# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1859_S311
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Does the Iowa Synod Really Strive, etc. 311

proof of such a claim is natural, and I am prepared to give it in advance.

In the very same Synodical Report in which the synod calls itself "Ev. Luth.," the following doctrine also occurs, and indeed as one "certain and settled": There is a "personal Antichrist," who is "a man, a particular person," not a "plurality of persons." The Papacy is antichristian, and many popes may be called Antichrists. "But the man of sin mentioned in 2 Thess. 2 is a particular human personality, and for that very reason still future." His rule immediately precedes the coming of Christ to the thousand-year kingdom and lasts three and a half years; then Christ will put an end to him. No one will rightly know the time of the beginning of his kingdom; that will be learned only once God has already done away with him.

The question now is not whether there is an Antichrist, nor whether he is a man and not an institution, nor whether all the signs which the Word of God ascribes to him belong to him; nor, finally, is it asked whether the Lord will destroy him at his coming by the breath of his mouth — for so far we are agreed. But the question is:

1. Whether the Antichrist must be a particular personality, that is, a single and only one man.

2. Whether the duration of his rule will be three and a half years by our reckoning.

3. Whether the Lord Christ will bring him along at his coming to the thousand-year kingdom.

As to the first point, the Iowa Synod says: "There (2 Thess. 2) the Antichrist is called the man of sin and the son of perdition, 2 Thess. 2:3, the lawless one, ho anomos (c. 2, 8). If he is the man of sin, he must indeed be a man, a particular person. But a man can be neither an institution nor a plurality of persons." (Synod. Rep., p. 19.) Now even granting all this, it by no means follows — as the Iowa Synod seems so anxious to wish — that the dear and faithful pope is not the Antichrist; for it is one thing to be a plurality of persons at the same time, and another to be a plurality of persons in succession. Now it is well enough known that never are two popes at once on the chair of Peter, that is, in full rule and authority. It is further known that the papists themselves want their popes regarded as one person. Thus, for example, Augustinus, Bishop of Ancona, writes: "As to power and authority, all the popes who have been from the beginning and shall be to the end of the world are no more than one Pope." (Lib. de pot. Ecc. qu. 3.)*) And the Glossator writes in the introduction to the Decretals: "The pope can therefore abolish the ordinances of his predecessors, and it does not prevent him

*) "Quoad officium papatus et autoritatem omnes papae, qui fuerunt a principio et erunt usque in finem mundi, non sunt, nisi unus Papa." ["As to the office of the papacy and its authority, all the popes who have been from the beginning and shall be to the end of the world are but one Pope."]