HOW DID SIMON PETER FIND OUT THAT JESUS WAS THE CHRIST?

 In the list of “101 contradictions in the Bible” you can find everywhere on the internet, #37 is the following:

“How did Simon Peter find out that Jesus was the Christ? (a) By a revelation from heaven (Matthew 16:17) or (b) His brother Andrew told him (John 1:41)”

There are several ways to address this contradiction, some of them quite trivial:

A. Andrew expressed the opinion that Jesus was the Christ, but Peter needed time to come to that same conclusion himself.

Morris states, “There seem to have been many claimants to messiahship in that period. It was the content put into the term that mattered. All the evidence is that it was quite some time before any of Jesus' followers reached anything like an adequate understanding of the term [Messiah].”

“No doubt the two disciples differed from Jesus in their ideas of what Messiahship involved. Some have seen here a contradiction of the Synoptic accounts which suggest that not until Caesarea Philippi was the Messiahship of Jesus recognized...Yet there is no need to suppose that the disciples had a fully developed notion of what Messiahship actually meant.” (D. Guthrie)

Ellison: “The early acknowledgment of Jesus as Messiah (Jn 1:41,45,49) had been an act of enthusiasm; Peter's confession expressed mature conviction created by divine revelation.”

B. Since Andrew's confession was itself the result of a divine revelation, so was Peter's.

C. One of the two accounts is misplaced chronologically due to literary or theological reasons so that both occurred at about the same time.

D. We should admit that the two accounts are irreconcilable and due to two completely different church traditions.

Raymond Brown accepts this explanation in regard to the parallel account in Mark when he states that “only halfway through Mark's account (viii 29) does Peter proclaim Jesus as Messiah, and this is presented as a climax. Such a scene would be absolutely unintelligible if, as narrated in John, Peter knew that Jesus was the Messiah before he ever met him.”

E. The new aspect of Peter's confession was due to the addition of “Son of the living God,” not just the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah.

Hill: “The addition 'Son of the living God' (a form of address already found on the lips of the disciples at 14:33) is a Matthean explanation, based on a later and more fully elaborated faith...in later Christian thought it was used as a title affirming Jesus divine origin and nature.”

“Jesus' address to God as Father remains distinctive and evokes opposition in the gospel for those who deny Jesus' claim to have such a distinctive relationship to God.” (M.M. Thompson)

Despite Hill's comment about “later Christian thought,” keep in mind that to call one the 'son of God' was interpreted by Jesus' opponents as Him making Himself equal to God (John 5:18). Thus, as Barbieri states, “Peter thus acknowledged Jesus' deity as the Son of the Living God.”

Ladd feels that the “blessing Jesus pronounced on Peter must have to do with sonship to God more than messiahship. An understanding of Jesus' divine sonship would indeed require divine revelation as messiahship would not.”

Hendricksen: “Even before this time Peter had made soul-stirring declarations concerning Jesus (Luke 5:8; John 6:68,69), but the present profession of faith is the most complete of them all...Peter's declaration that Jesus is, was, and always will be the Son of that God who not only is himself the only living One..., but also is the only source of life for all that lives.”

Geldenhuys: “No religious teacher before or after Him ever claimed that exclusive relationship to God...”

In rebuttal to those who would simply equate the two terms, Son of God and Messiah, with one another, France explains that “in view of Matthew's emphasis on the title 'Son of God' elsewhere...it is more likely that he expected his readers to hear it as adding a further dimension to Peter's declaration, by supplementing the 'functional title Messiah' with one which speaks more directly of who Jesus really is.”

Another pertinent Scripture passage containing “Son of God” is John 1:49, on which Ellis comments: “On Nathaniel's lips this may mean little more that “Messiah' (cf. Ps. 2:7); to the Evangelist it means much more.”

“The Messiahship thus confessed was something more than current Jewish expectation.” (Nixon)

You may note that there is really no difference between options A and E; both are certainly compatible with one another.

One final issue that may concern some readers is the exact nature of Peter's revelation. Several commentators weigh in on that issue:

Henricksen: “...this is not necessarily directly, by whispering something into the ear, but by blessing to the heart the means of grace, not the least of these means being the lessons which issued from the words and works of Jesus.”

Blomberg: “The language does not specify how God revealed himself or require some sudden flash of insight, but does affirm that God has led Peter to his correct understanding.”