On the Antichrists. [I Jn 2]

I am not nice and I’m not afraid of giving offense. There are two parts to this. The first is that the antichrist is many: they are the snakes within the church who deceive, who are heretics, and who do not preach the gospel. They deny Jesus is Christ, and Christ alone saves. The reformers saw the Pope and Thomist theology as denying this, and had no difficulty in labelling the Pope as an antichrist.


The idea of the Pope as the antichrist is not unique to Protestants.
In fact, for the 40 years where two rival Popes both called each other antichrist (1378-1417), John Wycliffe humorously pointed out that they were each half right. He wrote that they were “two halves of Antichrist, making up the perfect Man of Sin between them.”

Zwingli, who was a Catholic priest before his conversion to Christ, often referred to the Pope as the antichrist. He wrote: “I know that in it works the might and power of the Devil, that is, of the Antichrist” (Principle Works of Zwingli, Vol. 7, p. 135).

Calvin devoted an entire section of The Institutes to this topic (Book IV, “Of the Popish Mass”). In that section, at length Calvin identifies the Pope as the antichrist for no other reason than he leads the Catholic Mass. “Let my readers understand that I am here combating that opinion with which the Roman Antichrist and his prophets have imbued the whole world—viz. that the mass is a work by which the priest who offers Christ, and the others who in the oblation receive him, gain merit with God.”

What is interesting in that section is that Calvin draws extensively from Augustine, who wrote (translated by Calvin into French, then into English): “It would be equivalent to Antichrist for anyone to make a bishop to be an intercessor between God and man.”

The question today is not who is the final Antichrist: that is discussed in Daniel and in Revelations. It is what are the qualities of the Antichrist in this day. And one of them all should accept is that they remove themselves from fellowship with believers. “They went out from us…” relates to heresy and schism, and here lies one of the foundational differences between protestants (particularly the reformed) and Catholics: both claim to be the church that teaches correct doctrine. [And on this issue I side with Augustine. I am suspicious of any presbyter or elder or bishop — the terms are equivalent — who places himself between a believer and their saviour, in word or in practice].

And here we differ from the Anabaptists. The Anabaptists function as cultic: they set up communities that are supposedly naught but believers. As if people cannot deceive themselves. They do not accept that the church is imperfect, and all churches indeed have their antichrists within them.

Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.
I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.
(1 John 2:18-27 ESV)

He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
And the crowds asked him, “What then shall we do?” And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”
(Luke 3:7-14 ESV)

I am not nice and I am not afraid of repetition. The second test of our faithfulness, that we are indeed saved, is not the ritual — of baptism, in Luke 3 — but the repentance that is associated with it. The applications that John has relate to a caring for each other, and a lack of exploitation. The repentant kingdom was not a kingdom of this world. It included tax collectors and soldiers — who were loyal to Rome, not the temple.

If Christ is in us, we will have a sense of what the truth is, that will hold us when our prelates fall into the silliness of this world. If we have Christ within us, we will stay within the church, despite the many flaws we have. If Christ is in us, we will continually be repenting, for we remain flawed.

And if Christ is within us, we will look beyond the simple formulation of the pope or heretics as AntiChrist, and look for those who want to move beyond their calling: to find that which is new, and who deny the gospel for ideology, authenticity included.