Luca Signorelli, Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist, 1499-1504
The term “Antichrist” (antichristos) appears in the New Testament only in the First and Second Epistles of John. The context is certainly eschatological (paidia, eschate hora estin, vulg. filioli, novissima hora est, “little children, it is the last hour”), and the term also significantly appears in the plural: “just as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, and now many have become antichrists”. No less decisive is the fact that the apostle defines the last hour as the “now (nyn)” in which it is he who finds himself: “the Antichrist is coming (erchetai, present indicative)’. Shortly afterwards, it is specified—as if it were necessary—that the Antichrist “is now in the world (nyn en to kosmoi estin)”. It is worth bearing in mind this eschatological context of the Antichrist, if it is true—as Eric Peterson, and Karl Barth before him, never tire of reminding us—that the final moment of human history is inseparable from Christianity (“a Christianity,” writes Barth, “that is not wholly, entirely and without residue eschatological, has nothing at all to do with Christ, wholly and without residue”). For John, the Antichrist is the one who, in the final hour, “denies that Jesus is the Christ” (that is, the Messiah), and the antichrists are therefore the “many” who, like him, “went out from us, but were not of us”, which suggests, not without ambiguity, that the Antichrist emerges from the bosom of the ekklesia, but does not truly belong to it. As such, he is repeatedly referred to as the “deceiver” (planos, literally “the one who leads astray”, commonly translated as “seducer”).
However, the focus of the exegesis of the Church Fathers and theologians on the Antichrist over the centuries has not been the Epistles of John, but rather Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. Although the term does not appear there, the enigmatic figure whom the letter describes as “the man of lawlessness” (ho anthropos tes anomias) and the “son of perdition” (ho uios tes apoleias) had already been identified by Hippolytus, Irenaeus and Tertullian, and later by Augustine, as the Antichrist. Indeed, Paul says of him—whom he also describes as “lawless” (anomos)—that “he sets himself up against everything that is called God or is worshipped, to the point of sitting in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God”. The Antichrist is a worldly power (one tradition identified him with a resurrected Nero) who seeks to imitate and counterfeit the kingdom of Christ in the end times.
In the Epistle to the Thessalonians, however, the man of lawlessness is closely linked to another enigmatic figure, the katechon, the one who restrains (also in the masculine form: “he who restrains”). That which is held back is “the parousia [presence/coming] of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him”: the context of the letter is, therefore, exactly as in John’s letter, eschatological (just beforehand, the apostle refers to “the righteous judgement of God… at the revelation of the Lord Jesus with the angels of his power”). As early as Augustine’s time, this power that holds back the final coming of Christ was identified with the Roman Empire (which Paul, in Augustine’s words, would have refrained from naming explicitly “so as not to incur the charge of vilification, by wishing ill upon the empire which everyone regarded as eternal”) or with the Roman Church itself, as John’s letter seemed to suggest, mentioning the antichrists who “will come out from among us”. In any case, whether it be the Roman Empire or the Church, the power that holds back is that of an institution founded on a stable law or constitution (anticipating our concept of the “state”, Tertullian says: status romanus, which in his time meant “the stable condition of the Roman Empire”).
The key is to understand the relationship between the one who restrains and “the man of lawlessness”. This has sometimes been interpreted as a conflict between two powers, in which the man of lawlessness or the Antichrist “removes from the way” the one who restrains. The expression ek mesou genetai (“until the one who restrains is taken out of the way”) does not in any way imply that it is the man of lawlessness who does this: as the Vulgate translation suggests (donec de medio fiat), it is the restraining power itself (be it the empire or the Church) that is taken out of the way. The text that immediately follows is perfectly clear in this regard: “and then the lawless one will be revealed”. The relationship between the institutional power of the katechon and the man of lawlessness is the succession between two worldly powers, one of which is removed and replaced—or gives way to—the other. This is, in Paul’s words, “the mystery of lawlessness that is already at work” and which finds its revelation at the end, as if—just as the term “mystery” seems to suggest—the “lawless one” were finally to bring to full light the truth of the power that precedes him. If this is true, then the letter contains a doctrine concerning the fate of all institutional power that cannot be overlooked. According to this doctrine, institutional power founded on a stable basis ultimately gives way to a state of anomie, in which the constitutionally founded sovereign is succeeded by a “lawless” sovereign, who exercises his rule arbitrarily. The letter therefore contains a message that concerns us closely, for it is precisely this “mystery of anomie” that we are currently experiencing. State power founded on laws and so-called democratic constitutions has gradually been transformed—through an unstoppable process that began some time ago but is only now reaching its final crisis—into a state of anomie, in which the law is replaced by decrees and measures of the executive, and the state of emergency becomes the normal form of government. It remains – and we must not forget this – that the epistle states that once the power of “lawlessness” has been revealed, “the Lord will destroy it by the breath of his mouth and bring it to an end by the appearance of his presence”. This means that what remains for us to consider in the seemingly hopeless situation we are currently experiencing is the form of a human community that is free both from the “power that retains” with its apparent institutional stability and from the anomie of emergency into which it inevitably descends.
Giorgio Agamben – The State and anomie: Reflections on the Antichrist
The term “Antichrist” (antichristos) appears in the New Testament only in the First and Second Epistles of John. The context is certainly eschatological (paidia, eschate hora estin, vulg. filioli, novissima hora est, “little children, it is the last hour”), and the term also significantly appears in the plural: “just as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, and now many have become antichrists”. No less decisive is the fact that the apostle defines the last hour as the “now (nyn)” in which it is he who finds himself: “the Antichrist is coming (erchetai, present indicative)’. Shortly afterwards, it is specified—as if it were necessary—that the Antichrist “is now in the world (nyn en to kosmoi estin)”. It is worth bearing in mind this eschatological context of the Antichrist, if it is true—as Eric Peterson, and Karl Barth before him, never tire of reminding us—that the final moment of human history is inseparable from Christianity (“a Christianity,” writes Barth, “that is not wholly, entirely and without residue eschatological, has nothing at all to do with Christ, wholly and without residue”). For John, the Antichrist is the one who, in the final hour, “denies that Jesus is the Christ” (that is, the Messiah), and the antichrists are therefore the “many” who, like him, “went out from us, but were not of us”, which suggests, not without ambiguity, that the Antichrist emerges from the bosom of the ekklesia, but does not truly belong to it. As such, he is repeatedly referred to as the “deceiver” (planos, literally “the one who leads astray”, commonly translated as “seducer”).
However, the focus of the exegesis of the Church Fathers and theologians on the Antichrist over the centuries has not been the Epistles of John, but rather Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. Although the term does not appear there, the enigmatic figure whom the letter describes as “the man of lawlessness” (ho anthropos tes anomias) and the “son of perdition” (ho uios tes apoleias) had already been identified by Hippolytus, Irenaeus and Tertullian, and later by Augustine, as the Antichrist. Indeed, Paul says of him—whom he also describes as “lawless” (anomos)—that “he sets himself up against everything that is called God or is worshipped, to the point of sitting in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God”. The Antichrist is a worldly power (one tradition identified him with a resurrected Nero) who seeks to imitate and counterfeit the kingdom of Christ in the end times.
In the Epistle to the Thessalonians, however, the man of lawlessness is closely linked to another enigmatic figure, the katechon, the one who restrains (also in the masculine form: “he who restrains”). That which is held back is “the parousia [presence/coming] of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him”: the context of the letter is, therefore, exactly as in John’s letter, eschatological (just beforehand, the apostle refers to “the righteous judgement of God… at the revelation of the Lord Jesus with the angels of his power”). As early as Augustine’s time, this power that holds back the final coming of Christ was identified with the Roman Empire (which Paul, in Augustine’s words, would have refrained from naming explicitly “so as not to incur the charge of vilification, by wishing ill upon the empire which everyone regarded as eternal”) or with the Roman Church itself, as John’s letter seemed to suggest, mentioning the antichrists who “will come out from among us”. In any case, whether it be the Roman Empire or the Church, the power that holds back is that of an institution founded on a stable law or constitution (anticipating our concept of the “state”, Tertullian says: status romanus, which in his time meant “the stable condition of the Roman Empire”).
The key is to understand the relationship between the one who restrains and “the man of lawlessness”. This has sometimes been interpreted as a conflict between two powers, in which the man of lawlessness or the Antichrist “removes from the way” the one who restrains. The expression ek mesou genetai (“until the one who restrains is taken out of the way”) does not in any way imply that it is the man of lawlessness who does this: as the Vulgate translation suggests (donec de medio fiat), it is the restraining power itself (be it the empire or the Church) that is taken out of the way. The text that immediately follows is perfectly clear in this regard: “and then the lawless one will be revealed”. The relationship between the institutional power of the katechon and the man of lawlessness is the succession between two worldly powers, one of which is removed and replaced—or gives way to—the other. This is, in Paul’s words, “the mystery of lawlessness that is already at work” and which finds its revelation at the end, as if—just as the term “mystery” seems to suggest—the “lawless one” were finally to bring to full light the truth of the power that precedes him. If this is true, then the letter contains a doctrine concerning the fate of all institutional power that cannot be overlooked. According to this doctrine, institutional power founded on a stable basis ultimately gives way to a state of anomie, in which the constitutionally founded sovereign is succeeded by a “lawless” sovereign, who exercises his rule arbitrarily. The letter therefore contains a message that concerns us closely, for it is precisely this “mystery of anomie” that we are currently experiencing. State power founded on laws and so-called democratic constitutions has gradually been transformed—through an unstoppable process that began some time ago but is only now reaching its final crisis—into a state of anomie, in which the law is replaced by decrees and measures of the executive, and the state of emergency becomes the normal form of government. It remains – and we must not forget this – that the epistle states that once the power of “lawlessness” has been revealed, “the Lord will destroy it by the breath of his mouth and bring it to an end by the appearance of his presence”. This means that what remains for us to consider in the seemingly hopeless situation we are currently experiencing is the form of a human community that is free both from the “power that retains” with its apparent institutional stability and from the anomie of emergency into which it inevitably descends.
Quodlibet, 19 October, 2022