Lutherans, Is This True?

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Novocastrian said:
Fortunately she makes relatively few polemical pronouncements. Bishop Jewel talks of the Papacy as Antichrist, but the English church has always recognised the Roman church as a true church, while rejecting its more extravagant claims.
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All is through the eyes of the beholder - from the other side of the Tiber.
 
Novocastrian said:
I quite understand. I imagine Lutherans feel the same way about being told that they are not a real church, that they aren’t allowed to own property, that their church was founded by an incontinent, excommunicated monk, etc.
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I imagine that was a snipe at Catholics, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. Excommunicated? That would be a matter of historical fact, but I would guess that they view it as a good thing to be excommunicated by the antichrist. Who said they aren’t a real church or couldn’t own property? Was that an official Church teaching? What do you mean incontinent?
 
steido01 said:
By listening. By not hearing what has not been said.

My guess is that you find the word antichrist to be off-putting because of modern connotations. The modern, popular connotations from those stupid “Left Behind” books has nothing at all to do with the biblical terms. So instead of “hearing” revulsion at that meaning, instead try to “listen” to what Lutherans actually mean by the term. As I have explained in my previous post, the label “antichrist” can apply to anyone who obscures the Gospel of Christ. You’ll note that antichrist, in the Lutheran understanding, is a term that can apply to even misguided Lutherans!

Hope that helps.

On the flipside, how are Lutherans supposed to feel when Rome called those who professed our teachings of Grace Alone to be “anathema” - in other words, damned?
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I haven’t read any of the Left Behind books. Why would you guess that was what informed my revulsion? It’s not just modern or popular connotations that envision the antichrist as a person, a number of people, or a “spirit” a person participates in. Why do you think I made the distinction between being Antichrist vs anti-Christ? If you really think that I didn’t “listen” to what Lutherans apparently think, why would I even have wanted a clarification?

Anathema doesn’t mean damned.
 
steido01 said:
It had only been posted two hours when you posted. 🤷 I work. 😃

Is it true that the Lutheran Confessions understand that the institution of the papacy is Antichrist? Yes. That’s what the LCMS page is simply restating. Randy, I don’t think it was your intent, but I think you emphasized a section that is meant to serve as a simple conclusion about how the LCMS holds to the Confessions in relation to the topic of Antichrist; read the 1,029 preceding characters and you’ll see that it is not so simple as ‘the Pope is the Antichrist!’

Now let’s take a look at why Lutherans consider the institution of the papacy to be anti-Christ. The Reformers gave three reasons why the term applied to the Papacy (below). At least one of these (#2), does not apply in our day, since the Pope is no longer a kingmaker (one less issue keeping us from restored unity! :D):

  1. *]The Roman Pontiff claims for himself [in the first place] that by divine right he is [supreme] above all bishops and pastors [in all Christendom].
    *]Secondly, he adds also that by divine right he has both swords, i.e., the authority also of bestowing kingdoms [enthroning and deposing kings, regulating secular dominions etc.].
    *]And thirdly, he says that to believe this is necessary for salvation. And for these reasons the Roman bishop calls himself [and boasts that he is] the vicar of Christ on earth.

    From the Frequently Asked Questions section of the same website:
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  1. So…let me get this:

    If the pope is acting like an ordinary Christian…he is a good christian…but when he exercises the office of the papacy…as a bishop…the office or see of Peter…he is anti-Christ…and is therefor…a bad Christian when he does?
 
Alizarin said:
Having three popes in Catherine of Siena’s day can’t have helped much with keeping the Body together.

And the problem with judging by their fruits is that every church, while producing some very good fruit, has also prroduced some that’s really rotten. We all live in houses made of glass…
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But Catherine did endeavor to keep the Church together…and helped heal the schism…nor further the schism.
 
It is really fascinating to learn how many ecclesiastical communities have taken such great pains to mention the pope specifically in their confessions when the Catholic Church has not bothered to acknowledge any of them at all.
 
pablope said:
So…let me get this:

If the pope is acting like an ordinary Christian…he is a good christian…but when he exercises the office of the papacy…as a bishop…the office or see of Peter…he is anti-Christ…and is therefor…a bad Christian when he does?
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Depends on if he still maintains that he has universal jurisdiction and supremacy. Very roughly the same problems the Orthodox have with the office.
 
benjohnson said:
Depends on if he still maintains that he has universal jurisdiction and supremacy. Very roughly the same problems the Orthodox have with the office.
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Well…then…why just not drop all pretenses of loving the pope…cause he is not going to be what you want him to be…and when he became pope…he them became a bad christian…according to Lutherans…so why not just start calling the pope the Anti-Christ…from now on…🤷
 
Alizarin said:
Having three popes in Catherine of Siena’s day can’t have helped much with keeping the Body together.
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To be precise, there was one valid pope and two claimants.

Further, since the Church has continued to exist and did NOT fracture, obviously, we managed to get through it.
 
pablope said:
Well…then…why just not drop all pretenses of loving the pope…cause he is not going to be what you want him to be…and when he became pope…he them became a bad christian…according to Lutherans…so why not just start calling the pope the Anti-Christ…from now on…🤷
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Well from what I’ve read on this thread, Lutherans traditionally say, not “The pope is the anti-Christ”, but “The pope is anti-Christ”. (I can’t verify if that’s true, that’s just what I’m reading here.) If that’s true then why would they switch to saying “The pope is the anti-Christ” (from now on)?
 
SteveVH said:
I’m just kind of sitting here shaking my head. I was not aware of this belief by Lutherans as stated in their Confessions, and I don’t care how you cut it, it says what it says. My question to the Lutheran posters on this thread is: Do you believe this language should be removed from the Confessions?
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Yes. The term “heterodox” would be sufficient, without the modern dispensationalist overtones, which weren’t the intent of the Reformers.

Jon
 
SteveVH said:
I’m just kind of sitting here shaking my head. I was not aware of this belief by Lutherans as stated in their Confessions, and I don’t care how you cut it, it says what it says. My question to the Lutheran posters on this thread is: Do you believe this language should be removed from the Confessions?
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While the language is archaic and particularly abrasive to modern ears, it should not be removed. It should be better explained, and laypersons better catechized. I’m not a fan of changing doctrine to appease groups that, in our view, hold heterodox beliefs.

Similarly, non-Lutherans should understand that the term does not mean what they might think it to.

We still pray for the Pope. He still serves as a wonderful Christian witness to the world.
 
Randy_Carson said:
To be precise, there was one valid pope and two claimants.

Further, since the Church has continued to exist and did NOT fracture, obviously, we managed to get through it.
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It temporarily fractured.

Anyway, one has to wonder what would count as a permanent fracture, if we’re not counting the schism between Rome and Constantinople, Rome and Canterbury, or Rome and Wittenberg.
 
Novocastrian said:
It temporarily fractured.

Anyway, one has to wonder what would count as a permanent fracture, if we’re not counting the schism between Rome and Constantinople, Rome and Canterbury, or Rome and Wittenberg.
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Pointing to the stick in the eye of another does not take away the log in ours.

The fracture is not permanent because of the one constant:

Rome - The Chair of Peter.

You can keep throwing one liners and that is all there are… I can play that game as well but all you have to know after all the attacks against Catholicism is that:

Here we stand because of Christ.

We are right here, right now. After all the problems (A lot of them our own) and the ones to come, we are with Christ and His Rock.
 
steido01 said:
While the language is archaic and particularly abrasive to modern ears, it should not be removed. It should be better explained, and laypersons better catechized. I’m not a fan of changing doctrine to appease groups that, in our view, hold heterodox beliefs.

Similarly, non-Lutherans should understand that the term does not mean what they might think it to.

We still pray for the Pope. He still serves as a wonderful Christian witness to the world.
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Fair enough.

And you won’t object if we stick with “no salvation outside the Church”, right? 😛
 
Isaiah45_9 said:
If I am not mistaken, their final position on this matter is that the Office of the Papacy is anti-Christ - meaning against Christ. I don’t think they interpret the individual Pope as being the Anti-Christ.
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He is sitting in the chair.Whats the difference?
 
steido01 said:
While the language is archaic and particularly abrasive to modern ears, it should not be removed. It should be better explained, and laypersons better catechized.
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I found an interesting quote on usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and-interreligious/ecumenical/lutheran/attitudes-papal-primacy.cfm
In considering the historic Lutheran position on the papacy, we have become very much aware that the early Reformers did not reject what we have called the “Petrine function,” but rather the concrete historical papacy as it confronted them in their day. In calling the pope the “antichrist,” the early Lutherans stood in a tradition that reached back into the eleventh century.7 Not only dissidents and heretics but even saints had called the bishop of Rome the “antichrist” when they wished to castigate his abuse of power. What Lutherans understood as a papal claim to unlimited authority over everything and everyone reminded them of the apocalyptic imagery of Daniel 11, a passage that even prior to the Reformation had been applied to the pope as the antichrist of the last days. The pope’s willingness to derive advantage from doctrines and practices that seemed to them to contradict the gospel compelled them to resist such doctrines and practices as antichristian.8
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