It is commonly assumed by Roman Catholics that Jesus changed Simon’s name to “Peter” because He planned to build His Church upon “this rock.” Catholic Answers, for example, says Jesus did this to assign to him “a particular powerful role” as “the foundation stone of the Church.” And yet, the Scriptures nowhere say why Jesus changed his name. Where the Scriptures do give reasons for assigning or changing names, we safely grasp the meanings. Where the Scriptures do not give the reason, we are not at liberty to assign a meaning on our own. The fact is, as with several other name changes and assignments in the Bible, the Scriptures provide no explicit reason for calling Simon “Peter.” Context, however, provides the information we need.
We left off last time with a harmonized account of the loaves narratives, in which the Feeding of the 5,000 and the Feeding of the 4,000 were integrated into a single harmonized narrative using information from all four Gospels, beginning with the death of John the Baptist and ending with Peter’s confession of faith. That confession is typically taken to mean Peter was the first to believe, but in reality he was clearly the last. Jesus’ response to him should be understood in that context. From this harmonized account we understand statements that have confounded Roman Catholics, but are clear in the light of God’s revelation to us in the Scriptures. We understand what it means to eat “the true bread from heaven”, to “eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood”, why the loaves miracles were the antidote to the leaven of the Pharisees, upon which “rock” Jesus promised to “build My church,” why “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”; and what it means to receive the keys of the kingdom and the power to bind and loose on earth that which has been bound or loosed in heaven.
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