The promise of Peter’s primacy has been the subject of intensive exegetical research, which has focused on its literary and linguistic aspects in recent years. The results of that research are summed up in the first part of the study. The second part offers a hermeneutic interpretation of the text from the perspective of the the initiatory approach. Considered within the initiatory approach, the text of the promise of Peter’s primacy reveals the internal structure of the ecclesia at a certain stage in the initiation of the early Church. It is a community of believers in Jesus as the Messiah – that is, a community of catechumens. Peter wields twofold power in that community: the power of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and the power to bind and loose. The power to bind and loose concerns catechumens, whereas the power of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven applies to pre-catechumens.
