LCMS on Antichrist: “hypocritically professing loyalty” (Part 3 of 3)

2021-10-03: Addendum added below on so-called "Gottesdienst" teaching.

      This concludes from Part 2, presenting an English translation of Walther's stinging essay against "Lutherans" who do not teach that the Pope is the very Antichrist. — Now we need to fully expose the actual, official teaching of the LCMS.  Ask any LCMS pastor today: "Is Pope Francis the Antichrist"? At best you will get an equivocal answer, with few exceptions. So what is taught in LCMS seminaries?… what is taught to its lay people?  Do they hold up the teaching of its fathers? … of the Lutheran Confessions?

Teaching in the seminaries: (see also this post from 2 years ago)

      The official textbook in the LCMS for doctrinal teaching in it seminaries is Confessing the Gospel: A Lutheran Approach to Systematic Theology - 2 Volume Set (CPH 2017, $89.99).  Although it does not have a specific section dealing with "Antichrist", the section on the "Last Things" deals the most with it. On page 1138 we read (emphasis mine): 

“THE SMALCALD ARTICLES AND THE TREATISE

…In the six years that had elapsed since Melanchthon wrote the Apology, it had become clear to Luther that the papacy would not change its views, particularly with regard to justification by grace through faith. His conclusion was stark: “[The papacy] is the true end-times Antichrist, who has raised himself over and set himself against Christ…(SA II, 4, 10)”

What is wrong with this quote from the Lutheran Confessions?  It changed the specific confessional words of "Papst" (German) or "papum" (Latin) or "Pope" (English), into "The papacy." If "papacy" was meant, Luther would have written "Papsttum".  But he wrote "Papst".  None of the English translations of the Book of Concord translate this as "The papacy", all of them translate it properly as "Pope" or "pope", even the liberal, unionistic Kolb-Wengert  edition, p. 308-309. Also the Brief Statement of 1932 translates it as "the Pope".  So why would editor Samuel Nafzger's textbook change the wording of the Book of Concord?  It is because they, Nafzger and his LC-MS, do not teach as the Confessions teach on the Antichrist.  We get further concrete evidence of this in the following.

Teaching to the laity:

       The Wikipedia article on Confessional Lutheranism tipped me off to this issue among external Lutheran bodies who self-identify as "Confessional". Since 2012, or earlier, in their FAQs, they have stated the following in answer to questions on their teaching on the "Antichrist":

“The LCMS does not teach, nor has it ever taught, that any individual Pope as a person, is to be identified with the Antichrist.”

One may view a PDF that was evidently printed at an earlier time (2012?) below – scroll down to "Connection between the antichrist and the pope":

In stating it this way, they are not confessional Lutherans, even if they agree with Isaac Newton on this point.

Graphic from: LCMS.org/about/beliefs/doctrine

      The LCMS trivializes the Lutheran Confessions and exposes it's actual “quatenus” position on them.  The forceful emphasis in the phrase “nor has it ever taught” shows that it was inserted to soothe their conscience on this point, for it demonstrates that the “The LCMS does not teach, nor has it ever taught,” as the Old Missouri Synod taught. — President Matthew Harrison confirmed his support of Loehe (over Walther?) in a recent promotional statement for a 2020 CPH book, a Matthew Carver translation of a liturgical book by Friedrich Lochner, using the phrase "[Lochner's] great contemporaries like Löhe".  Lochner, while using, and correcting, some of Loehe's liturgical work, would hardly affirm President Harrison's and the LCMS's position on the Antichrist because he firmly upheld Walther's confessional Lutheran teaching on the Antichrist, despite any claim to the contrary. Even a casual perusal of Old Missouri periodicals shows that they specifically speak of individual Popes who served in the office of the Pope as continuing to fulfil the confessional statement that “he [not it] is the very Antichrist”. 

      This is not a trivial issue and Walther perfectly highlights its importance. Walther battled the Iowa Synod on exactly the same terminology issue in Der Lutheraner, vol. 23 (1867), p. 157. The Iowans said: 

"Because… the Apology calls the papacy also a part of the kingdom of Antichrist, and the Apology is just as much a confession of our church as the Smalcald Articles, we combine both passages, explain the more general by the more specific, and say: the pope or the papacy is the right Antichrist."

To this Walther commented: "A clumsier sophistry has hardly ever been made." [See also Walther's the Eastern District essay of 1870, with Walther present, (in English) here.] [2024-11-28: undated info on authorship.]

      What is the greatest impediment to a resurgence of true Lutheranism in the world today? It is the Lutheran church body that teaches

“the papacy is the true end-times Antichrist”,

not

“the Pope is the very Antichrist”,

it is 

the Quatenus LCMS!

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2021-10-03 — Addendum: 

Nine years ago a so-called "Gottesdienst" organization sponsored a Fort Wayne "Free Conference" where prominent member Rev. David Petersen published a notice and promotion which stated the following regarding the Antichrist: 

• "Lutheran apologetics haven't always been fair" [Fair towards the Antichrist?]
• Pope Benedict is called "the friendliest pope in memory" [who said "don't exclude charity"]  
• "there have been requests that we [LCMS] re-think and re-evaluate the Confessional identification of the office of the papacy with the antichrist." [This confirms again what is understood as the LCMS teaching of the Confessions on the Antichrist, that it was "the office of the papacy", but not the "the Pope."]  
• Editor Rev. Heath Curtis (+HRC) was to deliver an essay to "consider… the confessional claims ["claim", not a Confession?!], in the context in which they were written [not based on Scripture?!], while evaluating whether or not [!] these things still apply to the modern pope [!!]."

While the statement "evaluating whether or not these things still apply" could mean that the essayist was going to answer objections to this part of the Confessions, yet it gave no hint of this.  The clear import of this "Free Conference" from Petersen's (and Curtis's?) words indicate that it is questioning and confusing the Lutheran Confessions, and that it did not teach, as the Smalcald Articles explicitly teach, that "the Pope is the very Antichrist." All of this is an admission of a quatenus subscription to the Lutheran Confessions. And "Gottesdienst" claims to be "Confessional"?… calling themselves "Father"? — The sad take-away from Petersen is that the "requests" being aired in his LCMS were not to teach what the Smalcald Articles teach, but rather to "re-think and re-evaluate" the Confessions.