“Ego prorsus quid dixerit fateor me ignorare.”—S. AUG.
THE various conjectures as to the “Man of Sin,” and “that which withholdeth,” may be classed under three heads— (1.) the nearly contemporary, (2.) the distantly prophetic, and (3.) the subjectively general. And in each of these classes the suggested antitypes are either (α) general and impersonal, or (β) individual and special.
(i.) The opinion adopted will, of course, depend greatly on the extent to which the destruction of Judaism in the overthrow of Jerusalem can be regarded as “a coming of the Lord.” Those who, in accordance with most of the definite temporal prophecies of Scripture, think that St. Paul must have been alluding to something nearly contemporary— something which already loomed on the horizon, and therefore to something which would alone have a direct hearing on the lives of contemporary Christians, explain the Apostasy and the Man of Sin to represent, (α) generally, the Pharisees, or Gnosticism, or the growth of heresy; or (β) individually, Nero or some Roman Emperor, Simon Magus, or Simon the son of Gioras; and they see “the check” generally in the Roman Emperor, or the Jewish Law, or spiritual gifts,1 or the time appointed by God;2 or individually in some Emperor (e.g., Claudius = qui claudit = ὁ κατέχει),3 or James the Just,4 or—in St. Paul himself!
(ii.) Those who have taken the distantlypropheticalview of the passage explain the Apostasy of the Man of Sin to be, (α) generally, the Papacy, or the Reformation, or Rationalism, or something as yet undeveloped; or (β) individually, Mahomet, or Luther, or Napoleon, or some future personal Antichrist; while they see “the check” either, as above, in the Roman Empire, or in the German Empire, or, more generally still, in the fabric of human polity.
(iii.) Finally, those who take an entirely broad and subjective view of the passage, see in it only a vague forecast of that which finds its fulfilment in all Christian, and, indeed, in all secular, history, of the counterworking of two opposing forces, good and evil, Christ and Antichrist, the Jetsertôbh and the Jetser–ha–râ, a lawless violence and a restraining power.
Now, of all these interpretations one alone can be regarded as reasonably certain—namely, that which views “the check” as the Roman Empire,5 and “the checker” as the Roman Emperor. This may be regarded as fairly established, and has received the widest acceptance, first, because it fulfils the conditions of being something present and intelligible; secondly, because we see an obvious reason why it should have been only hinted at, since to express it would have been a positive danger both to the writer and the community;6 and, thirdly, because, as Bishop Wordsworth has pointed out, the Epistle was from the first publicly read, and the Thessalonians must have attached a meaning to it, and that meaning has been handed down to us traditionally from the earliest times.7 Whatever may have been the wild vagaries of theological rancour, expressing itself in the form of Biblical commentary, the early Fathers, at least, were almost unanimous in regarding “the restraining power” as being the Roman Empire,8 and the “restrainer” as being some Roman Emperor.9 And it seems obvious that one main feature in the blasphemous self–exaltation and opposition to God which is to be a mark of the Man of Sin is suggested by the insane and sacrilegious enormities of Caligula (A.D. 40) thirteen years earlier, as well as by the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes. Other traits may have been suggested by the pretensions and sorceries of Simon Magus and similar widely–accredited impostors. Nero became to the Christian Church some years afterwards the very impersonation of their ideal Antichrist.
But to form any conception as to St. Paul’s meaning, besides being guided by his belief of the probable nearness of the Advent, and by the necessity that what he said should have some meaning and value to his hearers, we must consider (α) the views of the age; (β) the symbols he uses; and (γ) his own subsequent language when he alludes to any similar topic.
Turning, then, to these, we find that (α) St. Paul was fully aware that, in the then present dispensation, the triumph of Christ was not to be final or complete. He may well have heard of Christ’s solemn question, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”10 Even thus early in his career his prescient eye may have observed the traces of that Judaic and Antichristian faction which was to undo so much of his work, and embitter so many years of his life, and to whom he applies the sternest language. Already he may have noticed the germs of the various forms of Gnosticism, of which, in his Epistle to Timothy, he describes the “devilish doctrines” in language which recalls some of his expressions in this place.11 And the views of the early Christians, as expressed by other Apostles, were all founded on warnings which Christ had uttered, and all pointed in the same direction.12 That St. Paul should have thrown his forebodings into the concrete was natural to one so familiar with Old Testament prophecy,13 so given to personification, and so trained to the expectation of a Messiah who should be the personal victor over all iniquity in the person of the Arch–foe, the Rashâ, the Antichrist. That this personification should also in part have taken its colour from the monstrous wickedness and blasphemous follies of emperors like Tiberius and Caligula, was exactly what we should have expected; and, indeed, the hopes and fears of the Jews had acted on the world of heathendom, which in its turn reacted upon them. It is a most interesting confirmation of this fact that the Jews gave to Antichrist the name of Armillus(סולמרא). Thus, in the Targum of Jonathan on Isa. 11:4, we find, “With the breath of His lips shall He destroy the wicked Armillus;” and in the Jerusalem Targum on Numb. 11:26, and Deut. 34:2, we are told of Armalgus the Impious. This seems to be an allusion to the bracelets (armillæ) which, with utter defiance of all public dignity, were worn in public by Caligula.14 We see, then, what St. Paul’s anticipations at this moment were. He thought that ere long the Roman Empire, so far at any rate as it was represented by the reigning Emperor, would be swept away; that thereupon the existing tendencies of iniquity and apostasy, whether in Judaism or in the Church itself, would be concentrated in the person of one terrible opponent, and that the destruction of this opponent would be caused by the personal Advent of the Lord. At this time portents and presages of the most direful character were in the air. The hideous secrets of the Imperial Court were darkly whispered among the people. There were rumours of monstrous births, of rains of blood, of unnatural omens.15 Though Claudius had been the last to learn the infamous orgies of his wife Messalina, and perhaps the last to suspect the murderous designs of his wife and niece Agrippina, yet by this time even he was not unaware that his life hung on a thread. Little was as yet known of Nero in the provinces, but it might have been anticipated, before the illusive promise of the early part of his reign, that the son of such a father and such a mother could only turn out to be the monster which his father expected, and which he did ultimately turn out to be. If St. Paul anticipated that the present condition of the government would perish with Claudius, the reigning Emperor, and that his successor would be the Man of Sin, his anticipation was fulfilled. If he further anticipated that this representative of lawless and already working opposition to God and His Christ would be destroyed by the second Advent, he was then absolutely right so far as its Judaic elements were concerned, and so far as the second Advent was foreshadowed by the destruction of Jerusalem; and his anticipations were only mistaken onapointrespectingwhichallknowledgewas confessedly withheld—only in that ante–dating of the personal second Advent which was common to him with all Christians in the first century of Christianity. Nor need it be surprising to any one that he should mingle Jewish and heathen elements in the colours with which he painted the coming Antichrist. In doing this he was in full accord with that which must be the case, and with the dim expectations of paganism no less than with Rabbinic notions respecting the rival of the Messiah.16—Further than this we cannot go; and since we cannot—since all attempts at nearer indication have failed—since by God’s express and declared Providence we are as far as the Thessalonians could have been from any accurate conception as to the times and seasons of the coming of Christ—it is clear that we lose no vital truth of the Gospel by our inability to find the exact interpretation of an enigma which has been hitherto insoluble, and of which, had it been necessary for us, the exact explanation would not have been withheld.17