‍I Tell You That You Are Peter

‍Is Simon the rock on which Jesus said he would build his church?

  Gary Hoge  ·  October 1, 2026

‍When Jesus asked his disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied to him,

‍Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter (Πέτρος — Petros), and on this rock (πέτρᾳ — petra) I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matthew 16:18–19).

‍Who or what is the “rock” on which Jesus said he would build his church? The answer to that question is contentious. Catholics (and many Protestants) believe that by giving Simon the name Peter (“Rock”) and then saying, “on this rock I will build my church,” Jesus was referring to Simon himself as that rock.

‍But others argue that based on the Greek wording of Matthew 16:18, Jesus may have been referring to something else. The evangelical apologetics website GotQuestions.org suggests that Jesus could have been contrasting himself, the foundational rock, with Simon, the small, movable rock:

‍The word for “Peter,” Petros, is a masculine noun that means “a detached stone, a stone that might be thrown or easily moved” ... The word for “rock” next mentioned is a different Greek word, petra, a feminine noun that means “a mass of rock” or “a cliff” and therefore something foundational … The difference in the two terms may suggest that Jesus was contrasting Peter with Himself. That is, Jesus was saying, “You are the small rock, but I am the foundation of the church.” This view finds support in other passages that present Christ, not Peter, as the foundation of the church (1 Corinthians 3:11) and the life-giving rock (1 Corinthians 10:4).¹

‍Or, perhaps Jesus was referring to Simon’s confession of faith, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” According to the evangelical apologetics website CompellingTruth.org,

‍Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, is the “rock” on which His church is built. The church is founded on a true understanding and declaration of Jesus’ identity, not on Peter himself.²

‍But the difference between the Greek words Petros and petra provides little support for identifying the rock as someone or something other than Simon. For one thing, Jesus probably spoke these words in Aramaic. If so, he didn’t call Simon Petros; he called him Kepha.

‍One indication that Jesus was speaking Aramaic is found in John 1:42, which reports that when Jesus met Simon, he told him that he would be called by the Aramaic name Kepha. John then tells us that Petros, the word we see in Matthew 16:18, is the Greek rendering of that name:

‍“You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Kepha³ (which is translated Petros)” (John 1:42). 

‍That Simon was known by the Aramaic name Kepha is further indicated by the fact that the apostle Paul referred to him as Kepha eight times but only twice as Petros.⁴

‍If Jesus was speaking Aramaic in Matthew 16, then the same Aramaic word kepha likely stood behind both “Peter” and “rock”: “You are Kepha, and on this kepha I will build my church.” According to Protestant New Testament scholar D. A. Carson:

‍[T]he underlying Aramaic is in this case unquestionable; and most probably kepha was used in both clauses (“you are kepha” and “on this kepha”), since the word was used both for a name and for a “rock.” The Peshitta (written in Syriac, a language cognate with Aramaic) makes no distinction between the words in the two clauses. The Greek makes the distinction between petros and petra simply because it is trying to preserve the pun, and in Greek the feminine petra could not very well serve as a masculine name.⁵

‍I tell you that you are Rock (Hudson)

‍If Carson is correct, then Jesus wasn’t contrasting Peter with the rock, he was equating them.

‍An example may help. Imagine that early in movie star Rock Hudson’s career a studio owner said:

‍“I’m going to hire Rock Hudson, and on this rock I will build my studio.”

‍The pun works because Rock is both the man’s name and a word for a foundation. That’s essentially the same kind of pun Jesus used: he called Simon “Rock” and then spoke of the “rock” on which he would build his church. The Aramaic word kepha worked well for that pun because it had been used in pre-Christian times as a man’s name,⁶ while also being the ordinary Aramaic word for “rock.”

‍But rendering this statement into Greek presented a problem because Greek personal names normally had a grammatical gender corresponding to the sex of the person named. Petra is a feminine noun and could not naturally serve as Simon's masculine Greek name. The masculine Petros therefore provided an appropriate form for Simon’s name, while petra remained the ordinary noun for “rock.”

‍The difference between Petros and petra, then, does not by itself establish a difference in meaning. But what about the common claim that petros means a small stone while petra means a large rock?

‍Does petros mean “a small stone”?

‍Although petros and petra could sometimes carry somewhat different nuances in Classical Greek, their meanings substantially overlapped, and both could refer to a rock or even a boulder. Lutheran theologian Oscar Cullmann notes that the words were “often used interchangeably,”⁷ while D. A. Carson says the distinction between them was “largely confined to poetry.”⁸ 

‍More importantly, the New Testament wasn’t written in Classical Greek; it was written in Koine (or “common”) Greek, which had become the common language of the eastern Mediterranean following the conquests of Alexander the Great. By the New Testament period, petros as a common noun was falling out of use.⁹ According to Protestant New Testament scholar R. T. France, “petros as a common noun is unlikely to have been familiar to Matthew’s readers, as it is not found in the LXX (except twice in 2 Macc) or in the NT and related literature. In these writings the term for a stone is lithos.”¹⁰

‍As France noted, lithos (λίθος) is the word commonly used in the New Testament for an individual stone. Not once is petros used as an ordinary noun to mean a stone, or a rock, or anything else. Throughout the New Testament, Petros is used only as Simon's name, the Greek rendering of his Aramaic name Kepha.

‍What’s in a name?

‍Another indication that Jesus was referring to Simon as the rock is that Jesus gave him a new name. We’re so accustomed to calling Simon “Peter” that it’s easy to lose sight of the significance of this. In Scripture, a new name can signify a new identity or role. God changed Abram’s name to Abraham in connection with his promise to make him “the father of many nations” (Genesis 17:5), Sarai to Sarah when he promised that “she will be the mother of nations” (Genesis 17:15–16), and Jacob to Israel after his struggle with God (Genesis 32:28). Against that biblical background, it is difficult to regard Jesus’ giving Simon the name Kepha (rendered Petros in Greek, Peter in English) as incidental or insignificant.

‍Peter’s authority

‍The verses that immediately follow provide further evidence that Peter is the rock Jesus had in mind. After telling Simon, “You are Kepha and on this kepha I will build my church,” Jesus said:

‍I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matthew 16:19).

‍There is a striking parallel between these words and what God said about Eliakim, the royal steward under King Hezekiah:

‍I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open (Isaiah 22:22).

‍The parallel suggests that the keys given to Peter likewise symbolize delegated authority. As Protestant New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce explains:

‍And what about the keys of the kingdom? The keys of a royal or noble establishment were entrusted to the chief steward or major domo; he carried them on his shoulder in earlier times, and there they served as a badge of the authority entrusted to him. … So in the new community which Jesus was to build, Peter would be, so to speak, chief steward.¹¹

‍The grant of the keys is immediately followed by the authority to “bind” and “loose,” terms used for authoritative decisions about what was forbidden or permitted.¹² The other apostles would later receive similar authority (Matthew 18:18), but here Jesus addresses Peter specifically, immediately after giving him the keys.

‍Peter’s prominent role

‍The authority given to Peter in Matthew 16 is consistent with the prominent role he occupies throughout the New Testament. Peter appears first in every New Testament list of the Twelve, while in the three Gospel lists, Judas Iscariot always appears last, suggesting that the order is not incidental. Matthew explicitly introduces him as “first” (prōtos) (Matthew 10:2). Jesus tells Peter to strengthen his brothers (Luke 22:32) and to feed his sheep (John 21:15–17). Peter takes the lead in replacing Judas (Acts 1:15–26), addresses the crowd at Pentecost (Acts 2:14), and receives the revelation that Gentiles can be admitted into the Church without first becoming Jews (Acts 10:9–48). He is also repeatedly singled out from the other apostles and is mentioned far more frequently than any other member of the Twelve.

‍As Methodist biblical archaeologist William F. Albright observed, “To deny the pre-eminent position of Peter among the disciples or in the early Christian community is a denial of the evidence.”¹³

‍Peter is the rock

‍The evidence points consistently in the same direction. Jesus gave Simon the name Kepha—“Rock”—and then declared, “on this kepha I will build my church.” The shift from Petros to petra in Greek is readily explained by grammatical gender and does not necessarily imply a contrast between Peter and the rock. And the authority Jesus immediately entrusted to Peter—the keys of the kingdom and the power to bind and loose—reinforces the natural reading of the passage. The rock is Peter himself.

‍This conclusion is by no means peculiar to Catholic interpreters. Many Protestant scholars likewise identify Peter as the rock. For example:

‍Donald A. Hagner of Fuller Theological Seminary wrote,

‍The natural reading of the passage, despite the necessary shift from Petros to petra required by the word play in the Greek (but not the Aramaic, where the same word kepha occurs in both places), is that it is Peter who is the rock upon which the church is to be built. … The frequent attempts that have been made, largely in the past, to deny this in favor of the view that the confession itself is the rock (e.g., most recently Caragounis) seem to be largely motivated by Protestant prejudice against a passage that is used by the Roman Catholics to justify the papacy.¹⁴

‍Lutheran theologian Oscar Cullmann wrote,

‍The idea of the Reformers that He [Jesus] is referring to the faith of Peter is quite inconceivable … For there is no reference here to the faith of Peter. Rather, the parallelism of “thou art Rock” and “on this rock I will build” shows that the second rock can only be the same as the first. It is thus evident that Jesus is referring to Peter, to whom he has given the name Rock … to this extent Roman Catholic exegesis is right and all Protestant attempts to evade this interpretation are to be rejected.¹⁵

‍For even more Protestant scholarship on this subject, see my paper “Protestant Scholars Agree: Peter Is the Rock.”

‍Jesus is ultimately the head of the Church, and Peter’s confession that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” is foundational to the Christian faith. But neither truth requires us to make Jesus himself or Peter’s confession the “rock” of Matthew 16:18. The most natural reading is also the most likely: impulsive, earnest, unsteady Simon was the rock on which Jesus said he would build his church.

‍__________

^‍1 Got Questions Ministries, “What Is the Rock in Matthew 16:18?,” GotQuestions.org, accessed September 30, 2026, https://www.gotquestions.org/upon-this-rock.html.

^‍2 Compelling Truth, “What Is the Rock in Matthew 16:18 upon Which Jesus Will Build His Church?,” CompellingTruth.org, accessed September 30, 2026, https://www.compellingtruth.org/upon-this-rock.html.

^‍3 The form that normally appears in English Bibles is “Cephas,” representing Greek Κηφᾶς (Kēphas), itself a transliteration of the Aramaic Kepha. Interestingly, the correct pronunciation of the Latin word Cephas is “Keyfas,” but English speakers usually pronounce it “Seefas.”

^‍4 Paul referred to Simon as Kepha in 1 Corinthians 1:12; 3:22; 9:5; 15:5; Galatians 1:18; 2:9, 11, 14. He referred to him as Petros in Galatians 2:7–8.

^‍5 D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 8, Matthew, Mark, Luke, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), 368.

^‍6 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, review of A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 2nd ed., rev. and augmented by F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker, Theological Studies 40, no. 3 (September 1979): 535, https://theologicalstudies.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/40.3.reviews-notices.pdf.

^‍7 Oscar Cullmann, Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr: A Historical and Theological Study, trans. Floyd V. Filson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953), 18–19.

^‍8 Carson, “Matthew,” 368.

^‍9 John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 669.

^‍10 R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 621.

^‍11 F. F. Bruce, The Hard Sayings of Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983), 143–44.

^‍12 Ralph Earle, “Matthew,” in Beacon Bible Commentary, vol. 6, ed. A. F. Harper et al. (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press, 1964), 156.

^‍13 W. F. Albright and C. S. Mann, Matthew, Anchor Bible 26 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), 195.

^‍14 Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 14–28, Word Biblical Commentary 33B (Dallas: Word Books, 1995), 470.

^‍15 Oscar Cullmann, “Πέτρος, πέτρα,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 6, ed. Gerhard Friedrich, trans. and ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968), 108.