Recent developments on the doctrine of Antichrist

Maybe it's just me, but I never expected that the person making the biggest waves with his idiosyncratic views on the identity of the antichrist would be a homosexual tech billionaire married to another man. Nevertheless, Peter Thiel. I won't try to explain his views: use the interwebs search engine of your choice and you'll know as much as I do. I can't make heads or tails of said doctrine of the antichrist, so I fall back on what is in the original version of Westminster Confession of Faith 25.6.

In these United States, that paragraph was amended by deletion in 1789. Still, I can't help but agree with the deleted phrase, which reads,

[the pope of Rome] is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God.

Sadly, many Christians read that statement through the lens of wild speculation fueled by dispensationalist (and tech billionaire) hermeneutics which raged through evangelicalism during the 20th and 21st centuries. Those of us who have heard one too many wild-eyed sermons filled with references to the Middle East are tempted to dismiss the original WCF 25.6 as more of the same, but I think that a grave mistake. Properly understood, it is a claim that the Roman Catholic papacy is a manifestation of the spirit of antichrist, which strikes me as objectively true. At least, it's objectively true if one accepts its doctrine of antichrist, which assumes that the antichrist is to be identified with the man of sin.

In his letters, the Apostle John tells us to beware of antichrists, which denies that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:18-22; 4:3; 2 John 7). One wonders how a person who denies Jesus is the Christ could possibly ever be accepted into any Christian Church of any denomination, as they all require assent to the Apostles' Creed ("And I believe in Jesus Christ..."). However, that mystery is cleared up if the antichrist is identified with "the man of sin" in 2 Thessalonians: "the man of lawlessness..., the son of destruction, who ... takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4). In other words, as the Westminster Divines seem to have understood it, the spirit of antichrist is to claim for oneself the place in the Church which only Jesus Christ can occupy. The Roman Catholic pope claims to be the head of the Church, taking the place of Christ as his "vicar" (assuming Jesus is not actively ruling his Church, leaving his office empty and needing to be vicariously filled). 

You don't have to agree with the exegesis of the relevant texts, but the original version of WCF 25.6 is clearly not crazy. Its doctrine is simple: to be antichrist is to take the place of Christ by proclaiming oneself the head of the Church. But on that definition, the pope of Rome is fairly obviously only one antichrist of many. 

The spirit of antichrist is in the world whenever a human being is declared or treated as though he were head of the Church.

While no congregation would formally declare that Jesus is not the Christ, more than a few act as though their pastor is the head of their local Church. Many of us have heard (or been told), "If you can't agree with the pastor, you don't belong in this congregation" (or words to that effect). In other words, this congregation belongs to the pastor: he is its head. These organizations may not be as large as the church of Rome, but surely these are also manifestations of the spirit of antichrist.

I suspect the widespread belief that the doctrine of "The Antichrist" is a subset of eschatology proper (that is, the literal last days) has led us to ignore John's warning: "as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come" (1 John 2:18). Many antichrists are abroad in our day, just as they were in John's. I think it entirely appropriate to label the pope of Rome as antichrist, and equally appropriate to label at least a few pastors of confessionally presbyterian congregations as antichrist as well.

In other words, let's use Bible words to describe what's going on in our congregations. Having done that, let us respond to what is going on in our congregations as the words of the Bible instruct us.

The problem with comedies

 

 I did a close reading of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in college when I was assigned a scene from it for an acting class, and decided that it really shouldn't be a comedy. Like most Americans, I like my comedies to be funny: I've never really accepted the classic definition of a comedy as a story with a happy ending (preferably a wedding or two). In the case of Measure for Measure, I thought the story so grim (a major plot point has a young woman pressured to have sex with Vienna's ruler to save her brother's life) that its happy ending seemed forced and inappropriate. A more consistently written Measure, I thought, would have turned out tragically, perhaps with a Hamlet- or Macbeth-style bloodbath.

When we know everything will turn out all right, it's hard to credit the emotional struggles through which characters must journey on their way to that happy ending. That's clearly the case with the Hebrew midwives whom Pharaoh told to kill all baby boys (Exodus 1:15-16). In just a few verses, they deceive Pharaoh by turning his own deceitful premise against him and so are rewarded by God (Exodus 1:17-21). I'm tempted to think of them as plucky, clever and indefatigable, but upon reflection I'm not sure why. Their bravery is remarkable, but is made remarkable because they didn't know they were living in a comedy: for all they knew, Pharaoh would kill them when he discovered they hadn't killed any babies.

In some sense, of course, this wasn't a comedy because Pharaoh simply takes his genocidal impulses public in Exodus 1:22: "Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, 'Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.'" I can't imagine anything about the episode seemed comic to Shiphrah and Puah. From the beginning, they must have been terrified that Pharaoh would see through their paper-thin deception. Then they had to live with even greater fear of what he might do to them once he had made his murderous intentions known to the world. Yes, God had given them families, but how long would they keep their own heads?

Perhaps that's the root of all anxiety: we don't realize we're living in a comedy. Jesus tells us anxiety is the sin of unbelief in Matthew 6:25-34, and it's one of the sins from which repentance is particularly difficult and signally uncommon. That may be because our time horizon is too short. We worry about tomorrow and the day after, forgetting that the deus ex machina which literally saved many a Greek hero and figuratively rescued the cast of Measure for Measure is an overly literal foreshadowing to the comedic end to this cosmic drama which we are all acting out.

Maybe we need more unfunny comedies. Life in a fallen world is rife with dread and struggle, and all too often we think that means it must therefore end badly. American Christians are particularly loathe to acknowledge the immense suffering of living in a fallen world because they fear that portends a tragic end. This is wrong, of course: I can say that God is good and my life is bad without any tension or contradiction. The Bible does have a few funny bits, but overall it's extremely unamusing. Nonetheless, its account of history is entirely comic.

Read this way, we can understand the experience of all believers from Shiphrah and Puah to our fellow congregants to ourselves, and how to survive that experience. We can get through the horrors of this life not on a reserve of innate cheerfulness, but on the basis of a Christian hope in the truths of comedy.

You say you want an eschaton

I can't be the only reactionary hard-shell Calvinist who misses Marxism's rhetorical domination of the educated elites. I enjoyed having a vocabulary in common with my opponents on the left. In particular, I really liked talking about what would happen when the Revolution comes (as in, "When the Revolution comes, the Republicans will be the first with their backs up against the wall." Ah, the good old days.). In the Marxist cosmos, "the Revolution" is that glorious impending moment in which the proletariat will rise up against their bourgeois oppressors, seize the means of production, and usher in an age of harmony and peace in a finally-classless society.

As a (nearly-)infinite number of Christian critics have noted, the Revolution is Marx's eschaton, his endpoint of history and new golden age. In that sense, Marxism is just another Christian heresy. In Christian orthodoxy, human history ends in Christ's return, the end of the present evil age, and our Lord's establishment of the new heavens and earth in which peace and justice reign. Marx (conveniently) removes Jesus and divine intervention from the scenario, but he does teach his students to look forward to an age of peace and justice.

Marx's vision will never, ever be achieved until the Revolution comes. (For what it's worth, I rather doubt it will.) Conversely, while the Christian eschaton is utterly dependent on the Lord's good pleasure to inaugurate it, it nonetheless is manifested in the present by the Christian's faith. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1) Along with the Old Testament saints, we are called to live in the present as though we already live in the age to come, according to the values of the city which has foundations (Hebrews 11-12). In other words, we are to live according to the Biblical principles of peace and justice now, even though they will not be rightly, fully, or permanently established until our Lord returns in glory.

Which brings us (at long last) to my point: an inaugurated eschatology requires the Christian to maintain a commitment to social justice. The perfect social justice of the new heavens and earth is not yet, but must be already present in the political agenda which the Christian pursues. Christians may, and certainly will, disagree as to how to pragmatically and prudentially pursue social justice in this present age; indeed, they often disagree as to what social justice even looks like. Nonetheless, whether they find themselves on the left or right of the political spectrum, whether they are politically active or inactive (or, in my case, only a reluctant voter), they must be bound by a desire to bring about as much social justice as is possible in this fallen world.

Accordingly, it is wrong, bordering on eschatologically heretical, to assert that Christians ought not be concerned with or driven by social justice. At their very best, such critiques evidence a rather poor grasp of Biblical eschatology.

Learning from the priests & Levites

The priests and Levites who come to John the Baptist in John 1:19-28 are not interrogators, but inquirers. As servants of the Temple, they are experts in Biblical worship, and in John's practice of baptism, they recognize a new ritual. Notice that they don't challenge baptism's propriety or John's right to perform it; in fact, they seem to implicitly grant it. Instead, they want to understand what this ritual reveals about John's identity.

John the Baptist could be Elijah, who they thought would inaugurate the eschatological Day of the Lord (Malachi 4:5-6). He could be the Christ, who would defeat the enemies of God and his people and establish a reign of eternal peace (Psalms 2 & 45). He could be the Prophet like Moses who will bring a new, perfect and final Law (Deuteronomy 18:15-18). In other words, John the Baptist appears to be a, if not the, subject of prophecy who will inaugurate the eschaton precisely because he has introduced an new ritual which signifies citizenship in a kingdom and entrance into a new age.

Of course, John is merely the herald of that figure. But as he does not challenge the priests' & Levites' assumptions, he effectively affirms them. By so doing, he lets us know that we all could learn a lot from the liturgical expertise of the priests and Levites.

Occupy the streets of gold

When I went off to university, I got involved with United Campuses to Prevent Nuclear War, which title pretty much explains the organization's purpose and constituency. Lest anyone think this will be a rueful look back at youthful folly, rest assured I continue to believe the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction to be about as sane as its acronym suggests. Moreover, our nation's determination to go into massive debt in order to finance weapon systems designed to devastate civilian populations is, in my humble estimation, a self-evident abomination. I very much enjoyed being a part of UCam, as it was known, for its clarity of purpose and for the sober strategies (such as education and lobbying legislators) it employed.

Then 1989 happened, and shortly thereafter the first President Bush grounded the bombers which, the more mature reader might recall, had to that point always been up in the air. With that, all the urgency left the movement. The national organization simply disappeared (which was a more than a little disorienting), and, a little while later, so did our campus chapter.

I focused my attention on homelessness and poverty, but struggled to understand how either of those issues could be addressed by direct political action. In conjunction with my social sciences degree program, I began exploring how my activism could (or, more fundamentally, whether it should) be integrated with my Christian faith.

I still ran into my UCam friends around campus, and began noticing something strange. They had all the anger and passion of our anti-nuclear campaigning, but it seemed to lack any focus. A few turned their attention to the university itself, trying to persuade the student body that the administration was up to something nefarious. (This was James Madison University in the early nineties: the administration’s most nefarious scheme was to fence off the quad to reseed the dirt trails beaten down by too many students cutting across the grass.) The activist community, such as it was, turned in, and on, itself. I remember a self-published “literary journal” in which an “Open Letter to a White Male Activist” asserted that caucasian men, no matter what their actions, could escape or exculpate the stigma and guilt of being representatives of the oppressor class. It occurred to me that this might not be the best approach to recruiting volunteers to the cause.

But of course, that was precisely the problem: what cause? My friends were activists who believed, as a matter of principle, that the world’s ills could be solved by political action and they were thus obliged to take action. However, they struggled to define what those ills were, precisely, and what political action would be able to address them. They knew there is something wrong, terribly wrong, with the world as it is, but were unable to say what exactly that is.

In the meantime, I got permission to sit in a class for graduating sociology majors so I could write a research paper on Christian political activism. In the process, I realized that what is fundamentally wrong with this world is sin, and that while political action might redress some of sin’s symptoms and effects, it can never cure sin. Only Jesus and the Spirit-empowered Gospel of the Cross can do that. I didn’t know it then, but that minor epiphany was what set me on the path which would eventually lead to the ministry of Word and sacrament.

All this came to mind when the “Occupy Wall Street” movement erupted a couple years ago. Say what one will about the efficacy of public protest, I agree with rest of my white middle-aged male compatriots that the “Occupy” movement’s great and fatal weakness was its inability to articulate what, precisely, its goals were and/or how those goals might be accomplished. It seemed instead to be saying litttle more than “Something is wrong, very wrong, with our society.”

And there I agree with the Occupy movement and my undergraduate activist friends. Something is terribly, terribly wrong with America and the world today. However, it’s what’s been wrong with every society and the world itself since the shortly after the beginning of human history: sin. People sin, and world is under the curse because of sin. No amount of political action can fix that. I’m thankful God has provided a solution through the Gospel, and look forward to its final implementation when our Lord returns for us in glory.

Psalm 75

is the third psalm in Book III of the Psalter. In Book III's introduction, Psalm 73, Asaph takes comfort from remembering the Lord's justice, saying he will "tell of all [God's] works" (Psalm 73:28). Psalm 75 returns to the theme of justice and judgment on the wicked, and so Psalm 75:9 echoes Psalm 73:28 when Asaph says "I will declare [the Lord's judgment] forever."