A friend's refutation of my Papacy tract.

[goldenchild17]

And what about this?

Pope Clement I
"Owing to the sudden and repeated calamities and misfortunes which have befallen us, we must acknowledge that we have been somewhat tardy in turning our attention to the matters in dispute among you, beloved; and especially that abominable and unholy sedition, alien and foreign to the elect of God, which a few rash and self-willed persons have inflamed to such madness that your venerable and illustrious name, worthy to be loved by all men, has been greatly defamed. . . . Accept our counsel and you will have nothing to regret. . . . If anyone disobey the things which have been said by him [God] through us [i.e., that you must reinstate your leaders], let them know that they will involve themselves in transgression and in no small danger. . . . You will afford us joy and gladness if being obedient to the things which we have written through the Holy Spirit, you will root out the wicked passion of jealousy" (Letter to the Corinthians 1, 58–59, 63 [A.D. 80]).

I looked from the epistle and just couldn't find this reference. Is it to chapters 58-59, 63? If so, it didn't have a 63, and 58-59 had no such passages.


I looked and the quotes don't seem to match the reference...

[goldenchild17]

I asked him a couple of pretty pointed questions to get to what he specifically believes on these issues. Now, I need to figure out how to respond... My questions are in quotes, his response follows...

Regarding Peter's authority.
[quote]But not over the whole Church. Just authority over the Church in Rome?[/quote]


Precisely. Now, he has authority over the whole church in a conciliar (sp?) way, but so do all bishops.


[quote]Okay, so the other apostles held the same authority?[/quote]

I don't see Peter's unique role as one of authority.


[quote]Did the Bishops of other cities and countries in the world have the same authority of Peter as Bishop?[/quote]

If you isolate Peter's role as bishop from his apostolic role, then yes, his role as Bishop of Rome was equal to that of the bishop of Carthage, or Jerusalem, or anywhere.


[quote]Is the office of Bishop equal in all places?[/quote]

Yes, with possible qualifications, of course.


[quote](Regarding Early Church quotes) But are you ready to argue against them? Because you keep saying you wouldn't argue against all the ECF quotes... (Don't worry I'll get to the Biblical part of this as soon as I can find some time--which is hard to come by)[/quote]

There is really not much to argue against the ECF quotes. To be brutally honest, most of the argumentation in the ECF's for apostolic succession seems pretty weak.

[quote]Okay. What about the importance and role of the "keys"?[/quote]

Excommunication, it seems. Entrance/excommunication into/from the Church.

[phatcatholic]

[quote name='goldenchild17' date='Nov 14 2004, 02:28 PM'] And what about this?

Pope Clement I
"Owing to the sudden and repeated calamities and misfortunes which have befallen us, we must acknowledge that we have been somewhat tardy in turning our attention to the matters in dispute among you, beloved; and especially that abominable and unholy sedition, alien and foreign to the elect of God, which a few rash and self-willed persons have inflamed to such madness that your venerable and illustrious name, worthy to be loved by all men, has been greatly defamed. . . . Accept our counsel and you will have nothing to regret. . . . If anyone disobey the things which have been said by him [God] through us [i.e., that you must reinstate your leaders], let them know that they will involve themselves in transgression and in no small danger. . . . You will afford us joy and gladness if being obedient to the things which we have written through the Holy Spirit, you will root out the wicked passion of jealousy" (Letter to the Corinthians 1, 58–59, 63 [A.D. 80]).

I looked from the epistle and just couldn't find this reference. Is it to chapters 58-59, 63? If so, it didn't have a 63, and 58-59 had no such passages.


I looked and the quotes don't seem to match the reference... [/quote]
footnotes often vary depending upon the work from which the quote is drawn (for example, a volume on the ECF's or a collection of Clement's writings, or something like that). so, the key is to either look in the same source that was used to derive the quote, or just look up that person's work on the internet and search for certain key words.

at NewAdvent, where they have Clement's First Epistle to the Corinthians, the words you are referring to appear in the second paragraph of Chapter 1 (go [url="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm"][b]here[/b][/url])

just tell your opponent that footnotes are specific to certain sources, but that the words attributed to Clement are indeed his, and they appear in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, which he indeed wrote.

pax christi,
phatcatholic

[goldenchild17]

okay.

[goldenchild17]

Errr, it just never stops!!! Something I need addressed please...
____________________________________________________

Since you made the claim that in the aramaic the Matthew passage would read " you are kephas, and on this kephas" with no support for why you stated this, I did some research. From what I found it appears that is not an accurate translation.

The Matthew passage in the original Greek uses two words. I believe it is safe to assume that there is a reason for this, as the word Petros could easily have been used for the second word " rock" as well, but wasn't. These words have distinct meaning although they come from the same root. I looked in several lexicons and they all say that Petros means a small rock, a moveable rock and that Petra is a large massive rock, a foundation stone. Since we do not have original works in the aramaic its necessary to see how these two Greek words would be translated. In every case of Petros in the original Greek New Testament, it is translated as Peter, Kephas. No problem so far. However you state that the word Petra should also be translated as kephas. That is not correct according to what I found.

I will add here before continuing that I also remember you stating somewhere that if Matthew was making a distinction the word lithos would have been used ( something like that, I just remember the word lithos being brought up ). In all cases in the Greek NT, the word lithos would be translated as kephas.

Now on to Petra. The word Petra refers to a massive stone, and unmoveable stone. The proper aramaic word here would be the word SHU'A. So the proper reading of Matthew would be " you are kephas, and upon this Shu'a I will build" , not as you stated.

I found this in several places and I was not able to find anywhere that could support the translation of Petra as kephas as you made the claim. I think scripture supports the Shu'a translation as we have many verses stating that the foundation on which the church is built is Jesus, not Peter. I can provide these if you like.

[goldenchild17]

bump

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='goldenchild17' date='Nov 17 2004, 03:13 PM'] Errr, it just never stops!!! Something I need addressed please...
____________________________________________________

Since you made the claim that in the aramaic the Matthew passage would read " you are kephas, and on this kephas" with no support for why you stated this, I did some research. From what I found it appears that is not an accurate translation.

The Matthew passage in the original Greek uses two words. I believe it is safe to assume that there is a reason for this, as the word Petros could easily have been used for the second word " rock" as well, but wasn't. These words have distinct meaning although they come from the same root. I looked in several lexicons and they all say that Petros means a small rock, a moveable rock and that Petra is a large massive rock, a foundation stone. Since we do not have original works in the aramaic its necessary to see how these two Greek words would be translated. In every case of Petros in the original Greek New Testament, it is translated as Peter, Kephas. No problem so far. However you state that the word Petra should also be translated as kephas. That is not correct according to what I found.

I will add here before continuing that I also remember you stating somewhere that if Matthew was making a distinction the word lithos would have been used ( something like that, I just remember the word lithos being brought up ). In all cases in the Greek NT, the word lithos would be translated as kephas.

Now on to Petra. The word Petra refers to a massive stone, and unmoveable stone. The proper aramaic word here would be the word SHU'A. So the proper reading of Matthew would be " you are kephas, and upon this Shu'a I will build" , not as you stated.

I found this in several places and I was not able to find anywhere that could support the translation of Petra as kephas as you made the claim. I think scripture supports the Shu'a translation as we have many verses stating that the foundation on which the church is built is Jesus, not Peter. I can provide these if you like. [/quote]
Matthew was written in Aramiac, then translated into Greek. This gospel story takes place along the coast near Phillipa Cesearea [prob not spelled right] where the disciples were walking along a massive rock topped by a pagan temple. Near there are very deep caves send by the jews to be an entrance of hell.

So read the quote in this context: "Thou are Peter and upon this rock I will build my chuch and the gates of hell will not prevail upon it."

Jesus certainly was not talking about a pebble or little stone.

[Guest Aluigi]

refer them to what the Apostles all called Peter

they didn't call him simon, they didn't call him peter

they called him CEPHAS

it's in St. Paul's epistles and the Gospel according to St. John
[url="http://bible.crosswalk.com/OnlineStudyBible/bible.cgi?section=0&word=cephas&version=rhe"]http://bible.crosswalk.com/OnlineStudyBibl...has&version=rhe[/url]

Clearly, St. Peter knew and answered to the name Cephas, as St. Paul personally knew him

Edited November 19, 2004 by Aluigi

[goldenchild17]

I made some changes to the middle of my tract. I expanded on the Greek and Aramaic texts a little bit. Let me know what you think, and what I can do to improve it grammatically or however. Thanks.






Next, from our first passage Matthew 16:13-19, we look at this line. “And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.” What Jesus is doing is calling Peter the “Rock” on which the Church is going to be built. Many opponents of Catholicism like to look at the original Greek of this sentence. In the original Greek Christ calls Peter “Petros” which means “little rock”, and calls the “rock” upon which the Church is to be built “Petra” or “large rock”. Some people believe this means that Jesus is contrasting Peter and the “rock” that the Church will be built upon. There are a few major flaws to this argument. First, Greek nouns are assigned a gender; each noun is either masculine or feminine. “Petros” is a masculine word, while “Petra” is a feminine word. It would very silly for Jesus to use a feminine word in regards to Peter. In fact, if Jesus was truly trying to call Peter a “small rock, or pebble” then He would undoubtedly have used the Greek word “lithos”, which more accurately means “small rock or pebble” but is not gender specific. In this passage, pay special attention to the pronoun used ‘taute’, which means “this very”. So the line would read “you are Peter, and upon taute(this very) petra I will build my Church.” When this Greek pronoun is used along with the Greek word for “and”, which is ‘kai’, the pronoun is referring to the previous noun. Basically what this means is that the passage would read like this, “you are Peter kai upon taute petra”. In english, “you are Peter and upon this very rock I will build my Church.” So, we can see that in the Greek, Peter is the same rock that the Church is to be built upon. If Jesus truly meant for the rock upon which the Church built to be something or someone other than Peter, he could’ve used the word “alla” for “and”. By this Jesus could’ve avoided the connection between Peter and the “rock”, but He doesn’t do this.

But let’s take this a bit further, let’s use the language that Jesus and his disciples would’ve spoken, Aramaic. This discourse that took place between Jesus and Peter in Matthew 16 is most likely in Aramaic. In Aramaic the word for rock is “kepha” and unlike in Greek, there is no gender assignment to Aramaic nouns. Then if we go to John 1:42, we see something very remarkable. We see that the name Jesus gives Peter is “Kephas” or “Cephas”. John 1:42 says “Then he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "‘You are Simon the son of John; you will be called Kephas’ (which is translated Peter).” (see 1 Corinthians 1:12, 1 Corinthians 3:22, 1 Corinthians 9:5, 1 Corinthians 15:5, and Galatians 2:9, 11, 14 Clearly Peter’s name was “Kephas”.) Kephas means “Rock” and Jesus specifically gave Peter this name Kephas “Rock”. “You are Kephas and upon this kephas I will build my Church.” Finally, Aramaic also has a word for “little rock, or pebble”. This word is Evna. In His native language, if Jesus meant to call Peter a “small rock or pebble” then he would have called Him “evna”. But He doesn’t, He clearly gave Peter the name of “Kephas”

[phatcatholic]

i would make one more small point, and then your argument would be totally solid (like a rock even ). i wrote this over at the ys forum:[list]
[*]the KJV New Testament Greek Lexicon defines petros ([url="http://bible1.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/Greek/grk.cgi?number=4074&version=kjv"]here[/url]) as "a rock or a stone" without making any indication that it is small in size. likewise, reputable protestant Greek scholars like D.A. Carson and Joseph Thayer admit there is no distinction in meaning between petros and petra in the Koine Greek of the New Testament [Joseph H. Thayer, Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996), 507; D.A. Carson, "Matthew," in Frank E. Gaebelein, ed., The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), vol. 8, 368.].
[/list]i hope that helps

pax christi,
nick

[goldenchild17]

Oh, okay. That's something I heard but wasn't too sure on. So Petros really doesn't mean "small rock or stone" like so many people seem to think. That's pretty cool. And another thing. Would it be a good thing for me to include the lexicons for each of these words to show that I'm not just making this up?
I'll make the changes soon.

[goldenchild17]

Is this better?



Next, from our first passage Matthew 16:13-19, we look at this line. “And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.” What Jesus is doing is calling Peter the “Rock” on which the Church is going to be built. Many opponents of Catholicism like to look at the original Greek of this sentence. In the original Greek Christ calls Peter “Petros” which many people think means “little rock or pebble”. They also say that Jesus calls the “rock” upon which the Church is to be built “Petra” or “large rock”. Some people believe this means that Jesus is contrasting Peter and the “rock” that the Church will be built upon. There are a few major flaws to this argument. First, Petros does not mean “small rock, or pebble”. The King James Version New Testament Lexicon says HERE that Petros actually means “a rock or a stone”. This is supported by protestant Greek scholars, D.A. Carson and Joseph Thayer, who say that there is no reason to believe that Petros means something different than the Greek word petra(1). There is no indication that Petros refers to a small pebble or rock. Second, Greek nouns are assigned a gender; each noun is either masculine or feminine. “Petros” is a masculine word, while “Petra” is a feminine word. It would very silly for Jesus to use a feminine word in regards to Peter, a male. In fact, if Jesus was truly trying to call Peter a “small rock, or pebble” then He would undoubtedly have used the Greek word “lithos”, which more accurately refers to a small rock or stone. (KJV New Testament Lexicon) and is also a masculine noun. In this passage, pay special attention to the pronoun used ‘taute’, which means “this” or “this very”. So the line would read “you are Peter, and upon taute(this very) petra I will build my Church.” When this Greek pronoun is used along with the Greek word for “and”, which is ‘kai’, the pronoun is referring to the previous noun. Basically what this means is that the passage would read like this, “you are Peter kai upon taute petra”. In english, “you are Peter and upon this very rock I will build my Church.” So, we can see that in the Greek, Peter is the same rock that the Church is to be built upon. If Jesus truly meant for the rock upon which the Church built to be something or someone other than Peter, he could’ve used the word “alla” for “and”. By this Jesus could’ve avoided the connection between Peter and the “rock”, but He doesn’t do this.

But let’s take this a bit further, let’s use the language that Jesus and his disciples would’ve spoken, Aramaic. This discourse that took place between Jesus and Peter in Matthew 16 is most likely in Aramaic. In Aramaic the word for rock is “kepha” and unlike in Greek, there is no gender assignment to Aramaic nouns. Then if we go to John 1:42, we see something very remarkable. We see that the name Jesus gives Peter is “Kephas” or “Cephas”. John 1:42 says “Then he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "‘You are Simon the son of John; you will be called Kephas’ (which is translated Peter).” (see 1 Corinthians 1:12, 1 Corinthians 3:22, 1 Corinthians 9:5, 1 Corinthians 15:5, and Galatians 2:9, 11, 14 Clearly Peter’s name was “Kephas”.) Kephas means “Rock” and Jesus specifically gave Peter this name Kephas “Rock”. “You are Kephas and upon this kephas I will build my Church.” Finally, Aramaic also has a word for “little rock, or pebble”. This word is Evna. In His native language, if Jesus meant to call Peter a “small rock or pebble” then he would have called Him “evna”. But He doesn’t, He clearly gave Peter the name of “Kephas”


__________________________________________________________________
(1). [Joseph H. Thayer, Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996), 507; D.A. Carson, "Matthew," in Frank E. Gaebelein, ed., The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), vol. 8, 368.].

[phatcatholic]

looks good. and yes, i would provide links to online lexicons as much as possible, so they can see for themselves.

[goldenchild17]

k, it'll be up in a sec.

[Robbi]

Sorry to everyone for butting in like this, but ive been following prot vs cath debates back and forth for a while now, and had learnt a bit of greek along the way too!!

Especially on justification, works of the law - there was a good point made how the Protestants try to justify "faith alone, works of the law etc..", and it got down to the nitty gritty Greek translations.
As an example, all the tenses of 'dikaioo' and what they can or cannot mean, the Reformed Protestants feel comfortable in presuming to tell the Greek Orthodox how to understand Greek, since the Orthodox share the Cath views and dont believe in "faith alone" either.

Keeping that in mind, why dont the Greek Orthodox beieve in the Papacy since that too comes down also to the greek translations - unless they dont agree with the translations Catholics use for Petra / Petros etc...

[yiannii]

nice work goldenchild17!

[goldenchild17]

Thanks, Yianni. It's a little project I'm working on, putting up a website with this kind of stuff on it. If you'd like to check it out you can access it from my signature.

[goldenchild17]

Another thought. Should I put in something about the significance of God changing a person's name? You know, how Jesus changed Peter's name to "Kephas" and Abram's name to "Abraham" and Sarai name to "Sarah" etc...?

I just thought about it, and think it would be quite relevant. What says all of you?

[phatcatholic]

[quote name='goldenchild17' date='Dec 18 2004, 01:02 PM'] Another thought. Should I put in something about the significance of God changing a person's name? You know, how Jesus changed Peter's name to "Kephas" and Abram's name to "Abraham" and Sarai name to "Sarah" etc...?

I just thought about it, and think it would be quite relevant. What says all of you? [/quote]
oh, definitely! that is a good point to make as well. when you do that, make sure you provide what the original name means, and then what the new name means. use this:
[b]--[url="http://bible.crosswalk.com/Dictionaries/HitchcocksBibleNames/"]Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary[/url] [/b]

[goldenchild17]

Alright I'll do that. That names dictionary is pretty sweet. This might be a more difficult find(I haven't found what I'm looking for yet) but how about a link that has like a list or something of all the people in Scripture that had their names changed? Something to that effect would really help a lot.