Posted on 07/10/2007 8:10:26 AM PDT by topcat54
The death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI have drawn great attention to the papacy in recent months. Such intense interest is remarkable. Much of it relates to the personality and accomplishments of John Paul II. He was a man of great courage and contributed significantly to the collapse of communism in eastern Europe.
Part of the interest also results from the powerful images that Rome can offer television cameras. Some of the greatest art and architecture of western civilization serve as a backdrop for elaborate rituals performed by gloriously clad clerics.
Part of the appeal for many—including non-Roman Catholics—is the sense of continuity and certainty provided by the institution of the papacy. The office of the pope connects us with the past, with a time of greater Christian presence and influence at all levels of society and culture in the west. It also speaks of certain moral standards defended against the relativism of our times.
All of these elements of appeal for the papacy went largely unexamined by the media. I heard few authentically Protestant voices challenging the papacy on historical or theological terms. A few Protestant leaders briefly provided words of praise for John Paul II, but the only criticism of papal theological positions came from more liberal Roman Catholics.
Perhaps the nature of the event (and of the media) made it unlikely that much Protestant opinion would be expressed. But in America—with many more Protestants than Roman Catholics—one might have expected some media exploration of why Protestants do not acknowledge the pope as the head of the church. The repeated claims that the pope is the successor of Peter and that the papacy is a 2000 year old institution went unexplored and unchallenged.
This Protestant silence says much about the state of Protestantism today. After observing the postponement of a royal wedding and the presence of the Prince of Wales, the prime minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury at the papal funeral, one Oxford historian declared, “Protestant England is dead.” Similarly, in America the reaction to the death of John Paul II was surprising. Our president, a Methodist, ordered American flags flown at half-staff—an honor not even accorded Winston Churchill. And while Mrs. Lillian Carter headed the American delegation to the funeral of John Paul I, the president and two former presidents represented the United States at this funeral. Does the American response indicate that Protestant America is more interested in religious toleration or a Christian united front than it once was?
Historic Protestant View of the Pope
Historically Protestants have been very critical of the papacy as an institution. They have rejected the papacy for its theological claims and for its tyrannical exercise of power over the churches.
Rome’s Claim #1: The Bishop of Rome is the earthly head of the whole church. Protestants have wanted to show historically and theologically that this claim is invalid. They have argued that the papacy is not a 2000 year old institution. Even if Peter did minister and die in Rome, it can not be demonstrated that he was bishop there in the Roman Catholic sense of that word. For Rome a bishop is a separate office in the church superior to the ministers (or priests) who serve under him. If Peter was a bishop in Rome, he was bishop in a New Testament sense where bishop is simply another term for minister or elder (see Titus 1:5-7). In I Peter 5:1 Peter simply refers to himself as a “fellow elder.”
Certainly many churches in the first five hundred years of the history of the church did not recognize a sovereign authority in the bishop of Rome. The churches of Eastern Orthodoxy have never recognized such a claim, and many churches in the western part of the Roman empire during those early centuries did not recognize them either.
Rome’s Claim #2: Peter is the rock on which the whole church is built. Roman Catholics have argued that Jesus indicated that the church is built on Peter as its rock, appealing to Matthew 16:18, 19. Peter (Petros) confesses that Jesus is the Christ, and Jesus responds that on this rock (petra) he will build his church. Most Protestants have insisted that Jesus the Christ is the rock on which the church is built. (Some argued that Peter as the confessor and believer in Christ stood for the faith of the church and in that sense was the rock.) Peter in his first epistle sees Jesus as the rock, calling Jesus the rock of offense (I Pet. 2:8). Also the keys of the kingdom given to Peter in Matthew 16 are not uniquely given to him, for Matthew 18:18 shows that they are given to all the disciples.
Even if Peter were the head of the entire church and the rock on which the church is built as the leading apostle, that fact would not demonstrate that Peter’s power could be passed on to anyone else. Only Jesus makes apostles, and even Rome grants that the office of apostle does not continue in the church beyond the first century.
The Pope as Antichrist: In Europe during the Middles Ages voices were raised against the claims of the Bishop of Rome. Some medieval Christians—notably radical followers of St. Francis of Assisi and of John Hus—argued that the pope was in fact the Antichrist because of his power, wealth and corruption. The pope’s use of military power, his accumulation of vast wealth and various moral scandals in the Vatican all seemed to support this belief.
The conviction that the pope was the Antichrist was held by almost all Protestants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When the pope refused to support reformation in the church and began to use the power of his office to persecute the advocates of reform, Luther concluded that the pope was Antichrist. Most other Protestants followed Luther in that belief.
Historic Protestant View: Biblical Basis
These early Protestants appealed to various texts of the Bible to support their contention. They cited 2 Thessalonians 2:3,4,9,10: “Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God….The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” Those Protestants noted that the Pope opposed the truth and claimed miracles to support his unbiblical teaching. They argued that he seated himself in the heart of the church which is the temple of God and took divine prerogative to himself, especially in changing the Gospel of grace.
They also applied Revelation 13:6,7 about the beast to the pope: “It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them….” (See also Daniel 7:25.) Protestants claimed that Rome’s rejection of the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone was a blasphemy against God and his grace in Christ. This doctrine was anathematized, or denounced as accursed, at the Council of Trent (1545-1563), a council which Rome believes is an official ecumenical council of the church. Trent’s anathemas were approved by the popes and remain a condemnation of that doctrine to this day. Further, many Protestant believed that because the popes supported the persecution of Protestants, leading to the martyrdom of tens of thousands of them in the sixteenth century, the papacy was revealed as the Antichrist.
Historic Protestant View: The Confessions
So strong was this Protestant conviction about the Pope that it was incorporated into several Protestant confessions. Philip Melanchthon in the official Lutheran “Apology of the Augsburg Confession,” (1531), Article 15, wrote: “If our opponents defend the notion that these human rites merit justification, grace, and the forgiveness of sins, they are simply establishing the kingdom of Antichrist. The kingdom of Antichrist is a new kind of worship of God, devised by human authority in opposition to Christ….So the papacy will also be a part of the kingdom of Antichrist if it maintains that human rites justify.”
Martin Luther wrote even more strongly in the Lutheran confessional document, the Smalcald Articles (1537), Part 2, Article 4, “The Papacy,” “this is a powerful demonstration that the pope is the real Antichrist who has raised himself over and set himself against Christ, for the pope will not permit Christians to be saved except by his own power, which amounts to nothing since it is neither established or commanded by God.”
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), chapter 25, section 6 declared: “There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God.”
While confessional Lutherans have not changed their confessional statements, most American Presbyterian churches have removed the declaration that the pope is Antichrist from their confession.
Conclusion
If many Protestants today are not persuaded that the pope is the Antichrist, what should we say of him? Has the theology of the Roman Catholic Church about the pope and about the Gospel changed? The Roman Catholic Church has changed some of its claims about being the only institution in which one can find salvation. It is willing to call Protestants in some sense separated brothers. There does seem to be more toleration and less commitment to coercion on the part of the bishop of Rome. We should be glad for these changes.
Still the basic teaching about the authority of the pope has not changed and the teaching about the Gospel also has not changed. The Roman Catholic Church still anathematizes the Protestant and biblical doctrine of justification.
The most important criterion by which any minister must be evaluated is this: did he preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ? As Paul taught clearly: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8). By that standard we must conclude that Pope John Paul II was no more a success than his predecessors since the time of the Reformation. Let us pray that Pope Benedict XVI, a very learned man, may come to see the truth as it is in Christ and teach it faithfully.
(c)2005 Westminster Seminary California All rights reserved
Who’s screaming?
I personally won't presume to inform Him as to whom He can and can't offer grace.
Who here is claiming that prerogative for himself?
I must be missing your point.
and that number would HAVE to include also RC’s and orthos. But I realize that you won’t see that, and I know I won’t convince you, so I don’t really see a need to continue. Besides, I have stuff I have to get acomplished today.
arrgghh.. You STILL have nothing to back up any of your facts. Sheesh!
if you find that number high you should really get out and talk to folks.
as for the Catholic and Orthodox there are folks who suggest that they can hold beleifs outside the church but that they’re part of it; they aren’t they’re apostates and they’ve abandoned the church. There are certainly Catholic and Orthodox apostates.
Does she have to go through purgatory?
Why in the world are you apologizing for not wanting to argue this with me when I clearly stated at the top of post
71 that I can’t argue it but am only presenting the information you wanted?
Phew!
I’m glad it’s not just me!
I can’t tell you.
I can’t tell you whether any of us will.
Not to stir up a can of worms, but that’s what Martin Luther was trying to get at: salvation by grace, through faith, not by our own works... He was trying to show that Scriptures themselves give us the assurance of salvation, through faith in Christ. It’s supposed to be a free gift, if we accept it willingly, acknowledging His grace in doing so. The funny thing is that humanity-then and now-is so jaded and cynical that we can’t believe anyone would give us such a gift without strings attached.
Then we’re a whole lot closer than we thought, aren’t we?
I pin my hopes on that. If I’m wrong, at least I lived life on the track I believed was correct. Didn’t Blaise Pascal talk about that?
Infallible interpretation is a Romish fiction.
Disputes about protestant vs. catholic vs. orthodox denominations are also meaningless when you look at the actual data. There is as much diversity of opinion among RC bishops and apologists as among Lutheran denomination (for instance). In the RC world every bishop is his own denomination.
Catholic Answers has hammered this same theme for years. According to them, an infallible, magisterial interpretation of Scripture is the only thing that can assure true unity, and the continuing proliferation and fragmentation of Protestant denominations is living proof that there can be no unity under the principle of sola scriptura.Suppose for the sake of argument we grant their premises and measure the Catholic apologists themselves by their own standard? [Karl] Keating is arguably the most prominent of dozens of Catholic apologists on the Internet. All of them claim they have an infallible interpretation of Scripture, given to them through the magisterium of Rome. So how has the principle of "unity" fared in the Roman Catholic apologetics community?
Not very well, it turns out. To cite one well-known example, Keating has disavowed and waged war on the Internet for several years against one of his best-known former lieutenants, Gerry Matatics, a convert from Protestantism who now heads an organization of his own. The trouble began, it seems, when Matatics declared his preference for traditional Catholicism with a Latin Mass, while Keating is staunchly in favor of the innovations instituted by the Vatican II Council—including the new Mass in the vernacular.
In 1995, Keating said he considered Matatics "a sad example of how schism leads very quickly to heresy." [The Wanderer, February 16, 1995 p. 7.] Keating has published a number of articles over the years in This Rock magazine warning other Catholics against his former associate's influence. [e.g., Karl Keating, "Habemus Papam?" This Rock (July/August 1995).] Both sides took their case to the World Wide Web, posting articles and open letters, debating whether Keating or Matatics best represents the "Catholic" position. [See, for example, "An Open Letter to Mr. Gerry Wells in Defense of Gerry Matatics"]
The battle raged for several years while Matatics remained in full communion with Rome. Then in early 2005, Matatics embraced a view known as sedevacantism, which is the opinion that no legitimate pope has occupied the Holy See since the death of Pius XII. Ostensibly, this involves a kind of auto-excommunication. According to Dave Armstrong (himself a lay Catholic apologist), when Matatics renounced the current pope,
he incurred latae sententiae (automatic excommunication), based on cc. 751 and 1364 of the Code of Canon Law. The first states: the aforesaid canons defines schism as "refusal of subjection to the Roman Pontiff, or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him". The second states that the penalty for is automatic excommunication.Matatics, of course, still considers himself a Roman Catholic—a truer Catholic than those who accept Vatican II. The ironic thing is that virtually every pope for the 450 years before Vatican II would have much more in common with Matatics than with Keating in their respective opinions about the Mass. (So much for semper eadem.)And Matatics is not the only Roman Catholic apologist to wage a public feud with Keating. Robert A. Sungenis is still at it.
Such feuds are symptomatic of several larger conflicts within the Catholic Church. Keating is a "conservative Catholic," whereas Sungenis is a "traditionalist." The Roman Catholic Church is home to vast differences of opinion about the Marian doctrines, confusion about supposed Marian prophecies, disputes over canon law, and other deep-seated disagreements about important doctrines. Various factions and sects operate within the walls of the Catholic Church, waging polemic battles as lively and intense as any that ever took place between Protestant denominations.
i don’t think you’d ever hear and Orthodox call an individual bishop infailable...
Well, Google is my friend. I’ll look it up!
(after the Mac and cheese is done)
Ha!
I got tossed from Catholic Answers!
Trust me, Catholic Answers is not the Vatican.
You won’t hear it from a Roman Catholic either.
We know our Bishops can be wacky. The Bishop of Rome is only infalable in matters of dogma. They are few and far between.
Is that supposed to be a Roman Catholic answer?
"All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven." (CCC 1032)
According to the CCC, unless your Methodist aunt died in a perfect state of grace she faced purgatory. No?
And the only way she could have died in a perfect state of grace is by confessing her sins to a priest in the sacrament of penance, and then immediately expiring before any impure thought, word or deed could have stained her soul.
Is that not the dogma of the RCC? Is that not what you believe?
BTW, this statement is wrong...
Sungenis is a “traditionalist.” (implying that he is a branch of The Roman Catholic church)
No he isn’t, he is in schizm. This kind of Traditionalist does not believe that the Pope is the Pope. He also is a Protestant, protesting Rome.
We are also taught that no one knows the mind of God at the hour of death.
I can’t, nor will I presume to know God’s Mind.
Now I’m not sure if it’s suppose to be a Roman Catholic answer but it’s coming from a Roman Catholic.
That is something along the lines I tried stating before. But you have to admit, at least the Protestants are honest and open about it. :)
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