Upon This Rock: How the Church Fathers Read Matthew 16:18

Few verses have carried more weight in the division between Rome and the Orthodox Church than Matthew 16:18. When St Peter confessed Jesus as "the Christ, the Son of the living God," the Lord answered: "And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."¹ The First Vatican Council (1870) read these words as the promise of "a primacy of jurisdiction over the whole church of God" given to Peter and continued in the bishops of Rome, and called this the teaching of Scripture "as it has always been understood by the catholic church."²

That phrase turns exegesis into history, which can be checked against what the Fathers wrote. The aim is not to make St Peter smaller: the Orthodox Church honors him as the first of the apostles and confesses his confession as her own faith. The question is whether the Fathers found in this verse the papacy that Vatican I defined.

In brief

The Fathers did not agree on what "this rock" is. Origen made every disciple who confesses like Peter a rock. St Hilary and St John Chrysostom said the rock is Peter's confession of faith. St Augustine came to prefer Christ Himself and left the choice to his readers. St Cyprian, St Ambrose and St Leo called Peter himself the rock, and St Cyril of Alexandria gave both readings. Even they did not mean what Vatican I meant: St Cyprian, the Father most quoted for "the chair of Peter," taught that every bishop sits in it. A seventeenth-century Catholic survey, as reported in a speech Archbishop Kenrick prepared for Vatican I, found the "faith" reading the most common. The Orthodox Church reads it as the Fathers did: the Church is built on Christ, on the faith Peter confessed, and on Peter as the first to confess it, whose ministry continues in every bishop who keeps that faith.

Thesis: The Fathers read "this rock" in several ways and, outside Rome's own see, never as a grant of universal jurisdiction to the bishop of Rome, so Vatican I's claim that its reading is the Church's constant understanding does not match the historical record.

The text and the Roman claim

Petros, petra and Kepha

In Matthew's Greek, Peter's name is Petros and "this rock" is tautē tē petra.¹ Catholic scholars reply to Protestant arguments from the difference, with good reason, that Jesus spoke Aramaic, where both would be kepha; in John 1:42 the Lord says, "You shall be called Cephas," and the evangelist explains it as "A Stone." The joint Lutheran and Roman Catholic study Peter in the New Testament (1973), as summarized by Paul Hennessy, put the Catholic case at full strength for the Aramaic source behind Matthew: "precisely because of the Aramaic identity of Kepha/kepha' there can be no doubt that the rock on which the church was to be built was Peter." For Matthew's Greek the same summary says the most common view agrees, but "Other interpretations, however, are possible," including "Peter's confession."³

The Orthodox need not deny the wordplay, but it does not settle in what capacity Peter is the rock, and the verse says nothing about successors, a city, or authority over the other apostles.

The keys, and binding and loosing

Verse 19 adds: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven." Catholic writers connect the keys with Isaiah 22:22, where the steward Eliakim receives "the key of the house of David," an office that passed from holder to holder; the Catechism says the power of the keys "designates authority to govern the house of God, which is the Church."⁴ But the New Testament spreads what the keys signify. The Lord says to the disciples together, "whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven" (Matthew 18:18), and after the Resurrection He breathes on them all: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (John 20:23). Revelation 3:7 calls the risen Christ "He who has the key of David." Vatican II itself grants that "the power of binding and loosing, which was given to Peter, was granted also to the college of apostles, joined with their head."⁵

What Rome teaches

Vatican I's Pastor Aeternus teaches that "It was to Simon alone" that the Lord spoke Matthew 16:18-19, anathematizes anyone who says Peter received "a primacy of honour only and not one of true and proper jurisdiction," and anathematizes anyone who denies that Peter has "perpetual successors in the primacy over the whole church" in the Roman pontiffs.² The Catechism says: "The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the 'rock' of his Church," though it also says, "On the rock of this faith confessed by St. Peter, Christ built his Church."⁴ One more text matters for our test. The bishops at the council professed that they would never "receive and interpret" the Scriptures "except according to the unanimous consent of the fathers," and Dei Filius forbade interpreting Scripture "against the unanimous consent of the fathers."⁶ Vatican I appealed to the Fathers (Pastor Aeternus cites St Leo) and bound its own exegesis to their consent.

How the Fathers read the rock

Origen: every true confessor is a rock

Origen, the third-century Alexandrian, says that whoever confesses Christ by the Father's revelation becomes "as Peter," because "a rock is every disciple of Christ of whom those drank who drank of the spiritual rock which followed them." He asks: "But if you suppose that upon that one Peter only the whole church is built by God, what would you say about John the son of thunder or each one of the Apostles?" And: "Are the keys of the kingdom of heaven given by the Lord to Peter only, and will no other of the blessed receive them?"⁷

St Cyprian: the chair of Peter in every bishop

St Cyprian, bishop of Carthage and martyr, did call Peter the one on whom the Lord built His Church. In On the Unity of the Church (251) he quotes Matthew 16 and John 21 and explains why the Lord began with one man: "Assuredly the rest of the apostles were also the same as was Peter, endowed with a like partnership both of honour and power; but the beginning proceeds from unity." Then: "The episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one for the whole."⁸

Chapter 4 survives in two versions. The second says that "the primacy is given to Peter" and asks: "He who deserts the chair of Peter, upon whom the Church is founded, is he confident that he is in the Church?" It was long attacked as a Roman forgery. The Benedictine scholar John Chapman, in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1908), argued that Cyprian probably wrote it himself, and conceded the decisive point: "The 'one chair' is always in Cyprian the episcopal chair," and "The assertion of the equality of the Apostles as Apostles remains."⁹ {{debated: Whether St Cyprian himself wrote the second, "primacy" version of On the Unity of the Church 4.}} Either way, Cyprian's chair of Peter is the chair every lawful bishop holds.

His letters agree. After quoting Matthew 16:18-19 he writes: "Thence, through the changes of times and successions, the ordering of bishops and the plan of the Church flow onwards; so that the Church is founded upon the bishops."¹⁰ To Bishop Quintus, during his dispute with Rome over baptism, he says that Peter, "upon whom He built His Church," did not, when Paul disputed with him, "claim anything to himself insolently, nor arrogantly assume anything; so as to say that he held the primacy."¹¹ When Pope Stephen pressed Peter's succession against Cyprian, Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia wrote in 256 of the "folly of Stephen, that he who so boasts of the place of his episcopate, and contends that he holds the succession from Peter, on whom the foundations of the Church were laid, should introduce many other rocks."¹²

St Hilary of Poitiers: the rock of confession

St Hilary, exiled for the Creed of Nicaea, defends Christ's true divinity from this verse: "And this is the rock of confession whereon the Church is built." And: "This faith it is which is the foundation of the Church; through this faith the gates of hell cannot prevail against her. This is the faith which has the keys of the kingdom of heaven."¹³ For Hilary the keys belong to the faith, so an Arian confession "holds not the keys of the Church."

St Ambrose of Milan: Peter the rock, strong in faith

St Ambrose calls Peter the rock. Discussing Christ's prayer that Peter's "faith should not fail" (Luke 22:32), he asks: "Could He not, then, strengthen the faith of the man to whom, acting on His own authority, He gave the kingdom, whom He called the Rock, thereby declaring him to be the foundation of the Church?"¹⁴ In a hymn, at the cock's crowing, he calls Peter "the very rock of the Church" (ipse petra ecclesiae); St Augustine cites the line.¹⁵

St John Chrysostom: "the faith of his confession"

Preaching on Matthew about 390, St John Chrysostom glossed the verse: "And I say unto you, You are Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church; that is, on the faith of his confession." Christ "raises his spirit, and makes him a shepherd," and gives the keys to "a mortal man."¹⁶

St Augustine: Christ the rock, and "let the reader choose"

St Augustine wrote both ways and said so. In his Tractates on John: "For petra (rock) is not derived from Peter, but Peter from petra; just as Christ is not called so from the Christian, but the Christian from Christ." So "On this rock, therefore, He said, which you have confessed, I will build my Church. For the Rock (Petra) was Christ." He grants Peter a real primacy, but as a figure: the Church "was personified in the Apostle Peter, on account of the primacy of his apostleship."¹⁷

In the Retractations (1.21), reviewing his earlier books, Augustine recalls that he once wrote that the Church was founded on Peter "as on a rock." "But I know that afterwards I very often explained" the words so that the rock is "Him whom Peter confessed," because "it was not said to him, 'You are the rock [petra],' but 'You are Peter [Petrus].'" He ends: "Of these two opinions, let the reader choose which is the more probable."¹⁵

St Cyril of Alexandria: both readings

On John 1:42, St Cyril says the Lord "changes it to Peter from Petra: for upon him was He about to found His Church."¹⁸ But in his Dialogues on the Trinity (Dialogue 4) he says Christ called "rock," as he thinks, "figuratively nothing other than the unshakeable and utterly firm faith of the disciple, on which the Church of Christ is also unshakeably founded."¹⁹

Two bishops of Rome: St Leo and St Gregory

The strongest support for the Roman reading comes from Rome itself. St Leo the Great preached that "the blessed Peter persevering in the strength of the Rock, which he has received, has not abandoned the helm of the Church," and spoke of Peter "whose power lives and whose authority prevails in his See."²⁰ Vatican I cites this sermon.² Yet Leo adds that this "was gained by that confession" which "was endued with the firmness of a rock."

More than a century later St Gregory the Great, bishop of Rome, wrote to Eulogius of Alexandria that the see of the Prince of the apostles "in three places is the See of one": where Peter ended his life, where he sent his disciple as evangelist, and where he sat for seven years, that is, by the usual tradition, Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. "Since then it is the See of one, and one See, over which by Divine authority three bishops now preside," he counted Eulogius's good as his own.²¹ Gregory does honor Peter's primacy ("alone has grown strong in authority"), but he places it in three sees at once. A bishop who thought Rome alone held it by divine law would not write this.

{{very-strong: The Fathers did not agree on what "this rock" means: between them they read it as Peter, as Peter's confession of faith, as Christ, and as every believer who confesses like Peter, and several gave more than one reading.}}

Counting the Fathers

The best-known count comes from Jean de Launoy (1603 to 1678), a French Catholic priest and doctor of theology, and a Gallican who rejected papal infallibility. According to the Anglican scholar George Salmon, Launoy gathered seventeen patristic testimonies that Peter was the rock, forty-four that it was the faith Peter confessed, sixteen that it was Christ, and eight that the Church was built on all the apostles.²²

The figures reached Vatican I. Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick of St Louis prepared a speech he did not deliver and had it printed for the council fathers. Citing "a remarkable pamphlet" with the same figures, plus a fifth reading (the faithful themselves), he concluded: "If we are bound to follow the majority of the fathers in this thing, then we are bound to hold for certain that by the rock should be understood the faith professed by Peter, not Peter professing the faith." On the rule of unanimous consent he wrote: "It is doubtful whether any instance of that unanimous consent is to be found."²³

The numbers need care: they are a secondary tally, they include medieval "doctors" such as Theophylact, and one Father can appear under several readings. {{moderate: In the older surveys of patristic exegesis, the reading of the rock as the faith Peter confessed is the most frequently attested.}} The safer conclusion is simply that there was no unanimity.

The Orthodox reading

The Orthodox Church does not pick one patristic reading and discard the rest. Christ is the rock in the first sense: "For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11). The faith that confesses Him as Son of the living God, revealed by the Father, is the rock on which the Church stands. And Peter is the rock as the first to confess it. Scripture speaks of the Church "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone" (Ephesians 2:20).

Peter's ministry continues where the apostles' ministry continues, in the bishops who succeed them and keep their faith. St Ignatius of Antioch wrote early in the second century: "Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."²⁴ St Cyprian placed Peter's chair in every bishop; St Gregory saw Peter's one see in three cities. {{strong: The Fathers who connect Peter's chair with later bishops apply it to every bishop or to several apostolic sees, and outside Rome none makes it the possession of the Roman see alone.}}

So the Orthodox Church honors the ancient primacy of Rome as the first see in order among the churches of the undivided Church, while rejecting papal supremacy and infallibility as errors. That history is set out in Did the Early Church Believe in Papal Supremacy?, and Peter's Roman martyrdom, which the Orthodox affirm, in Was St Peter Ever in Rome? The rock is the faith once for all delivered, kept whole in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Orthodox Church (see The Apostolic Faith Once for All Delivered).

Vatican I's claim, tested

Vatican I called its teaching "absolutely manifest" in Scripture and "always" so understood by the Church, and it had bound itself to "the unanimous consent of the fathers" as the rule of interpretation. The texts above support none of the three. The Fathers honored Peter and honored Rome, but the step from Peter as the rock to a bishop of Rome holding by divine law full and universal jurisdiction over every church is not in their reading of Matthew 16. It was taken later and defined in 1870 over the objections of bishops within the council. That story is told in Vatican I and Ultramontanism and Papal Infallibility: Ancient Doctrine or Later Development?

Objections answered

"The Aramaic proves the rock is Peter, and many Fathers say so."

Grant both. But the Aramaic identifies the man addressed; it does not create successors in one city or a jurisdiction over apostles who receive the same binding and loosing. And Cyprian, the Father most often quoted, explains Peter's chair as the one episcopate held by every bishop.

"The keys in Isaiah 22 imply a succession of stewards."

They imply an office, and the apostolic office does continue, in the bishops. Isaiah's steward was not set over other stewards, the corresponding powers are given to all the apostles, and Revelation 3:7 keeps the key of David in Christ's hand.

"Doctrine develops."

Development can unfold what was held from the beginning. It cannot make a reading one the Church "has always" understood when the record shows otherwise, and Vatican I bound itself to the Fathers. On telling apostolic tradition from later additions, see Guard the Good Deposit.

What we can say confidently

• Matthew 16:18 is a real promise to Peter, and the Aramaic wordplay ties his name to the rock.
• Binding and loosing is also given to all the apostles (Matthew 18:18; John 20:23).
• The Fathers read "this rock" in at least four ways, and several gave more than one.
• Cyprian's "chair of Peter" is the episcopal chair of every bishop, as the Catholic scholar John Chapman conceded.
• There was no unanimous patristic consent for Vatican I's reading.

What remains disputed

• Whether St Cyprian wrote both versions of On the Unity of the Church 4.
• The exact figures of Launoy's tally, a seventeenth-century collection with overlapping categories.
• How far St Leo's sermons express a developed Roman claim.
• How to weigh Matthew's Greek against the presumed Aramaic original.

Conclusion

Every Orthodox Christian says with St Peter, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," and that confession is the faith on which the Church stands. The Fathers honored Peter as the first to make it and saw his ministry continued in the bishops who keep it. They did not find in his name a throne over the whole Church in one city. Our Roman Catholic brethren are right to love St Peter and to honor the ancient church of Rome; they err when they make the bishop of Rome the sole heir of the rock, and Vatican I erred when it said the Church had always read the text that way. The faith Peter confessed has been kept whole in the Orthodox Church. See also Why Orthodoxy.

Notes

1. Scripture is quoted from the New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), checked at https://www.biblegateway.com/. The Greek of Matthew 16:18 is from the SBL Greek New Testament, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+16%3A18&version=SBLGNT.
2. First Vatican Council, Session 4 (18 July 1870), First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ (Pastor Aeternus), chapters 1-2, English translation from Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, at https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm; Latin text at https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-ix/pt/documents/constitutio-dogmatica-pastor-aeternus-18-iulii-1870.html. Chapter 2, note 47, cites Leo I, Sermon 3, ch. 3.
3. Raymond E. Brown, Karl P. Donfried and John Reumann, eds., Peter in the New Testament (New York: Paulist, 1973), 92-93, as summarized (wording Hennessy's) in Paul K. Hennessy, "Infallibility in the Ecclesiology of Peter Richard Kenrick," Theological Studies 45 (1984): 702-714, at 705, https://theologicalstudies.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/45.4.5.pdf.
4. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 424, 552, 553 and 881, https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1D.HTM, https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1L.HTM and https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P2A.HTM.
5. Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 22 (1964), https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html.
6. First Vatican Council, Session 2 (6 January 1870), Profession of Faith, and Session 3, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith (Dei Filius), chapter 2, Tanner translation, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm.
7. Origen, Commentary on Matthew 12.10-11, trans. John Patrick, ANF 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/101612.htm.
8. Cyprian of Carthage, On the Unity of the Church (Treatise 1) 4-5, trans. Robert Ernest Wallis, ANF 5, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050701.htm. The ANF prints the version without the "primacy" sentences.
9. John Chapman, "St. Cyprian of Carthage," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1908), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04583b.htm. The quotations of the second version of Unity 4 are Chapman's translation.
10. Cyprian, Letter 26 (ANF numbering), 1, trans. Wallis, ANF 5, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050626.htm.
11. Cyprian, Letter 70 (ANF numbering; Letter 71 in modern editions), to Quintus, 3, trans. Wallis, ANF 5, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050670.htm.
12. Firmilian of Caesarea to Cyprian, Letter 74 among Cyprian's letters (ANF numbering), 17, trans. Wallis, ANF 5, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050674.htm. Date from Chapman, note 9.
13. Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity 6.36-37, trans. E. W. Watson and L. Pullan, NPNF2 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/330206.htm.
14. Ambrose of Milan, On the Christian Faith 4.5.57, trans. H. de Romestin, E. de Romestin and H. T. F. Duckworth, NPNF2 10, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/34044.htm.
15. Augustine, Retractationes 1.21.1, Latin text (PL 32) at https://www.augustinus.it/latino/ritrattazioni/ritrattazioni_1_libro.htm; English quotations are our translation. Augustine there quotes Ambrose's hymn: "Hoc ipse petra Ecclesiae canente, culpam diluit."
16. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 54.2-3, trans. George Prevost, rev. M. B. Riddle, NPNF1 10, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200154.htm. Date (about 390) from the Catholic Encyclopedia, "St. John Chrysostom," https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08452b.htm.
17. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 124.5, trans. John Gibb, NPNF1 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1701124.htm.
18. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Book 2, on John 1:42, trans. P. E. Pusey, Library of the Fathers 43 (Oxford, 1874), about p. 151, read at https://web.archive.org/web/2023/https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cyril_on_john_02_book2.htm.
19. Cyril of Alexandria, Dialogues on the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity, Dialogue 4, in the German translation of Heinrich Hand, Sieben Gespräche über die heilige und wesensgleiche Dreieinigkeit, Bibliothek der Kirchenväter (Kempten, 1879), pp. 233-234, https://bkv.unifr.ch/works/-42x/versions/sieben-gesprache-uber-die-heilige-und-wesensgleiche-dreieinigkeit-bkv/divisions/68. The English is our translation of Hand's German; the Greek (PG 75) was not consulted.
20. Leo the Great, Sermon 3.3, trans. Charles Lett Feltoe, NPNF2 12, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360303.htm.
21. Gregory the Great, Letters, Book 7, Letter 40, to Eulogius of Alexandria, trans. James Barmby, NPNF2 12, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360207040.htm.
22. George Salmon, The Infallibility of the Church (London: John Murray, 1888), 328-329, https://archive.org/details/cu31924029371311. Salmon cites Launoy, Epistle 7, Opera, vol. 5, part 2, p. 99 (Geneva, 1731), which we have not seen. Launoy's dates, doctorate and Gallicanism: "Jean de Launoy," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_Launoy (checked November 5, 2026).
23. Peter Richard Kenrick, Concio in Concilio Vaticano habenda at non habita (Naples, 1870), English translation in Leonard Woolsey Bacon, ed., An Inside View of the Vatican Council, in the Speech of the Most Reverend Archbishop Kenrick of St. Louis (New York: American Tract Society, [1871]), 107-109, https://archive.org/details/insideviewofvati00kenrrich. On the speech's printing and distribution to the council fathers, see Hennessy (note 3), 703.
24. Ignatius of Antioch, To the Smyrnaeans 8, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, ANF 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982; Greek text from The SBL Greek New Testament, at biblegateway.com.
• First Vatican Council. Profession of Faith; Dei Filius; Pastor Aeternus. 1870. In Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils; Latin text of Pastor Aeternus at vatican.va.
• Second Vatican Council. Lumen Gentium. 1964.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church. Vatican edition, at vatican.va.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Ignatius of Antioch. To the Smyrnaeans. ANF 1.
• Origen. Commentary on Matthew. Trans. John Patrick. ANF 9.
• Cyprian of Carthage. On the Unity of the Church; Letters 26 and 70; with Firmilian's Letter 74. Trans. Robert Ernest Wallis. ANF 5.
• Hilary of Poitiers. On the Trinity. Trans. E. W. Watson and L. Pullan. NPNF2 9.
• Ambrose of Milan. On the Christian Faith. NPNF2 10.
• John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew. NPNF1 10.
• Augustine. Tractates on the Gospel of John. NPNF1 7. Retractationes. Latin text, augustinus.it.
• Cyril of Alexandria. Commentary on John. Trans. P. E. Pusey. Oxford, 1874. Dialogues on the Trinity. German trans. Heinrich Hand. Kempten, 1879.
• Leo the Great. Sermons. Trans. Charles Lett Feltoe. NPNF2 12.
• Gregory the Great. Letters. Trans. James Barmby. NPNF2 12.

Other scholarship

• Bacon, Leonard Woolsey, ed. An Inside View of the Vatican Council, in the Speech of the Most Reverend Archbishop Kenrick of St. Louis. New York: American Tract Society, [1871].
• Chapman, John. "St. Cyprian of Carthage." The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton, 1908.
• Hennessy, Paul K. "Infallibility in the Ecclesiology of Peter Richard Kenrick." Theological Studies 45 (1984): 702-714.
• Salmon, George. The Infallibility of the Church. London: John Murray, 1888.