The Petrine Fact, Part 8: Peter and the Keys

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Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter (Sistine Chapel – Pietro Perugino, 1480-81)

NOTE: This series is a work in progress. See Part 1 updates including bibliography in progress. As I add sources and update past posts I will continue to expand the bibliography.

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 16:19)

If verse 18 (“You are Petros, and on this rock I will build my Church”) is the central saying of Jesus’ extraordinary threefold logion to Peter in Matthew 16, verse 19 is its climax. Verse 18 is the fulcrum of the passage, but verse 19 provides the leverage. Verse 19 is the key to the Petrine fact; it puts the primacy of Peter in all the other passages we have considered into sharpest relief, giving us a definite context for understanding the nature of Peter’s relationship to Jesus, to the Twelve and to the Church.

Like the previous two verses (as we saw in Part 6), verse 19 consists of a major pronouncement addressed to Peter and about Peter, followed by a supporting couplet expounding upon or unpacking the major pronouncement:

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,

and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,

and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

If verse 18 invited comparison to the renaming passages in Genesis involving Abraham, Sarah and Jacob, verse 19 even more strikingly recalls an Old Testament text with the same three-part structure, as well as other clear points of contact:

And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David;

he shall open, and none shall shut;

and he shall shut, and none shall open. (Isa 22:22)

In addition to this passage, there are also four New Testament passages warranting mention. One is Matthean, the other three Johannine:

Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,

and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matt 18:18)

Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven;

if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. (John 20:22b-23)

Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and hades. (Rev 1:17b-18)

The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David,

who opens and no one shall shut,

who shuts and no one opens. (Rev 3:7)

A number of images and themes crop up throughout these passages: keys, the Church, heaven and earth, hades, binding and loosing, opening and closing, forgiving and retaining.

Let’s begin with the idea of binding and loosing, found in the two Matthean passages, Matthew 16:19 and 18:18 (which are also the only two texts here or anywhere in the Gospels in which the word “church” appears).

As we saw with receiving and delivering (Part 2), the language of binding and loosing is borrowed from rabbinic vocabulary, where refers first of all to regulatory or disciplinary authority: authority to forbid or permit, to declare licit or illicit — to define and clarify Halakhah, the living legal tradition regulating all aspects of Jewish life. Binding and loosing can also refer to executive or juridical authority to exclude from the community or to acquit of wrongdoing.

An example of the first, halakhic sense of binding as regulatory or disciplinary authority can be seen another Matthean saying of Jesus that mentions “binding”:

The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger. (Matthew 23:2-4)

The saying clearly refers to halakhic authority misused, i.e., used in an abusive and hypocritical way — though Jesus gives no indication that the misuse of regulatory authority disqualifies its use or warrants its disregard. On the contrary, he affirms the authority of the scribes and the Pharisees, urging his hearers to “practice and observe whatever they tell you,” even when this power of binding is hypocritically wielded by those who “sit in Moses’ seat.”

A related expression can be found in a passage previously considered, Acts 15, in which, deferring to James’ pastoral concern for Jewish brethren, the council issues a halakhic pronouncement for the Syrian Gentile Christians, stating that “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity” (Acts 15:28-29). While the word “binding” is not present here (it is another Semitism particular to Matthew), Luke’s language of laying “burdens” on men (i.e., obliging certain Gentile brethren to observe certain conspicuous precepts of the Law of Moses above and beyond the requirements of the moral law) resonates with Jesus’ language about “binding heavy burdens,” and reinforces that Jesus is speaking of regulatory or disciplinary authority.

The second sense of binding and loosing, authority to exclude from the community or to acquit of wrongdoing, is directly in view in Matthew 18, where verse 18 immediately follows Jesus’ teaching that the obstinate wrongdoer who “refuses to listen even to the church” should be ostracized from the community (“let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector”). It’s not hard to see that these two senses are interrelated (e.g., authority to establish the rules of a community more or less entails authority to distinguish members in good standing from those who are not).

It is one thing to have authority, and another to use it rightly. We have seen that Jesus excoriated the scribes and Pharisees for misusing their own authority to bind (while still exhorting his hearers to submit to that misused authority); and to the Twelve, as we saw in Part 3, Jesus sought to impart the idea of a radically different model of authority based on service rather than privilege. Clearly the Twelve were slow to absorb this concept prior to Pentecost, and even after Pentecost it is not necessary to assume that every apostle was always a perfect model of servant leadership. Certainly Christian history is replete with examples of leadership abused in just the ways that Jesus condemns.

Nevertheless, both in Matthew 16:19 and 18:18 we find astonishing ratification of the exercise of the binding and loosing authority conferred by Jesus: “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Insofar as binding and loosing entails halakhic authority, this “heaven and earth” language indicates that the Christian Halakhah has divine force. (“Heaven” in Matthew is a circumlocution for “God”; e.g., where Mark and Luke use “kingdom of God,” Matthew uses “kingdom of heaven.” Thus, “bound in heaven” means “bound by or before God.”) Insofar as it entails authority to exclude or to acquit, Jesus’ language comes very close to the parallel Johannine pronouncement “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

In both Matthew 16 and 18, the future perfect tense could also be translated “shall have been bound/loosed” (a construction that R. T. France suggests is as awkward in Greek as it is in English), or even “shall having been bound” (thus A. T. Robertson). This suggests divine guidance for those exercising this authority — an implication that particularly resonates with Jesus’ guarantee in Matthew 16:18 that “the gates of hell shall not prevail” against the Church he builds upon this rock.

While this may entail infallibility in unchanging matters (a point I may return to in a future post), it should not be taken to indicate that Peter and the apostles are authorized only to declare what is or is not lawful according to the eternal moral law. Acts 15 provides a good counter-example: “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,” the council wrote, though such matters as eating meat offered to idols and blood were not matters of the eternal moral law, but of the Law of Moses.

The implication is not that the council’s decision to require more than the moral law was merely ratified or seconded by the Holy Spirit, but that it was in accordance with the will of the Holy Spirit. Thus, what is “having been bound in heaven” need not be only what is eternally bound by the moral law; it can also be what is in keeping with prudential moral judgment for a particular cultural situation. In other words, “shall have been bound in heaven” need not mean “bound always, everywhere and for everyone”; binding and loosing can have a more limited scope, even in heaven.

So far we have been considering Jesus’ language about binding and loosing in Matthew 16 and Matthew 18 in an undifferentiated way. Now we must take stock of crucial differences between the two passages. Three in particular stand out.

First, though identically translated in contemporary English (which lacks inflection for number of the second-personal pronoun and second-person verbs), in the Greek text (and in any Aramaic original, and in most other languages), the second-personal pronoun “you” and the verbs “bind” and “loose” are singular in 16:19, addressed to Peter alone, and plural in 18:18, addressed to the company of the Twelve.

On the one hand, then, Jesus says to Peter, “whatever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” On the other hand, he says to the Twelve, “whatever you (all) bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you (all) loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Once again, as in declaring Peter the rock and in various other ways, Jesus singles Peter out. He doesn’t tell, e.g., John that what he binds or looses on earth shall be bound or loosed in heaven — or James, or Andrew, etc. He doesn’t even say “Whatever any of you bind or loose on earth shall be bound or loosed in heaven.” The plural verbs in chapter 18 are enacted by a plural subject. Taken at face value, Matthew 18 speaks of a corporate power of binding or loosing, exercised by a body — the body of the Twelve, of the “church” (as per the previous verse) — while Matthew 16 speaks of an individual power of binding or loosing, exercised by Peter.

This is an observation about the Greek grammar and what Jesus says in Matthew. I do not leap directly to any specific theological conclusion about differences in the authority given to Peter versus the Twelve. I am not necessarily saying that John or James or Andrew had not in any sense power to bind or loose individually. My only immediate conclusion is that Jesus once again singles Peter out and ascribes to him individually what is ascribed to the Twelve only corporately, as he does in calling Peter the rock on which the Church is built while the apostles collectively are elsewhere called the Church’s foundation.

A second difference: While in both passages binding and loosing is directly associated with the Church — the only places the word ever appears in the Gospels — the word church seems to be used differently in Matthew 16 and Matthew 18. In the former passage it clearly refers to the Church Universal: “Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it” (16:18). It the latter it seems to refer to the local church community: “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (18:17). (Certainly Matthew’s readers would not have understood from this that Christians were to go up to Jerusalem to take their grievances with one another before the leading apostles; they would have understood this to refer to local church leadership.)

Once again, I do not leap directly to any specific theological conclusion. I do not claim, for instance, that the authority of individual apostles other than Peter was geographically limited or confined to particular communities. It is theologically true that the apostolic mission of every apostle was to the whole Church. Nevertheless, Jesus speaks of Peter’s individual authority to bind and loose in the context of the Church Universal, and of the apostles’ collegiate authority to bind and loose in the context of local churches. The latter authority is given a relative context; the former an absolute context.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, while 18:18 mentions only the power of binding and loosing, 16:19 mentions something else: the keys of the kingdom. In fact, the keys of the kingdom are the major clause; binding and loosing is only the supporting couplet.

In the last couple of posts I argued that the supporting couplets in Matthew 16:17-19 illuminate and expound upon the major clauses. As we saw, some resist this in 16:18, arguing that “You are Petros” has nothing to do with “upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it.” Now, in verse 19, many of the same readers go to the opposite extreme, arguing that the keys of the kingdom and the power of binding and loosing are not only related, but simply and sheerly synonymous. “The keys of the kingdom,” they say, means nothing that is not wholly contained in the power of binding and loosing that is shared by all. The major clause is thus collapsed into the supporting couplet.

We have already seen that even with regard to binding and loosing Peter is uniquely privileged among the Twelve. Beyond that, though, the effort to collapse the keys of the kingdom into the power of binding and loosing must be rejected.

To begin with, one could not similarly collapse the meaning of the major clauses from the preceding verses into the supporting couplets. “Upon this rock I will build my Church” is obviously related to “I say to you, you are Petros,” but they are not two ways of saying the same thing, nor does “upon this rock I will build my Church” contain the whole meaning of “I say to you, you are Petros.” Likewise, Peter’s blessedness and the Father’s revelation to him of Jesus’ identity are related but not identical realities, and the latter is not the sole basis for the former (in fact, Jesus is about to bless Peter further). The reductionist effort to read the keys of the kingdom out of the passage is not supported by the context.

The key, though, is the Old Testament background in Isaiah 22: “And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open” (Isa 22:22). This passage, recognized by most commentators and commentaries today, Catholic and non-Catholic, as the precedent for Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:19, indicates that what is given to Peter is a privilege that is unique among the Twelve.

The verse is part of an oracle that concerns the office of chief steward or master of the household of David. The current office holder, Shebna, has incurred God’s displeasure, and is to be cast down from his station, and his authority given to a successor, Eliakim son of Hilkiah. Here is the oracle in full:

Thus says the Lord GOD of hosts, “Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is over the household, and say to him: What have you to do here and whom have you here, that you have hewn here a tomb for yourself, you who hew a tomb on the height, and carve a habitation for yourself in the rock? Behold, the LORD will hurl you away violently, O you strong man. He will seize firm hold on you, and whirl you round and round, and throw you like a ball into a wide land; there you shall die, and there shall be your splendid chariots, you shame of your master’s house. I will thrust you from your office, and you will be cast down from your station. In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your girdle on him, and will commit your authority to his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him like a peg in a sure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his father’s house. And they will hang on him the whole weight of his father’s house, the offspring and issue, every small vessel, from the cups to all the flagons. In that day, says the LORD of hosts, the peg that was fastened in a sure place will give way; and it will be cut down and fall, and the burden that was upon it will be cut off, for the LORD has spoken.” (Isa 22:15-25)

The “key of the house of David” in this passage represents the office of chief steward or master of the royal household. Like other kings in ancient and modern times, the Davidic monarchs were served by various stewards or ministers empowered to exercise authority in the king’s name. Among these was the one “over the household,” as Shebna is called in 22:15, and as Eliakim is called in Isaiah 36:3.

The same language for the same office is found in 1 Kings 4:6 as well as in (for the northern kingdom) 1 Kings 16:9 and 18:3; parallels are also found in Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian contexts. A pre-Davidic parallel is found in Genesis, where Joseph is put “over the household” of Pharaoh (Gen 41:40, 45:8), an office entailing supreme authority over the whole kingdom second only to Pharaoh. This is the authority of the Egyptian vizier — the model for the Hebrew office of chief steward according to some scholars. (Originally, apparently, the authority of the master of the house was just that — he was a palace administrator, concerned with the doings of the king’s household rather than the kingdom. Over time, however, the office acquired more importance, and by )

The key of the royal household in Isaiah 22 is a sign of the chief steward’s preeminent authority among the king’s ministers, an authority second only to the king himself. That they are worn on the shoulder seems to suggest ceremonial significance: The key is actually a token of office, not just a tool for locking or unlocking.

In Matthew 16:19, Jesus does not quote Isaiah 22:22 exactly, as if it were a prophecy of the Petrine office. Isaiah does not foretell Peter; neither Shebna nor Eliakim is a prophetic “type” of Peter in the sense that the Davidic king was a type of Christ.

Rather, Jesus alludes to an Old Testament passage that provides an interpretive precedent for what he is doing. Peter has just confessed Jesus as the Messiah, the son of David, the king of Israel. In reply, by giving Peter the keys of the kingdom, Jesus places Peter over the royal household.

This is a unique privilege; it is held by one. The other apostles also share in the power of binding and loosing; they also are stewards and ministers in the royal household. But the absence of the keys in Matthew 18:18 is not merely a formal detail. Only one is over the household. Only Peter has the keys. This is not merely halakhic authority to bind and loose, along with the other apostles. Peter is chief steward, with administrative authority second only to Jesus.

Why Peter? Whatever factors in Peter’s personality we might cite for or against him, Jesus makes it clear that it is “not by flesh and blood” that Peter comes to where he is now. It was by the Father’s choice that he came to confess Jesus, and by Jesus’ choice that he becomes the rock of the Church and the bearer of the keys. This is not to say that the other apostles lacked Peter’s faith, or that others before Peter had not confessed Jesus as Messiah (cf. John 1:49). But Jesus’ interpretation of Peter’s confession is definitive; it is Peter whom he pronounces blessed, Peter who becomes the rock, Peter who receives the keys.

Some polemicists attempt to evade the implications of Isaiah 22 for Matthew 16 by emphasizing that Isaiah 22 speaks of the disgrace and fall of an unworthy steward, and looks forward to the fall of his successor Eliakim as well. Isaiah 22 calls Eliakim “a peg in a sure place” from which hangs “the whole weight of his father’s house,” but concludes that the peg “will give way” and “the burden that was upon it will be cut off” (this appears to refer to Eliakim, though it’s not entirely clear). The implication, apparently, is that this would not bode well for Peter or for any office inaugurated on him.

This is to overplay the significance of the specific events described in Isaiah 22 for Matthew 16. Jesus does not pronounce Peter to be a new Shebna or Eliakim, as John the Baptist was a new Elijah. Shebna is not the first chief steward of David’s house; he is merely one in a long line of office holders. He is not a prophetic type of Peter, only someone who held an analogous office under the old covenant. Jesus’ allusion to Isaiah 22 simply references the office held by Shebna and Eliakim as a way of explaining Peter’s role in the Church and the kingdom.

Eliakim may be “a peg in a sure place” supporting “the whole weight of his father’s house,” but Peter is the rock that supports the Church built by Christ. Isaiah prophesies that the peg and its burden are destined to fall, but Jesus himself declares that the Church built upon this rock will not. Shebna and Eliakim’s authority was unquestioned within the royal household, but Peter’s authority to bind and loose is ratified by heaven itself. The differences tell as much as the similarities.

Another attempt to minimize Peter’s privilege in Matthew 16 involves pointing to the verses in Revelation 1 and 3 that speak of Jesus having the keys. In particular, Revelation 3:7 (“The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens”) unquestionably references Isaiah 22:22, even more directly than Matthew 16:19 — though Matthew 16:19 is functionally closer to Isaiah 22:22 in that both Isaiah 22:22 and Matthew 16:19 involve the entrusting of keys to a minister. In Revelation 3:7 Jesus declares that he has the key, but the key is neither given nor received in that passage, as in Isaiah 22 and Matthew 16.

This is fitting, since obviously the point of Revelation 3 is not that Jesus is now chief steward! Rather, Jesus has the key of David by virtue of being the king, while in Matthew 16 Peter receives the keys, like Eliakim, by virtue of being the king’s servant. There is no contradiction between Jesus giving Peter the keys in Matthew 16 and having the key in Revelation 3; Jesus does not give up the keys he entrusts to Peter, any more than he gives up the sheep he entrusts to Peter. (We will return to these verses when considering the question of succession.)

To see Peter as Jesus’ chief steward offers a definitive context in which to understand Peter’s primacy throughout the New Testament, and vice versa; each contextualizes the other. In Luke 22, when the whole company of Christ’s stewards are to be sifted by Satan, it is the chief steward that Jesus prays for, that he might strengthen the rest. It is the chief steward to whom Jesus gives the solemn threefold commission as vice shepherd, to whom Jesus appears first after the Resurrection.

It is the one to whom Jesus gives the keys, the master of the house, who leads the apostles in choosing a replacement for Judas, who speaks for the Twelve at Pentecost, who speaks before the Sanhedrin, who pronounces judgment (exercising the power of the keys) on Ananias and Sapphira (a pronouncement that is ratified by heaven).

It is the chief steward who receives the vision opening the door to Gentile believers — and who silences debate at the Jerusalem council by reminding the assembled that it was he whom God chose from among them all for that vision, just as he was chosen from among the Twelve at Caesarea Philippi.

It is also the chief steward whom Jesus rebuffs at Caesarea Philippi, who initially refuses Jesus’ foot-washing, who receives the rebuke for the sleeping disciples at Gethsemane, who denies Jesus three times, whom Paul must oppose to his face. The New Testament’s near preoccupation with Peter’s failures tells much the story as its interest in his outspokenness and leadership. Peter’s weakness is so significant precisely because he is the chief of the apostles.

More to come!

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