Loehe denies Pope is the Antichrist = not Lutheran (Walther, Der Lutheraner) Part 1

      When I ran into this essay by Walther in Der Lutheraner of 1874, I realized that it was perhaps the most definitive defense against what the LC-MS teaches today. I had blogged in 2015 about Pieper's forceful teaching that the Pope is the Antichrist.  But here we see Walther defending against the Romanizing German theologian Wilhelm Loehe and his followers in America, the Iowa Synod, later the ALC, now the ELCA.  But the actual teaching of today's LC-MS is not only much the same, it is actually worse than Loehe's teaching!  How so?  Read Walther's clear, simple, direct defense, from Der Lutheraner, vol. 30 (1874), p. 41-42 [EN] (underlining follows Walther's emphasis):

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The Loeheans and the Doctrine of the Antichrist.

As is well known, all Millennialists [Chiliasten] deny that the Pope is the Antichrist proclaimed in the Word of God, namely 2 Thess. 2. Therefore, already in 1850, Pastor Loehe wrote in reference to the Smalcald Articles, in which the Pope is declared to be the true Antichrist (ipsum verum antichristum) [Triglotta]:  

“Nevertheless, one will have a just concern to agree: The pope is the Antichrist. ... One will therefore have to take the concrete language of Luther in this way: The papacy and every pope, as it has become in the Roman Church, has something anti-Christian; every Pope can be called an antichrist; but the Antichrist is still missing." *)  

The Iowans [Iowa Synod, ALC, ELCA], who are known to be Loehe's faithful disciples, therefore agree with Loehe also in this. They, too, wrote in 1858 in their Synod report with regard to the Smalcald Articles: “Thus that sentence only wants to express: the papacy is anti-Christian.” Furthermore: “It is not to be denied that the papacy is anti-Christian, or that many popes can be called antichrists, in the same sense in which 1 John 2:18 speaks of many antichrists. But the man of sin mentioned in 2 Thess. 2 is a definite human personality, and for that very reason still future.” Furthermore: “This apostasy” (2 Thess. 2:3) “in the Antichrist we also have to expect as still in the future.” (pp. 17, 19, 28) Therefore, as late as 1867, the Iowans, on behalf of their Synod, on the occasion of our public colloquy with them, made the declaration in writing: “But the Antichrist in the strictest sense is a single person, and will appear in the end to be destroyed by Christ in his future.” **) 

It would be foolish to be surprised about this – Millennialists [or Chiliasts] cannot judge otherwise. According to their view of the millennial kingdom, they cannot even assume that the Papacy is the prophesied great “apostasy” and that the prophesied actual “Antichrist” has therefore already come. If, however, they want to be considered good Lutherans, they are urged to believe that the doctrine that it is a clear doctrine of the Lutheran confessions, what do they do then?  Then they usually take refuge in the pretense that the doctrine of the Antichrist is only an “open question” or only an unimportant secondary doctrine, yes, the doctrine that the Pope is the Antichrist “cannot be drawn from Scripture, but only from history and experience,” †) therefore one can be a quite good, confessional [page 41 col. 3] Lutheran, even if one does not consider the Pope to be the actual prophesied Antichrist with the Smalcald Articles, but expects him only in the future (i.e. immediately before the millennial kingdom).  

This pretense is groundless, but in any case not as outrageous as if one waits for the actual Antichrist and thus rejects the Lutheran doctrine on this point, and yet claims that one wholeheartedly accepts what the Smalcald Articles confess about the Antichrist! This is such a blatant deception that it undoubtedly brings upon himself God's rebuke. We can therefore only rejoice that the Loeheans [Löhianer] in Germany have recently, at last, come out honestly with their language and decisively rejected the doctrine of the Smalcald Articles, that the Pope is the actual Antichrist, as an “outmoded delusion”, without hypocritically professing loyalty. 

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      We see that the doctrine of Millennialism is intertwined with that of the Antichrist. But Walther unravels the confusion and exposes the error for what it is. We also note that even Loehe understood that the Smalcald Articles meant the Pope, not just the "papacy", to be the Antichrist.  — In the next Part 2, the conclusion of Walther's essay, and more on how today's LC-MS's teaching is worse than that of Loehe's which Walther calls "honestly" done.