The Antichrist In The 16th Century

 

Martin Luther, John Dee, and Pope Paul III. 

The Protestants arrived on the historical scene in the 16th century by declaring the papal authority in Rome the Antichrist. 

This was a turbulent period. End times propaganda was in the air. The European public's susceptibility to religious extremism was at an all time high. Theological learning was becoming deinstitutionalized, and ancient manuscripts and philosophical books were being translated into common languages. 

An excerpt from, "Martin Luther’s Views on the Antichrist" by Dennis Pettibone, Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 2007: 

If Protestantism owes its very existence to Luther’s conviction that the papacy was the Antichrist, it might be instructive to inquire why Luther held this view and under what circumstances he came to this conclusion. We will see that he came to this view slowly and reluctantly, driven by historical circumstances and theological reflection. We will also briefly note the comparable views of other Protestant Reformers and their predecessors. Looking at the idea that the papacy is the Antichrist of prophecy in its historical context might give us a rational basis for evaluating it.

We will focus primarily on Luther because it was his views on the subject that triggered the Protestant Reformation. However, we should note that Luther was far from the first person to hold this view. Luther himself credited John Huss with being the first to call the pope an Antichrist. Huss did indeed consider the Pope to be the Antichrist, but he was not the first to do so, nor was his mentor, John Wycliffe, although Wycliffe and at least some of his Lolland followers, including Sir John Oldcastle, held this belief. This idea also circulated among the Waldensians, the Albigensians, and the Fraticelli, a group of Franciscans with more regard for the rule of St. Francis than for papal authority.

. . .Martin Luther was probably unaware of the previous attacks on the papacy when, in 1517, he drafted his 95 Theses. If he had been, he would have been unsympathetic. At the time he regarded John Huss as a heretic. His target was not the papacy; it was a greedy Dominican monk named Johann Tetzel who was distorting Catholic doctrine by exaggerating the benefits of indulgences. Luther had no intention of splitting the church: he was only trying to protect his parishioners.

Enraged, Tetzel made sure that Rome knew what was happening. This set in motion a chain of events that led to a summons for Luther to appear before a papal representative. It also led to a theological attack on Luther’s position by Sylvester Cardinal Prierias, the papal court’s chief theologian. Prierias wrote, “He who does not accept the doctrine of the Church of Rome and pontiff of Rome as an infallible rule of faith, from which the Holy Scriptures, too, draw their strength, is a heretic.” Furthermore, “Whoever says that the Church of Rome may not do what it is actually doing in the matter of indulgences is a heretic.” Prierias had transformed the debate from a question of procedure to one of authority.

An excerpt from, "John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature" by Deborah E. Harkness, Cambridge University Press, 1999, Pg. 136 - 139: 

Today we tend to group all beliefs that the world is ending under the rubric of "apocalypticism." In the early modern period, however, apocalyptic expression fell into several different categories: apocalypse, prophecy, and eschatology. Neither the interest in the final days of the earth nor the response to that interest was homogeneous. While some speculation and divination was tolerated, other opinions met with considerable resistance. Still, the belief that the end of the world was approaching continued to flourish well into the seventeenth century, where it took on a new cast within shifting social, cultural, religious, and economic contexts. The lines dividing apocalypticism, prophecy, and eschatology were never so clearly demarcated as is suggested here, but it is important to distinguish among them because the distinctions can help us to understand why Dee was initially "well received" by monarchs and church officials yet later turned away when his angelic revelations became increasingly apocalyptic.

An apocalypse was a particular genre of speculation about the final days whose authors claimed to have received a direct revelation from a divine agency - either God, an angel, or a saint. Apocalypses were usually communicated to the world through prophets, as in the case of Girolamo Savonarola. Prophecy was a dangerous business in early modern Europe; Savonarola's public execution in Florence in 1498 reminded everyone from common astrologer to exalted natural philosopher of the risks implicit in making predictions about the future that claimed to rest on divine directives. The interpretation of signs of the End of Days, or eschatology, was different from either apocalypticism or prophecy. Most apocalyptic writings in early modern Europe were not actually apocalypses but eschatologies.

Eschatologists like Gabriel Harvey who commented on natural disasters claimed no privileged and direct line of communication from God but instead pointed out the importance of natural signs. Early modern eschatalogical texts attempted to fit recent events into preexisting canons of apocalyptic signs, though some advanced radically new interpretations. Discussing and analyzing signs of the earth's predicted demise was a popular industry in medieval and early modern Europe. The list of pamphlets and books on the new star, on the grand conjunction, and on hosts of natural marvels like monstrous births or rains of blood suggests that anyone might have his views on the subject published. Presses throughout Europe issued one apocalyptic interpretation of contemporary events after another to meet the seemingly insatiable demands of readers. Sheltco à Geveren's Of the Ende of this Worlde, and the Seconde Commyng of Christ, for example, was quickly translated by Thomas Rogers from its original Dutch into English and reprinted in London five times between 1577 and 1589. Printing facilitated the formulation of a widely recog nized canon of eschatological signs ranging from natural and supernatural events to military skirmishes, all of which mounted with alarming speed as the fifteenth century moved into the sixteenth. No longer was knowledge of surprising or unusual events confined to their immediate locales by the limits of word-of-mouth transmission. What this signified in practical terms was that the Catholic church was unable to control the spread of prophetic messages and guide their interpretation. At the Fifth Lateran Council convened in 1512, the Church officially renounced the popular enthusiasm for eschatological speculations that were being printed, circulated, and discussed by those outside its authority.

Just as the printing press was challenging Catholic authorities in the cities of Europe, so the Reformation (whose main proponents made good use of the new printing technology) was establishing alternative forms of worship. The Reformation of the church, coming as it did in the midst of a series of eschatalogical signs, was given a weighty role in Protestant accounts of the world's progress toward redemption. The Catholic church responded with its own program of reform, claiming sole responsibility for leading humanity into the next spiritual age of restitution and rebirth. The iubilee vear of 1600 became the focus for Catholic eschatologists. Among the Protestants, the exact time of the Second Coming was more imprecise; many thought that God might begin the next age between 1583 and 1588. This time frame was particularly potent because of its proximity to the great conjunction of 1583, and because prophecies often referred to miraculous events as happening 1,558 years after Christ's birth.

The Antichrist In The White House

Trump is a man with zero taste.

Donald Trump is spiritually a Jew who hates Gentiles and Christians. He's not an American and I think he's admitted that by his actions in office.

We need to stop pretending about who and what this creature is. Whether the Rothschilds have him on tape raping and killing children or whether he's Israel's proxy by choice doesn't matter. The result is the same. He is a threat to world peace.

When he was running for President he was a totally laughable character who didn't pose any serious danger to America or the world. He entered the political arena like a bull in a china shop, and began disparaging other political candidates for fun. He was an amusement. 

After Mr. Trump went to Washington everything changed. The political capital that he built up, which wasn't his to begin with, was quickly spent on Israel's every wish and policy directive. He has done Netanyahu's bidding from Syria to Spain. They might go after Italy next and blow up the Colosseum.

Trump believes himself to be a clever political animal but he simply tapped into public anger like any demagogue. The political system in the U.S. was already dead by the time he arrived on the scene. He just swooped in like a vulture and now he's feasting on the carcass.

One of the flaws of democracy is a political outsider like Trump or Obama can rise relatively quickly, promising to give the people the sun, moon, and stars. They are sold as saviour figures. And when they don't deliver the goods they're discarded just as quickly, to be replaced by the new shiny object in the next election cycle. There are no consequences. The political system marches on like nothing happened. 

In a different system, less democratic and less forgiving, like in Russia or China, the man at the top has to be more true to his word. 

Elites in non-democratic systems have to stay on their toes. 

Western oligarchs have had it easy because the democratic ritual of the election cycle is the perfect release valve for public anger and frustration. 

But the ballot box is not a true referendum on anything. The democratic mandate is one of the most dangerous political inventions, and also the most useless. 

If any liar and common thief like Trump can get elected then what good is democracy?

The World Ruler As Antichrist

The Antichrist label has been used as a powerful religious device to label one's political and religious enemies. 

Every sect and political power has cast the other side as the Antichrist, be he Napoleon, Hitler, Attila the Hun, Muhammad, or gnostic rebels in the Middle Ages, just to give a few examples.

A highly religious population, immersed in Biblical imagery and history, can be easily mobilized at the mere suggestion of the Antichrist. It's an easy propaganda victory for any ruler or rebel. Casting one's enemy as the Devil incarnate in the Abrahamic context is a cheat code. It's a little too easy. 

Popes wielded this label to great effect when their word still held meaning. Islamic rulers have also utilized this religious power when it benefited them, labeling whomever they didn't like as the Antichrist or Satan. The Ayatollah famously branded the United States the Great Satan. That was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. 

In fact, that's true for a lot of these examples. Hitler's enemies were not saints. Neither were Napoleon's. 

But history remembers them as saints because they won.

If you win you're the Messiah and the saviour of the world. If you lose you're a good for nothing rebel, devil, dictator, monster, terrorist, genocidal maniac, the complete opposite of everything holy and good.

II.

An excerpt from, "The Great Code: The Bible And Literature" by Northrop Frye, Penguin Group, Pg. 122-126:

The Bible does not regard the world ruler as necessarily an evil or sinister person. It is only that he rules the kind of world in which one of his successors will sooner or later become so. The Pharaoh who knew Joseph and welcomed Israel into Egypt was finally succeeded by a Pharaoh who tried to exterminate the Hebrews by genocide. Cyrus of Persia, and to some extent Darius, are referred to with the deepest respect, but their successor Xerxes, the Ahasuerus of the Book of Esther, is very nearly persuaded into an anti-Jewish pogrom. Alexander the Great gets very little attention in the Bible, though Josephus has him welcomed into Jerusalem by the high priest with many mutual expressions of esteem. But eventually his empire produced Antiochus Epiphanes, who began the ferocious persecution of Jews that provoked the Maccabean rebellion. Under the Roman Empire Paul maintains that "the powers that be are ordained of God" (Romans 13:1), but before long we have Nero and other persecuting emperors.

The reason for this degeneration of the world ruler is one that takes us back to the two forms of social contract that we saw arising out of the pagan and Biblical cultures. The Classical social contract is the one that we see in the trial scene at the end of Aeschylus' Oresteia. It is a vision of justice and equity in which man, nature, and gods are all included. The gods ratify it, and if they were not there we should have nothing but the purely automatic reactions of nature represented by the Furies, the agents of the natural force of nemesis, to keep a balance in human affairs. In the Biblical contract, as we saw, nature is not an immediate participant: the contract is between God and his people, and if the people are as loyal to it as God is, the nature around them will be transformed into a quite different world.

As social conditions change to those of empire, however, it becomes more and more obvious that the ruler is the one essential force that holds the contract together. Hence he begins to take on divine qualities, as the adopted son or, as in Egypt, the incarnation of his god. It is at this point that Jesus' principle, that one should render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's (Mark 12:17) runs into trouble. Sooner or later there will be a Caesar who will demand what is due only to God, that is, divine worship.

The act of Antiochus Epiphanes that outraged the Jews even more than his cruelties was his desecrating of the temple by rededicating it to Zeus and erecting an altar and perhaps a statue there (I Maccabees 1:54). This sacrilege is called, in the AV's somewhat cumbersome rendering, "the abomination that maketh desolate" (Daniel 11:31). It is referred to again in the Gospels (Matthew 24:15) in connection with the calamities of further persecutions, not impossibly with reference to a supposed desire expressed by the Emperor Caligula to put his own statue in the same place.

In any case a cult of the divine Caesar was established at Rome, and an act of observing it, however perfunctory, was obligatory. Society is never tolerant about anything it attaches real importance to, and this act was important as the symbol of the Roman way of life. But it was, of course, precisely the act that Jews and Christians could not observe. Hence, although Christianity was not set up on a revolutionary basis, and on the contrary stressed its loyalty to the secular power, it was compelled to behave exactly like a revolutionary organization. There have been many explanations for Christianity's triumph over all other religions of its time, but the most visible explanation was the brilliance of its revolutionary tactics. It set up a counterpart of imperial authority in the Church which could go underground in times of persecution, until the time came for it to emerge and take over, or at least merge with, temporal power. Marcus Aurelius spoke of the parataxis, the military discipline, of the Christians as their strongest asset.

Already in the New Testament a conception has emerged of an "Antichrist," the enemy of everything Christ stands for, and who seems to have some connection with the persecuting emperors. Paul, despite his emphatic counsel of submission to the Roman power, gives us a description of

... The son of perdition, Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. (II Thessalonians 2:3-4)

The imagery here is clearly derived from Daniel's "abomination." In the Book of Revelation (13:18), a "beast," a figure of the Antichrist type, is referred to by a cipher, the number 666, which is generally thought to spell out the name of Nero, even though the author of Revelation may have lived under a later emperor.

The Book of Revelation was later assumed to be a prophecy of the future troubles of the Church, which left commentators on it free to identify its sinister images of Antichrist and Great Whore with whatever they were most afraid of in their day. The Great Whore, of whom more later, is identified in the text with the Babylon that carried the Jews into captivity, and evidently also with the Rome of the persecuting Caesars who represented the same kind of thing in the author's own day. Dante identified these images with Philip of France and the Avignon Papacy. Some Protestant polemic of the sixteenth century regarded the Roman Church as an extension of the Roman Empire, identifying that Church with the Whore, and the Pope with Antichrist. Blake identified them, more traditionally, with a recrudescence of state power that he saw taking shape in his day; this he called "Deism" and saw as leading to the annihilation warfare that he identifed as a degenerate form of "Druidism." We should call it "totalitarianism": the effort to conceive the state as a single body incarnate in its leader, the "Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer" of Hitler's Germany. It might even be said, from some points of view, that the only mark of genuine distinction in that otherwise rather shabby tyrant was the seriousness with which he took his Antichrist role, as a figure to whom everyone in Germany was to render thanks for his daily bread.

The time of Christ was also the period of the great consolidation of Classical literature under Virgil and Ovid. Here, as we should expect, the controlling imagery is that of cyclical movement, which had expanded to take in such larger rhythms as the precession of the equinoxes. Hence there were many theories about a new cycle of history, just as there are theories about an "age of Aquarius" now. One famous expression of these theories is Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, a congratulatory poem on the birth of a child, thought to be influenced by the apocryphal, or rather pseudepigraphical, "Sibylline Books." This poem speaks of a new golden age when nature will resume its paradisal shape and "the serpent shall die." Christianity promptly seized on this poem as an unconscious prophecy of the Christian Messiah, but at the same time it ignored or rejected all cyclical theories of history. Augustine's attack on this kind of cyclical speculation in The City of God is much later, but reflects a consistent Christian view.

In Dante's Commedia Virgil serves as guide for the whole area that is controlled by the natural cycle---the hell at the center of the earth and the mountain of purgatory on its other side. At that point Virgil has to leave Dante, who from there on is guided by Beatrice instead, because Virgil is never to see the beatific vision. His vision on earth got as far as renewal, but never broke through to resurrection. In our day we have the reverse movement in D. H. Lawrence's story The Man Who Died, which assimilates Jesus to the revolving cycle of nature. In this story Jesus, reviving in the tomb, becomes the lover of a priestess of Isis who has been told to "wait for the reborn man," and at the end of the story he leaves her with a promise to return. Other assimilations of the Christian story to the cycle of rebirth are in Robert Graves's King Jesus and in Yeats's Vision. In the latter the planetary conjunctions symbolized by the phrase "A Full Moon in March" embrace both the assassination of Caesar and the crucifixion of Christ.

The Aeneid is also dominated by the cycle of revolving years, and its main theme is the establishment of a new Troy and a new cycle of history. The crucial point of its vision is in Aeneas' journey, in the sixth book, to the lower world, where he sees the great wheel of history turning to bring Rome to world power. Some conception of reincarnation, which is of course entirely consistent with such a vision, seems to be included. It is clear that in the Stoical world view, as expounded by Posidonius and others, which was a strong influence on Virgil, the pagan contract is beginning to narrow down. The gods are nature spirits in origin, but as the sense of natural law, as manifested in the cycle, develops, the arbitrary characteristics of such gods, derived as they are from unpredictable elements in nature, fade into the background. In the action of the Aeneid Juno's willful aggressiveness is not only childish but futile, and even Venus is hardly more than decorative. The real power is an inscrutable will that manifests itself only in the divine supervision of Aeneas' struggles to establish a beachhead in Italy and bring about a new phase of history. Virgil is still a long way from saying that only one god is necessary---the divine will that holds together social and natural law---and that Caesar is the central manifestation of this will. But the tendency is there, the Aeneid being essentially a poem in which the house of Caesar occupies much the same place as the line of David in the Bible.

The Question of Israel's Future: A Matter of Humility

According to author Joseph Atwill, when Rome failed to colonize the Jews in its wars it turned to religion to spiritually pacify them and make them less willing to die for their Messiah. 

Thus, Christianity was born as a tool of imperial statecraft to de-militantize Judaism, not as some divine revelation unique in the history of mankind.

It was a form of psychological counterinsurgency in 30 B.C. on a macro level. To take an example on a smaller scale from our time it would be like if the FBI infiltrated an ISIS cell to try to turn a Wahhabi terrorist into a Sufi dervish. Or the other way around.

The Romans wanted a tribe of peaceniks, spiritual ascetics, and hippies in their empire's frontier, not a murderous Koreshian death cult that would destabilize their empire from within. 

And can you blame them?

Based on this theory, the character of Christ was deliberately engineered by Roman mythmakers in the court of the Caesars to make him the new model Messiah for radical and militant Jews to look up to - peaceful, humble, and wise enough to stay out of Caesar's way. 

Previously, the Jewish version of Messiah, their future political saviour who was to deliver them from slavery and exile, was akin to a modern suicide bomber, a violent radical willing to go to extreme limits to defend the Jewish temple and the Jewish religion from all foes. 

That form of Messianism was too chaotic and troublesome for the Romans. They knew something had to be done to transform this explosive Messiah concept and diffuse its war-making potential. The last thing they wanted was to fight in Judea for generation after generation. They had an empire to run, new lands to conquer, dams to build, soldiers to train, roads to maintain, and distant enemies to worry about. The prickly Jews were a headache they could do without.

So they went about solving the Jewish question with a clever invention, a little Messiah of their own. 

It's a compelling theory. And one that raises many questions about mankind's religious history, not just the history of Christianity. 

It is clear we do not all share one religious story, for in the Jewish telling of this Roman myth the real Antichrist was the personage of Jesus Christ. He would be the opposite of the Messiah from the Jewish perspective. They believe the Romans insulted their spiritual inheritance and religious iconography. They still spit upon the Cross and Christians today in Israel. They've held onto this grudge for millennia. It's remarkable if you really think about it.  

What Rome did still pisses the Jews off to this day. Netanyahu was talking about how Rome won't conquer Judea again. Motherfucker, Rome's been gone. What are you talking about? Put away the Torah for a minute and open a history textbook for once. 

But Netanyahu is not alone. For Zionists Rome didn't go anywhere. And this paranoid reading of history influences the Israeli worldview immensely.

A less paranoid reading of history tells us the Jews outlived Rome. David won. Rome failed to win them over with either the sword or the pen. All the Roman elite managed to accomplish was introduce a new god for other peoples to cling onto. And all that did was add more confusion and mystery to the Greco-Roman religious landscape.

Christianity as a myth has its merits. Don't get me wrong. I don't like knocking any successful religion. It has elevated individuals, instructing them to live righteously, and treat their neighbours with kindness. That's great stuff. 

Christian societies have fared better throughout history than pagan ones. A sense of community beyond the nearby king and tribe was established in Christian lands, making them more resilient militarily and economically. Christianity also produced God-fearing men and mystics who preserved knowledge and contributed to science, medicine, and mankind's general enlightenment. 

I will get around to reading the Bible soon. That's on the reading list. But the fact it didn't resolve the central tension between Jews and the other races means it's a flawed book to begin with. The authors failed in their mission to convert and pacify the Jews. Something went wrong in the translation. 

The subsequent attempts at forced conversions after Christianity's rise only produced horror and distrust. The Jews retained their identity throughout the centuries ferociously. The success of Christianity stimulated their own, older religious tradition, eventually leading them home.

After the rebirth of Israel the assumption was the Jews would finally be happy and settled, becoming just another nation amongst the nations. 

But the state of Israel wants to put itself above the nations, viewing itself as a master of the world, lecturing others from a cosmic pulpit. It is Santa Claus and we're all the children. If we're being naughty we don't get any presents. And all his little elves laugh, falsely thinking they're also part of Santa's power trip.

That relationship will have to fundamentally change moving forward. Israel has to be humbled. Not eliminated. Not converted. Just humbled. 

A new Rome will have to rise and put it in its place again.

Antichrist In The Biblical Imagination

"Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil" by Bernard McGinn, Columbia University Press, 1999:

In this timely and sweeping exploration, one of the greatest living historians of Christian thought traces the concept of Antichrist from its Judeo-Christian origins to the present day. Rooted in Second Temple Judaism--a period of intense religious and political disruption--Antichrist developed out of belief in malevolent angelic and human forces. McGinn demonstrates how Antichrist has often reflected the human need to comprehend the persistence of evil in the world, and examines how it has haunted popular imagination in both the form of indivuduals--such as Nero, Napoleon, and Saddam Hussein--and groups--Jews, heretics, Muslims.

Bernard McGinn - Wikipedia:

Bernard McGinn (born August 19, 1937) is an American Catholic theologian, religious historian, and scholar of spirituality. A specialist in medieval mysticism, McGinn is widely regarded as the preeminent scholar of mysticism in the Western Christianity. He is best known for his comprehensive series on mysticism, The Presence of God.