Huon

I can't tell, I don't know. Having two fathers is perhaps not so dangerous.

sotto voce

Then why post with capital letter certainty about fathers? :constern01:

Maybe it's for lunatics. Maybe having two fathers is having none at all.

stephan huller

This is a theory that someone once floated but has no basis in fact. Pappas is a variation of pappos. There is no actual evidence for pappas being an imitation of baby talk any more than 'abba' means 'daddy.'

sotto voce

What would criminals do if people communed directly with deity rather than a remote mind-controller of their own devising? Horror!

Sheshbazzar

The word 'see' came about as an invented descriptive term for an area authority more or less reserved as the terratorial field of a particular gospel teacher/church leader. ('father")
As is suggested by 'Paul's examples;
Paul refrained from preaching in territory where others had already taught and established a congregation that was subject to their authority ('see')
This idea is still continued in 'Parishes' wherein each leader ('Priest' 'Pastor' 'Bishop' 'President' or 'First among equals' ) within the church with the vested and recognized authority of that church, is responsible for the disseminating of his denominations beliefs and values within a restricted and exclusively assigned geographical area, 'Fathering' ('Papa'ing') others in The Faith as is taught in 1 Cor 4:17 (Phl 2:22), 1 Thess 2:9-11, 1 Tim 1:2, 1:18, 2 Tim 1:2, and Tts 1:4.

There was (and still is) a 'father' 'son' (or 'daughter') relationship inherent in the transfer of the Gospel.
There are many 'papas', but each individual within and church is accounted as the 'son' or 'daughter' within the household of one 'father', subject to the authority of that congregations recognized leader and 'father'.
(and within the congregation, whomever taught and persuaded a member to join, being the one who 'fathered' that individual, but yet all are under the authority of the church's recognized leader, a 'father' and 'shepherd' over the 'household of faith' and the 'flock' by whatever title might be applied.)
Otherwise you would find four 'First Baptist Church's' each competing for members on thousands of intersections all over the country.
Each church leader or 'father' within any denomination has his defined territory, call it by this, that, or another term.
The long established and Church accepted 'catholic' term for this area of control is a 'see', and the long established and Church accepted 'catholic' term for a Church leader and authority is 'Father'.

The Roman church recognizes only one supreme human 'Father' and the highest human authority over The Church, whom alone among all men is identified by the term 'Pope'. The first among equals in a long and unbroken line of church elected and recognized 'Fathers' of The Holy, Catholic and Orthodox Faith. His 'see' being the entire world.

Duvduv

Which is why I posted this subject on another thread tonight, i.e. how could this passage be interpolated into a canonized text that had supposedly been holy scripture (and could not be tampered with) for several hundred years echoing the existence of a centralized authority which could obviously not be a single papacy, but rather the regime church of the 4th and 5th centuries:

17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter,[b] and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades[c] will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be[d] bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be[e] loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Sheshbazzar

Its an 'interpretational' thing.
The church that became 'Catholic' interprets the sense of this statement in certain way. IE. 'Peter' was that 'rock' on which the universal ('catholic') church was to be built. Thus a succession of 'Popes' beginning with Peter.

The other interpretation is that Peter's confession to Jesus;
Is that Rock upon which The true Church would be built.
In other words 'whosoever' (in its due time) made this confession would be accepted.
Calling upon his name, -Joel 2:32, Acts 2:21, Romans 10:13- assuring the salvation of ALL who believed, made this confession, and called upon his name. Smart or stupid, learned or ignorant, literate or illiterate. NONE would lose their reward, and being obedient to this call none would, or could ever be able to 'pluck them out of His hand'.

Duvduv

But this does not address the fact of a canonized holy book according to sources from the 2nd century being tampered with later. Unless the canoni ststus did not exist in the second century, of course.

sotto voce

So it is often supposed; but there is only one meaning possible to Mt 16:18.

'Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Manifestation of the living God."

Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are a stone; and on this Rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it."'

The Rock here must, without a doubt, be reckoned to be the aforesaid Manifestation of the living God, Jesus:

'He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.' Dt 32:4 NIV

'"Their rock is not like our Rock, as even our enemies concede."' Dt 32:31 NIV

'Our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink, because they drank from the spiritual rock that went with them, and that rock was Christ.' 1 Co 10:1-4

'Who is God besides the Lord? And who is the Rock except our God?' Ps 18:31 NIV

'He will be the stability of your times, a wealth of salvation, wisdom and knowledge.' Isa 33:6 NASB

'"You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one."' Isa 44:8 NIV

'In Scripture it says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."' 1 Pe 2:6 NIV

Here Jesus is confirming that he, and he alone, is the deity of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Judah, Moses, David, Elijah and Isaiah, and of the disciples there with him as he spoke. That is the primary purpose of the pericope (that does not really end until Jesus' transfiguration). It is true enough, for hermeneutic reasons, that faith in Jesus gives 'rock-ness'; but apostasy is possible, faith can be lost, can be 'shipwrecked'. Note how rapidly Simon Bar-Jona lost faith, to be called "Satan", a stumbling-block, not a building block. That is the secondary purpose, that 'rockness' or stability is only as good as the 'anchor and chain' that attaches to it, as Simon later again demonstrated, when put to shame in Antioch. So Simon was 'rock' only as he expressed recognition of Jesus as Messiah, and at the moment that recognition was absent, so was the stability necessarily caused by that recognition. Simon is example for all, not in any way a special case, as has been supposed.

Note also that the kingdom of God, or church, would not be of merely human origin. Those who had faith to the end would survive death of the body:

'"the gates of Hades will not overcome it"'

'"In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure for ever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands — a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces."' Da 2:44-45 NIV

Sheshbazzar

There was (and there still is) a difference between a church's 'canon', and 'The Canon' -of The Holy Roman Catholic Church"
(or the other variants of 'Orthodox' 'Catholicism' -the 'Christian' variety of 'The Tyranny of The Majority'.)

In the writings of the early Christian Fathers any particular church's 'canon' consisted of whatever writings were regularly read from or taught from within that church, city or geographical area during their weekly worship.

There was a huge amount of variance in the content of this eclectic 'canon' among the various Christian sects until the books and their content began to become standardized. A process that Constantine and the swords of 'The Holy Roman Empire' endeavored to assist, contain, rule over, and hurry along.
They were not entirely effective, and even to the present day there are Church's, even some 'Catholic' ones, that still have books included within their 'Canon' that are not accepted as being 'Canonical' by The Holy Roman Catholic Church.

Moving away from that limited 'canon' endorsed and so often forced and enforced by Roman Catholicism, there have always been independent Christian congregations, with their own persuasions and judgments as to what constituted acceptable reading and exposition material within their congregations, whether it were that form of 'canon' acceptable to the Marcionites, The Euchites, the Cathari, The Mormons, or The Assemblies of Yahweh.

The only way Roman Catholicism ever succeeded in calling the shots or in enforcing its Roman version of Christian 'orthodoxy' and 'Canon', was through coercion and bloody force. Countless millions have given their lives in resisting this assumed 'authority' with its unjust domination of men's minds.

And the battle for the right to freedom of religious thought, and freedom of one's conscience, and freedom of worship (including what texts a congregation employs) -still- goes on.

Of course Rome would still like to 'convert' us all,....or exterminate us from the face of the earth.

.