Instead of connecting the two parts of the statement: "Thou art Peter," and, "Upon this rock I will build My Church," as closely as Catholics do, the two parts ought to be kept separate. What the Lord says to Peter may be paraphrased thus: Peter, there was a time when you were merely Simon, Jonas's son. At that time you had thoughts and formed opinions about holy matters such as your flesh and blood, your natural reason, suggested to you. All that is changed now that you are a Peter, a firm believer in the revelation which the Father makes to men about Me. What you have confessed is the exact truth; cling to that against all odds; for upon this person whom you have confessed, as upon a rock, I will build My Church.—And now we may imagine that the Lord, while uttering the words, "upon this rock," pointed to Himself. The text does not say that the Lord made such a gesture; we simply imagine this, but our imagination is not only just as good as that of the Catholics, but better, for the gesture which we assume agrees with the teachings of all the Scriptures that speak of Christ's person and work.
However, the Catholics remind us that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven and made him the doorkeeper of paradise. Yes, so the text reads, and with Luther we should now inquire: Was it a brass, or silver, or golden, or wooden key? Is the lock on the gate of heaven a common padlock, or like the cunning contrivances which are nowadays employed in safety vaults? Catholics are very much offended when one speaks thus of the keys of Peter. They say sarcasm is out of place in such holy matters. That is quite true; but, again with Luther, we would urge that the keys of which we are speaking sarcastically are not the keys in Matt. 16, 10, but the keys in the Catholic imagination. And these latter one can hardly treat with reverence. The Catholics must admit that no real key, or anything resembling a key, was given to Peter by Christ. The language in this text is figurative: the words which follow state the Lord's meaning in plain terms. The power of the keys is the preaching of the forgiveness of sins to penitent sinners, and the withholding of grace from those who do not repent. If that is admitted to be the meaning, we need turn only one leaf in our Bible, and read what is stated in Matt. 18, 18. There the Lord confers the same authority on all the disciples which He is said in Matt. 16, 19 to have conferred on Peter exclusively. On this latter occasion Peter, if the Catholics have the right view of the keys, ought to have interposed an objection and said to the Lord, What you give to the others is my property. Evidently Peter did not connect the same meaning with the words of Christ about the keys as the Catholics. Christ spoke of this matter once more, and in terms still plainer, at the meeting on Easter Eve, and again addressed all the disciples. Again Peter made no complaint. (John 20.)
It should be noted , moreover, that in this entire text in Matthew the Lord speaks in the future tense: "I will build," "I will give." The words do not really confer a grant, but are at best a promise. It is necessary now that the Catholics find a complement to this text in Matthew, a text which relates that Christ actually carried out later what He promised to Peter in Matt. 16, 18. 19. The Lord seems to have forgotten the fulfilment of His promise, and the matter seems to have slipped Peter's mind, too; for we are not told that he reminded the Lord of His promise, though he asked him on another occasion what would be the reward of his discipleship. (Matt. 19, 27 ff.)
Luther has, furthermore, appealed to the Catholics to prove from the Scriptures that Peter ever exercised such an authority as they claim for him. If Peter had been created the prince of the apostles or the visible head of the Church, we should expect to find evidence in our Bible that Peter acted as a privileged person and was so regarded by the other apostles. But we may read through the entire book of Acts and all the apostolic epistles: they tell us very minutely how the Church was planted in many lands, how it grew and spread, but there is not even a faint hint that Peter was regarded as the primate, or Pope, in his day. When a certain question of doctrine was to be decided in which the congregations of Paul were interested, Paul did not lay the matter before Peter to obtain his judgment on it, but referred it to a council of the Church. At this council many spoke, and it was not Peter's, but James's speech which finally decided the matter. (Acts 15.) When Philip had organized congregations in Samaria, the church at Jerusalem sent Peter and John to visit them. Peter did not assume control of these churches by his own right, nor had Philip in the first place directed the Samaritans to Peter as their head. (Acts 8, 14 ff.) We have thirteen letters of Paul, three of John, besides the Revelation, one of James, and one of Jude. The state of the Church, its affairs and development, are the subject-matter of all these writings, but not one of them reveals the popedom of Peter. Yea, Peter himself has written two epistles and appears utterly ignorant of the fact that the Lord had created him His vicegerent and the visible head of the Church.
The Catholic argument for the God-given supremacy of their Pope, however, becomes perfectly reckless when we bear in mind that their banner text speaks only of Peter, but says nothing at all about Peter's successors. If Peter possessed the supremacy that Catholics claim for him, how and by what right did he dispose of it at his death? How did this power become attached to Rome? On all these questions the Bible is silent. Catholics construct a skilful argument from fragmentary and doubtful historical records, which are not God's Word, to show that Peter chore Rome as his episcopal see, and therewith transferred his primacy for all time to this place. To fabricate a dogma that is to be binding on the consciences of all Christians in such a way is daring impudence. The devout Catholic must close his eyes to all history if he is to believe that Christ really appointed a Pope. When he reads the history of the Popes, and comes to the period of the papal schism, when the Church had not only one, but two visible heads, one residing at Rome, the other at Avignon, yea, when he reads of three contestants for papal honors, and beholds the Church as a tricephalous monster, he must stop thinking.
Luther regarded the papacy as the most monstrous fraud that has been practised on Christianity. In its gradual and persistent development and the success with which it has maintained itself through all reverses, it impresses one as something uncanny. It requires more than human wiliness to originate, foster, perfect, and support such a thoroughly unbiblical and antichristian institution. Luther spoke of the papal deception as one of the signs foreboding the end of the world. He has not spoken in delicate terms of the Popes. His most virulent utterances are directed against the "Vicar of Christ" at Rome. He traces the papacy to diabolical origin. When he lays bare the shocking perversions of revealed truths of which Rome has been guilty, and talks about the foul practises of the Popes and their courtesans, Luther's language becomes appalling. In a series of twenty-six cartoons Luther's friend Cranach depicted the rule of Christ and Antichrist. The series was published under the title "Passional Christi und Antichristi." (14, 184 ff.) By placing alongside of one another scenes from the life of the Lord and scenes from the lives of the Popes, the artist displayed very effectually the contrast between the true religion which the Redeemer had taught men by His Word and example, and the false religiousness which was represented by the papacy. On the one side was humility, on the other, pride; poverty was shown in contrast with wealth; meekness was placed over and against arrogance, etc. At a glance the people saw the chasm that yawned between the preaching and practise of Jesus and that of His pretended representative and vicar, and they verified the pictures showing the Pope in various attitudes from their own experience. These cartoons became very popular, and have maintained their popularity till the most recent times. During the "Kulturkampf" which the German government under Bismarck waged against the aggressive policy of the Vatican, the German painter Hofmann issued a new edition of the "Passionale," and Emperor William I sent a copy to the Pope with a warning letter.
Catholics complain about the rudeness and nastiness of these cartoons and others that followed. Luther is supposed to have furnished the rhymes and descriptive matter which accompanied them. Lather is also cited as uttering most repulsive and scurrilous sentiments about the Pope.
What are we to say about this antipapal violence of Luther? Certainly, it is not a pleasant subject. We are in this instance facing essentially the same situation as that which confronted us when we studied Luther's "coarseness" (chap. 5), and all that was said in that connection applies with equal force to the subject now before us. One may deplore the necessity of these passionate outbursts ever so much, but when all the evidence in the case has been gathered and the jury begins to sift the evidence and weigh the arguments on either side, there is at the worst a drawn jury. All who have truly sounded "the mystery of iniquity" which has been set up in the Church by the papacy will affirm Luther's sentiments about the Pope as true.
It is necessary, however, to point out certain facts that may be regarded as additional argument to what was said in chap. 5. In the first place, the cartoon is a recognized weapon in polemics. The struggle of the Protestants against the Pope was not altogether a religious and spiritual one; political matters were discussed together with affairs of religion at every German diet in those days. The age was rude and largely illiterate. Many who could never have made any sense out of a page of printed matter, very easily understood a picture. It conveyed truthful information, though in a form that hurt, as cartoons usually do, and it roused a healthy sentiment against a very malignant evil in the Church and in the body politic. If the Popes would keep out of politics, they and their followers would enjoy more quiet nerves.
In the second place, it should be borne in mind that the claim of papal supremacy is no small and innocent matter. The Popes wrested to themselves the supreme spiritual and temporal power in the world. They pretended to be the custodians of heaven, the directors of purgatory, and the lords of the earth. Across the history of the world in the era of Luther is written in all directions the one word ROME. It is Rome at the altar swinging the censer, Rome in the panoply of battle storming trenches and steeping her hands in gore, Rome in the councils of kings, Rome in the halls of guilds, Rome in the booth of the trader at a town-fair, Rome in the judge's seat, Rome in the professor's chair, Rome receiving ambassadors from, and dispatching nuncios to, foreign courts, Rome dictating treaties to nations and arranging the cook's menu, Rome labeling the huckster's cart and the vintner's crop, Rome levying a tax upon the nuptial bed, Rome exacting toll at the gate of heaven. Out of the wreck of the imperial Rome of the Caesars has risen papal Rome. Once more, though through different agents, the City of the Seven Hills is ruling an orbis terrarum Romanus, a Roman world-empire. The rule extends through nearly a thousand years. How deftly do cunning priests manipulate every means at their command to increase their power! Learning, wealth, beauty, art, piety,—everything is used as an asset in the ambitious game for absolute supremacy which the mitered vicegerent of Christ is playing against the world. Rome's ancient pontifex maximus —the pagan high priest of the Rome before Christ—had been a tool of the consuls and the Caesars; the new pontiff makes the Caesars his tools. Princes kiss his feet and hold the stirrup for him as he mounts his bedizened palfrey. An emperor stands barefoot in the snow of the Pope's courtyard suing pardon for having dared to govern without the Pope's sanction.—The forests of Germany are reverberating with the blows of axes which Rome's missionaries wield against Donar's Oaks. The sanctuaries of pagan Germany are razed. Out of the wood of idols crucifixes are erected along the highways. Chapels and abbeys and cathedrals rise where the aurochs was hunted. Sturdy barbarians bend the knee at the shrines of saints. Hosts set out to see the land where the Lord had walked and suffered, and brave all dangers and hardships to wrest its possession from infidel hands. But at the place where all these activities center, and whence they are being fed, a shocking abomination is seen: Venus is worshiped, and Bacchus, and Mercurius, and Mars, while white-robed choirs chant praises to the mother of God, and clouds of incense are wafted skyward. Here is a mystery—a mystery of iniquity: the son of perdition in the temple of God! Proud, haughty Rome, wealthy, wicked and wanton, is filling up her measure of wrath against the day of retribution.—We are now so far removed from these scenes that they seem unreal; in Luther's days they were decidedly real. Rome's aggressiveness has been perceptibly checked during the last four centuries; in Luther's days papal pretensions were a more formidable proposition.