§ 49. The Reformation and the Papacy.
Here is the place to interrupt the progress of events, and to reflect on the right or wrong of the attitude of Luther and the Reformation to the papacy.
1 It appeared in Klug’s Gesangbuch, Wittenberg, 1543, under the title:
‘* Hin Kinderlied zu singen, wider die zween Ertzfeinde Christi und seiner heiligen Kirchen, den Papst und Tirken.”’
§ 49. THE REFORMATION AND THE PAPACY. 269
The Reformers held the opinion that the papacy was an
antichristian institution, and some of the Protestant confessions of faith have given symbolical sanction to this theory. They did not mean, of course, that every individual Pope was an Antichrist (Luther spoke respectfully of Leo X.), nor that the papacy as such was antichristian: Melanchthon, at least, conceived of the possibility of a Christian papacy, or a general superintendence of the Church for the preservation of order and unity.! _ They had in view simply the institution as it was at their time, when it stood in open and deadly opposition to what they regarded as the truth of the gospel of Christ, and the free preaching of the same. Their theory does not necessarily exclude a liberal and just appreciation of the papacy before and after the Reformation.
And in this respect a great change has taken place among Protestant scholars, with the progress of exegesis and the knowledge of church history.
1. The prophetic Scripture texts to which the Reformers and early Protestant divines used to appeal for their theory of the papacy, must be understood in accordance with the surroundings and conditions of the writers and their readers who were to be benefited. This does not exclude, of course, an application to events and tendencies of the distant future, since history is a growing and expanding fulfillment of prophecy; but the application must be germane to the original design and natural meaning of the text. Few commentators would now find the Pope of Rome in “the little horn” of Daniel (7:8, 20, 21), who had in view rather Antiochus Epiphanes; or in the Apocalyptic beast from the abyss (Rev. 13:1), and “the mother of harlots” (17:5), which evidently apply to the persecuting heathen Rome of Nero and his successors.
1 See his appendix to the Smalcald Articles, 1537: De autoritate et primatu Pape.
254 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
St. John is the only biblical writer who uses the term « Antichrist ; 1 but he means by it, in the first instance, the Gnostic heresy of his own day, which denied the incarnation ; for he represents this denial as the characteristic sign of Antichrist, and represents him as being already in the world; yea, he speaks of “many” antichrists who had gone out of the Christian churches in Asia Minor. The Pope has never denied the incarnation, and can never do it without ceasing to be Pope. |
It is quite legitimate to use the terms “antichrist” and
‘‘antichristian ” in a wider sense, of all such men and tendencies as are opposed to Christ and his teaching; but we have no right to confine them to the Pope and the Roman Church. “Many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many” (Matt. 24:4, 11, 23, 24). _ St. Paul’s prediction of the great apostasy, and the “man of sin, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped; so that he sits in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God,” ? sounds much more than any other passage like a description of the papacy with its amazing claim to universal and infallible authority over the Church of God. But the application becomes more than doubtful when we remember that the apostle characterizes this antichristian apostasy as “the mystery of lawlessness,” already at work in his day, though restrained from open manifestation by some conservative power.2 The papacy did not yet exist at the time; and its besetting sin is not lawless freedom, but the very opposite.
11 John 2:18, 22; 4:8: 2 John 7.
22 Thess. 2:3-7. This is the passage Taken ae the Westminster Confession against the Pope, chap. xxv. 6.
ὃ τὸ γὰρ μυστήριον ἤδη ἐνεργεῖται τῆς ἀνομίας " μόνον ὁ κατέχων ἄρτι ἕως ἐκ μέσου γένηται. The Roman government was at first (before the Neronian persecution of 64) a protector of Christianity, and more particularly of Paul, who could effectually appeal to his Roman citizenship at Philippi, before the centurion at Jerusalem, and before Festus at Cesarea.