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115. Rome, the Pope and Gospel Work in Italy. 10 Questions With Leonardo De Chirico

November 18th, 2015

This interview was published in Credo Magazine, volume 5, Issue 4, November 2015, pp. 8-11.

Leonardo De Chirico is the pastor of Breccia di Roma, a church that he helped plant in Rome in 2009. Previously, Leonardo planted and pastored an evangelical church in Ferrara, Italy, from 1997 to 2009. He earned degrees in History (University of Bologna), Theology (ETCW, Bridgend, Wales) and Bioethics (University of Padova). His PhD is from King’s College (London); it was published as Evangelical Theological Perspectives on Post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism. In 2015, he published A Christian Pocket Guide to Papacy (Christian Focus). He is a lecturer of Historical Theology at Istituto di Formazione Evangelica e Documentazione in Padova, Italy. Additionally, Leonardo is the Director of the Reformanda Initiative, which aims to equip evangelical leaders to better understand and engage with Roman Catholicism, and the leader of the Rome Scholars Network (RSN): www.reformandainitiative.org

1. Did you grow up in the Catholic Church? If so, what drew you to become an evangelical Christian?

My family was an ordinary Italian family, nominally Christian and devout to Saint Antony, but with little grasp of basic gospel truths. One day we were visited by a Swiss couple from the local evangelical church that was going door to door. They asked if we were Christians. The answer was “yes, of course.” They further asked if we had ever read the Bible. The answer was “no.” Catholics were not supposed to read the Bible.

They then replied, “How can you be Christian if you don’t read what Christ has done for you?” It was as if a light was switched on in the darkness. It was the beginning of a journey that led my father to become a believer, then the rest of the family followed at different stages of life.

2. What is the main doctrinal divide, in your estimation, between Roman Catholics and Protestants?

In Roman Catholicism the tendency is to idolize the church. The distinction between Creator and creature is blurred by way of conferring to the church what ultimately belongs to the triune God alone. The church is elevated to a position that makes it an idol, stemming out of a non-tragic view of sin, the conviction that in significant ways the church continues the incarnation of Jesus Christ resulting in an abnormally conflated ecclesiology. The great bullet points of the Protestant Reformation, i.e. Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, are all biblical remedies against the idolatrous tendency of a self-referential church, which sadly have been rejected so far.

3. In your ongoing interaction with Roman Catholics in Italy, what approach have you taken and found to be effective when witnessing to them?

Exposing them to Scripture as much as possible and not assuming they already grasp the basics of the gospel. They may know some Christian vocabulary, but it is generally marred, distorted by traditions and deviant cultural baggage. Most Catholics in Italy are of the “pick-and-choose” variety and so they blend unbiblical traditions and secular unbelief. It is also important to show the personal and the communal aspects of the faith in order to embody viable alternatives for their daily lives.

4. You have written a very helpful little book on the papacy. So tell us, what are positive and negative aspects of this new pope Francis?

There is much sentimentalism about Pope Francis. He is a champion of the gospel of “welcoming all” and “showing compassion.” Many secular people, as well as many evangelicals, are fascinated by it. We should ask: What about repentance and faith in Christ alone? What about turning back from idolatry and following Christ wholeheartedly? What about putting the Word of God first? Some of the language of the Pope seems to resemble gospel emphases, yet the substance of it is still heavily sacramental and Marian, leaning towards a liberal form of Catholicism. He is the first Jesuit to become Pope and we should never forget that the Jesuit order was founded to fight against the Protestant Reformation by learning its secrets and using them against it.

5. Let’s address the elephant in the room: Is the Pope the Anti-Christ?

Luther, Calvin, the seventeenth-century Protestant confessions, the Puritans, Wesley, Spurgeon, et al., believed that the papacy (not this or that Pope) is the institution out of which the Anti-Christ will eventually come. I share this broad protestant consensus. The papacy claims christological and pneumatological titles and prerogatives (e.g. vicar of Christ, infallible teacher, supreme head of the church with full, immediate and universal power), coupling them with earthly political power. Remember that Popes are monarchs of a sovereign political state. In the papacy what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar tragically intermingle. This poisoned mixture is the potential milieu for the Anti-Christ to rise from.

6. You are a pastor of a Reformed Baptist Church in Rome. Is a church like yours extremely rare? How has the culture perceived your congregation?

Evangelicals are 1% of the population in Italy and Rome is no different from the rest of the country. We still struggle with the centuries-long prejudice of evangelicals being perceived as a cult. What makes our church distinct is that it is confessional (holding to the 1689 London Confession of Faith and belonging to a Reformed Baptist association of churches), urban (impacting the cultural, political, media, and academic institutions of the city with the gospel), and missional (living to the glory of God in all vocations and initiatives). Unlike cults, we cherish church history and claim to belong to the catholic (not necessarily Roman Catholic!) church. Unlike cults, the gospel we believe in is for the whole of life. Unlike cults, we encourage constructive and critical cultural engagement. Thankfully, there is a growing number of churches like that.

7. Tell us about this new piece of property your church is purchasing. Why is this so exciting?

Because of the presence of the Vatican, Rome city center has been, until recently, a “heresy free-zone.” Non-Catholic initiatives were not welcomed, if not forbidden. The last property that evangelical churches bought in the central area dates back to 1920. After nearly 100 years we are sending the message that we love the gospel and we love the city. We want to be a gospel community right at the heart of it. Apart from hosting the activities of the church, the property will also function as a theological study center. With IFED (a Reformed theological institute: www.ifeditalia.org) we are providing outstanding theological training to lots of students. In Rome we will act as an outpost of evangelical theology, next to the Jesuit and the Dominican universities which are located around the corner! The space has the potential to become a springboard for gospel work in the city and beyond. For example, the Reformanda Initiative has just been launched (www.reformandainitiative.org). It aims at helping the world-wide evangelical church to relate biblically to Roman Catholicism.

8. If our readers get the chance to visit Rome, what two places must they see?

Evangelical tourists should see the “dark” sides of Rome as far as religious freedom is concerned. For instance, Campo dei Fiori is a beautiful square next to the baroque Piazza Navona where Popes burnt heretics of all types, Protestants included. In the middle of Campo dei Fiori is an impressive bronze statue of Giordano Bruno recalling his execution that happened there in 1600 because he was a “free thinker” in an age and place where total submission to the power of the church was imposed. A number of Evangelical martyrs found the same destiny there.

Another place to visit is Porta Pia where the Italian army entered the city and conquered it in 1870, thus ending the history of the Pontifical state. The Bible in Italian was forbidden in Rome up to 1870. It was through the breach of Porta Pia that the first Bibles printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society were smuggled into the city and freely distributed to the people. The tragic irony of Rome is that she is known as one of the cradles of Christianity, but the reality is that the Bible was a forbidden book for centuries. Generally, no tour guide tells you these stories or shows you these places.

9. Let’s get down to the important stuff: which football team should we be rooting for (that is, “soccer” for our American readers!)?

In Rome there are two top teams: Roma and Lazio. People tend to be very passionate about one or the other or – should I say – one against the other! People stop talking to you if you happen to support the other team. I was not born in Rome, so I am excused to support Torino FC, which is not perceived as a rival to most Romans. In this way, I don’t run the risk of losing a friend for supporting the wrong football team!

10. If I have just one meal in Italy, what authentic dish should I order?

Try “strozzapreti” (literally “priest stranglers”!). It’s a savory pasta dish, like thick and twisted macaroni. It can have various combinations with different tomato-based sauces. In popular culture, Roman Catholic countryside priests were teased because of their voracious appetites and impressive bellies. So this pasta was supposed to “strangle” them because of its thickness. The great Dante used the law of retaliation to punish people in the Inferno. Popular culture made a kind of pasta to punish greedy priests. A tasty reminder that no glutton will inherit the kingdom of God!

 

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114. Is the Pope the Anti-Christ?

October 2nd, 2015

These days no one asks a question like this. It seems too arrogant, too outdated, grossly missing the mark of a honest religious conversation. Moreover, any reference to the Anti-Christ seems to be further marred by the fancy treatments that it has received in popular pseudo-apocalyptic novels, futurist accounts of world trends, and millenarist explanations of Christian eschatology.

It seems that on the Anti-Christ is better to maintain a silent attitude if not an agnostic approach. It is there in the Bible, but we don’t know what it looks like and we are bound to stay away from any polemical discourse or unhelpful conjecture. Ecumenical correctness imposes a dialoguing code that demands that only “nice” things can be said in inter-faith conversations. In this overly hesitant position there is also a clear-cut theological judgment on the way in which the Protestant tradition has been understating the nature of the Anti-Christ for centuries. From Martin Luther to C.H. Spurgeon, from John Wesley to the Puritans, there has been a consistent, coherent and univocal interpretation of the identity of the Anti-Christ. The Protestant Reformation did not invent this reading of the Papacy as the Anti-Christ but carried it on from strands of Medieval teachings and gave it a deeper theological basis.

Here is how the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith aptly summarizes this widespread and long-standing Protestant consensus:

“There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof, but is that Antichrist, the man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself, in the church, against Christ and all that is called God” (art. XXV.6).[1]

Francis Turretin (1623-1687) is perhaps the greatest Reformed theologian of the XVII century. His major work, the Institutes of Elenctic Theology, has been one of the most influential theological textbooks of the continental Reformed tradition. In his section on the Church, Turretin extensively deals with the Papacy, as he always engages in “apologetic” theology. His more comprehensive treatment of the Pope as the Antichrist, however, is his 7th Disputation on the Antichrist that, in turn, is part of a larger work entitled Concerning our Necessary Secession from the Church of Rome and the Impossibility of Cooperation with Her (1661).[2] Here we find perhaps the most detailed and systematic Protestant argument for the identification of the Pope as the Antichrist. Turretin endeavors to exegete Scripture and evaluate the facts of church history for the purpose of saving the Church of Christ from committing spiritual fornication.

After noting that it is the common opinion of Protestants that the Pope is the Antichrist, Turretin explains that Scripture reveals the place of the Antichrist (the temple), his time (from apostolic times onward), and his person (an apostate from the faith, a performer of spurious miracles, one who opposes Christ, a self-exalting figure, a man of sin, an idolater). Turretin goes as far as analyzing the name and number of the Beast of Revelation 13:17-18. Gathering all these elements together, he does not find these marks among the Jews or Turks (Muslims), nor among the Greek Orthodox. In his view, they only fit the chief authority of the Roman Church.

Turretin is convinced that the Antichrist is not a single person but must refer to an office or succession of persons in office that began operating in apostolic times. To the Catholic objection that Popes have never denied Christ, Turretin replies that the Antichrist will not openly deny Christ as a professed enemy but as a professed friend of Christ who praises Him with their words, yet fights Him with his actions. He sees this attitude in Popes who arrogate to themselves the three offices of Christ (Priest, Prophet and King), but bury the Gospel under their own traditions and undermine His work of redemption by their masses, purgatory, indulgences, and false worship.

Referring to the doctrine of Papal supremacy, the 1997 Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered” (882). Turretin’s analysis of the Papacy may seem harsh and trenchant, but fits the presentation of the official teaching of the Roman Church on the Papacy. The Pope as Vicar of Christ with full, supreme and universal power, coupled with the political status of the papacy, is indeed an institution that claims titles and prerogatives which must be Christ’s and Christ’s only and is also an institution that blurs religious and political fundamental distinctions!

These views are certainly far from being “ecumenically correct”. Yet, whatever one makes of them, it is important to appreciate the fact that they do not stem from slandering invectives or bandying insults. Theologians like Turretin built a highly sophisticated Biblical and theological argument and were not driven by resentment alone. The Roman Church, while not being static, nor a monolithic reality, does not really change in its fundamental commitments. It expands itself but does not purify itself. It embraces new trends and practices but does not expel unbiblical ones. It grows but it does not reform itself according to gospel standards. The discussion on the Anti-Christ must be revived and worked out with biblical soberness and historical awareness.

 

[1] It is followed by The Savoy Declaration (1658), art. XXVI and The London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), art. XXVI.

[2] The 7th Disputation was published as F. Turretin, Whether It Can be Proven the Pope of Rome is the Antichrist, ed. by R. Winburn (Forestville, CA: Protestant Reformation Publications, 1999).

 

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108. Martin Luther and the Papacy

May 11th, 2015

This is an excerpt from my book A Christian’s Pocket Guide to the Papacy (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2015). Have a look here: bit.ly/1E0JK2j

Luther and the Pope have long been perceived as representing the two enemies within Western Christianity. Their persons embodied the religious conflict that took place in the XVI century giving rise to the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. Before Luther rejected the Pope, the Pope had already rejected Luther by condemning him first in 1520 and then excommunicating him in 1521. So it is difficult to establish who first broke fellowship with the other. In fact, before burning the 1520 Papal bull Exsurge Domine that contained his condemnation, Luther was a devout Roman Catholic and highly esteemed the Pope. His acceptance of the Papacy was totally uncritical. He believed that the problem lied with the curia around the Pope, not with the Pope himself. Even after nailing the 95 theses in 1517 he had hopes of finding a hearing with the Pope concerning the need to correct certain moral abuses and doctrinal errors. In the Theses Luther is chiefly concerned with limiting the powers of the Pope, not considering them self-referential and unlimited, but instead under Gospel standards (e.g. Thesis 5). For example, Popes have no power over the souls who are in Purgatory, only God does (Theses 22 and 25). Popes cannot give absolution if God has not granted it (Thesis 6). Popes can only act within the boundaries set by the Word of God.

At this stage, Luther begins to counter the absolute claims of the primacy of the Pope or of the Councils with the primacy of Scripture. In writing against the Catholic theologian Johannes Eck in 1519 Luther develops his critical approach towards the Papacy with a fuller set of arguments (Resolutio Lutherana … de potestate papae). The authority of Popes and Councils should be subordinate to that of the Bible. The Papacy was not instituted by Christ, but was instead established by the Church in the course of its history. So it does not come from “divine law”, but is instead a human institution. The “rock” of Matthew 16 is not a reference to Peter, but is his confession of Jesus on behalf of the whole church or Christ himself. He alone is the solid foundation of the Church. The Roman Popes have nothing “petrine” about them, nor is there anything “Papal” in Peter. The Papacy is not commanded nor foreseen by Scripture, and therefore obedience to the Word of God must take precedence over obedience to the Pope. If the Pope disobeys the Scripture, the faithful Christian should follow the latter without hesitation. Christians are not obligated to obey an unfaithful Pope.

Although the debate was becoming hotter, it was only after his definitive excommunication in 1521 that Luther elaborated his even more radical critique of the Papacy. At this point, Luther became convinced that the supreme adversary of the Christian faith was its supreme representative, i.e. the Pope. The Papacy had become a power structure and could no longer serve the cause of the Gospel, but served instead the carnal interests of the Church. In his response to Ambrogio Caterino (an Italian Dominican monk who had written a defense of the Pope and against what Luther had published on the topic) the German reformer turned his opposition to the Papacy into an apocalyptic argument. In commenting on Daniel 8:23-25, Luther identifies the ferocious king of the passage who devastates the saints as the Pope. Playing with the double meaning of the Greek word anti, Luther argues that the Pope is against Christ and takes his place by claiming to act on his behalf. He is a counterfeit Christ. He is therefore the Antichrist. According to Luther, his times were marked by the imminent end of the world; this then demanded that the situation be painted in black and white. The Pope and the Turks were the representatives of the Antichrist and were focusing their final attack on the Church of Christ.

In 1534 Luther drafted the Smalcald Articles, which are a summary of Christian doctrine from a Lutheran perspective. In art. 4, Luther speaks of the Pope’s power as “false, mischievous, blasphemous, and arrogant” mainly interested in “diabolic affairs”. His critique, however, is not confined to his contemporary experience of the Papacy, but draws on historical and theological arguments. In the same article he writes: “it is manifest that the holy Church has been without the Pope for at least more than five hundred years, and that even to the present day the churches of the Greeks and of many other languages neither have been nor are yet under the Pope. Besides, as often remarked, it is a human figment which is not commanded, and is unnecessary and useless; for the holy Christian [or catholic] Church can exist very well without such a head, and it would certainly have remained better [purer, and its career would have been more prosperous] if such a head had not been raised up by the devil. And the Papacy is also of no use in the Church, because it exercises no Christian office; and therefore it is necessary for the Church to continue and to exist without the Pope”. A church without the Pope captures Luther’s vision at this point.

In 1545, one year before dying, Luther wrote his final fierce thoughts on the Papacy. In his work Against the Papacy at Rome, Founded by the Devil, he is aware that the final, eschatological hour is at hand. The Pope is a child of the Devil who wants to destroy the Church through the sword  of the Turks and through the lies of the Pope. It is an eschatological emergency reaching its final stage. No compromise is possible under these circumstances and evil is to be denounced and fought against relentlessly.

Luther’s views of the Papacy developed over his life from an initial acceptance to a final and total rejection of it. His apocalyptic views served to shed a sinister light on the Pope and shaped his harsh language against him. Yet Luther, the superb Biblical scholar he was, was also an excellent Christian theologian who easily dismantled the superficial Biblical and theological arguments in favor of the Papacy. Because of this rich display of Christian wisdom, his radical criticism cannot be explained in psychological terms as if he were driven by resentment only. His theological assessments set the tone for the wider Reformation movement.