[quote=“CalMeacham, post:5, topic:552521”]
Missionaries got badges? Next time I see them, I am going to ask to see their badges!
Ex-mormon here (but never was a bishop). LDS teenagers were encouraged to memorize this verse back when I was a kid, and from my perspective I never saw a problem with it.
The LDS teach that Jesus established his church in Jerusalem, with 12 apostles. He also set up a mirror church in America with 12 disciples.
The only discrepancy I see now is that, for hundreds of years, the “gates of Hades” actually did overcome the church, so much that the church needed to be restored by Joseph Smith and the Zombie Peter (no, zombie is not the preferred LDS word). But is this a problem unique to Mormonism? Don’t Protestants also believe that Hades had corrupted the original true faith until Luther et al corrected some errors?
From what I’ve been able to research, it seems likely that Jesus never said that at all to Peter, which means that it’s not Jesus’ lie, but rather the fabrication of the author or of the source of information who the author depended upon.
As best can be told, after Jesus’ death the church in Jerusalem was headed by James the Just. The gentile church, based in Antioch, was headed by Paul. Peter was likely among the higher ups in the Jerusalem church, but his position was likely raised to being “The Rock upon which I will build my church” in the literature that remains thanks to being the only major disciple of Jesus who changed sides to join the gentile church. By proclaiming Peter the head of the church of Jerusalem and the chosen successor of Jesus, the gentile church became the leader of Christianity, instead of a competitor with the Jerusalem church.
It’s worth noting that Peter is one of the few people known to have switched allegiance from John the Baptist to Jesus. In his life, he appears to have served John the Baptist, Jesus, James the Just, and Paul of Tarsus – at least two more masters than anyone else we know of. That he should end up as nearly the main character of the gospels and be ascribed a position that goes against all secondary information in the New Testament and all primary information in the apocrypha makes it seem very plausible that there’s a lot of misrepresentation surrounding him. Personally, I wouldn’t be suspicious of anything impressive that’s placed upon him in the Bible.
Scripture to what Jesus spoke of was not a lie, but the absolute truth, thereby nullifying the entire viewpoint expressed by the LDS as stated by the OP. So supporting the OP in that the LDS view is not valid, and there is no ‘meaning’ as it is a false statement by the LDS (as expressed by the OP).
I don’t want to derail this thread, but I can’t help it.
Peter is actually “Kefas” which translates to “petra” (and not “lithos”). “Petros” is a masculinization of “petra” to fit the newly-coined name with Peter’s sex (Louise vs. Louis).
When I was a kid, being raised as a conservative Baptist, we were taught that what Jesus was actually referring to in that verse was NOT naming Peter as his successor, but saying that it was the Rock of FAITH that he was building his church upon.
Dammit dammit dammit. Yes, you’re quite correct. Satan has gotten hold of my keyboard and makes me type the wrong things. Thanks, CalMeacham for the correction. Thanks, Khadaji for correcting the correction.
What’s the gentile church?
In that context, the Gentile Church is the section of the Early Church that believed you did not have to become Jewish to follow Jesus. The other side were called Judaizers. Pretty much any Scripture about circumcision was about this–as that was the most pronounced requirement. Paul was a prolific figure in the Gentile Church, and is where we got the idea that certain laws in the Old Testament were for Israel only, and not for other Christians–they were followers of a New Covenant.
That said, the interpretation that is given above implies that Peter was retroactively declared the major Apostle because he stayed with the Gentile Church. I am not saying I agree with this, although it is an interesting interpretation.
A “gentile” in the parlance of early Christianity is someone who isn’t Jewish. The church in Jerusalem was – most likely – by and for Jews.
Paul of Tarsus had been a lawyer in Jerusalem and prosecuted several of the Christians with sufficient fervor as to cause some of Jesus’ followers to flee the city (for instance, he had the apostle Steven stoned to death). At some point (probably after Jesus’ death) Paul left the city, fell ill, and was taken in by one of the Jewish Christians who lived in Damascus. When he had recovered, he claimed to have been visited by the resurrected Jesus, that all of Jesus’ teachings had been directly revealed to him, and that he was tasked with bringing the religion to the gentiles. For about the next three years, he did this without ever once visiting the church in Jerusalem.
The moment he chose to actually visit the church in Jerusalem was when there was a famine in the city, and he came bearing a bag full of gold to support the church. While there, he made his big claim of direct revelation, and argued before James the Just and the other apostles that they should drop the restrictions on conversion to Judaism, circumcision, the kosher diet, etc. They decided to accept all of these things, thus officializing the gentile church.
At some point after this big meeting, Peter left Jerusalem, to take up a lead position among the gentile church at Antioch. Eventually, Peter and Paul ended up together in Rome and made the first significant conversions that would lead to the eventual success of the religion.
It’s certainly not factual history. But its plausibility is demonstrative of why it’s hasty to call Jesus a liar. Even disregarding internal politics of the early church, there’s still problems of witness memory, lax standards of scholarship, etc. that can all result in a far different version of what actually occurred being written down.
So how would the word ‘church’ have been understood at the time? The physical building, or a group of people practioning a belief, or all such buildings or groups of people, or just the belief? Is there anything in that word, or any word besides ‘rock’ that adds to the context of the statement in it’s literal form (assuming that there is any agreement on the literal form)?
Dunno, you’d have to ask the translators on the board. I can only talk about the historical background.
Wha…? I think I’d also vote for an “Ask the Mormon” discussion, or better yet, to be more inclusive: a “post the weirdest beliefs of your faith” thread.
As a Christian, I’d like to encourage each of us to step back, look at what we believe (or what we’ve been taught to agree to), and ask “Does this make any sense?”
Are you referring to the acceptance of the Bible as an accurate record of events? I’ve heard many people profess faith based on the Bible, but not as a factual depiction of events. Sort of a ‘spirit of the law’ instead of ‘letter of law’.
The Greek word for"church" in this passage (and in the NT in general) is ekklesia, which literally means “[those] called out,” and refers to public assemblies, i.e those “called out” for public assemblies. Jesus would have been speaking Aramaic, though, so who knows what that word might have been? I guess there must have been some Jewish use of the word since there is an OT book called Ecclesastes, but that’s a Greek translation of the Hebrew title, and I don’t know Hebrew, so can’t help with exactly what that title meant to Jews. I imagine it was something pretty similar.
You’re mostly right. Kefas (oe Cephas) is Aramaic for “rock” and is what Simon the Rock is called in Aramaic. You’re also right that Petros is a masculinized rendering of the feminine noun petra, but in this particulr passage, Jesus does not say Kefas, but does say, “You are Petros, and upon this petra…” The second use of the word just reverts back to its normal noun form rather than a name form.
Ok, so the if the ‘church’ is the group of practitioners (where did practioning come from?), I guess now the phrase ‘build my church’ would refer to the cause of people becoming practitioners. Sounds more like the ‘rock’ as a principle rather than the person. Maybe. Every word could be open to interpretation, along with every phrase. Still seems odd to call it a lie, when there is so much room for interpretation.
Is there a verse that says that there will be a succession of ‘rocks’ for the church? I assume Jesus would have known that Peter would not be immortal.
Looking through this Wikipedia article, it looks like one source is Matthew 28:16-20:
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Since the end of the age hasn’t come yet, one can thus presume that the apostles are still here too, with Jesus’ blessings upon them. Since the original apostles are most certainly dead, that blessing must have been transferable.
Of course, there’s a fairly major theory that Jesus was predicting the end of the world to occur within the next few years (circa 30 AD), so the apostles that he knew would literally last until the end of the world (i.e. the end of the age).
Double-nitpick: It’s
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
A separate, much-smaller church uses the no-hyphen, capital-D-in-Day spelling.
A lot of LDS “question and answer” types assert that the rock referred to is not Peter (“Why would Jesus found a church on a human being?”) but that instead, as Scacarius mentioned, Jesus was talking about the “rock” of personal revelation from God to man.
I think this is the crux of TheRtHonPM’s argument – he isn’t talking about the whole “Is Peter the rock?” part, he’s talking about the “and the Gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” part. In LDS theology, the early Christian church apostatized very quickly from Jesus’s true religion, absorbing Greek beliefs and becoming “scripture mingled with the philosophies of men.” Thus, it was necessary for God to restore his true church to Joseph Smith after 1,700+ years of complete corruption. (Well, more like 1,400 years of complete corruption if you include the Christian church Jesus set up in the Americas after his resurrection [as related in the Book of Mormon, of course], which lasted till around 420 AD before dying out completely and falling into even deeper apostasy than the Old World’s Christian church.)
Thus, the “Gates of Hades” did indeed prevail against the church, from Peter’s perspective, and he had to come help restore it. But hey, they only prevailed temporarily, and Jesus only said they wouldn’t prevail, he didn’t say they wouldn’t prevail for a couple thousand years and then be de-prevailed.