In order to form a just estimate of Luther’s views on the papacy, it must not be forgotten
that they were uttered in the furnace-heat of controversy, and with all the violence of his violent
temper. They have no more weight than his equally sweeping condemnation of Aristotle and Thomas
Aquinas.
§ 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.
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.^290
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.
- 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.
St. John is the only biblical writer who uses the term Antichrist;"^291 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).
(^290) See his appendix to the Smalcald Articles, 1537: De autoritate et primatu Papae.
(^291) 1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 7.