In a comment on my recent post on the meaning of the “Gates of Hell,” Jerry Blake notes some additional scriptural grounds for a robust interpretation of Petrine primacy. He does not mention the “keys of the kingdom of Heaven,” but he does mention the power to “bind” and “loose,” and the meaning of the Keys of St. Peter is surely bound up with this ambiguous power.
The first thing to note is that “the kingdom of Heaven” is not “Heaven,” although the two are certainly connected. When Christ likened the “kingdom of Heaven” to a man sowing seeds on various soils, to leaven in lump of dough, to treasure buried in a field, to a pearl of great price, etc., he was obviously using the phrase “kingdom of Heaven” to indicate the liberating gnosis of the Gospel (Matthew 13).
When Christ said, “the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” he meant the New Testament (i.e. new dispensation) had arrived and was available to his audience then and there.
The “keys to the kingdom of heaven” are therefore only indirectly the keys to the Pearly Gates; the power that Christ passed to Peter was not, therefore, the power to send a man to Hell, but was simply the authority to supervise the work of spreading the gnosis of the Gospel. It is barbarous to suppose that Peter could condemn a man to Hell or bar a man’s entry into to Heaven. This is why Edward Gibbon (admittedly no great friend of the Church) tells us this barbarous notion stalked the earth in a barbarous age.
“In an age of superstition, it should seem that the union of the royal and sacerdotal characters would mutually fortify each other, and that the keys of paradise would be the surest pledge of earthly obedience.”*
We are told, for instance, that St. Wilfrid used this spurious argument to frighten the Anglo-Saxon monarchs of seventh century Britain into fealty to Rome.
“By a ridiculous appeal to the keys of St. Peter, Wilfrid perplexed the simple mind of Oswy [King of Northumbria]; and the king’s dread of being shut out of heaven by the celestial power, decided the question in favor of Rome and Wilfrid.”**
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When he spoke of keys and of binding and loosing, it is universally agreed that Jesus was alluding to the messianic promise of Isaiah 22:22.
“And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.”
Isaiah personifies the recipient of these gifts as Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, and Eliakim is usually understood with the figure of a servant who God raises to be master of the house, while the house’s former master is driven out of doors into exile, ignominy, and shame.
“And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand: and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah. And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.”
Isaiah’s Eliakim prefigures the Messiah to whom the religious government of Israel will be given when Israel’s former religious governors have grown derelict and are driven out of doors into exile, ignominy, and shame. Eliakim does not perfectly prefigure Peter because the elevation of Peter was not a consequence of dereliction on the part of Christ. The robe, girdle and key were transferred to Christ because of the dereliction of the priests of Israel; Christ then entrusted the keys (but not the robe or the girdle) to Peter as his steward or housekeeper.
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I said earlier that the power to “bind” and “loose” is an ambiguous power. If we take “keys” as an emblem of stewardship, this power of binding and loosing is obviously limited like the power of a steward. The steward is not the master of the house, so his power is not absolute but conditional on doing his master’s will. Christ is the master of the house; it is his will that “the kingdom of heaven” (i.e. the gnosis of the Gospel) be spread; Peter’s power to “bind” and “loose” is therefore limited by the necessity that it serves this end.
The parable of the Wicked Servant is here instructive.
In Isaiah, the steadfastness of Eliakim (the Messiah) is likened not to a “rock” but to a “nail” that is fastened “in a sure place” (22:23). This securely fastened “nail” replaces a previous “nail” that was, we may suppose, securely fastened in its time. The old “nail” is the Law and Priesthood of Israel; the new “nail” is the Gospel and Priesthood of Christ. As Isaiah puts it:
“In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, shall the nail that is fastened in the sure place be removed, and be cut down, and fall; and the burden that was upon it shall be cut off: for the Lord hath spoken it.” (22:25)
I take the power to bind and loose as signifying the power to retain or discard elements of the old Jewish Law, the decision in all cases depending on its utility to the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” (i.e. spreading the gnosis of the Gospel). I believe Peter fully discharged that power when he delivered his tremendous “sentence” at the Counsel of Jerusalem, as reported in Acts 15: 19-20
“Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.”
In order that the Gospel might be spread, Gentiles remained “bound” on these articles of the old Law; but they were on Peter’s authority “loosed” from all other articles of the old Law.
*) Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 12, chapter 69.
**) E. Ellerton, The Evils and Dangers of Tractarianism (Oxford: J. Vincent, 1845), p. 7.