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Protestants and the Pope
W. Robert Godfrey
(First published in
Evangelium, Vol. 3, Issue 4, July/August 2005)
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.
Ó2005
Westminster Seminary California All rights reserved
Evangelium is a quarterly publication of the Seminary. For more
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S. M. Baugh
R. Scott Clark
Iain M. Duguid
Bryan D. Estelle
W. Robert Godfrey
Michael S. Horton
Dennis E. Johnson
Hywel R. Jones
Peter R. Jones
Joel E. Kim
Julius J. Kim
George C. Scipione
Robert B. Strimple
David M. VanDrunen
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