Against the Pope

Q: How can I know that I am in the true church?

A: The true church is the household of God. By our baptism we are baptised into the name of Jesus Christ – the man whom God has appointed as our ruler under God – in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Thus everyone who is baptised and believes is in the true church, the house of God, an adopted and beloved child of the same, and will be saved.

Q: What is an Antichrist?

A: AN antichrist is someone who attempts to be a world-ruler. The Lord Jesus Christ is the King of Kings and the Lord of lords, so any claim of any other person to the same power makes him a rival, or anti, Christ.

Q: Why is the Bishop of Rome an Antichrist?

A: The Lord Jesus Christ, by his death and resurrection, has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. He has sat down at the Father’s right hand upon the throne of David where he has begun to rule that same empire. His ascension into heaven does not imply a distancing from power over the affairs of the earth, but the exact opposite. The right hand of Power is the most powerful place a man can be. He has begun to wage war against his enemies on earth from there, as it is written, “The LORD said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.”

The Pope claims to be excercising Christ’s power upon earth in his absence, hence the title Vicar of Christ (vicarious ruler). He has usurped Christ’s power and office, so he is without doubt an Antichrist.

Q: How are my sins remitted?

A: By grace alone, through the propitiation of the cross alone, and by faith alone, apart from the works of the law. If it is by grace then it is not of works, or grace is no longer grace. If then we are justified apart from the works of the law, being the commandments of God, how much less are we justified by the laws of the Pope?

Nevertheless, Pope Boniface VIII declared in his bull Unam Sanctum of 18 November 1302:

We declare, say, define, and proclaim to every human creature that they by necessity for salvation are entirely subject to the Roman Pontiff.

Luther commented:

Therefore, it is the devil himself who is speaking in the person of the pope and all such papal decrees. For if salvation consists in the observance of the pope’s laws, what need do we have of Christ as our Justifier and Saviour?

We see then that the Church of Rome, far from being the true church, is the home of treason against Christ, denial of the sufficiency of the cross, and it is filled with wicked hubris, pride and arrogance.

Monophysites and Diophysites

These words sound like something out of a physics textbook. In fact they describe two ways of thinking and speaking about the Lord Jesus Christ regarding the union and distinction between the divine Logos and his humanity.

Historically the Christian Church was divided by the Council of Chalcedon. Both sides agreed, and still do, that Christ is one person in which perfect divinity and perfect humanity are perfectly united. The difference lay in the terminology used by Chalcedon to describe this union. The monophysite (one nature) churches could not agree to the wording, so they withheld their consent. They were the African Churches of Egypt and Ethiopia, the Syrians, Armenians and the Indians. The diophysite (two natures) churches were the Western and Orthodox churches, and since then, the Protestant churches.

It may sound like a stupid argument about words, not substance, but there is a real and valid point to the Monophysite objection.

They argue that St. Cyril has taught us that since the incarnation it is wrong to speak of Christ as if he is two, and not one. For example, it is wrong to say that he is God and man, since that is to speak of two entities. Rather we should speak of the incarnate God, since that is to speak of a single entity, a single person.

They use the example of burning iron. One does not speak of it as fire and iron, but as one thing. To do otherwise is unnatural. Man is a perfect union of body and soul, yet we do not speak of man as body distinct from soul. When you have indigestion you do not say, “My body is feeling discomfort but my soul is not”. That is an absurd mode of speech.

There is a far more serious reason not to speak of the incarnate God in this way. Nestorianism teaches that Christ’s deity and his humanity are so distinct that they are in effect two persons. There is a divine person and a human person, but the union is hardly a union at all. The argument is that when Chalcedon speaks of Christ in these dualistic terms, even though they formally affirm the perfect union, they are thinking in a way that has very strong Nestorian tendencies, a way that is unnatural, and a way of thinking about the two natures that is heretical, because it is so much like Nestorianism.

If we are to speak of the Hypostatic Union even the language employed must avoid Nestorian-like modes of speech and categories of thought.

To be continued …