I spoke once with Visser ‘t Hooft , the general secretary of the World Council of Churches, in the period of Hitler in Holland, when it was conquered. He said: We Dutch people, and many other Christians, had the feeling Hitler might be the Antichrist because of all the anti-Divine things he did, in a really Satanic way. But then we looked and looked and finally realized: No; he is not good enough for this; the Antichrist must at least maintain something of the religious glory of the real Christ, so that it is possible to confuse them and to adore him. But he is too nothing for this. And then we knew the end of all times had not yet come, and Hitler is not the Antichrist.
Here you see it is not a dogma. Visser ‘t Hooft in these ideas was in the real tradition of the sectarian movements going through all Church history, when he had this feeling. This is a very interesting contribution to the understanding of the Church.
If we call somebody the Antichrist today, it is usually simply understood as name- calling. You could also call him “swine,” or something else nice! But that is not the case. :Swine” is not a dogmatic term. But “Antichrist” is. When Luther called the Pope “Antichrist,” he did not want to attack the Pope in this way, except dogmatically; I. e., on the place where Christ is represented, everything is done which is against the Christ. And this is the whole tradition of the sectarian movements of the Church, and we have it also in Wyclif.
One of the criticisms which shows the Antichrist character of the Church is that they are big business. The banking house of the world was the Vatican, especially in the period in which Luther came, but long before also, The bishops were bankers, in a reduced way; but all this Wyclif insisted must be abolished. And even the monks, even the Franciscans in whose tradition he very much lives, have lost their ideal of poverty and have accommodated themselves to the general desire of the Church to be a rich Church.
But this criticism brought him to more radical consequences. He attacked transsubstantiation, saying that the body of Christ is, spatially speaking, in Heaven.
He is actually, or virtualiter (I. e., with its power) in the bread, but not spatially.
This of course is a complete contradiction to the idea of transsubstantiation. And now he realized that the Church rejected him, and since he knew that he was right, on Biblical grounds, in these criticisms, he realized that the official Church can err with respect to articles of faith. This was the great experience of Luther, that the Church rejected something which was a criticism of errors and which represented truth, From this follows that he is able to criticize any Church decision which is unbelievable, because the Bible is the real law of Christ. From there he criticized the number of the sacraments, special sacraments such as marriage, etc; he criticized the character indelibilis , the idea in Catholicism that he who is baptized, confirmed, and ordained has a special character which he never can lose, even if he cannot exercise it. He even criticized the celibacy of the priests.
He criticized the idea of the treasury of the saints, and the superstitious elements of the popular religion. The monks must be abolished because they produced separation between the one Church. And there should not be a division in the status, in principle; there should be a communis religio , a common religion, to which everybody belongs; and even what the Catholic church calls the monastic counsels is something which everybody shall fulfill – for instance, the love of the enemies. In this way one can say: negatively Wyclif has almost anticipated all positions of the Reformers. He was supported by the king who was of course on his side, because the English crown was for a long time in national opposition against the influence of Rome on the affairs of the English nation, religiously and, indirectly, politically. He was attacked very much, but never hurt; he was protected.
