Matthew 16:18 — "Upon This Rock"

The Eastern Orthodox Church affirms Peter's special role and honor among the apostles but firmly rejects the interpretation of Matthew 16:18 as establishing papal primacy as the Roman Catholic Church understands it. The Orthodox reading emphasizes that 'rock' refers to Peter's faith and confession rather than to an institutional office that would grant one bishop absolute authority over the entire church. Peter is venerated as the chief apostle and there is a tradition of patriarchal primacy within Orthodoxy, but this is understood as an honor and a responsibility to serve the ecumenical councils and the whole episcopate rather than as absolute jurisdiction. The Orthodox Church maintains that papal primacy in the Roman sense developed later and represents a distortion of apostolic ecclesiology.