E2: Antichrist = "collective person", all individual Popes (Comparing LC-MS vs Old Missouri)

[2024-12-21: added note in red below on "collective work".]

      This continues from Part E1 (Table of Contents in Part E1) presenting the 1870 Eastern District convention essay on "The Antichrist". Walther was in attendance, so the essay's content would be his as well. — In this post, we dig into the portion that is in direct opposition to what is taught in the LC–MS today: 

1) Has the “Missouri Synod” never taught that individual Popes were the Antichrist?

the LC–MS's Theological Commission states:	1870 Eastern District essay (w/ Walther): (emphasis mine)
“The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod does not teach, nor has it ever taught, that any individual Pope as a person, is to be identified with the Antichrist.”	“The present pope is considered by many to be too pious to be the Antichrist… But do not be deceived, the devil disguises himself as an angel of light.  Pius IX is rather the greatest hypocrite, the most shameful, most wicked man that the earth bears at present”

The Eastern District convention, along with Walther who is considered the father of the Missouri Synod, explicitly taught that an individual Pope was “the Antichrist”. Walther’s word to the LC–MS: “do not be deceived”.

2) Again, not “any individual Pope as a person”?

the LC–MS's Theological Commission states:	1870 Eastern District essay (w/ Walther): (emphasis mine)
“…the Scriptures also teach that there is one climactic "Anti-Christ" ... Concerning the historical identity of the Antichrist, we affirm the Lutheran Confessions' identification of the Antichrist with the office of the papacy…” [excluding any individual Pope]	“…according to the Scriptures, we should rather think of a collective person (consisting of several individuals).” Luther: "One should by no means obey those who understand this (Dan. 8:23-25) and similar passages of the prophets to refer to one person alone… [Luther refers to “person” here, not just an office. The Antichrist is not “one person” but a series of persons holding that office.] Paul would have understood the whole body and the whole swarm of the ungodly and all their descendants to be the same end-Christ [or Antichrist]. Gerhard: “…Against the Papists we urge that in Matt. 16:18 the singular with the definite article and the demonstrative pronoun “ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ” [“on this rock”] is found, and yet they [papists] refer that word no less to every pontiff. We also urge this, that canon law, when it names the "Pope," does not understand one [einen] man, but every Pope who is present at the time, or the whole succession of Popes." Hülsemann: "There is absolutely no reason why one should think more favorably of the present Roman bishop, Urban VIII [an individual man], as if he were either not the Antichrist, or that he has not defiled himself with all the marks of the Antichrist.

Now the LC–MS may think that their identification of only the “office of the papacy” as the Antichrist agrees with the essay’s statement of a “collective person”, but the Eastern essay then clarifies this with the term “several individuals”. [2024-12-21 Cp. to "collective work" in copyright law.] Now the LC–MS theologians will surely fault the Eastern District essayist, saying that this is not what the Scriptures teach, not what the Confessions teach. But the LC–MS’s teaching essentially says that the Confessions are ambiguous when it is written that “the Pope is the very Antichrist”. But the writings of Luther, Gerhard, and  Hülsemann know nothing of the peculiar LC–MS doctrine. Luther does not speak of just the “office of the papacy”, he used the word “person”. He is not excluding the “office of the papacy”, he is reinforcing it by referring to the “person” or “persons”. And while Gerhard does not specifically speak of “individual men”, yet his terms “every pontiff” and “every Pope” point to individual men as Popes. — He also understands the word “Pope”, in the confessional phrase “the Pope is the very Antichrist”, in the same way that the papists do. The papists do not distinguish the word “Pope” from the “individual men who fill that office”. 

      The Lutheran Confessions state “the Pope is the very Antichrist”. Nowhere do they exclude the individual Popes as the Antichrist, as the LC–MS theologians do. Yet these theologians boldly claim “we affirm the Lutheran Confessions'…”.

      There is another aspect of the Old Missouri Synod teaching that "flies in the face of" today's LC–MS, the duration of the period of time of the Pope as the Antichrist. We cover that in the next Part E3.