2 Thessalonians 2:3-12

EXCURSUS ON MAN OF SIN.

2 Thessalonians 2:3-12.

The obscurity of this passage arises partly from its prophetic character, partly from the circumstance that Paul is merely referring to what he had already explained by word of mouth. He does not feel himself called upon to repeat explanations which he bad previously given. What is to us obscure was intelligible to his original readers; and ten words from Paul's mouth would give us certainty where now there is much that is dubious.

The elements of which this prediction is composed are also found in the prophecies of Daniel, the last discourses of our Lord, the Apocalypse, and the Epistles of John. Daniel speaks of one who ‘shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High;' of one ‘who shall magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished.' John's prediction is similar: ‘There was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.' Our Lord, in His survey of the course which events would take, predicts that in the last times, ‘because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold;' and indicates that when the Son of man cometh, faith shall be rare upon earth. This unbelief and heartlessness, the general falling away of the Church from faith in Christ which is to indicate the nearness of Christ's second coming, will be produced by distressing outward circumstances and by delusive representations which are to mislead all but the elect. The end of this world is not spoken of as a fixed date at which the present order of things must abruptly close. It is not spoken of as a point of time arbitrarily chosen as the termination, irrespective of the moral condition and prospects of the world, but it is spoken of as conditioned by certain features in the world's history which make the termination fitting if not necessary. The coming of Christ is to occur at that juncture when apparently nothing short of this could save the world from universal apostasy and the total extinction of Christianity. This final apostasy Paul represents as culminating in the revelation of the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, that wicked (or lawless) one. These expressions naturally lead us to suppose that a person is indicated. This view, though disputed by some interpreters, is confirmed by the definition of Antichrist given in 1 John 2:22: ‘He is Antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son,' a definition which applies to a person, not to a system. It is also confirmed by the fact that the similar predictions uttered by Daniel were fulfilled by a person, Antiochus Epiphanes. And weight must also be given to the observation of Alford, that ‘almost all great movements for good or for ill have been gathered to a head by one central agency.'

But the question, Who is the person thus ominously designated? divides interpreters still more seriously. There are some who solve the difficulty by supposing that the prophecy was a merely human anticipation engendered by Judaistic views of the end of all things, and that it has no fulfilment in fact. But of those who believe it to be a true prediction, some suppose its fulfilment still lies in the future; others, interpreting the ‘coming of Christ' of some great historical catastrophe such as the destruction of Jerusalem, believe that it has long since been fulfilled.

Of these latter, or praterist interpretations, there may be said to be three classes. 1st. There are those who, with Grotius, Wetstein, and Döllinger, find the Man of Sin in one or other of the Roman emperors. [1] Much plausibility is lent to these interpretations by the manner of the prediction itself, which would seem to speak of a near and imminent catastrophe. And it cannot be wondered at, that when the Church was suffering severely at the hands of any individual, she should suppose that here at last was the Man of Sin revealed. Some confirmation has also been given to this view by the discovery, made simultaneously by four Biblical scholars, that the number of the beast in the Apocalypse corresponds with the name Nero. Godet has, however, shown that this decipherment, though supported by world-renowned names, is open to the gravest doubt. But the most conclusive argument against this application of the prophecy lies in the nature of prophecy itself, which would lead us to expect a ‘springing and germinant' fulfilment along the whole line of history. This expectation is deepened when we find that however applicable one or two particulars of the prophecy are to one or other of the Roman emperors, there is always an unfulfilled margin, room left for some grander and more complete fulfilment.

[1] Detailed accounts of these opinions will be found in Eadie's Thessalonians, and in Bleek's Lectures on the Apocalypse.

n the same grounds the second class of interpretations must be rejected. This class refers the coming of Christ to the destruction of Jerusalem, and finds the Apostasy and the Man of Sin in the previous condition either of the whole Jewish nation (Whitby) or of a portion of it, such as the Pharisees or Rabbis (Schöttgen), or of an individual like Simon Magus (Hammond).

The third class has always been the most largely represented, and consists of those interpretations which find the Man of Sin in some misleading system of doctrine or worship, or some antichristian creed. In the Middle Ages, Mohammed was frequently branded as Antichrist. The Protestants have with much plausibility sought to demonstrate that the Pope is the Man of Sin; and the Papists have naturally retaliated by exhibiting the similarity between Luther and Antichrist. [2] And certainly there are many striking points of resemblance between some of the worst Popes, or even between the system of Popery itself, and the description here given by Paul. The points chiefly insisted on are the notorious profligacy and ambition of some of the occupants of the Papal See, the assumption of the title ‘our Lord God the Pope,' the session of the newly-elected Pope on the high altar in St. Peter's and his adoration by the cardinals, the lying wonders performed by the relics of saints, by images, and by officiating priests. It is also remarkable that this interpretation first arose not among Protestants, but long before the Reformation among Romanists themselves. Dr. Eadie (p. 340) cites a number of writers who adhered to the Church of Rome, and who yet with greater or less explicitness pointed to the Pope as fulfilling this prediction. ‘Gregory I., toward the end of the 6th century, had foreshadowed the opinion in asserting theoretically that any one possessing the kind and amount of power, which the Pope claimed soon after his time, would be the forerunner of Antichrist. His words are: ‘I confidently assert, that whoever calls himself or seeks to be called Universal Priest, is by his self-exaltation the forerunner of Antichrist, inasmuch as he proudly sets himself above others.'

[2] One of the most caustic of Dr. Newman's Essays is on the Protestant idea of Antichrist.

This, however, seems to be the most that can be said, that the Pope or Popery is in some respects a forerunner of the Man of Sin. For in other respects the identification fails. It cannot, e.g., be said that the Pope ‘opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God.' On the contrary, the creed of Rome has constantly affirmed Trinitarian doctrine, and the Church of Rome is still the refuge of those who thirst for God and are yet unable to prove His existence to the satisfaction of their own intellect. It might more plausibly be affirmed that Positivism is the Man of Sin, because it is in principle Atheistic or at best Agnostic, and it does fulfil the terms of the prediction by setting humanity in the place of God. But however much any system may prepare for the manifestation of Antichrist, and what-ever share it may therefore have in that ‘mystery of iniquity' which ‘doth already work,' this is a guilt which is probably not peculiar to it, and which does not justify us in identifying it with that yet unrevealed monstrosity of blasphemy and atheistic pride which Paul leads us to look for not in a system but in an individual.

The Man of Sin who is to be destroyed by the brightness of the Lord's coming has not yet appeared. In persecutions which have crushed voting churches out of existence; in heretics who have seduced men from Christianity with arguments so plausible as to deceive, if it were possible, the elect themselves; in false religions or corrupted forms of the true religion, in misleading philosophies, in all these we find some of the characteristics of Antichrist, but in none do we find every feature which is here set down. In these iniquity is working in a mystery, in a hidden manner, the evil is rooting itself and growing and gaining ground. Revolution, war, social disorder, unbelief, these things and the causes of them are ever seething together, combining in forms we cannot always analyze, striving as it were to manifest themselves and bring all things to ruin. The forerunners of Antichrist are to be distinguished from him who is himself alone Antichrist. John says that even in his day there were many Antichrists.

It seems then idle to speculate in what precise form the Man of Sin will appear. It is possible that as in Paul's day the Jews were the most bitter antagonists of the Gospel, so it is reserved for them to exhibit wickedness and opposition to the truth in the most aggravated form possible to man. This view has won many supporters. If we are to be guided by the name Antichrist, as signifying a counter-Christ or pseudo-Messiah, it is to Judaism we must look for this development. And those who have most closely studied this people will be the last to affirm that they are not destined yet to play a leading part in the last act of this world's drama.

But what is it which prevents this mystery of iniquity which already works from reaching its full development? There is a very general consensus of interpreters that what Paul had in view when he spoke of ‘he that withholdeth' or ‘that which now letteth,' was the Roman power. It was the armed strength of Rome and their strict administration that prevented the Jews from exterminating the Christian Church, if not everywhere, in many places, and especially in Thessalonica. It was the Roman legions which kept down that restless ambition of the Jewish people, and which nipped in the bud every effort at revolt and establishment of a worldly Messianic kingdom. That particular form of the ‘withholder' is gone, but the terms of the prophecy have still been fulfilled in one form or another of civil government, which for its own sake has kept down lawlessness and those outbursts of godlessness which seem from time to time to threaten the destruction of all civil arrangements and institutions as well as of all things sacred.

Any who wish to pursue this subject will find abundant material for doing so in the following books, in which references to others are given: Encyclopedia Brit., s.v. Antichrist (by Dr. Sam. Davidson); Eadie on Thesslonians; Baring-Gould's Myths of the Middle Ages; Bleeps Lectures on the Apocalypse; Renan's L' Antechrist (Chapter s on the Apocalypse); Reuss' History of Apostolic Age; Godet's New Test. Studies; Newman's Essays Crit. and Hist., vol. ii., and his Discussions and Arguments. Bishop Wordsworth's identification of Antichrist with the Papacy is certainly very worthy of consideration; see his pamphlet, Is the Papacy predicted by St. Paul? Farrar's article in the Expositor for May 1881, or his Appendix to the Life of St. Paul. may be consulted for an opposite view.