2 Thessalonians 2:4

4. The gloss ως θεον is interpolated before καθισαι in DcFgrGKL and most minn., in syrpesh and g [lat]; it was incorporated on this quite insufficient evidence in the T.R. G* employs in this phrase the extraordinary Latinism ινα θεον (g* ut, in the sense of quasi).

AG 37 put αποδεικνυοντα for -υντα.

4 (continued). ὥστε αὐτὸν εἰς τὸν ναὸν τοῦ θεοῦ καθίσαι, ἀποδεικνύντα ἑαυτὸν ὅτι ἔστιν θεός, so that he takes his seat within the temple of God, showing himself off (to the effect) that he is God! Ὥστε (with infin. of result) brings in the climax of the self-deification of the Antichrist. Καθίσαι (the verb is here intransitive, as in 1 Corinthians 10:7; Matthew 5:1, and commonly) is the aorist of the single (inceptive), not continuous, act (cf. Matthew 19:28, &c.); εἰς is suitable to the aorist, as implying motion towards,—putting himself “into” God’s seat in the ναός. By their several positions αὐτόν and καθίσαι are both emphasized: “He in the temple of God takes his seat,” as though that throne were his! Ναός, as distinguished from ἱερόν, is the temple proper, the inner shrine of Deity. For ἀποδεικνύναι, cf. 1 Corinthians 4:9; it implies a public display, a show—spectandum aliquid proponere (Winer); but the verb, as Lightfoot proves, bears in later Greek the technical sense, to nominate or proclaim one who accedes to office: so e.g. Philo, in Flaccum, § 3, Γαΐου δὲ�. The verb thus read is construed with ὅτι quite easily—“proclaiming himself that he is God”—with attraction of the dependent subject (see Winer-Moulton, p. 781). The present participle, qualifying the aorist infinitive (for indicative), denotes a course of conduct that attends and centres in the principal act. On the ordinary rendering of ἀποδεικνύντα, the ὅτι clause forms a second explanatory object, by a kind of synizesis: “showing himself off, (declaring) that he is God.” The rendering of Beza, “præ se ferens se esse Deum,” corrects the Vulg. translation, “ostendens se tanquam sit Deus,” which misses the essential point: ἀντίθεός τις ἔσται (Chrysostom).

The latter part of the description of the Antichrist, from καὶ ὑπεραιρόμενος onwards, is based on Daniel 11:36 f.: καὶ ὑψωθήσεται ἐπὶ πάντα θεὸν καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν θεὸν τῶν θεῶν ἔξαλλα λαλήσει … καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς θεοὺς τῶν πατέρων αὐτοῦ οὐ μὴ προνοηθῇ … ὄτι ἐν παντὶ ὑψωθήσεται; cf. Daniel 7:25; Daniel 9:27; Isaiah 14:13 f.; Ezekiel 28:2 (ὑψώθη σου ἡ καρδία, καὶ εἶπας Θεός εἰμι ἐγώ, κατοικίαν θεοῦ κατῴκηκα … καὶ ἔδωκας τὴν καρδίαν σου ὡς καρδίαν θεοῦ). In the above prophetic sketches the monarchic pride of the ancient world-rulers is seen rising to the height of self-deification; these delineations adumbrate the figure which St Paul projects on to the canvas of the Last Times. That self-deification forms the governing feature in this description of Jesus Christ’s Satanic counterfoil, presupposes the assumption of Divine powers on the part of Jesus; cf. note below on ὁ ναὸς τοῦ θεοῦ.

St Jerome gave the two possible interpretations of εἰς τὸν ναὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, writing in Epist. 121: “in templo Dei—vel Ierosolymis, ut quidam putant [so the older Fathers—Irenæus, Hippolytus, &c.]; vel in ecclesia, ut verius arbitramur” (so the later Greek interpreters). Chrysostom presents the latter view less exactly (for St Paul refers to the entire Church as ὁ ναὸς τοῦ θεοῦ in 1 Corinthians 3:16 f., 2 Corinthians 6:16; cf. Ephesians 2:21; Revelation 3:12; Revelation 7:15), when he says, καθεδήσεται εἰς τὸν ναὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, οὐ τὸν ἐν Ἰεροσολύμοις�ʼ ἑκάστην ἐκκλησίαν. When the Apostles speak of “the sanctuary of God” without other qualification, they might be supposed to refer to the existing Temple at Jerusalem (cf. the usage of the Gospels, as respects ὁ ναός and the wider τὸ ἱερόν, which includes the courts and precincts; similarly in Acts, τὸ ἱερόν), to which the kindred passages in Daniel (Daniel 11:31; Daniel 12:11), cited in our Lord’s prophecy (Matthew 24:15; Mark 13:14), unmistakably apply. Attempts have been made to show that their words were practically fulfilled soon after this date by certain outrages committed by Nero, or Vespasian, upon the sacred building. But this is not clearly made out; and even the worst of the Emperors was but an adumbration of St Paul’s Antichrist. On the other hand, we have learnt from 1 Thessalonians 2:16 that St Paul believed national Judaism to be nearing its end,—the Temple presumably with it. Our Lord had predicted the speedy destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (see Luke 21:6; Luke 21:32, &c.), which, forsaken by the Son of God, could no longer be viewed by Christians as properly His “Father’s house” (see Matthew 23:37-39; Matthew 21:13; John 2:16). Along with the terms ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ (1 Thessalonians 2:14), Ἰσραὴλ τοῦ θεοῦ (Galatians 6:16), οἱ ἅγιοι and the like (cf. Philippians 3:3; 1 Peter 2:4-10), the presumption is that ὁ ναὸς τοῦ θεοῦ belonged statedly, in Pauline dialect, to the new kingdom of God and had its “foundation” in “Jesus Christ”; this transference of the ναός-conception is assumed in 1 Corinthians 3:10-17, the next Epistle to ours in point of date, as a recognized fact (οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ναὸς θεοῦ ἐστε; 2 Thessalonians 2:16); the true ναός is marked out by the indwelling of “the Spirit of God” (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:8 above). It is true that there is nothing in our context to indentify ὁ ναός with ἡ ἐκκλησία; but we must remember that we have an incomplete context before us; the paragraph is throughout allusive to previous teaching (2 Thessalonians 2:5). The doctrine that the Christian community constitutes the veritable shrine of God on earth, may have been as familiar to the Thessalonian as it certainly was a few years later to the Corinthian Christians. Granted this equivalence, the connexion between ἀποστασία and ἄνθρωπος τῆς� becomes exceedingly close: the Lawless One, in superseding all forms of religion except the worship of himself, assumes to sit within the Church of God, abetted by its apostates, and proclaims himself its supreme Head, thus aping the Lord Jesus and playing his anti-Christian part to the uttermost,—“quasi quia ipse sit Christus” (Theodore).

FURTHER NOTE on 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 : The premonition of the Lord’s advent the Apostle finds, therefore, in a previous counter-advent, and this is twofold: the coming (a) of “the apostasy,” (b) of “the man of lawlessness, &c.”—(a) a movement, (b) a personality. The former element in the representation remains in shadow, and is developed by the Apostle in later Epistles; the image of “the lawless one’ dominates this passage, but forthwith vanishes from the Pauline writings, to reappear, considerably altered, in St John’s Apocalypse. Three chief factors go to furnish the conception these verses give of the final manifestation of evil: (1) Its foundation lies in the data of O.T. prophecy, more particularly in the Apocalypse of Daniel, to which our Lord attached His own predictions of the Last Things and with whose “son of man coming in the clouds of heaven” He identified Himself. “The apostasy” and “the lawless one,” since they embody ideas from this source, appear to signify two distinct but co-operating agents, as distinct as were e.g. the apostates of Israel from the heathen persecutor, Antiochus Epiphanes, for whose coming their appearance gave the signal at the Maccabean epoch. The distinction is one pervading Pauline thought and teaching, viz. that between existing Jew and Gentile (Israel and the nations), which are reconciled on the true basis in the Church of Jesus Christ; the corresponding evil powers unite to form the conspiracy of Satan. The new Messianic community, of Jews and Gentiles in one body, has become “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16), defection from which is “apostasy” (see 1 Timothy 3:15 to 1 Timothy 4:1 : ἀποστήσονται�); the old antagonism of Jew and Gentile has been resolved into the opposition of the people of God and the world—the antithesis, in short, of Christian and un-Christian. St Paul, to speak in modern phrase, appears to foresee the rise of an apostate Church paving the way for the advent of an atheistic world-power. So it is “out of the” restless, murmuring “sea” of the nations and their “many waters” that “the Wild Beast” of Revelation 13:1; Revelation 17:1; Revelation 17:15, “comes up.” This combination Daniel 8:23 already presents: “When the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance … shall arise”; cf. 1Ma 1:10-15, for the parallel earlier situation. (2) While, for Christian believers, “apostasy” means revolt from Christ, by the same necessity the figure of the atheistic world-king, transmitted from the Book of Daniel and from the struggle with Antiochus, is clothed with an Antichristian character; “the lawless one” becomes from point to point the antithesis of the Lord Jesus,—a Satanic caricature of the Messiah-king, a mock-Christ. But (3) contemporary history supplied a powerful stimulus to the prophetic spirit of the Church, which already dimly conceived its Antichrist as the counterpart in the kingdom of darkness to the true Christ reigning in God’s kingdom of light. The deification of the Roman emperors, from Julius Cæsar downwards, was a religious portent of the times. This cultus must have forced itself on the notice of St Paul and his companions in their recent journey through the north-west of the peninsula of Asia Minor (Acts 16:6-10), where it already flourished; not improbably, their route led through Pergamum, a city which boasted, in its magnificent Augusteum, the chief seat of Cæsar-worship in the whole empire (cf. Revelation 2:13 : ὅπου ὁ θρόνος τοῦ Σατανᾶ). The attempt of the mad emperor Gaius (Caligula), made in the year 40, to place his statue in the temple of Jerusalem for Divine worship, an attempt only frustrated by his death, compelled the attention of the entire Jewish people whom it filled with horror, and of the Christian Church with them, to this blasphemous cult. The event was typical, showing to what lengths the intoxication of supreme power in an atheistic age might carry a man inspired by Satan. This attempt was, in Caligula’s case, but the last of a series of outrages upon “every so-called god.” Suetonius relates that this profane monster transported the statue of Olympian Zeus to Rome, displacing its head for the image of his own; also, that he built his palace up to the temple of the old Roman gods Castor and Pollux, and made of this a vestibule where he exhibited himself standing between the twin godships to receive the adoration of those who entered (De Vita Cœsarum, iv:22). The Apostles are only projecting into the future the development of a “mystery of lawlessness”—a tendency of inscrutable force, springing from unsounded depths of evil in human nature—that was “already at work” before the eyes of all men, masquerading in the robes of Godhead on the imperial stage at Rome. So far-reaching was the impression produced by the Emperor-worship, that Tacitus represents the German barbarians speaking in ridicule of “ille inter numina dicatus Augustus” (Ann. I. 59). The effect of this new Government cultus on what remained of natural religion in the rites of Paganism is indicated in the pregnant words of Tacitus (Ann. I. 10), the first clause of which might have been borrowed from St Paul: “Nihil deorum honoribus relictum, cum se templis et effigie numinum per flamines et sacerdotes coli vellet [Augustus].” Nor was the exaltation of the emperors to deity an act of mere autocratic blasphemy and pride of power. Rome and the provinces spontaneously gave Divine honours to Julius Cæsar at his death; and Augustus promoted the new worship out of policy, to supply a religious bond to the Empire and to fill up the void created by the decay of the old national religions, the very want which Christianity was destined to meet. In relating the obsequies of Julius Cæsar Suetonius says (Ibid. i.84, 88): “Omnia simul ei divina atque humana decreverat [senatus] … Periit sexto et quinquagesimo ætatis anno, atque in deorum numerum relatus est, non ore modo decernentium sed et persuasione volgi.” The unconscious irony of the above passage is finely pointed by the exclamation which the same historian puts into the mouth of the dying Vespasian (viii:23): “Vae, puto deus fio!” Cf. the tragic scene of Acts 12:20-23, ὁ δῆμος ἐπεφώνει· Θεοῦ φωνὴ κ. οὐκ� … καὶ γενόμενος σκωληκόβρωτος ἐξέψυξεν (Herod Agrippa I.). The shout of the Cæsarean δῆμος shows the readiness of a sceptical and servile heathenism to deify its human rulers, while the language of St Luke reflects the loathing stirred thereby in Christian minds. The Apostle Paul realized the significance of the Cæsar-worship of his time; he saw in it τὸ μυστήριον τῆς� at work in its most typical form. Antiochus Epiphanes and Gaius Caligula have sat as models for his Antichrist; the Emperor Elagabalus (218–222 A.D.), in more Oriental fashion, subsequently reproduced the type. The struggle between heathen Rome and Christianity was to turn, in reality, upon the alternative of κύριος Καῖσαρ (Martyr. Polycarpi 8) or κύριος Ἰησοῦς (1 Corinthians 12:3),—the point already raised, with a strange instinct (like that of Caiaphas respecting the Atonement, John 11:50 ff.), by the Jews when they cried to Pilate, “If thou let Him [Jesus] go, thou art not Cæsar’s friend” (John 19:12). Cæsar-worship being the state-religion, and the worship of Christ admitting of no sharer, Christianity became a religio illicita and its profession, constructively, high treason. Ὄμοσον τὴν Καίσαρος τύχην was the test put to Polycarp by the Proconsul of Asia in the stadium of Smyrna (Martyr. 9); and this challenge, with the martyr’s reply—πῶς δύναμαι βλασφημῆσαι τὸν βασιλέα μου;—is typical of the entire conflict of the Christian faith with its ἀντικείμενος, the veritable θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου enthroned on the Palatine. Cæsar’s titular name Σεβαστός, the Greek rendering of Augustus (cf. ὁ ὑπεραιρόμενος ἐπὶ πᾶν … σέβασμα above)—to which Divus was added at death—was itself a blasphemy to Jewish and Christian ears. With σεβαστός the title υἱὸς θεοῦ was associated in popular use and even in business documents (see Deissmann’s Bible Studies, pp. 166 f., and Dalman’s Words of Jesus, p. 273), a circumstance that gave additional point to the rivalry, which forced itself on Christian thought, between the deified Cæsar and Christ.