Annotation CCVI
”The poor you have always with you, but me you have not always.” — John 12:8
Whether Peter received the keys in his own person.
Augustine, in the fiftieth tract on John, sifting the present clause, has two passages unjustly usurped by the heretics of our times: one for the overthrow of the primacy of Peter, the other for the abolishing of the truth of the most sacred Eucharist.
The FIRST passage seems to intimate that Christ gave the keys to Peter not in his own person, but in the person of the whole Church — as if all the good who are in the Church have the keys, and a power of the keys equal to Peter’s. His words are these:1 “‘I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: whatsoever thou shalt loose,’ etc. If this was said to Peter only, the Church does not do this; but if it also takes place in the Church — that what [things] are bound on earth are bound in heaven, and what [things] are loosed on earth are loosed in heaven — [then] if this takes place in the Church, Peter, when he received the keys, signified the holy Church. Thus in the person of Peter the good in the Church were signified,” etc. This passage John Calvin adduces against the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, in chapter 8 of his Institutes.
The SECOND passage, which seems to exclude the true body of Christ from the Eucharist, is had in these
—[these] words: “‘THE POOR you shall always have with you, but me you shall not always have.’ Christ was speaking of the presence of his body. For according to his majesty, according to [his] providence, according to [his] ineffable and invisible grace, that is fulfilled which was said by him, ‘Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the age.’ But according to the flesh, which the Word assumed — according to that [by] which he was born of a virgin, [by] which he was seized by the Jews, [by] which he was fastened to the wood, [by] which he was taken down from the cross, [by] which he was wrapped in linens, [by] which he was laid in the sepulchre, [by] which he was manifested in the resurrection — ‘You shall not always have me with you.’ Why? Because he conversed, according to the presence of [his] body, forty days with his disciples, and, they escorting him by seeing [him], not by following, he ascended into heaven, and is not here. For there he sits at the right hand of the Father, and [yet] he is here — for the presence of [his] majesty did not depart. Otherwise, according to the presence of [his] majesty, we always have Christ; [but] according to the presence of the flesh, it was rightly said to the disciples, ‘Me you shall not always have.’ For the Church had him according to the presence of the flesh for a few days: now it holds [him] by faith, [and] does not see [him] with the eyes.”
TO THE FIRST passage it must be answered to the heretics that, although the keys were given to Peter in the person of the whole Church, yet it does not follow thence that all who are in the Church have the keys, and a power of the keys equal to Peter’s — of which there would surely be no use, if all had [them]. But the sense of the words is that the keys were given not to Peter alone, but to Peter in the person of the Church — that is, not for the use, dignity, and advantage of Peter alone, but that Peter might use them for the profit and benefit of the whole Church, lest, looking out for himself alone, he should turn the power of the keys into a tyrannical dominion. Read Annotations 68 and 231 of this book.
2 The SECOND passage is to be interpreted of the mortal and visible presence of the body of Christ, according to which we no longer have Christ — whom yet, according to the glorious and (to us) invisible presence of the same body, we have in the sacrament of the altar, in that manner which was explained above, Annotation 196.