How far, we must ask here, did Luther recognize the dominion of the papacy as a part of
the true catholic church? He did not look upon the Pope in the historical and legal light as the
legitimate head of the Roman Church; but he fought him to the end of his life as the antagonist of
the gospel, as the veritable Antichrist, and the papacy as an apostasy. He could not have otherwise
justified his separation, and the burning of the papal bull and law-books. He assumed a position to
the Pope and his church similar to that of the apostles to Caiaphas and the synagogue. Nevertheless,
whether consistently or not, he never doubted the validity of the ordinances of the Roman Church,
having himself been baptized, confirmed, and ordained in it, and he never dreamed of being
re-baptized or re-ordained. Those millions of Protestants who seceded in the sixteenth century were
of the same opinion, with the sole exception of the Anabaptists who objected to infant-baptism,
partly on the ground that it was an invention of the popish Antichrist, and therefore invalid.
Nor did Luther or any of the Reformers and sensible Protestants doubt that there always
were and are still many true Christians in the Roman communion, notwithstanding all her errors
and corruptions, as there were true lsraelites even in the darkest periods of the Jewish theocracy.
In his controversy with the Anabaptists (1528), Luther makes the striking admission: "We confess
that under the papacy there is much Christianity, yea, the whole Christianity, and has from thence
come to us. We confess that the papacy possesses the genuine Scriptures, genuine baptism, the
genuine sacrament of the altar, the genuine keys for the remission of sins, the true ministry, the
true catechism, the Ten Commandments, the articles of the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer. ... I say that
under the Pope is the true Christendom, yea, the very élite of Christendom, and many pious and
great saints."^690
For proof he refers, strangely enough, to the very passage of Paul, 2 Thess. 2:3, 4, from
which he and other Reformers derived their chief argument that the Pope of Rome is Antichrist,
"the man of sin," "the son of perdition." For Paul represents him as sitting "in the temple of God;"
that is, in the true church, and not in the synagogue of Satan. As the Pope is Antichrist, he must be
among Christians, and rule and tyrannize over Christians.^691 Melanchthon, who otherwise had
greater respect for the Pope and the Roman Church, repeatedly expressed the same view.^692 Luther
came nearer the true position when he said that the Roman Church might be called a "holy church,"
by synecdoche or ex parte, with the same restriction with which Paul called the Galatian Christians
"churches," notwithstanding their apostasy from the true gospel.^693
(^690) "Ich sage, dass unter dem Papst die rechte Christenheit ist, ja der rechte Ausbund der Christenheit, und viel frommer, grosser
Heiligen." (Von der Wiedertaufe, Erl. ed. XXVI. 257 sq.) The Roman Catholic Möhler does not fail to quote this passage in his Symbolik,
p. 422 sq. He says of Luther’s conception of the church (p. 424), that it is not false, but only one-sided (nicht falsch, obgleich einseitig).
He virtually admits the Protestant distinction between the visible and the invisible church, but holds that the Catholics put the visible
church first as the basis of the invisible, while the Protestants reverse the order.
(^691) Ibid. p. 258. Critical commentators have long since abandoned this interpretation. Whatever be the wider applicability of this passage,
Paul certainly meant a "mystery of lawlessness" (not tyranny) already at work in his time (ἤδη ἐνεργει̑ται, 2 Thess. 2:7), long before
popery existed, or before there was even a bishop of Rome (unless it be Peter). Moreover, "lawlessness," which is the proper translation
of ἀνομία, is not characteristic of popery, but the very opposite. If Paul refers to Rome at all, it is rather as a "restraining" force, τὸ κατέχον,
vers. 6, 7 (Comp. Rom. 13:1). The term "Antichrist" occurs only in the Epistles of John, and he speaks of "many Antichrists" in his own
day. In a wider sense all is antichristian that is contrary to the spirit and aim of Christ in any church or any age.
(^692) In his Judicium de Jure reformandi, 1525 ("Corp. Ref." I. 767): "It is written that the Antichrist will have a great and powerful reign
in the last times, as Paul says, Antichrist will be seated and rule in the temple of God, that is, in the church." And again in the "Apology
of the Augsburg Confession" (1530), arts. VII. and VIII. (Müller’s ed., p. 152): "Paulus praedicat futurum, ut Antichristus sedeat in
templo Dei, hoc est, inecclesiadominetur et gerat officia."
(^693) Com. in Ep. ad Gal. (Erl. ed., 1. 40 sq.): "Paulus vocat ecclesia Galatiae per synecdochen ... Sie et nos hodie vocamus ecclesiam
romanam sanctam et omnes episcopatus sanctos, etiamsi sint subversi et episcopi et ministri eorum impii. Deus enim regnat in medio