Peter the Pebble, Christ the Rock
Also, in Acts 4:11, when St.Peter was called before the Sanhedrin concerning the healing of the lame man at the Temple, Peter said: "He [Christ] is 'the stone which was regarded as worthless by you, the builders, which has become the head of the corner.' There is salvation in none other, for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, by which we must be saved!" Here Peter identifies not himself, but Christ as the chief Cornerstone, as prophesied in Psalm 118:22 and Isaiah 28:16.
And in Peter's first letter, he again refers to the same Old Testament prophecies - "Coming to Him [the Lord], a living Stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God, precious. You also, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Because it is contained in Scripture, 'Behold, I lay in Zion a chief Cornerstone, elect, precious: he who believes in Him will not be disappointed.' For you therefore who believe is the honor, but for such as are disobedient, 'The Stone which the builders rejected, has become the chief Cornerstone'" (1 Peter 2:4-7). So Peter himself twice states clearly that not he but Christ is the chief Cornerstone on Whom the Church is established.
St. Paul also quotes those same Old Testament prophecies - "Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and a rock of offense; And no one who believes in Him will be disappointed" (Romans 9:33). And again - "having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the Cornerstone, in Whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in Whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:20-22). And again - "For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11).
Coming back to Matthew ch, 16, in the Greek text Christ uses the singular pronoun for "you" ("thou" and "thee" in the King James version) which here indicates one person, Peter. This is sometimes pointed out by Catholics to bolster their case for the papacy, the heirs of Peter's authority who hold the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. But we find the same idea of "the keys" in Matthew 18:18 and John 20:23 where the Greek word for "you" is plural, indicating all of the Apostles had this authority. As we saw in Ephesians 2:20-22 above, Christ is the Cornerstone on which all of the apostles and prophets built the Church.
It is well known that St. Peter was taken to Rome as a prisoner where he was tried, sentenced and crucified upside-down. But there is no proof that he ever served as Bishop of Rome. In the early fourth century, Hippolytus of Rome wrote The Apostolic Tradition, which describes the Church's rules for ordaining bishops, priests and deacons, as well as Church governance for the first three centuries, indicating that there were multiple bishops in Rome and that none of them claimed authority over the others.
What's all the fuss about? Why is this important? Because for the first several centuries of Church history, the eastern and western leaders of Christianity were able to correct and balance out each other by meeting together in councils when threats to true doctrine or church order would arise. The first council was held in Jerusalem - see Acts ch. 15 - and was chaired not by Peter but by James, the brother of the Lord. Starting with Popes Gerasimus I and Leo the Great in the fourth and early fifth centuries, however, the Archbishops of Rome began claiming authority over all other bishops, archbishops and patriarchs.
In The Republic, Plato described four types of government - monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, and anarchy - that tend to devolve from one to the next. We can see this tendency over and over in history: an absolute monarch (emperor, king, or pope) gives way to a senate or council of highly-qualified leaders, which eventually yields to a democracy of all the people, which in turn degenerates into anarchy when the common people find their way to the public purse and bankrupt the state. Then the cycle starts over again.
This pattern also held true for the Church: the kings of the Old Testament gave way to Church councils of the Apostles and their successors, the bishops. In the West, the Roman Senate by the fifth century had yielded to the people's demands for "bread and circuses" that led to anarchy and the collapse of the Roman Empire. This is when Pope Leo the Great siezed the reins of civil government by negotiating with the advancing barbarian Huns, thus becoming both the secular and spiritual absolute ruler.
Which brings us to the Enlightenment (weakening of papal authority), Gutenberg's invention of the printing press (the spread of literacy to the common people), the Reformation (rejection of papal authority and beginning of church governance by laypeople), the advent of modern liberal democracy (rule by the propertied people), and modern liberal-leftist anarchy (rule by demagogues, semi-literates and the masses of the poor who are addicted to the public purse). You can read about this intellectual/theological development (or devolution) at my Literature web-page.
In Rod Dreher's recent article How The Social Order Crumbles, he traces the beginning, the growth... and the demise of modern democracy. The inscription under the above photo states - "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people..." by President John Adams.
Dreher writes - "The problems in liberalism didn’t show up until now because most people in liberal democratic countries took the Judeo-Christian moral framework for granted. If the human rights (for example) that liberalism enshrines are something real, then they have to be grounded in something transcendent. It has been observed many times that liberalism is mostly a secularized version of Christianity; there’s a lot of truth to that. As I read [#1 best seller] Why Liberalism Failed, I take [the author] Deneen as saying that liberalism had to fail because at its core it stands for liberating the individual from an unchosen obligation. Ultimately, it forms consumers, not citizens."
Modern liberal democracy assumed the moral and religious principles of Western Christianity, which had come to the point of toleration of myriads of differing theological and organizational modes, so today we have tens of thousands of denominations with conflicting doctrines that all claim to have the truth. When by now this toleration has widened to include first the Jews, then the Muslims, then Buddhists, Hindus, Confucians, and even atheists and hedonists, it has devolved into the nebulous mush of what Justice Anthony Kennedy described in his infamous line that Dreher quotes: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
In traditional Christian theology, however, liberty or freedom is the ability to choose and to act upon what is good and right. It assumes objective goodness and rightness as aspects of the Divine nature. But when liberty or freedom comes to mean the right to define one's own meaning of the universe, in other words, to believe and act in whatever way one wishes, it degenerates into consumerism, hedonism, and anarchy. The masses of people have found their way to the public purse.
In the comments section of Dreher's article, one person wrote: "We have learned, as a people, that there are no moral truths binding on anyone. There is no moral truth that cannot be simply dismissed and ignored."
I replied to that comment - "Another way to put this is: 'There are absolutely no absolutes, and that's the absolute truth.' By reducing his words to this bare-bones restatement, we can see its obvious absurdity.
To state it positively, there ARE absolute truths, but they are not easy to comprehend and even more difficult to put into practice. It requires faith, self-denial, and a deep sense of our own finitude and fallibility.
We must return to these basic Christian virtues and submit ourselves to the greater wisdom of God's revealed truth in Christ, in the Scriptures, and in the great Fathers and Mothers of the Church. No one human being is perfect, infallible or absolute, which is why we need to be guided by the consensus of godly men and women of the faith."
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