Annotation LXIX

”Upon this rock I will build my Church.” — Matthew 16:18

Whether the Church was built upon each and every one of the faithful.

Origen, in the Tomes on Matthew — in the first of those [treatises] which we now have — has this: “A rock is everyone who is an imitator of Christ; and upon all such the Church of God is built. But if you think the whole Church to be built upon that one Peter [alone]: what do you say of James, and John, and the sons of thunder, or of the individual Apostles?” John Bonderius, in [his] Contestations against the Heresies of This Age, title 31, article 4, cites this passage among those which the Lutherans bring forward against the primacy of Peter, saying that the Church is not founded primarily upon Peter, but upon each and every one of the faithful. And to these [things] he adds that Origen’s exposition is typical, and according to allegory — [an allegory] which is not wont to be adduced for confirming dogmas; and that this is clear from the fact that Origen interprets the “gates of hell” [as] sins, [and] the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” [as] virtues.