| | preface
In many of my various discussions regarding the Roman Catholic
Church, I end up arguing points with folks from all backgrounds, including
everybody from the not-so-distant “Orthodox” to fundamentalist Baptist and
everybody in between. Few of these people still hold to the original doctrines
espoused by the so-called Reformers, but some do, and talking with them is
always interesting. In one of my recent discussions, I came across a nice
fellow who believed (along with the rest of the RPCNA) that the Pope is
Antichrist, and more specifically, the man of sin represented in St. Paul’s
second epistle to the Christians in Thessalonica. He posed a challenge for me,
to wit: that I prove from Holy Writ alone that the Pope – or, the succession of
Popes – is not the “man of sin” spoken of therein. This alone, he explained,
was his reason for rejecting the Catholic Church. The following post is based
on my response to his challenge.
Hic est antichristus qui
negat Patrem et Filium
It must be said from the
outset that I cannot prove to anybody that the Pope, or that all the collective
bishops of Rome are not the singular “man of sin” mentioned in the Scriptures. The
reason for this is the same reason that nobody can prove to me that he is (or
they are), based on the Scriptures alone. One can offer his private opinion and
I can offer mine, but at the end of the day, each man retains the prerogative
of whom or what he will believe in terms of an interpretative scheme and why.
Since I have no control over that, whether or not I have proven anything,
always resides with the listener and with him alone. I might reverse the
challenge and make my opponent “prove” that the Church that Jesus established
was actually the many thousands of Protestant sects which would appear many
hundreds of years later; at the end of the day, I would be the sole judge of
whether or not he had proven this satisfactorily.
Secondly, proving that a
singular Pope (the text does say “man” and not “men”) is the man of sin is not
enough to disprove the claims of the Catholic Church since the Pope’s being
Antichrist is certainly within the realm possibility. But more to the point,
proving that the Pope is Antichrist is not enough, in itself, to demonstrate
the claims of Protestantism. There are so many heretical sects (ones that even all
mainstream Protestants would consider heretical) that are also in stark
opposition to the Roman Catholic Church. The claim that the Pope is Antichrist
could be accepted by Coptic Christians, Eastern Orthodox, Mohammedans, Mormons,
Children of God, Swedenborgians, as well as many rural fringe charismatic sects.
Thirdly, there is a
constant refrain that I hear regarding a great singular apostasy which is
prophesied by St. Paul, and this apostasy is always accepted – prima facie – to be the corruption of the Roman Church. Yet history
records hundreds of apostasies, all of which most Christians would also
consider apostasies, to wit: Marcionism, Nestorianism, chiliasm, Donatism,
Montanism, Eutychianism, &c. Demonstrating that an apostasy in fact took
place does not prove de facto that
“the apostasy” was that of the Roman Catholic Church. And the truth is that neither
does it prove that Protestantism is the true religion. One must keep in mind
that there are hundreds of current Restorationist Christian sects, all of which
claim the exact same thing: that a great apostasy occurred within the Church, from which apostasy the Church would not recover for many centuries.
Saying that the Catholic
Church began the apostasy is not enough to make the greater case – it must also
be demonstrated that whatever sect you happen to hold is the true one. And
there are thousands upon thousands of sects, all claiming to be the true restoration
of the Church – the same Church which was destroyed or corrupted in the Roman Church.
Let me name a few of them: Iglesia Ni Cristo, the Boston Church of Christ, the Church of God of
Prophecy, the House of Yahweh, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists,
the Campellites and the Millerites, and Luz del Mundo. All of these sects make
the exact same claims as the Reformed Protestant, yet possess completely
different doctrinal standards. In the grand scheme of things, what is one more
sect amongst so many? For me even to give weight to one particular brand of Restorationist
Christianity, I then would have to evaluate every single sect that was ever
born of men. Why? Because if the Church fell once, she can fall again, and the
brand of Christianity that one accepts now may well undergo its very own
apostasy down the road, requiring yet another Reformation, where everything previously
thought to be true is shown actually to be false – based on the Bible alone, of
course, or which ever books were decided still belong therein.
Specifically, what makes
the claim of the Lutherans valid, but not that of the Mohammedans, Mormons, or
Millerites? If one can entertain that the entire Church fell and nobody saw it
happen, then I can maintain that any other particular sect did fell as well and
then we would have to investigate the claims of every single Joe Schmoe who
came along with yet a new reading of the Scriptures. And why would we have to
do this? Precisely because we would believe in a Church that is capable of
teaching error. There would be no pillar or bulwark of the truth – just we,
alone in the desert with our Bibles, yet without anybody to tell us how to read
them. This is, ultimately, the scenario being presented to me. All Protestants will
vehemently deny it, but there really is no way out of this. If a Reformation
can come along and undo everything before it – or even ninety per cent – then
another Reformation can come along and undo everything that the first one did.
And now, given all the
aforementioned caveats, I will attempt to deal with the text at hand. The claim
is that St. Paul said that this Man of Sin would sit in the temple of God (i.e. the
church). Yet just because the Pope sits in the Church does not automatically
make him the culprit here. All Protestants – indeed, all men of Christian
persuasion – can be said to “sit in the temple of God” as well.
Next, it is said that “he would
claim to be God on earth.” Yet many, many men have made this foolish claim. And
not many of these men who have made this claim have been Catholics, let alone
the Pope. There is no such teaching of the Catholic Church that the Pope is God
on earth. The teaching is that he is the Vicar of Christ, which is hardly the
same thing. He in a very real sense fills the same office as the Old Testament
prophet who would speak to kings and say, “Thus saith the Lord.” The prophet
was not claiming to be God on earth, but he did indeed act as God’s mouthpiece
on earth. God uses mouthpieces all the time. Sometimes they are asses, and
sometimes they are angels. But they are all God’s mouthpieces without taking
away from His ultimate Deity.
Finally, it is claimed
that this man of sin – the Pope, as the theory goes – “leads the apostasy, a
falling away from the truth within the church.” But there were numerous
accounts of these kinds of things, as I said above – why single out the
Catholic Church, especially when Protestants by and large accept many of the
dogmas that were taught by the Popes and the Catholic Church – even after this apostasy
supposedly took place?
The Scriptures tell us
specifically what the teaching of Antichrist would be, and no Pope has ever
taught what the Scripture says that Antichrist would teach, to wit: that Jesus
is not the Christ, denying the Father and the Son (cf. I John II:xxii). If a
culprit is to be found for this teaching, there are many people who did this in
the early days of the Church, and I have already named a few of them.
The main problem with this
theory is that when I ask when it is that the Bishop of Rome became Antichrist,
nobody ever has a specific answer, yet St. Paul says that all this rumpus would
happen after a specific revolt followed by a singular revelation of a singular
man. Very well then, what was this specific revolt? In what year did it occur?
Who was the singular man, and whose identity was revealed of which the holy
text speaks? I ask this because these things cannot be identified, I find nothing
about the argument even remotely compelling.
Now the first great revolt
that happened after St. Paul wrote his letter to the church in Thessalonica was the Jewish-Roman
war, a great revolt, after which Nero took power (a. d. 66). He ruthlessly persecuted
Christians, had the temple destroyed, and most certainly did see himself as a
deity on earth. His megalomania was even observed by the heathen of his day.
And yet even after all of
this, there is nothing in the text to indicate that an office, or a succession
of popes is the singular “man of sin”. If one wishes to tell me which Pope it
was, or which it will be, then by all means let it be known.
However, identifying which
Pope it was will only present a whole new set of problems for the argument.
Should one decide that the
Pope in A.D. 66 (St. Peter) was Antichrist, then that would not look too
appealing, especially since he wrote some of the books of the Bible. If you
pick his successor, St. Linus, that does not bode well either, because St. Paul speaks
well of St. Linus in his epistle to the Romans.
Suppose it be St. Xystus –
and he did reign around the time of the revolt of Bar-Kochba – but actually he
did not do anything particularly man-of-sin-like. All we know that he did was
to codify certain parts of the Mass. For instance, he did say that all the
people have to recite the Sanctus together after the Preface. But that is
hardly the behaviour for which we are looking in order to identify Antichrist. Then
there is Pope St. Victor (A.D. 180), but he stood up for the deity of Christ
Himself, and actually excommunicated a priest for denying it. By St. John’s own
criterion, he fails to make the status of Antichrist.
One might go all the way
to Pope St. Sylvester (as many often do, supposing that his name was actually Constantine), but Sylvester
does not come after a large revolt. In fact, he and Constantine were around when
the Edict of Milan was passed, when Christianity was legalised. After that, there
is not a great deal to happen revolt-wise for a great season.
And I would be remiss if I
did not mention that nearly all Protestants (and especially the Reformed type) accept
the Œcumenical Councils at least up through the fifth century as being binding
for doctrinal orthodoxy. All this brings us pretty late in the game for this
great apostasy to have started.
And yet, in the mean
while, hundreds of real, bona fide, historically-recorded apostasies had already
occurred, but I am to ignore those. No, not just ignore them, but I am to side
with the Catholic Church and accept her rulings at those junctures against those heretics. The Church slowly moves
along, condemns Arius and Mani and Donatus – all well and good – but then at
some point everything changes. Some huge cataclysmic event happens (but nobody
notices) and suddenly the Pope is Antichrist, the Catholic Church is full of
errors, and all of this happens to occur whilst evading recorded history and without
sparking schism. Or even discussion. It just happened. And then all the events that
led up to it and resulted from it were just washed down the Memory Hole.
I am forever curious as to
where all the Bible-believing Christians were when this change took place. Did
they all just hop right along down the path of perdition behind the great Whore
of Babylon?
None of it adds up. Even
so, I am willing to hear the various theories on this. I just cannot see how
this can make any sense when analysed with any depth whatsoever.
But at the end of the day,
the most obvious thing that sticks out is that the Scriptures say “man of sin”
and not “men of sin”. The desire to turn the word “man” into the word “men” has
a specific name I learnt in my Protestant high school systematic theology class:
eisegesis. |
