Who Is He?

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.  They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us;  1 John 2:18-19a  ESV

Antichrist – As you know, I am reticent to write anything about end-time apocalyptic verses.  That’s not because these verses aren’t important.  It’s because apocalyptic literature is a very special genre which requires a good deal more than exegetical prognostications to understand.  In my view, it’s better left alone.  There is hardly a more divisive category in Christianity than this end-times fixation, and there is hardly any other fixation that has caused so much heartache and theological accusation.  But I was struck by a comment from Eric Santner that leads me to break step and make some comments.  Here’s Santner’s remark:

“Several notable efforts in this regard have traced the origins of the most extreme forms of ethnic, national, and religious antagonism to the emergence of monotheism in the West.”[1]

Did you understand the impact?  Santner claims that it is the formation of the Church (what else could it be for monotheism in the West) that has perpetrated the greatest conflicts in our world.  Ethnic, national, religious—wars fought over such divisions—brought on by cracking open the serpent’s egg of the Church.  Why does he say such a thing?  And how can the claim be justified?

Well, let’s start with Scripture.  John’s first letter opens this investigation because he uses the term “antichrist.”  Of course, in Greek it is antíchristos, literally, “against the anointed one.”  In theological terms, one who contests the claims of the Messiah.  Grundmann elaborates:  “Those who confess the sonship and messiahship of Christ by the Spirit (1 Jn. 4:15; 2:22; 4:2) are born of God (5:1), but those who contest them are antichrists (2:22) controlled by the spirit of antichrist (4:2). In 2:18 and 4:3 antichrist is a coming apocalyptic figure, the opponent of Christ whose power increases prior to the end but who is finally judged and destroyed. This figure, however, is already at work in false teachers (antichrists) who come from within the community and whose appearance shows that the last hour is near (1 Jn. 2:18; cf. 4:3; 2 Jn. 7).”^[2]  Of course, Grundmann’s analysis is thoroughly Christian, based on the divinity of Jesus.  But John, an orthodox Jew, would have written something a bit different.  Certainly the Greek is still “against the anointed one,” but if “Jesus” is Yeshua, and Yeshua is the anointed Jewish Messiah, then those who oppose his claim are not simply pagans.  Christians oppose the Jewish christos.  What do you think John would say about that?

Let’s add one more insight from Santner: “Monotheism, . .  because grounded in (revealed) scripture, tends to erect a rigid boundary between true religion and everything else, now rejected as ‘paganism’: . .”[3]  Boyarin would concur, with the explanation that “everything else” is now heresy.  The “rigid boundary” excludes John’s Messiah, and that means Christianity opposes the anointed one of the Hebrew Bible.

Now read John!  “Many antichrists have come” isn’t about some eschatological, apocalyptic age.  It’s about what John was witnessing in the first century—the degradation of the “Way” by those Greco-Roman paradigmatic “believers” who pushed for a new religious view, one based not on the Jewish tradition but on the adoption of heresiology, that is, branding everyone who did not conform to this new view as a false believer.  It is Christian monotheism with its consequent heresiology that created a world of conflict—of true and false—of correct belief and false doctrine.  And men went to war over this, claiming their violence was justified by God.  Reconsider the Church’s role in eliminating Jews and you just might come to another conclusion about the “antichrist.”

Topical Index: antichrist, heresy, monotheism, Eric Santner, 1 John 2:18-19a

[1] Eric L. Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life, p. 1.

^[2] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 1335). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.

[3] Eric L. Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life, p. 3.