The events Stein is describing here are recorded in Mark 8, Matthew 16, and Luke 9. They took place in the Gentile city of Caesarea Philippi, and include chiefly Peter's confession of Jesus as the Messiah, and Jesus' beginning to teach them about his crucifixion and resurrection.
"The events of Caesarea Philippi were clearly the watershed and turning point of Jesus' ministry. It is at this point that the disciples came to acknowledge, despite their own misconceptions, that Jesus was indeed the Christ. Upon receiving this confession, Jesus began to prepare the disciples for his forthcoming passion."
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"The necessity of preparing the disciples for the future passion was understandable. One need only observe the response of Peter to this teaching to see why. Despite the verbal correctness of his earlier confession that Jesus was the Christ, Peter's understanding of what this confession implied was seriously flawed. In his thinking, as in the thinking of most of his contemporaries, there was no place for the suffering, rejection, and death of which Jesus spoke. Jesus had altered in part the disciples' nationalistic preconceptions about the person and work of the Messiah, but there was no room for a messianic passion in their understanding. Consequently Peter began to criticize and even rebuke Jesus for teaching this. No wonder Jesus had commanded his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ. If the disciples were still confused and harbored misconceptions concerning the work of the Messiah, how much more confused must the crowds have been."
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"In the past one could usually tell if a commentator in the gospel of Matthew was a Roman Catholic or Protestant simply by how he or she interpreted this passage of Scripture. If the rock was interpreted as referring to Peter, the commentator was Roman Catholic. If the rock was interpreted as alluding to Peter's confession that Jesus was the Christ, he or she was a Protestant. It is unfortunate when the interpretation of a text is predetermined from the start by one's religious affiliation. One's religious background predisposes how one interprets a text such as this. Such awareness should serve as a first step in trying to be more objective....
The easiest way of understanding this pun [between Peter's name, which means "a stone," and the word "rock" upon which the church is built] is to assume that Jesus is referring to Peter as a 'rock' due to the future role he would play in the church. Peter is the one who would serve as the early leader of the church; it would be through him that the gospel would be proclaimed in Jerusalem, Judea (Acts 2:1-4:31), and Samaria (Acts 8:14-25), and it would be through Peter that the first Gentiles would hear the gospel and believe (Acts 10:1-11:18). There is a real sense, therefore, that it would be through the ministry of Peter, the leader of the apostles, that the church would be established and grow...Protestants and Orthodox can join with Roman Catholics in joy over the gift of this man to the church. However, there is no hint anywhere in this text or in the rest of the New Testament that this leadership role was passed on in perpetuity to a successor of any sort."
--Robert Stein, Jesus the Messiah
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