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Armstrong vs. Collins & Walls #10: St. Peter & the Papacy

Last updated on: June 5, 2026 at 11:51 pm   by Dave Armstrong

Armstrong vs. Collins & Walls #10: St. Peter & the Papacy 2026-06-05T23:51:01-04:00 Dave Armstrong

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This is one of my many critiques of the book entitled, Roman but Not Catholic: What Remains at Stake 500 Years after the Reformation, by evangelical Protestant theologian Kenneth J. Collins and Anglican philosopher Jerry L. Walls (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2017).

*****

Kenneth Collins, in his chapter 11: “The Papacy”, states:

Indeed, the notion that Peter was somehow over the universal church is unfounded. . . .

. . . Matthew 16:18 cannot mean that Peter had authority in an extraordinary way over the other apostles.

Matthew 16:18 (RSV) And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.

Collins runs through the standard discussions about whether “the rock” Jesus referred to was Peter’s confession, or he himself. And of course, in the end, he clearly favors the “confession” interpretation because that’s the one that works with Protestant relative ecclesiological disorganization and the denial (of most Protestants) of apostolic succession and episcopal, hierarchical ecclesiology, or Church government.

Yet the position of “rock” in Matthew 16:18 being St. Peter himself (which has been the Catholic view for many centuries) is held by a great number of Protestant exegetes in recent times, including some of the very best ones, and is the majority position (as noted in the Encyclopedia Britannica article on “Peter”: 1985, Micropedia, Vol. 9, 330-333). Collins (bless his heart) does manage to mention one of these: Presbyterian linguist Marvin Vincent. Here are many more that he didn’t mention (lest his readers come to understand that this is virtual consensus in biblical commentary today):

Here are a few more:

Jesus now sums up Peter’s significance in a name, Peter . . . It describes not so much Peter’s character (he did not prove to be ‘rock-like’ in terms of stability or reliability), but his function, as the foundation-stone of Jesus’ church. The feminine word for ‘rock’, ‘petra’, is necessarily changed to the masculine ‘petros’ (stone) to give a man’s name, but the word-play is unmistakable (and in Aramaic would be even more so, as the same form ‘kepha’ would occur in both places). It is only Protestant overreaction to the Roman Catholic claim . . . that what is here said of Peter applies also to the later bishops of Rome, that has led some to claim that the ‘rock’ here is not Peter at all but the faith which he has just confessed. The word-play, and the whole structure of the passage, demands that this verse is every bit as much Jesus’ declaration about Peter as v.16 was Peter’s declaration about Jesus . . . It is to Peter, not to his confession, that the rock metaphor is applied . . . Peter is to be the foundation-stone of Jesus’ new community . . . (Anglican R. T. France, in Leon Morris, general editor, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press / Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1985, vol. 1: Matthew, 254, 256)

[I]f it were not for Protestant reactions against extremes of Roman Catholic interpretation, it is doubtful whether many would have taken ‘rock’ to be anything or anyone other than Peter . . . In this passage Jesus is the builder of the church and it would be a strange mixture of metaphors that also sees him within the same clauses as its foundation. . . . Had Matthew wanted to say no more than that Peter was a stone in contrast with Jesus the Rock, the more common word would have been “lithos” (“stone” of almost any size). Then there would have been no pun — and that is just the point! (Baptist D. A. Carson; in Frank E. Gaebelein, general editor, Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1984, vol. 8: Matthew, Mark, Luke, 368)

[O]ne must dismiss as confessional any attempt to see this rock as meaning the faith, or the Messianic confession of Peter . . . The general sense of the passage is indisputable . . . Peter is the rock on which the new community will be built, and in that community, Peter’s authority to ‘bind’ or ‘release’ will be a carrying out of decisions made in heaven. His teaching and disciplinary activities will be similarly guided by the Spirit to carry out Heaven’s will. (Methodist William F. Albright and C. S. Mann, Anchor Bible, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1971, volume 26, 195, 197-198)

How about St. Peter having extraordinary unique authority as not only the the leader of the apostles, but as the first pope and head of the universal Church (Petrine primacy)? It is not unknown for reputable Protestant scholars to hold to this view (my blue highlighting):

Of those twelve men Simon Peter was the acknowledged leader. There are differences between one evangelist and another in their portrayal of Peter, but on this they are agreed. (F. F. Bruce, Peter, Stephen, James, and John, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1979, 16)

[I]t was Peter who became the focal point of unity in the great Church, since Peter was probably in fact and effect the bridge-man who did more than any other to hold together the diversity of first-century Christianity. James and Paul, the two other most prominent leading figures in first-century Christianity, were too much identified with their respective ‘brands’ of Christianity, at least in the eyes of Christians at the opposite end of this particular spectrum . . . none of them, including none of the rest of the twelve, seem to have played any role of continuing significance for the whole sweep of Christianity . . . (James D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, London: SCM Press, 2nd edition, 1990, 385; cited in agreement by Bruce in the work above, pp. 42-43)

So Peter, in T. W. Manson’s words, is to be ‘God’s vicegerent . . . The authority of Peter is an authority to declare what is right and wrong for the Christian community. His decisions will be confirmed by God’ (The Sayings of Jesus, 1954, p. 205). (The New Bible Dictionary, general editor: J. D. Douglas; Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1962, “Power,” section III: “The Power of the Keys,” by R. N. Caswell, pp. 1017-1018)

“The authority of Peter is to be over the Church, and this authority is represented by the keys.” –S. T. Lachs, A Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1987), 256.

“And what about the ‘keys of the kingdom’? The keys of a royal or noble establishment were entrusted to the chief steward or majordomo; he carried them on his shoulder in earlier times, and there they served as a badge of the authority entrusted to him. About 700 B.C. an oracle from God announced that this authority in the royal palace in Jerusalem was to be conferred on a man called Eliakim . . . . (Isaiah 22:22). So in the new community which Jesus was about to build, Peter would be, so to speak, chief steward.” –F. F. Bruce, The Hard Sayings of Jesus, (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 1983), 143-144.

“The ‘kingdom of heaven’ is represented by authoritative teaching, the promulgation of authoritative Halakha that lets heaven’s power rule in earthly things . . . . Peter’s role as holder of the keys is fulfilled now, on earth, as chief teacher of the church.” –M. Eugene Boring, “Matthew,” in Pheme Perkins and others, eds., The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 8, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), 346.

I summarized the ample biblical evidences of Peter’s primacy in my paper, 50 New Testament Proofs for Peter’s Primacy & the Papacy [+ reply to an anti-Catholic critique of it]. This was further condensed and concisely rearranged for a National Catholic Register article. I’ve also dealt with the old non sequitur chestnut of contra-papal polemics (briefly alluded to by Collins): Paul’s rebuke of Peter (for hypocrisy; not doctrinal error). And I tackled the question of papal succession, and made a biblical case for that.

Matthew 16:19  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.

Collins (for good reason, given his goals) completely ignores the Hebraic historical and thematic background of this passage — which goes back to Isaiah 22 –, and all of the implications thereof, which have been massively dealt with by many Protestant commentators. I think folks ought to become acquainted with that fascinating data (rather than be completely in the dark), so here are many more related citations from Protestant scholars (thanks again to Nicholas Hardesty and his article, cited above):

Bottom line in this discussion: If one wants to simply bask in centuries of contra- and anti-Catholic polemics and bias, and repeat and memorize and chant those, parrot-like, one can (it’s a free country). But if one is interested in the latest consensus of biblical commentary, and in the background of key passages in the New Testament with regard to Church government, then they have to dig a little deeper, and seriously delve into the endless riches of the Bible and Hebrew Old Testament culture and ways of thinking. I did the latter; Collins clearly did not.

Because of that fact, I’m fully confident that the fair-minded, open-minded reader, who is truly interested in all that the Bible has to say, in its depths (not in mere “surfacey” hyper-selective prooftexting; ignoring mountains of relevant data), will see that the purely biblical case for the primacy of St. Peter and even for the essential kernels of the later fully developed papacy (before we even get to Church history), is surprisingly strong (and some might say, compelling).

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Photo credit: Christ Surrendering the Keys to St. Peter (c. 1614), by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Papacy & Infallibility

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Jerry L. Walls

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Kenneth Collins

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Matthew 16:18

Matthew 16:19

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Armstrong vs. Collins & Walls #9: "Apocrypha" (Jerome, Athanasius, Etc.)

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