Still Running Off at the Keyboard

ANTI-CHRIST - WILL HE BE A PERSON ?

Four passages in Scripture specifically mention Anti-Christ: 1 John 2:18, 2:22, 4:3, and 2 John 1:7.

As the Catholic Encyclopedia entry explains, passages in the writings of St. Paul allude to such a person but do not use the specific term "antichrist".

The following passage comes from the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CATHOLIC HISTORY, by Matthew Bunson, with a Foreword by Archbishop Oscar H. Lipscomb, published by Our Sunday Visitor:

Antichrist Term derived from the Greek antichristos (against Christ), used to describe the foremost enemy of Christ. The Antichrist is mentioned in the NT (1 Jn 2:18, 2:22, 4:3; 2 Jn 7) and traditional interpretations include the powerful imagery of the Book of Revelation as referring to the Antichrist. Catholic teaching points to a real poerson and not a movement; throughout history, he has been identified with Nero and Gaius Caligula. The Antichrist stands as the anticipated enemy of Christ with the final cosmological struggle to occur before the Second Coming of Christ. (p. 964)

Pope Pius X - E Supremi (4/10/1903):

5. When all this is considered there is good reason to fear lest this great perversity may be as it were a foretaste, and perhaps the beginning of those evils which are reserved for the last days; and that there may be already in the world the "Son of Perdition" of whom the Apostle speaks (II. Thess. ii., 3). Such, in truth, is the audacity and the wrath employed everywhere in persecuting religion, in combating the dogmas of the faith, in brazen effort to uproot and destroy all relations between man and the Divinity! While, on the other hand, and this according to the same apostle is the distinguishing mark of Antichrist, man has with infinite temerity put himself in the place of God, raising himself above all that is called God; in such wise that although he cannot utterly extinguish in himself all knowledge of God, he has contemned God's majesty and, as it were, made of the universe a temple wherein he himself is to be adored. "He sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God" (II. Thess. ii., 2).

From "Training for priestly celibacy" by Jose Saraiva Martins, Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education:

He who loves Christ «loves all that comes from him», as Vladimir Solovyev so beautifully puts it in The Legend of Antichrist.6

From "Address of John Paul II at the End of the Lenten Spiritual Exercises"

I cordially thank you for your efforts in preparing and directing these spiritual exercises. Through them we were immersed as it were in the mystery of the eternal Trinity, "man's viaticum on the way to the third millenium". You prepared an authentic biblical journey for us, enriched with the voices of saints and spiritual masters. You also let Soloviev speak to us, quoting the texts with the words of the "Antichrist": a powerful moment.

From the Catholic Cultural Document Library:

Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, the 72-year-old archbishop of Bologna (central Italy), made his comments in a lecture he gave in March on Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900), a brilliant Russian Orthodox theologian and mystic who has also been cited approvingly by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Soloviev said the Antichrist would appear after the 20th century. He said the 20th century would be marked by horrific wars and the demise of sovereign nations. Then the Antichrist would appear. He would call for a world religion via ecumenism, replacing traditional Christianity with an amorphous "New Age" type of spirituality...

Soloviev's story of the Antichrist is part of his larger work WAR, PROGRESS AND THE END OF HISTORY.

John Henry Newman on Antichrist:

Having been led, at this season of the year, to speak of that dreadful visitation which will precede the return of CHRIST to judge the world, I mean the coming of Antichrist, I will end the subject now with a few brief remarks on the persecution which will attend it. In saying that a persecution will attend it, I do but speak the opinion of the early Church, as I have tried to do all along, and shall do in what follows.

The Early Church Fathers on the Timing and the Rise of Antichrist.