The gates will not prevail

[VeryTas]

Like many apologists I have used Matthew 16:18 ("you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it") defensively. That is, to assure myself or others that the Church will last intact until Christ comes in glory.

But the image is odd and suggests another view. I had been thrown off, first of all, by "the gates". Why is it plural? A good answer is that the entrance to most strongholds is a double door, each half a gate. Then there is the matter of what stronghold these gates belong to. Older English translations say "of hell", just as the Apostles' Creed has Jesus descending to "hell" -- in English; but the reference is not to what we mean these days by hell (the eternal worm-ridden fire of Gehenna, the outer darkness, or the lake of fire), but rather to the place of the dead, for which we have no word, other than the netherworld, the underworld, Hades, Sheol, or Death.

Fine then. But the problem I had was understanding how gates might ever be said to "prevail" or overcome or overpower the Church at all. Gates are not aggressive but inert. Perhaps to correct this strange image the 1970 NAB went so far as to replace these gates with "the jaws of death", in order to retain a threatening stance. That is an inaccurate (dishonest?) translation.

"Prevail" is from Latin "pre-" (before, fully, very) and "valeo" (be strong, dominate), and "against" can also mean "over against" or "compared to". And likewise with the Greek. But look what you can get when you add "not": the gates of Death will not be very strong against the Church, will not withstand her. As if the Church is the aggressor! And isn't she? Like Christ, doesn't the Church "harrow" Death's door (the weak spot of any fortress) to positively proclaim liberty to the dead, to lead a host of captives out of that darkness by his resurrection and gospel, and her sacraments?

The traditional image is still true enough, but can we also avail ourselves of this one, that Christ's cross was and still is a battering ram, or to put it more mildly, that the keys of the kingdom in Peter's hand include "the keys to death and the netherworld" (Rev. 1:18)?