Ok, let's talk about Matthew 16:18: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church."

I understand your thinking when you talk about the Greek translations. To understand much of the bible we have to get behind the English to the Greek, just like you say.

Some people falsely say that the Greek word for rock is petra, which means a large, massive stone. Then they will go on to say that the word used for Simon’s new name, Petros, a little stone, a pebble." Those are not an accurate translations.

In reality Greek scholars—even non-Catholic ones—admit, the words petros and petra were synonyms in first century Greek. They meant "small stone" and "large rock" in some ancient Greek poetry, centuries before the time of Christ, but that distinction had disappeared from the language by the time Matthew’s Gospel was rendered in Greek. The difference in meaning can only be found in Attic Greek, but the New Testament was written in Koine Greek—an entirely different dialect. In Koine Greek, both petros and petra simply meant "rock." If Jesus had wanted to call Simon a small stone, the Greek lithos would have been used. A non-Catholic cannot use the small stone – large rock argument because that is faulty translation of Greek. (For an Evangelical Protestant Greek scholar’s admission of this, see D. A. Carson, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984], Frank E. Gaebelein, ed., 8:368).

Any one using faulty translations might think that Jesus was contrasting Simon and the rock. On the one side, the rock on which the Church would be built, Jesus himself; on the other, this mere pebble. Hence Mr. White, you might think Jesus was really saying that he himself would be the foundation, and he was emphasizing that Simon wasn’t remotely qualified to be it. When an accurate translation of Greek is used, it is clear to Catholics that Jesus was equating Simon and the rock.

Well Mr. White, I agree that we must get behind the English to the Greek, and I hope you’ll agree with me that we must get behind the Greek to the Aramaic.

As you know, Aramaic was the language Jesus and the apostles and all the Jews in Palestine spoke. It was the common language of Palestine. Many, if not most of them, knew Greek, of course, because Greek was the language of commerce of the Mediterranean world, and most of the books of the New Testament were written in it, because they were written not just for Christians in Palestine but also for Christians in places such as Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, places where Aramaic wasn’t the spoken language.

But not all of the New Testament was written in Greek. Many hold that Matthew was written in Aramaic—we know this from records kept by Eusebius of Caesarea—but it was translated into Greek early on, perhaps by Matthew himself. In any case the Aramaic original is lost (as are all the originals of the New Testament books), so all we have today is the Greek.

Jesus spoke Aramaic and we know this because some of his words are preserved for us in the Gospels. Take for example, Matthew 27:46, where Jesus says from the cross, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ That isn’t Greek; it’s Aramaic, and it means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

What’s more Mr. White, in Paul’s epistles—four times in Galatians and four times in 1 Corinthians—we see the Aramaic form of Simon’s new name preserved for us. In our English Bibles it comes out as Cephas. That isn’t Greek. That’s a transliteration of the Aramaic word Kepha (rendered as Kephas in its Hellenistic form).

If you are wondering what does Kepha mean? It means a rock, the same as petra. (It doesn’t mean a little stone or a pebble. What Jesus said to Simon in Matthew 16:18 was this: ‘You are Kepha, and on this kepha I will build my Church.’

When one understands what the Aramaic says, you see that Jesus was equating Simon and the rock; he wasn’t contrasting them. We see this clearly in some modern English translations, which render the verse this way: ‘You are Rock, and upon this rock I will build my church.’ In the French language, one word, pierre, has always been used both for Simon’s new name and for the rock.

You might wonder that if kepha means the same as petra, why don’t we read in the Greek, ‘You are Petra, and on this petra I will build my Church’? You might also wonder why, for Simon’s new name, does Matthew use a Greek word, Petros, which means something quite different from petra?

Answer: Because he had no choice. Greek and Aramaic have different grammatical structures. In Aramaic you can use kepha in both places in Matthew 16:18. In Greek you encounter a problem arising from the fact that nouns take differing gender endings.

In Greek, as you mentioned in your post, you have masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns. The Greek word petra is feminine. You can use it in the second half of Matthew 16:18 without any trouble. But you can’t use it as Simon’s new name, because you can’t give a man a feminine name—at least back then you couldn’t. You have to change the ending of the noun to make it masculine. When you do that, you get Petros, which was an already-existing word meaning rock.

Greek translations give us an imperfect rendering of the Aramaic; you lose part of the play on words. In English, where we have ‘Peter’ and ‘rock,’ you lose all of it. But that’s the best you can do in Greek.

Beyond the grammatical evidence, the structure of the scriptural verses does indicate a downplaying of Peter’s role in the Church. Look at the way Matthew 16:15-19 is structured. After Peter gives a confession about the identity of Jesus, the Lord does the same in return for Peter. Jesus does not say, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are an insignificant pebble and on this rock I will build my Church. . . . I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven." Jesus is giving Peter a three-fold blessing, including the gift of the keys to the kingdom, not undermining his authority. To say that Jesus is downplaying Peter is contrary to the context Mr. White. Jesus is installing Peter as a form of chief steward or prime minister under the King of Kings by giving him the keys to the kingdom. Kings in the Old Testament appointed a chief steward to serve under them in a position of great authority to rule over the inhabitants of the kingdom, as can be seen in Isaiah 22:22. Mr. White, Jesus quotes almost verbatum from this passage in Isaiah, and so it is clear what he has in mind. He is raising Peter up as a father figure to the household of faith (Is. 22:21), to lead them and guide the flock (John 21:15-17). This authority of the prime minister under the king was passed on from one man to another down through the ages by the giving of the keys, which were worn on the shoulder as a sign of authority. Likewise, the authority of Peter has been passed down for 2000 years by means of the papacy.

What I discussed above in only one reason why Catholics believe that Christ put peter in charge and made him the visible head of His Church right before he left for heaven. There are other reasons and those are biblical as well.

Peace