From the Christian point of view, Protestant as well as Catholic, the important passage is not “thou art Peter,” but “the gates of hell shall not prevail.” For while no one has been able to establish historical connection with Peter, the statement about the gates of hell seems a general and unequivocal promise that the church will go forth invulnerable, from which we cannot avoid the conclusion that the church is not only to continue “firm and steadfast until the end of the world,”223 but that it actually has in the end nothing to fear. “The gates of hell” is quoted as often and as fervidly by Baptists as by the Catholics themselves, and that to prove that their church, marked by its “trail of blood,” must have persisted through the ages from the time of Christ. But does the magnificent assurance of the “gates of hell” hint at anything as poor as an intermittent trail of blood? Just what is meant by the peculiar expression, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”? That is the all-important question for both Catholics and Protestants—a question which they never examine.
Peter’s Confession at Caesarea Philippi
Away in the north, at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks the question the whole Gospel has been driving toward: “But whom do you say that I am?” And Peter answers for the Twelve: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus blesses the confession as revelation from the Father, names Peter, and promises him the keys of the kingdom, then charges them all to tell no man.
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The reading is the Joseph Smith Translation, in the text of the Covenant Christian Edition, carried beside each Gospel and set against the King James baseline. Headers give both numbering systems: the CCE chapter and verse, and the traditional KJV reference.
13And when Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? 14And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. 15He said unto them, But whom do you say that I am? 16And Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. 17And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed it this unto you, but my Father who is in Heaven. 18And I say also unto you that you are Peter. And upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19And I will give unto you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever you shall set loose on earth shall be set loose in Heaven. 20Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus, the Christ.
27And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi. And by the way, he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am? 28And they answered, John the Baptist; but some say Elijah, and others, one of the prophets. 29And he said unto them, But whom do you say that I am? And Peter answered and said unto him, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. 30And he charged them that they should tell no man of him.
18And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him; and he went alone with his disciples to pray, he asked them, saying, Who do the people say that I am? 19They answering said, Some say John the Baptist, but others say Elijah, and others that one of the old prophets is risen again. 20He said unto them, But who do you say that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ of God, the Son of God.
What Rock? Revelation.
Taking a Different View of the Translation
D&C 128:8–11 (CCE T&C 151:6–9) · September 7, 1842 · scriptures.info ↗Writing to the church on the baptism for the dead, Joseph Smith read the power given to Peter in verse 19 two ways: whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven, or “taking a different view of the translation,” whatever you record on earth is recorded in heaven. He then quotes verses 18 and 19 as his precedent. The edition canonizes the letter. The bracketed “Matt. 9:1” is its own reference: the verses stand in the first paragraph of its Matthew 9.
Now, the nature of this ordinance consists in the power of the Priesthood, by the revelations of Jesus Christ, wherein it is granted that whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven. Or in other words, taking a different view of the translation, whatever you record on earth shall be recorded in Heaven, and whatever you do not record on earth shall not be recorded in Heaven. For out of the books shall your dead be judged according to their works, whether they themselves have attended to the ordinances in their own propria persona, or by the means of their own agents, according to the ordinance which God has prepared for their salvation from before the foundation of the world, according to the records which they have kept concerning their dead.
It may seem to some to be a very bold doctrine that we talk of, a power which records or binds on earth and binds in Heaven. Nevertheless, in all ages of the world, whenever the Lord has given a dispensation of the Priesthood to any man by actual revelation, or any set of men, this power has always been given. Hence, whatever those men did in authority in the name of the Lord, and did it truly and faithfully, and kept a proper and faithful record of the same, it became a law on earth and in Heaven, and could not be annulled, according to the decrees of the great Jehovah. This is a faithful saying. Who can hear it?
And again, for a precedent, Matthew chapter 16 verses 18 and 19 [Matt. 9:1]: And I say also unto you that you are Peter. And upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.
Now the great and grand secret of the whole matter, and the summum bonum of the whole subject that is lying before us, consists in obtaining the powers of the holy Priesthood. For him to whom these keys are given there is no difficulty in obtaining a knowledge of facts in relation to the salvation of the children of men, both as well for the dead as for the living. Herein is glory and honor, and immortality, and eternal life.
The Keys of the Kingdom
Joseph Smith does not cite Matthew in this entry, and it is not an exposition of verse 19. It is shown because his journal records a sermon on “the keys of the kingdom,” the words Jesus gave Peter, and his own definition of them: certain signs and words, to be revealed in the temple, by which false spirits are told from true.
Journal entry, 1 May 1842 (Sunday), sermon in the grove, Nauvoo · Joseph Smith, Journal, December 1841–December 1842 (the Book of the Law of the Lord), kept by Willard Richards (History of the Church 4:608) · Joseph Smith Papers ↗preached in the grove on the keys of the kingdom charity &c.— The keys are certain signs & words by which false spirits & personages may be detected from true.— which cannot be revealed to the Elders till the Temple is completed.— The rich can only get them in the Temple. The poor may get them on the Mountain top as did moses. The rich cannot be saved without cha[r]ity. giving to feed the poor. when & how God requires as well as building. There are signs in heaven earth & hell. the elders must know them all to be endued with power. to finish their work & prevent imposition. The devil knows many signs. but does not know the sign of the son of man. or Jesus. No one can truly say he knows God until he has handled something. & this can only be in the holiest of Holies.
Upon This Rock: “What Rock? Revelation.”
Preaching on John the Baptist and the kingdom of God, Joseph Smith came to Jesus’ promise at Caesarea Philippi and answered the old quarrel over “the rock” in two words: not Peter, not a place, but revelation, the very thing by which Peter had just confessed the Son of the living God. The reading is the History’s, which took its synopsis of the sermon from Wilford Woodruff; switch to Scribal accounts to compare the reporters.
Discourse, 22 January 1843, Nauvoo · History, 1838–1856, vol. D-1, addenda, p. 6 (History of the Church 5:256–259; Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 274) · Joseph Smith Papers ↗… and Christ came according to the words of John, and he was greater than John, because he held the keys of the Melchisedec Priesthood, and Kingdom of God, and had before revealed the Priesthood to Moses, yet Christ was baptized by John to fulfil all righteousness, and Jesus in his teachings says “upon this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” What rock? Revelation
Again he says, “Except ye are born of the water and of the spirit, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of God,” and though the heavens and earth should pass away, my words shall not pass away, If a man is born of the water and the Spirit, he can get into the kingdom of God.
Whatsoever You Seal on Earth: Can It Be Taken Off? No.
Preaching on the spirits of Elias, Elijah and Messiah three months before his death, Joseph Smith named the power promised to Peter in verse 19, to bind on earth and have it bound in heaven, as the power of Elijah and “the keys of the kingdom of Jehovah,” and made it plain with a man sitting in the congregation. Four reporters took down the sealing passage; switch to Scribal accounts to compare them with the History’s reading.
Discourse, 10 March 1844, Nauvoo · History, 1838–1856, vol. E-1, pp. 1920–1921 (History of the Church 6:251–252; Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 337–338) · Joseph Smith Papers ↗I wish you to understand this subject, for it is important, and if you will receive it, this is the Spirit of Elijah, that we redeem our dead, and connect ourselves with our fathers which are in heaven and seal up our dead to come forth in the first resurrection; and here we want the power of Elijah to seal those who dwell on earth to those who dwell in heaven. This is the power of Elijah and the keys of the kingdom of Jehovah. Let us suppose a case; suppose the great God who dwells in heaven, should reveal himself to Father [Alpheus] Cutler here, by the opening heavens, and tell him, ‘I offer up a decree that whatsoever you seal on earth with your decree, I will seal it in heaven,’ you have power then, can it be taken off? No, then what you seal on earth by the keys of Elijah, is sealed in heaven, and this is the power of Elijah, and this is the difference between the Spirit and power of Elias and Elijah. …
… This spirit of Elijah was manifest in the days of the Apostles, in delivering certain ones to the buffetings of Satan, that they may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus; they were sealed by the spirit of Elijah unto the damnation of Hell until the day of the Lord, or revelation of Jesus Christ.
“The Rock Was Revelation”: The Earliest Witnesses
Surveying the patristic evidence, Nibley arrives at exactly Joseph Smith’s answer: the all-important phrase is not “thou art Peter” but “the gates of hell,” and the oldest and best witnesses say the rock was revelation, the confession that Jesus is the Son of God.
Once the meaning of the phrase “gates of hell” is clear, it is equally clear why no one in the first centuries of the church ever referred to that verse to prove that the church would survive or to show where its head would be. It has nothing to do with the future of the church on earth but refers to a high and secret matter about which the second century of the church knew nothing. That explains why it is never referred to at all. It is one of those “teachings of the elders,” which, Irenaeus informs us, his generation regarded as “rather mysterious” and could not hope to explain. “In the second century,” Harnack discovers, “not a single church father or heretic made any reference to this verse (Matthew 16:18 [Matt. 9:1]), even in those cases in which one would, in view of its context, expect such a reference. Tertullian and the author of the Clementine homilies are the first to attest it.” In this case the Clementine author does not use the word petra at all, but instead writes foundations.225 But what, in this earliest reference, could the foundation of the church have been; what was meant by “the rock”? Two of the most distinguished theologians of the fourth century, Hilary and Basil, both say the rock was revelation—the others do not mention it.
Erasmus’s marginal note in Hilary’s comment on Matthew 16:18 [Matt. 9:1], Ecclesiae fundamentum fides, is fully borne out by Hilary’s own text: “The Son of God the Heavenly Father refers to revelation. O happy foundation for the announcement of the new name of the church!” Elsewhere Hilary writes: “Peter confesses that Christ is the Son of God. This faith is the foundation of the church: through this faith the gates of the lower regions are made weak against her. This faith holds the keys of the kingdom of heaven. This faith will bind in heaven and earth. This faith is the guarantee of revelation from the Father. . . . This is the revelation of the Father; this is the eternal security.” Not a word about any geographical conditioning of a grant of power, no dwelling on the name of Peter. “It is this [confession of Peter],” writes Basil, “which is the true rock of piety.”
Strack and Billerbeck give what scholars consider the most likely rendering of Matthew 16:18 [Matt. 9:1] in the original Aramaic: “Upon this rock (upon the fact of my Messianic calling and my being the Son of God) I will build my society.” “This interpretation is strengthened,” Olof Linton tells us, “by the fact that elsewhere in the primitive church it is always Christ and not Peter who is the foundation of the church.”
Ellipses mark omissions within Nibley’s own text; the bracketed names are the scholars Nibley cites.