Should Sympathy Be Shown to the Pope?
Articles in the September-October 2010 issue of Protestant Truth which condemned the papal visit to the UK were gladly welcomed by readers, but some were surprised to find a full-colour picture of the Pope on the front cover and two other pictures inside. And they were more than surprised when some phrases apparently sympathetic to the Pope appeared in a book review in the January-February issue.
The book, Commander of the Faith by Rupert Shortt, gives a concise account of Ratzinger’s career and describes him as “Commander of the Faith”. It is good that the reviewer states categorically: “The faith [the Pope] commands isn’t that which is revealed in Holy Scripture, which is able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, the one and only Mediator between God and men”.
However, the review is muddied by such unwise phrases as, “It has to be said that Evangelical Protestants will have some sympathy with Ratzinger in a number of the battles he fought to maintain Rome’s historic teachings”, and, “As an Evangelical Protestant I have more in common with the current pope, than with liberal Protestants such as John Selby Spong and his ilk”.
Of course the Pope does not believe certain of Spong’s gross heresies, but he does not defend any orthodox doctrine out of love either to Christ or the Scriptures. Those who love the Saviour will not, as the Pope does, add their works to His finished work, and those who love the Word of God will not add tradition to it, as he does.
Spong’s poison is very obvious. The Pope’s poison has enough orthodoxy in it to make it seem safe to many, but it is all the more dangerous for that.
“A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” – and how much leaven there is in Rome’s mixture!
It is not for the purity of Biblical doctrine that the Pope really engages in battle, but for the power of the Papacy. As “that man of sin”, he is not to be offered sympathy but rather to be consistently condemned. NMR