On the death of Pope Francis, I have been a little surprised by some of the evangelical responses. For a helpful comment, I would recommend this from Leonardo Di Chirico. I appreciate the death of any world leader – particularly where we feel the need to comment – can be a tricky business. Quite what do you say? Particularly if the person in question has said and done some things with which we might vehemently disagree. Let me raise some notes of caution.

The triumphalist response

I remember some of the gloating that went on in the immediate aftermath of the death of Margaret Thatcher. There were some fairly unpleasant, ‘ding dong the witch is dead’ responses. You don’t have to do much digging to find (or figure out) my personal views of the woman, but even I found these kind of response on the day she died more than a little crass. As much as you may think a person to be damaging and whose morals (rightly or wrongly) you have come to question, a person has nevertheless died and family (if not a number of others more broadly) are grieving. To revel triumphalistically in the death of another is itself somewhat morally dubious.

Sadly, I think there can be a similar tendency among evangelicals. One we consider to be a great enemy is dead. A deceiver of the masses has passed away. Hallelujah. Praise be. Is that the love of enemies by which believers are called to be characterised? Is it not possible to separate the death of a person made in the image of God from the thoughts, words and actions of that person? Can we not decry whatever damage we perceive without triumphing in the very death that Jesus came to destroy? It does not seem to mirror the attitude that Jesus had towards us whilst we were his enemies.

Even if a note of triumph were ever appropriate in the circumstances (and I’m not convinced), what triumph can any evangelical credibly claim in the death of a pope? It’s not as if there won’t be the appointment of another one. It’s not as if the very things that led us to question the existence of the role or the church over which the pontiff sits have gone away. It’s not as though what we consider to be serious false teaching – which is the primary point of concern – has disappeared. Sure, the individual fronting it may change, but the actual message they presided over remains. If our concern is genuinely for gospel truth, what do we really have to be triumphalist about under these circumstances?

The do not judge response

This is perhaps the strangest one (as I judge it) from evangelicals. Some will insist that because the Roman Catholic pontiff claimed to be a believer, who are we to judge? It’s not for us to say. From people who reckon themselves to be “gospel people”, who define themselves according to the gospel and even name themselves something close to “gospelists”, this is a bizarre response from evangelical people.

Whilst I recognise we are not infallible, we are the people Jesus explicitly tells to determine those who belong. Why, for example, does Jesus tell us to watch out for false teachers and give us means of discerning who they are? (cf. Matthew 7:15-10) Why does Jesus tell us immediately after that not everyone will enter the kingdom and, later on in Matthew 18, to judge precisely who those people are as a church? Why does Paul insist to the Corinthians that they ought to judge an individual who professes to be a believer and ‘hand [him] over to Satan’ in 1 Corinthians 5? What specifically did Paul mean in 1 Corinthians 5:12 when he insists we are to judge those inside the church?

We could go on, but the ‘do not judge’ position is specious. Whilst we don’t claim perfect knowledge, the bible is full of markers outlining who is and isn’t genuine, who does and doesn’t belong, who is and isn’t saved. It expects and even commands the church to make such judgements. Ironically, those applying this to a Roman Catholic pope appear to miss the fact that this is a point on which Protestants and Catholics agree!

The kingdom inclusion response

Some still want to leave open the possibility (or even probability) of saving faith. Perhaps wanting to sound theologically thoughtful and maybe a bit clever jump on a selected quote from John Owen. They insist it is possible for the pope to be genuinely saved despite false doctrine because – as Owen said:

I no way doubt but that many men do receive more grace from God than they understand or will own, and have a greater efficacy of it in them than they will believe. Men may be really saved by that grace which doctrinally they do deny; and they may be justified by the imputation of that righteousness which, in opinion, they deny to be imputed.

As such, they aver, even a Roman Catholic pontiff may be in possession of genuinely saving faith despite belief in a formal false gospel.

The selective quote goes on to miss out the rest of what Owen said. Here is what he says immediately after that selected quote:

for the faith of it is included in that general assent which they give unto the truth of the gospel, and such an adherence unto Christ may ensue thereon, as that their mistake of the way whereby they are saved by him shall not defraud them of a real interest therein. And for my part, I must say that notwithstanding all the disputes that I see and read about justification (some whereof are full of offence and scandal), I do not believe but that the authors of them (if they be not Socinians throughout, denying the whole merit and satisfaction of Christ) do really trust unto the mediation of Christ for the pardon of their sins and acceptance with God, and not unto their own works or obedience; nor will I believe the contrary, until they expressly declare it.

Notice he says it is not belief in all the right doctrines that saves, but ‘general assent which they give unto the truth of the gospel’. Owen is arguing that ticking all the right theological boxes isn’t what saves, but there nevertheless must be assent to the truth of the gospel itself. He gives the examples of justification. You might be wrong on your understanding of how that works, but if your faith is in Christ and ‘not unto their own works or obedience’, then his point applies. Owen specifies that those he’s talking about ‘really trust unto the mediation of Christ for the pardon of their sins and acceptance with God, not unto their own works of obedience’. But official Roman Catholic teaching – which we must assume the pope affirms – does insist on salvation by faith and works and clearly are not the people he is speaking about.

Notice also, he further insists he will not believe an individual who misunderstands how justification works is trusting in their own works or obedience ‘until they expressly declare it’. It is impossible not to recognise that he has Arminians in mind here. People whom Owen says misunderstand justification but who nevertheless believe in salvation by faith alone and do not claim otherwise. Owen is crystal clear, if anybody says they are saved by faith and according to works, then they are denying the gospel of salvation by faith alone quite directly. Again, he cannot be including Roman Catholics here – and certainly not the official head of the Roman Catholic Church who affirms official Roman Catholic doctrine – who expressly teaches what Owen says explicitly puts them beyond justification because they have not received it by faith alone.

If you want a modern version of this teaching, in simpler language than Owen’s, Alistair Begg’s famous sermon clip is it:

There can be no way in which these things in any way apply to any Roman Catholic Pope. There is certainly no way that Owen, in making his comments on justification, was meaning to apply them to the head of a church that actively denies the very heart of salvation by faith alone. Quoting Owen on the potential saving faith – if we read his wider context – undermines any claim that the Pope was in the fold.

Silence

Some say nothing at all. They think not my monkey, not my circus. We’re not Catholic, what has it got to do with me? We don’t answer to the Pope and we don’t consider him to have any authority over us. Perhaps we are best just saying nothing at all. In truth, I am sympathetic to that response.

However, we cannot avoid that fact that many will view him as the authentic voice of Christianity. Roman Catholic teaching is, as far as they’re concerned, Christian teaching. Those of us who reject Roman Catholicism may nonetheless be viewed as adjacent to it. If you spend any time in an area like ours in Oldham, if people know anything of Christianity at all, it is usually some form of folk-Catholicism on which they build their various assumptions about what we must think and believe too. Minimally, they will assume there is some loss for us as a very public Christian figure dies.

Silence, under those sorts of circumstances, is not always that helpful. For those who think it a loss, silence seems strange. Why wouldn’t we say something? For those who think we believe the same things, silence may be damaging. One of the few times we may get to speak about what we actually believe with them and we choose to say nothing, letting them continue to believe the bible says what we don’t think it says at all.

So what then?

It is possible to be factual, saying something, without being triumphalistic about it. It is possible to recognise the sadness of death, whomever it may come to, without affirming the goodness of a gospel that cannot save. It is possible to point to the gospel as proclaimed in scripture whatever the views and beliefs of an individual whose death provides us with an opportunity to do so.

These sorts of issues can be vexing for believers. We don’t want to portray a disunited church but do not want to affirm a church we do not recognise. We don’t want to portray a false gospel to the world by affirming a leader who proclaimed one. We don’t want to be cruel and unkind but we don’t want to lead people astray. We don’t wish to damage others and certainly don’t want to unhelpfully ruin opportunities with ordinary Roman Catholic people. It can be difficult to feel that we can do all these things at once and hold all these things together.

I do believe there is a way to do so. I think Leonardo De Chirico does a good job of that here. But I think the worst of all world is saying the kind of thing that gives the impression the gospel believed is the same or that faith that is not in Christ alone is nevertheless saving. In a bid not to be crass, I fear we sometimes stray close to affirming what is ultimately damaging and, in the process, are not really being very kind at all.