ, “Thou art Peter” — we say that Peter is the rock upon which the Church is founded, against Augustine’s explanation and against the voice of Paul, who lays no foundation besides Christ. To whom we reply that we embrace the present exposition of Augustine with [our] whole heart, and also firmly retain our own interpretation, as received from the same Augustine. For he, in the first [book] of the Retractations, chapter 21 — approving both, and preferring neither to the other — uses these words: “I said, in a certain place, concerning the apostle Peter, that upon him, as upon a rock, the Church is founded — which sense is also sung by the mouth of many in the words of the most blessed Ambrose, where, concerning the cock, he says:

‘At this, the very Rock of the Church, [the cock] crowing, washed away [his] fault’ —

but I know that I have afterward very often so expounded what was said by the Lord, ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,’ that by ‘this rock’ should be understood [him] whom Peter confessed, saying, ‘Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.’ But which of these two opinions is the more probable, let the reader choose.” Thus Augustine — whom, as we do not contradict, so neither do we lay any other primary foundation besides Christ. For we believe, and with sure faith confess, that Christ is the first and chief foundation of the whole ecclesiastical edifice; but upon this foundation we also assert that other stones are superimposed — namely Peter and the rest of the Apostles, whom John in the Apocalypse names the twelve foundations of the heavenly Jerusalem,² upon which we do not doubt that the remaining parts of the ecclesiastical structure are built.

Nor are there lacking, among the ancient fathers, those who interpret this response of Christ to Peter as [said] of Peter — among whom Clement of Rome, in the first epistle to James, [says]: “Simon Peter, by the merit of [his] true faith and on the strength of [his] upright preaching, was by Christ appointed to be the foundation of the Church.” Origen, in book 5 on the epistle to the Romans, says: “When to Peter the summit of affairs was handed over for the feeding of the sheep, and upon him — as upon [firm] earth — the Church was founded, no other virtue is required of him except charity.” And on Matthew, chapter 16: “Christ in truth was saying to Peter, ‘Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God’ — in which [confession] he was both beatified, and by promise merited to become the foundation of the Church.” Basil, in the second book against Eunomius: “Peter, because he excelled in faith, took up in his very self the building of the Church.” Theophylact, in the explanation of this passage: “The Lord rewards Peter, giving him a great reward — that upon him he built the Church.” In the same manner interpret [it] Jerome, in book 3 on Matthew, and Chrysostom, chapter 16 on Matthew.

Hilary, in canon 16 on Matthew, expounds these words in the same manner — although Erasmus strives to drag his words into another sense, adding in the margin a scholium of this kind: “The foundation of the Church is faith”; by which words he wished to interpret Hilary, as if he [Hilary] held faith and the rock, and not Peter, to be the foundation. Yet Hilary speaks most openly of Peter, as is manifest to one reading his words. But — [even] to grant to Erasmus that Hilary’s mind in this place is not easily grasped — what will he [Erasmus] say to those [words] which the same [Hilary] writes on this matter in the exposition of Psalm 103, in these words, clearer than the noonday light? “When Jesus had spoken certain things about his passion to the disciples, and Peter had detested this as unworthy of the Son [of God] — Peter, to whom [Jesus] had earlier given the keys of heaven, upon whom he was about to build the Church, against whom the gates of hell should have no power, and whatever [things] he should have loosed or bound on earth, those should remain in heaven loosed or bound — him, therefore, detesting this sacrament of the passion, [Jesus] met with such a reviling [and] such a response: ‘Get behind me, Satan; thou art a scandal to me.’³ For so great was his devotion to suffering for the salvation of the human race, that he named Peter — the first confessor of the Son of God, the foundation of the Church, the door-keeper of the heavenly kingdom, and, in the earthly judgment, the judge of heaven — with the reviling [name] of ‘Satan.’” See below, Annotation 206.