What Most Readers Never Hear: The Fathers on the Antichrist
What Most Readers Never Hear: The Fathers on the Antichrist
SermonIndex
An essay on nine things the early Church Fathers said about the Antichrist that popular teaching rarely mentions, each set out in their own words.
1. He is known by what he copies
The word antichrist occurs in only four verses, all in John’s letters (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 7), and there it names those who deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. The Fathers add Paul’s man of sin, Daniel’s little horn and the beast of Revelation. But what strikes a reader who goes through them in order is how often they describe the figure by what he imitates. Chrysostom puts the pattern in one sentence, about the devil’s method. “after the prophets, were the false prophets; and after the apostles, the false apostles; and after Christ, Antichrist For unless the devil see what to imitate” — John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew (part 2 of 3) Hippolytus, early in the third century, turns the idea into a long, point-by-point comparison. Christ was shown to us as a lamb, and so will the Antichrist appear, but “within he is a wolf”.
“The Saviour was manifested as a lamb; so he too, in like manner, will appear as a lamb, though within he is a wolf. The Saviour came into the world in the circumcision, and he will come in the same manner. The Lord sent apostles among all the nations, and he in like manner will send false apostles.” — Hippolytus of Rome, On Christ and Antichrist The writings that go under his name, which are later, stretch the list further: a counterfeit virgin birth, counterfeit healings, a counterfeit ascension, a counterfeit seal in place of the cross. They are gathered under Question 3, “How does he copy Christ?”. The Greek prefix anti- can mean “in place of” as well as “against”, and what the Fathers describe fits the first sense. He is less an open enemy than a substitute, who comes with Christ’s name, tribe, signs and throne. Athanasius gives the picture of a man who steals children by copying their absent parents’ faces.
“just as if a man wishing to get into his power some children not His own, should in the absence of the parents counterfeit their looks, and lead away the children who were longing for them. In every heresy then the devil says in disguise, "I am Christ, and with me there is truth.” — Athanasius of Alexandria, Catena Aurea: Commentary on St. Luke, part 2 (chapters 11–24) If the chief mark of the Antichrist is his likeness to Christ, then the question is no longer “how frightening is this figure?” but “do I know Christ well enough to see where the copy fails?” Sulpicius Severus tells how a devil dressed as a king appeared to Martin of Tours and said, “I am Christ”. Martin answered that the Lord had never said he would come in purple and a crown, and that he would not believe it was Christ unless the figure showed the wounds of the cross. The apparition vanished.
“the fiend himself being surrounded by a purple light, in order that he might the more easily deceive people by the brilliance of the splendor assumed, clothed also in a royal robe, and with a crown of precious stones and gold encircling his head … I am Christ; and being just about to descend to earth, I wished first to manifest myself to thee … The Lord Jesus did not predict that he would come clothed in purple, and with a glittering crown upon his head. I will not believe that Christ has come, unless he appears with that appearance and form in which he suffered, and openly displaying the marks of his wounds upon the cross” — Sulpicius Severus, On the Life of St. Martin Cyril of Jerusalem gives his baptismal candidates the same test in a sentence. “The true Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, comes no more from the earth. If any come making false shows in the wilderness, go not forth; if they say, Lo, here is the Christ, Lo, there, believe it not” — Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures
2. The first warning is about teachers inside the Church
John writes of antichrists who “went out from us”, and the Fathers take him at his word. For Polycarp, the pupil of the apostles, the word applies to anyone who denies the incarnation or the cross. “For everyone who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is an antichrist. Whoever does not confess the testimony of the cross is of the devil. Whoever twists the sayings of the Lord to suit his own desires and says there is no resurrection and no judgment is the firstborn of Satan.” — Polycarp of Smyrna, Polycarp to the Philippians The test is a confession of Christ, and it is applied to people inside and around the Church. Cyprian calls those who leave the Church’s unity antichrists. Jerome counts every heresiarch as one. Athanasius calls Arianism the last heresy and a harbinger of the Antichrist, and Leo, two centuries later, applies John’s “this is Antichrist” to those who divide or deny Christ’s human nature. What they fear most is the deceiver who arrives in Christian dress. Jerome writes that heretics do this deliberately.
“they speak of Christ, and hide the Antichrist: for they know that no one can be led on, if they bring forth the Antichrist” — Jerome, Homilies on Psalms Cyprian says the same in a phrase: the adversary equips his ministers as ministers of righteousness, so that they present “antichrist under the name of Christ”. “the adversary is flattering and deceiving, who, according to the apostle's word, transforms himself into an angel of light, and equips his ministers as if they were the ministers of righteousness, who maintain night instead of day, death for salvation, despair under the offer of hope, perfidy under the pretext of faith, antichrist under the name of Christ” — Cyprian of Carthage, Treatise 1. On the Unity of the Church Hilary of Poitiers, writing under an Arian emperor, saw a further consequence. A Church that has been long deceived may no longer recognize the true Christ when he comes.
“But Christ coming in the end shall find His Church wearied, and tossed by the spirit of Anti-Christ, and by the troubles of the world. And because by their long experience of Anti-Christ they will be troubled at every novelty of trial, they shall have fear even at the approach of the Lord, suspecting deceitful appearances.” — Hilary of Poitiers, Catena Aurea: Commentary on St. Matthew, part 2 (chapters 11–21) None of this makes the final figure a figure of speech. Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Cyril of Jerusalem and Chrysostom all expect one man at the end. Chrysostom asks whether the man of sin is Satan, and answers at once. “Here he discourses concerning the Antichrist, and reveals great mysteries … But who is he? Is it then Satan? By no means; but some man, that admits his fully working in him. For he is a man. … For he will not introduce idolatry, but will be a kind of opponent to God; he will abolish all the gods, and will order men to worship him instead of God, and he will be seated in the temple of God, not that in Jerusalem only, but also in every Church … For he will perform great works, and will show wonderful signs” — John Chrysostom, Homilies on 2 Thessalonians
The Fathers hold both together: a man still to come, and a spirit already at work. The usual modern picture, of a distant political villain, leaves out the second half of what they said, and they said it first.
3. Who holds him back: Rome, and why they prayed for it
Paul says that something is holding the lawless one back, and that the Thessalonians know what it is (2 Thessalonians 2:6–7). He does not write it down. Tertullian, about AD 200, says it is the Roman state. “What obstacle is there but the Roman state, the falling away of which, by being scattered into ten kingdoms, shall introduce Antichrist upon (its own ruins)?” — Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh Chrysostom, two centuries later and in the Greek East, weighs the other candidate and sets it aside. “what is that which withholdeth, and after that would know, why Paul expresses it so obscurely. What then is it that withholdeth, that is, hindereth him from being revealed? Some indeed say, the grace of the Spirit, but others the Roman empire, to whom I most of all accede … Because if he meant to say the Spirit, he would not have spoken obscurely, but plainly, that even now the grace of the Spirit, that is the gifts, withhold him. And otherwise he ought now to have come, if he was about to come when the gifts ceased; for they have long since ceased. But because he said this of the Roman empire, he naturally glanced at it, and speaks covertly and darkly” — John Chrysostom, Homilies on 2 Thessalonians
Lactantius, who had lived through the Great Persecution, draws the practical conclusion. “The subject itself declares that the fall and ruin of the world will shortly take place; except that while the city of Rome remains it appears that nothing of this kind is to be feared. … It is that city, that only, which still sustains all things; and the God of heaven is to be entreated by us and implored-if, indeed, His arrangements and decrees can be delayed-lest, sooner than we think for, that detestable tyrant should come” — Lactantius, The Divine Institutes Book 7 This explains a habit that surprises modern readers: Christians prayed for the empire’s survival because they thought its fall would bring the end. Tertullian says so openly in his Apology. “We pray, too, for the emperors, for their ministers and for all in authority, for the welfare of the world, for the prevalence of peace, for the delay of the final consummation.” — Tertullian, The Apology
Not all of them were comfortable with this. The same Tertullian, in his treatise On Prayer, complains of those who pray for delay. “how do some pray for some protraction of the age, when the kingdom of God, which we pray may arrive, tends unto the consummation of the age? Our wish is, that our reign be hastened, not our servitude protracted.” — Tertullian, On Prayer Augustine, writing after the sack of Rome in 410, lists the guesses (Rome, or the hidden wicked within the Church) and then gives his own answer. “they show that he was unwilling to make an explicit statement, because he said that they knew. And thus we who have not their knowledge wish and are not able even with pains to understand what the apostle referred to, especially as his meaning is made still more obscure by what he adds. For what does he mean by "For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now holdeth, let him hold until he be taken out of the way: and then shall the wicked be revealed?" I frankly confess I do not know what he means. I will nevertheless mention such conjectures as I have heard or read.” — Augustine of Hippo, The City of God (part 3 of 3)
The idea that the restrainer is the Holy Spirit or the Church, taken out of the world before the tribulation, is not what the majority said. Chrysostom mentions the Spirit as the view of “some” and rejects it on the ground that the gifts of the Spirit had long ceased. Other readings exist (God’s power or the angels, the hidden wicked, God’s own permission), and we set them out under Question 4, “What holds him back?”, but a Church removed by a rapture is not among the ones we found.
4. The sacrifice that ceases is the Church’s worship
Daniel says that in the middle of the final week the “sacrifice and the oblation” will cease. Modern readers usually picture the animal sacrifices of a rebuilt Jewish temple. Hippolytus, the first to write at length on the subject, means something else. “The sacrifice he speaks of is not that of sheep, but the prayers of the upright. And the holy city he speaks of is the righteous, i. e. [those] who are oppressed and trodden under foot by the horn that sprang up in the midst [Dan. vii. 8, 20, 21, 25], which is Antichrist, as Daniel said.” — Hippolytus of Rome, Commentary on Revelation In another fragment he says what he means by the offering that is removed. “there will remain only one week, the last, in which Elias will appear, and Enoch, and in the midst of it the abomination of desolation will be manifested, viz., Antichrist, announcing desolation to the world. And when he comes, the sacrifice and oblation will be removed, which now are offered to God in every place by the nations.” — Hippolytus of Rome, Fragments - Exegetical. Fragments from Commentaries on Various Books of Scripture
The offering “now offered to God in every place by the nations” is the Church’s. And in a passage preserved by the Syriac writer Dionysius, Hippolytus describes the effect: the Antichrist “will scatter all men, so that there shall not be found two or three together to assemble, to offer sacrifice to God”. “These things then are to be in the half of the week, when Antichrist will scatter all men, so that there shall not be found two or three together to assemble, to offer sacrifice to God. This then is to be fulfilled, that the sacrifice shall cease. When then these are killed there [ib. 7] by the false Christ, afterwards they are to stand up, in presence of many, and are to be caught upon the clouds to meet our Lord” — Hippolytus of Rome, Quotes on Revelation recorded by Dionysius Syrus The writings under his name go further, and describe an empty church and a silent altar.
“because neither "oblation nor incense "is attended to, nor a service acceptable to God; but the sanctuaries of the churches will become like a garden-watcher's hut, and the holy body and blood of Christ will not be shown in those days. The public service of God shall be extinguished, psalmody shall cease, the reading of the Scriptures shall not be heard” — Pseudo-Hippolytus, Dubious and Spurious Pieces Attributed to Hippolytus The idea lasted. Six centuries later, in the Syriac church, Dionysius bar Salibi says the same. “in the latter days of the world the Church shall suffer persecution for three years and a half, which period he identifies with the 'half-week' foretold by Daniel (ix. 27); and the 'sacrifice caused to cease in the midst of the week,' signifies accordingly the suppression of the public prayers of the Church by the tyranny of Antichrist” — Dionysius bar Salibi, Commentary on Revelation
And the nineteenth-century compilers Neale and Littledale, summing up the older readings of the Psalms, put it in terms of prayer. “That is, they look forward to that time of Antichrist when the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and so the great oblation of the Church's thanksgiving will come to an end: when from those few scattered servants of God who remain without a priest and without a temple, what can there be but earnest prayer, that, for the elect's sake, those days may be shortened?” — Neale and Littledale (compilers), A Commentary on the Psalms from Primitive and Mediaeval Writers, volume 2 (Psalms 39–80) (part 1 of 2) The Fathers did not choose between the temple in Jerusalem and the worship of the Church. Irenaeus says the Antichrist will sit in the temple at Jerusalem, Cyril of Jerusalem insists it is the Jewish temple and “not the Church”, and John of Damascus agrees; Chrysostom says it may mean both Jerusalem and every church. What the liturgical reading adds is a view of the goal. On this reading the last persecution is aimed first at the assembly and at the offering, and that is why, in the Orthodox churches, the feast of Elijah, the Gospels of Holy Week and the services of the Last Judgment all have the end in view..
5. The defence is the tradition, not the calendar
In the same chapter in which he describes the man of sin, Paul gives his readers their defence: “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (2 Thessalonians 2:15, KJV). The Fathers say the same. Polycarp’s remedy for false teaching is plain. “So let us leave behind the emptiness of the crowd and their false teachings, and turn back to the word that was handed down to us from the beginning. Let us stay alert in prayer and persevere in fasting” — Polycarp of Smyrna, Polycarp to the Philippians Cyril teaches the signs of the Antichrist to the candidates for baptism, and in the same breath forbids curiosity about the date. “as to the time let no one be curious. For it is not far you, He says, to know times or seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power. And venture not thou to declare when these things shall be, nor on the other hand supinely slumber … that we may not die deceived and be led astray by that false Antichrist” — Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures
Athanasius finds a reason for this in the Lord’s own words. Because the Son said that he did not know the day, anyone who speaks of the day, even one who claims to be Christ, can be disbelieved. “because of the deceivers which shall be afterwards; that though demons should be transfigured as Angels, and should attempt to speak concerning the end, you should not believe, since they are ignorant … and that, if Antichrist too, disguising himself, should say, `I am Christ,' and should try in his turn to speak of that day and end, to deceive the hearers, ye, having these words from Me, `No, not the Son,' may disbelieve him also” — Athanasius of Alexandria, Four Discourses Against the Arians The Fathers did not always follow their own advice. Hippolytus reckoned six thousand years from creation and placed the end about five hundred years after Christ, and he was wrong.
“From the birth of Christ, then, we must reckon the 500 years that remain to make up the 6000, and thus the end shall be. … in order that in the remaining half time the gospel might be preached to the whole world, and that when the sixth day was completed He might end the present life.” — Hippolytus of Rome, Fragments - Exegetical. Fragments from Commentaries on Various Books of Scripture The same Hippolytus elsewhere counsels the opposite. “the little horn, which is Antichrist, shall appear suddenly in their midst, and righteousness shall be banished from the earth, and the whole world shall reach its consummation. So that we ought not to anticipate the counsel of God, but exercise patience and prayer, that we fall not on such times.” — Hippolytus of Rome, Fragments - Exegetical. Fragments from Commentaries on Various Books of Scripture Jerome records that a chronographer named Judas dated the Antichrist to about AD 202. Augustine rebuked a correspondent who thought the decade might be known. Gennadius says a chronicle built only on Scripture silences idle guessing about the Antichrist’s coming. And Neale and Littledale, with the long view of the nineteenth century, make an observation that remains true.
“They take it of the coming of Antichrist in the last times, when the faith of the Church has become weak, and from Augustine in the fifth century to Parez in the fifteenth, each accounts his own days as near the end, and finds all the marks of decrepitude in the belief and lives of Christians” — Neale and Littledale (compilers), A Commentary on the Psalms from Primitive and Mediaeval Writers, volume 2 (Psalms 39–80) (part 2 of 2) The record is of each generation sure that it saw the signs and each corrected by the next. The Fathers’ words about watchfulness stand, and so do their words against fixing a date.
6. He is in the heart before he is on the throne
Augustine, preaching on John’s first letter, turns the word on the listener. “Let each one, looking well to his own conscience, if he be a lover of the world, be changed; let him become a lover of Christ, that he be not an antichrist. If one shall tell him that he is an antichrist, he is wroth, he thinks it a wrong done to him; perchance, if he is told by him that strives with him that he is an antichrist, he threatens an action at law. Christ saith to him, Be patient; if thou hast been falsely spoken of, rejoice with me, because I also am falsely spoken of by the antichrists: but if thou art truly spoken of, come to an understanding with thine own conscience; and if thou fear to be called this, fear more to be it.” — Augustine of Hippo, Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John
Gregory the Great gave the Western church the idea in its mature form: Antichrist is the head of a body, and all the wicked, in every age, are his members. The man at the end is the full revealing of what is already at work. “every wicked person, who has already gone by, survives in his perverse imitators, and that the author of iniquity, who has not yet come, is already visible in those who do his works. Hence John says; Now are there become many Antichrists … As if he were saying; Then Antichrist will be manifestly seen; for he now secretly works his hidden works in the hearts of the unrighteous.” — Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job (part 4 of 5) Origen widens the test from persons to teaching and to virtue itself. “For every discourse which professes to expound Scripture faithfully, and has not the truth, is Antichrist. For the truth is Christ, that which feigns itself to be the truth is Antichrist. So also all virtues are Christ, all that feigns itself to be virtue is Antichrist” — Origen of Alexandria, Catena Aurea: Commentary on St. Matthew, part 3 (chapters 22–28)
Cyprian finds the spirit of Antichrist in pride and in a person’s speech. “Exaltation, and puffing up, and arrogant and haughty boastfulness, spring not from the teaching of Christ who teaches humility, but from the spirit of Antichrist, whom the Lord rebukes by His prophet” — Cyprian of Carthage, Letters “By his mouth, therefore, and by his words, is every one at once betrayed; and whether he has Christ in his heart, or Antichrist, is discerned in his speaking” — Cyprian of Carthage, Letters Bede puts both halves in a sentence: a man to come, and a presence already in the minds of those who resist Christ “by profession or by deed”. “He comes with the imminent day of judgment, born into the world as that man more wicked than all others, the son of iniquity. And now he is already in the world, dwelling in the minds of those who resist Christ either by profession or by deed” — Bede, Bede's Commentary on the Catholic Epistles
The Eastern monastic tradition calls this delusion prelest, in which a counterfeit of grace is taken for the real thing. Palladius’s story of the monk Valens is an early example: a demon dressed as the Saviour, with a host of lamp-bearing angels, deceived him into worshipping, and the elders cured his pride (the Syriac version and the Greek). Orthodox writers today connect this with the seal of chrismation, the anointing that marks a Christian from baptism. Neale and Littledale note that the sin of Satan at the first and of Antichrist at the last is the same: pride. This does not make him a symbol. It puts the question differently, and the Fathers would say first. Before “who is he?” comes “how much of him is in me?”
7. What is older than you think, and what is newer
A reader who knows the modern charts will find that some of the pieces are old, and others are not found in these Fathers at all. We list both, since a fair reading has to include the first as well as the second.
Found in the Fathers
A single man at the end of the age, among ten kings who divide the Roman empire, who reigns three and a half years (Irenaeus). Elijah and Enoch as the two witnesses, killed by him and raised (Hippolytus and Tertullian; Victorinus names Jeremiah with Elijah instead of Enoch; see Question 9). A final “week” of Daniel, with a gap between the sixty-ninth week and the seventieth: Hippolytus says that “there will remain only one week, the last”, in which Elias and Enoch appear and, in the middle of it, the Antichrist. A rebuilt temple at Jerusalem (Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Cyril of Jerusalem, John of Damascus). A people who receive him, which means the Jews for most of these writers, and which we treat with care under Question 16, “What did the Fathers say about the Jews and Antichrist?”. The tribe of Dan. A kingdom on earth after him for some, the “thousand years”, and a rejection of it by others.
Not found in what we gathered
A removal of the Church before the tribulation. The nearest words are Irenaeus’s, who says that “in the end the Church shall be suddenly caught up from this”. Some readers have taken this as a rapture before the tribulation. But the same sentence goes on to call the tribulation “the last contest of the righteous, in which, when they overcome they are crowned”, and elsewhere Irenaeus puts the resurrection of the just “after the coming of Antichrist”. “And therefore, when in the end the Church shall be suddenly caught up from this, it is said, "There shall be tribulation such as has not been since the beginning, neither shall be." For this is the last contest of the righteous, in which, when they overcome they are crowned with incorruption.” — Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies Hippolytus’s use of the same verb is just as plain. The two witnesses are killed by the false Christ, and “afterwards they are to stand up … and are to be caught upon the clouds to meet our Lord”. The catching-up comes at the end of the ordeal, not before it.
The Church or the Holy Spirit as restrainer, taken away. See section 3. A seven-year treaty brokered by the Antichrist. Hippolytus and Bede both quote Daniel’s “he shall approve the covenant for many, one week” and place it at the end (Hippolytus, Bede). Hippolytus also has the Antichrist promise to restore the kingdom of Israel. But we found no Father who describes a signed seven-year treaty, and in Hippolytus the week begins with the witnesses’ preaching and not with the Antichrist. The mark as a technology. For the Fathers, the mark and number are about worship and denial. Pseudo-Hippolytus describes a seal that requires a formal denial of the Creator and of baptism, Lactantius a mark whose refusers are tortured or burned, and Victorinus and Bede give names that add up to 666 (see Question 8). A papal Antichrist. Gregory the Great does say that anyone who wants to be called “universal bishop” is a forerunner of Antichrist, but he said it to the Patriarch of Constantinople and the emperor, about a title. The later Protestant identification of the Antichrist with the papacy is not in these early writers.
A caution. What is absent from our quotations is not necessarily absent from every Father, because we selected passages, and some of the works are fragments.
8. Where they disagreed
None of the above should suggest a single Patristic view. They disagreed about whether the temple is the Jewish temple or the Church (see Question 6), about who restrains (Question 4), about whether Nero will return (Question 2), about the meaning of 666 (Question 8), about whether the Antichrist is of Dan (Question 2), and about whether there will be a thousand-year kingdom on earth (Question 14). Where they agree is on the outline: a final deceiver who comes in Christ’s likeness, a short and fierce persecution, and a coming of Christ that ends it. Even that outline is treated differently by Aphrahat, who reads Daniel’s little horn as Antiochus, already past, and by Clement of Alexandria, who reads the last week as already fulfilled.
9. Three questions the Fathers would ask
The Fathers did not leave their readers a timetable, and we do not offer one. What they leave is a set of questions. First: does it look like Christ, or does it only use his name? The deceiver comes in his name, with his titles and with signs, and the test is the cross and the wounds, humility, and the Father’s name. Second: does it ask me to deny that he came in the flesh, or to give up the assembly of the Church? John’s test is a confession, and Hippolytus’s picture of the last persecution is a Church scattered and unable to gather. Third: am I standing on what was handed down, or on a timetable? Paul’s remedy was to stand fast in the traditions, Athanasius’s was that no one can know the day, and Augustine’s was to fear more to be an antichrist than to be called one.
That is perhaps what most readers never hear. The Fathers’ main concern about the Antichrist was not prediction but fidelity: knowing Christ well enough to be unmoved by the counterfeit, and holding the common faith in a time when it will be hard to gather.