Now, Peter’s confession of faith in the divine sonship of Jesus is not contrary to his human intellect. After all, Peter witnesses lots of events that point to Jesus’s unique identity, such as the walking on water, the stilling of the storm, and the Transfiguration. In the end, however, according to Jesus, Peter is only able to believe the incomprehensible mystery that Jesus is really “the Son of the living God” because God himself reveals it to him. As the apostle Paul would later put it: “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3).
