It's a chilly fall evening, and Frs. Jack and Daniel are seated in the former’s dining room, enjoying a roast.
Jack: It’s been too long since we shared a meal, Dan. Thank you again for having me over.
Daniel: Too long, indeed. (Raising his glass.) And thank you for the vino!
Having finished their supper, he stacks their plates, sets them to the side, and then tops off their wine glasses.
Daniel: Have you been able to pursue any of your hobbies these past few years? You took up so many of them during the pandemic that I lost track of them all!
Jack: Haha, yes—way too many. I still tinker around in my woodshop. Carving spoons has become something of a coping mechanism for me. It’s a good way to calm my mind, though I could start selling them wholesale, given how many I have lying around.
Daniel: Surely they make good Christmas gifts.
Jack: Yes, they did—for the first two years. (Chuckles.) I’m afraid I’ve inundated my family with them. I should’ve brought a few for you!
Daniel: I would love a set!
Jack: Oh! Now that you have me thinking back to the pandemic and my numerous hobbies, I realize there was one that I haven’t yet shared with you.
Daniel: You’re like a shark! You always keep moving.
Jack: You have no idea! I’m not sure if it is a blessing or a curse. Anyways, this wasn’t exactly a hobby, but it was definitely a product of spending too much time sitting with my thoughts.
Daniel: Oh?
Jack: Soon after isolation began, I returned to some of my favorite novels. I started with The Plague, which I admit was a bit on the nose, but then I got around to others. Most importantly, I reread both The Brothers Karamozov and Screwtape Letters. They inspired me to pursue an odd little project.
Daniel: Oh? What would that be?
Jack: Well, I wrote a satirical little treatise on how to be an effective antichrist.
Daniel: Oh good grief.
Jack: I know it sounds bizarre.
Daniel: I’ve come to expect nothing short from you!
Jack: It’s very much in the spirit of Lewis’s Screwtape Letters.
Daniel: As in, it’s a correspondence between two demons?
Jack: No, but the “author” takes himself to be an antichrist, though not in some supernatural sense. I think of him more like an antichrist philosopher who is writing something like a self-help manual for people trying to become antichrists.
Daniel: Haha, okay, that sounds funny. Is it kind of like A Modest Proposal?
Jack: I didn’t really have that in mind when I wrote it, and it’s been decades since I read it, but I think that’s a somewhat apt comparison. I tried to make it very serious-sounding, but underlying and motivating it is a sense of frustration that I could only adequately express by being ironic.
Daniel: You’ll have to share it with me sometime.
Jack wrinkles his eyebrows and rubs his beard.
Jack: I’ve been a bit embarrassed to discuss it or share it, but I think you, of all people, would take it for what it is and understand my intention. (Takes a sip of wine and then continues.) You know what? Rather than sending it to you, I think I would prefer to read it to you. Would you mind?
Daniel: Do you have it with you?
Jack: Oh, come on, old man: everything is on the cloud these days!
He pulls his phone from his pocket.
Daniel: Is it very long?
Jack: Hah! It’s probably longer than it should be.
Daniel: In that case, let’s get comfortable and uncork that second bottle. Come on into the study.
They get up from the table and head into the room adjoining the dining room. They each select an overstuffed chair and settle in. Jack uncorks the bottle of wine and places it on the table situated between the chairs.
Daniel: Okay, lay it on me!
Jack: Alright. Here we go. (Begins reading.)
It is very easy to accidentally become an Antichrist; in some ways, it is the easiest thing in the world. But when such a way of being springs up without intentional cultivation, it lacks deep roots. This brief compendium is intended for those seeking to better understand how they might deliberately nurture and develop a deep-rooted and authentic Antichrist personality or identity. As such, it provides a concise theoretical articulation of the distinction between the Christ and the Antichrist—understood as distinct and oppositional ways of being—and it delineates the essence of an Antichrist identity. Moreover, it presents practical strategies through which such an identity may be carefully cultivated and sustained by those who find themselves in the midst of a putatively Christian culture.
Daniel: It sounds so academic!
Jack: Hehe, yes, I was having fun writing it in a hoity-toity manner. So, this first part I am calling the “Theoretical Exposition.” (He clears his throat and continues to read.)
Part I: Theoretical Exposition
§1. To be Antichrist is to be against something—namely, that which essentially belongs to, is expressed through, and is disclosed by the Christ figure.¹ In the terms of the Book of Lies, anyone who denies that Jesus is “of God” is Antichrist,² but we shall assume that this does not refer to a mere verbal act, but a deeper intentional act and existential orientation. There are, in a manner of speaking, many “Christs.” More precisely, there are many different christologies, i.e., conceptions or theories of Christ.³ In a strictly logical sense, then, there are an equal number of possible antichristologies; for every “Christ” there is a correlative “anti-Christ.”
Daniel: Ah, yes! That’s an interesting idea! That expresses a suspicion that I often have, which is that some people who claim to reject Christ are actually rejecting a caricature of Christ.
Jack: Yes, that is partly what I had in mind, too. (He gives a bit of a sly grin.) But I think some people who claim to accept Christ also accept a caricature. Anyways, continuing on!
§2. The basis for the cultivation of an Antichrist personality will, of necessity, involve opposition or negation, so our practical aim requires that we decide here, at the outset, how to respond to the problem of plural christologies. It would appear that we have two options: (1) We could remain agnostic on the true nature and meaning of the Christ figure and thus treat all christologies as of equal importance to our project. As such, we would need to attempt an exhaustive survey of the various theories of Christ and then identify the means by which one may live in opposition to each. Alternatively, (2) we could endeavor to identify the true and essential nature and meaning of the Christ figure and then focus our efforts on articulating the means by which one may live in opposition to this.
§3. Undoubtedly, there would be a great scholarly benefit in carrying out the first option. However, such a survey would be encyclopedic in scope and chiefly academic in aim. Since this compendium is intended to be theoretically concise and of practical use, we will err on the side of adopting the second option. The risk associated with doing so is that everything rides on accurately identifying the true meaning and essential nature of the Christ figure. But boldness dictates that we pursue this path, despite the risks, for is this not what every authentic Antichrist aspires to oppose? We presume that a devoted, intentional Antichrist is not interested in opposing every notion of Christ that someone, somewhere has happened to conceived; rather, they seek to fashion themselves in lived opposition to the true Christ. Anything short of that amounts to mere posturing or tilting at windmills.⁴
Daniel: Oh, that’s clever!
Jack: (Continuing.)
§4. As we have said, to be Antichrist is to be against Christ; however, an Antichrist is always also for something, for the life of any being who has the capacity and option to cultivate either a Christ or an Antichrist personality—i.e., a person, or a being for whom the question of who they are is a question—must necessarily be lived in relation to some conception of an end or a goal, though it may remain implicit or unarticulated. So, while being Antichrist is the subject of this discourse, it should not be supposed that an individual who is Antichrist can be understood solely in terms of such a status. Moreover, as we shall see, the intentional cultivation of an Antichrist personality requires that one be for something.
§5. An important theoretical distinction has been alluded to, but now needs to be explicated. Namely, it is possible to be against that for which Christ stands either in an intentional or an unintentional manner. An Antichrist personality can be intentionally cultivated, but perhaps more often, one is found to be in possession of such a personality simply by accident. That is to say, one might, in a de facto sense, embody an Antichrist identity. This is often a result of a certain kind of enculturation. It is presumed that the ultimate object of our investigation is to reveal the essence of the Antichrist personality, or way of being, and to articulate practical strategies relating to its deliberate cultivation and flourishment.
Daniel: Hold on. Why would such a person want or need to deliberately cultivate it? Wouldn’t simply ignoring the issue be the more ordinary approach?
Jack: You’re getting ahead of me! Listen here:
§6. It may be objected that such deliberate cultivation is unnecessary, for the relationship between Christ-followers and the Antichrists can be viewed as analogous to the relationship between two teams of children engaged in a game of ball, each intent on winning. In such cases, the only thing that matters is the final score. It would not much matter if the victorious team scored most of their goals by happenstance, luck, or even owing to a profound lack of skill on the part of the other team. Regardless of their own skill and intentionality, or the lack thereof, they would remain “the winning team.”
There is a limited appeal to this analogy: it is true that Antichrists are concerned with the successful thwarting of the Christ agenda. However, while all analogies limp, this one is downright lame, for in actual fact, what is at stake in the contested relationship between the Christ-followers and the Antichrists—especially when considered from an existential perspective—is not analogous to a final score. There is no tally to which we can refer, and the “game,” if such it can be called, has no end. We do not even know how many competitors are on the opposing “team,” nor whether they have “scored” for their own side or ours. Moreover, the “players” can switch sides at any point.
A slightly better analogy may be found without leaving the ballpark: the stakes are somewhat analogous to those one would face upon resolving to pursue a career as a professional ball player. Once the decision is made, personal success will not be achieved without training and discipline.
Daniel: Haha, okay. I’ll accept the conceit that your imagined audience wants to intentionally be opposed to Christ. But don’t you think the problem is often ignorance? I think—or, rather, I hope—that if most people understood what Christ stood for, they would find themselves transformed.
Jack: Yes, I hope so too, but I don’t think that is the case. And I suspect you don’t really either! Don’t you think that some people would reject God even in full understanding?
Daniel: Hmm. I suppose that is what I am theologically committed to. But hope springs eternal.
Jack: Haha. Yes, indeed. Let me return to the discourse, since I think the next analogy helps solidify the central conceit, as you called it.
§7. A much better analogy requires that we take leave of the sports simile: we could analogize what is at stake for the Antichrist to what is at stake for one who decides to become not only a professional thief, but an excellent professional thief. As with the ball player, training and discipline are necessary for lasting success. But, unlike the ball player, who must hone his craft within the limits of the rules of the game, the thief’s standard of excellence requires that he learn both the “rules” and also how to violate them without detection. Moreover, he must understand his marks so well that it might be said he comes to know them better than they, themselves. This is the position in which a committed Antichrist stands: to be fully Antichrist, one must understand the mark of opposition—the Christ—exceedingly well and direct their intentional opposition to a conception of the Christ-figure that is of utmost clarity.
§8. While there is, undoubtedly, a social dimension to the Antichrist life, the matter is largely, and certainly ultimately, an existential one. What is at stake in the choice between Christ or Antichrist is the nature and quality of one’s life itself. There is no compulsion, for one need not seek to achieve excellence; mediocrity is always an option. But for those who wish to achieve excellence, insight and discipline are necessary. And it is for those that this compendium has been written.
Daniel: Haha. I have to admit, I’m a bit hooked! The way in which you’ve set this up is fascinating.
Jack: (Continuing)
§9. A second key distinction is between that which belongs to the Christ figure and that which nominally bears the classification of “Christian.” Some Christians may elide or attempt to deliberately obfuscate this distinction by claiming that since the Church is the Body of Christ, and since Christ promised the Church the power to bind and loosen,⁵ whatever is said and done and laid down through proper ecclesial processes is thereby the will or actual reality of Christ.
Daniel: I can’t help but take that as a dig!
Jack winks.
Jack: Bear with me. And remember, this is an antichrist philosopher speaking! He is supposed to be offensive. And I’ll warn you: this is particularly true of the next sentence.
This identification of the will of the Church with the will of God is an ingenious theological maneuver, and it may even be put to good use by a sophisticated and advanced Antichrist. However, its application as a means of simply conflating the will of the Christ figure with that of every nominal Christian is a parochial conception at best, and, by and large, most Christians acknowledge a distinction between what is attributable to Christ and what is attributable to so-called “Christians.” This is true even of Roman Catholics who adopt what superficially may seem to be something like the aforementioned theological perspective,⁶ for they acknowledge a difference between Christians who are members of the Ecumenical Body of Christ (Lutherans, Anglicans, Orthodox, Presbyterians, et al.) and those who are “Christian” in name only (among these, they would include Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons).
Daniel: True enough, but you’ve left the implicit papist charge hanging!
Jack: Hah, yes, I suppose I have.
Daniel: Let’s put a pin in that, because I have something I want to say about it.
Jack: Very good. Take a mental note—or, even better, let’s jot down a list of things we want to discuss afterwards.
Daniel pulls a small notepad and pen from the breast pocket of his shirt and begins a list.
Jack: (Continuing.)
§10. We shall proceed on the assumption that there are many beliefs, practices, and values, which are called “Christian,” but which are mere historical accretions and are not properly or essentially attributed to the Christ figure or those who seek to be “little Christs,”⁷ i.e., Christ-followers, or what one might call “genuine Christians”—those who seek to cultivate a Christ identity. Examples include here so-called “Christian” family values, many of the associated details of which have little to no basis in the life and teachings of the Christ,⁸ as well as many “Christian” cultic and spiritual practices, including the bulk of the various liturgies; many forms of prayer, including praying the rosary; the institution of confession, etc. While these practices can have the effect of orienting individuals to Christ or a Christ-like form of life, they can just as easily become rote or otherwise vacuous exercises.
(Daniel hastily writes another note and Jack smiles.)
Only the most magically minded person could imagine that these practices, in and of themselves, necessarily and efficaciously orient one to Christ. Christians themselves are aware of this fact. The theologian, Aiden Kavanagh, has gone so far as to argue that many of the most popular “Christian” conceptions of the Easter celebration are only nominally Christian and, in fact, demonstrate that implicated individuals and even entire Christian communities find themselves in a state of apostasy. While ‘apostasy’ is typically defined as the willful abandonment of one’s faith, Kavanagh defines it as “a most subtle state that is determined by the degree of a person’s or a community’s being unrisen in Christ.” He goes on to say, “the ultimate form this may take is the seemingly pious assumption that Easter constitutes, in dramatic tableaux, the final proof that we Christians are right in making Jesus into the founder of a religious ‘denomination’ most efficiently supportive of status quo.”⁹ The relevant point for our purposes is that Kavanagh argues that a perspective held by many “Christians” concerning the meaning and import of the Easter event—Christ’s resurrection—actually evidences their failure to participate in the resurrectional life of Christ.
Daniel: I’m familiar with some of Kavanagh’s work. Where does he discuss that?
Jack: It’s an article titled, ““The Theology of Easter: Themes in Cultic Data.”
Daniel: I haven’t read that. Be sure to send it to me.
Jack: Sure thing. It’s good. (He turns back to his phone.)
§11. So, to repeat, many beliefs, practices, and values are only Christian in a nominal and accidental sense, and Christians themselves recognize this distinction. As we shall see, some of these nominally Christian beliefs and practices may be appropriated or utilized by an advanced Antichrist; hence, it is imperative that their non-Christian character, or at least the possibility of such, be appreciated. And those which are authentically Christian—i.e., those which properly belong to Christ and Christ-followers—must, by that very fact, be encompassed in our survey of the Christ figure and what he stands for.
What comes next few sections are probably the most important. Everything else hinges on them.
Daniel: Duly noted!
Jack:
§12. In light of the essentially oppositional nature of the Antichrist’s way of being, our task now is to accurately identify that to which an Antichrist stands as an antithesis; that is, we must clarify the nature of the Christ figure and the teachings essentially wedded to it. The teachings of Jesus and his apostles were, fortunately, rather simple, though they have been made to seem complicated and mysterious. Their simplicity is a boon for those who wish to cultivate an Antichrist persona, for it is far simpler to negate merely A and B than it is to negate A, B, C, D, and so on.
Daniel: Another clever move! Very sophistic.
Jack: I was rather pleased with that line.
§13. As is well known, Jesus allegedly summarized the teachings of the Torah by saying that one should love God with one’s full heart and love one’s neighbor as oneself. Perhaps most importantly, he indicates that these amount to the same thing.¹⁰ He reiterates the point as “a new commandment” in the depictions of his final communion with his disciples, where he is portrayed as saying, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”¹¹
§14. It is imperative that we dwell upon the way in which Jesus summarized the Mosaic law, for this formulation—that one should love God—elides the question of who or what God is. It is all too commonplace for people to take the word ‘God’ as a name, though a moment’s reflection reveals that this is far from the case. We shall not repeat this mistake, for we must be clear to ourselves what Jesus meant when he said that one is to love God.
§15. The word ‘god’ is not a name. It is a descriptor that has, historically, been applied not only to the alleged Creator of all that is, seen and unseen, but more generally to those forces or realities that impinge upon and structure the universe, life in general, and specifically the lives of human beings. Contrary to popular ways of speaking, polytheists, such as the Greeks and pagan Romans, did not really have “gods of…” chaos, time, war, wisdom, etc. Rather, they related to these things in themselves (albeit in personified form) as divine, i.e., forces that control us, impinge themselves on us and our reality, and in relation to which we ought to stand in awe, reverence, and perhaps terror.¹²
§16. The word ‘deity,’ meaning ‘a god,’ comes to us from the word deus, which seems to come from the Proto-Indo-European root of dyeu-, which means “to shine,” like the sun shines over all. In a quite literal, etymological, and historical sense, the sun is our god; that which shines over us and reveals things via its light. The sun is truly the universal source of light for all of us—or at least it was until we harnessed first fire and then later electricity. (The word ‘universal,’ means “the one over, or which includes, the many.”)
§17. Even if our ancient ancestors thought of the sun as a god—and they surely did—they also realized that there are other realities that “shine,” so to speak, and stand as universals that determine our reality in a more metaphorical but no less important way. These universals they personified and thus enumerated as their various “gods,” i.e., deities. Each, in its way, was thought to be a reality that transcended, or was different than, the domains or aspects of life or the universe for which they were responsible. But over such domains and aspects they did rule. Hence, they came to be understood as realities to which we could orient ourselves properly or improperly.
§18. Religio (or religion) is the virtue of properly orienting oneself to such divinities.¹³ It may be said, in light of the aforementioned, that the object of such worship is the universal. Greeks did not venerate erotic sensation (ερως), they venerated the Erotic (Ἔρως). They did not venerate chronological moments (χρόνος), they venerated Chronos (Χρόνος). Of some gods, they were ambivalent. For example, Ares (Ἄρης), usually referred to as “the god of war,” means ruination. It is not particular acts of ruination to which they were ambivalent—far from it: some wars, for example, were worthy of much support—but rather Ruination as a universal. Ares (Ἄρης) or Ruination is a universal-persona in regards to which one must be ambivalent.
§19. Unlike their polytheistic counterparts, the Jews, over time, came to view the divine as consolidated in a single deity, which, in a manner of speaking, was the most universal of universals: the Creator of all that is, seen and unseen, and hence the single deity to whom time, love, war, etc. were all answerable. Of this deity, little can be positively said. Hence, when, Moses asks whom he should say sent him to lead his people from bondage—i.e., when he asks this god to identify himself by name, he is given a non-answer:
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.¹⁴
§19. The redactors of the New Testament operated within this monotheistic tradition, as did their master, Jesus, whose life, teachings, death, and resurrection they committed to story form in various books, many of which collectively constitute what we now know as the Bible. The authors and redactors make it evident that they conceive of this single god, referenced in the first of Jesus’ great commands, as love: “God,” they tell us (i.e., the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob) is love.”¹⁵ As an eminent theologian has astutely noted, this constitutes a remarkable disclosure of Christ’s understanding of the divine: “Jesus tells his hearers that if they love one another agapically [i.e., as ‘complete gift of self to the other’], the Father and he will dwell in them… God is not the object of love; God is the love that exists among Jesus’ disciples.”¹⁶
§20. We are thus warranted in taking this claim—that God is love—to be an identity claim (i.e., that god = love and love = god). Hence, through an application of the principle of the substitution of identical terms, Christ’s essential teaching can be restated as follows: one should love and trust in love with one’s full heart and love one’s neighbor as oneself. Importantly, this is why, when asked which of these commandments is most important, Jesus went beyond the Pharisaic teachings, which stood as a contemporaneous alternative to his own ministry, and claimed that these commandments mean the same thing. For what could it mean to “love love” than to actively and materially love other people? Jesus did not disagree with the Pharisees when it came to the question of whether their god’s central command was to love and respect others, nor that the other moral precepts, principles, and laws flowed from that command. Indeed, there are profound similarities between Jesus and the Pharisees, a point that is well illustrated by considering the famous insight delivered by Hillel the Elder, the Pharisee in whose school Saul (who became Paul the Apostle) was educated. Hillel taught, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah [law]; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”¹⁷ What allegedly distinguished Jesus from other rabbis of the time was his insistence that the command to love God is, at least practically, identical to the command to love others. This is why, in the story known as the Final Judgment, the “Son of Man” separates the “sheep,” who will “inherit the kingdom,” from the “goats,” i.e., those who are condemned and found wanting, on the basis of whether they materially embodied love by providing what was their own to those others in need, whether it be food and drink, clothing, or even their friendship or companionship.¹⁸ Michael Himes explicates the point succinctly:
[T]he criterion of judgment has nothing to do with any explicitly religious action. The criterion is not whether they were baptized, or prayed, or read Scripture, or received the Eucharist, or believed the correct doctrines, or belonged to the church. Not one of these—however important they may be—is raised as the principle of judgment. Only one criterion is given: Did you love your brothers and sisters?¹⁹
Daniel: Oh, you’re really goading me. You know how much I love Himes!
Jack: (Smiling.) I’m finally coming to the key passage:
§21. It is, then, patently obvious that the Christ figure stands for the notion that what is of absolute and ultimate concern is love, where this means that one should “love love,” i.e., have trust or faith in the efficaciousness of love, and recognize that making oneself a living sacrifice to love—to outcompete one another in love, as Paul suggests²⁰—is both the nature of proper religio (worship)²¹ and constitutes the wisdom that is soteriologically sufficient—i.e., sufficient to direct or order one toward their ordained end and ultimate good.
Daniel: That, I must say, is well put. It’s quite funny to attribute such a succinct statement of the faith to an antichrist philosopher!
Jack: I knew you would ultimately appreciate the irony. So:
§22. At this point, it is necessary to offer an important aside about an ambiguity that surrounds the descriptor, ‘god,’ as it is used in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, particularly in juxtaposition to the uses of that term in the other religions of the time (e.g., Babylonian, Greek, and Roman religious thought). The development of Jewish thinking concerning the nature of the divine is received, by us, nowadays, as the paradigm through which all other conceptions of god are understood, whether a thinker confesses belief in the Jewish, Christian, or Islamic god or not. In other words, when a contemporary Western person either pronounces or denounces belief in a god (or gods), they are, with only minor exceptions, pronouncing or denouncing what they take to be belief in god as understood within the Abrahamic religions. This was, of course, precisely not the case for the authors and redactors who contributed to the development of what is now considered the Jewish and Christian scriptures. To the contrary, they were, in a very important sense, engaged in an oppositional theopoetics, one which ran up against and explicitly rejected the conceptions of divinity operative within those societies and cultures to which they found themselves opposed. Hence, the authorial voices of the Hebrew Bible are at pains to make it evident that their conception of the divine, unlike the others on offer at the time, entails that people are at home in the world: i.e., that they belong here and do not need to appease the gods to ensure the continued maintenance of reality.²² The Divine, they insist, does not require human sacrifice;²³ neither does the Divine delight in or require death.²⁴
Daniel: What do you have in mind, specifically? I mean, of course I agree that God doesn’t require or delight in those things, but do you have some specific passage in mind?
Jack: Not a single passage, but many. For example, I take the point of the story of Noah and the flood not to be that Yahweh committed mass genocide to wipe the Earth clean of human sins, but rather that Yahweh will not do so. They took the story of the flood from the Babylonians and reappropriated it, effectively saying, “You say your gods destroyed the Earth because of human sin. Our God recognizes that we will sin and nevertheless resolves not to throw reality back into chaos.”
Daniel: Hmm. That’s an interesting interpretation. Of course, it’s hard to ignore the fact that they still attributed the deluge to God.
Jack: Sure. But I think that is just what they liked to do: take a story and tell it differently. It’s not because they somehow knew what actually happened, but more because they had hope and confidence in what they thought was the case about their God—namely, that God thought we were good and should feel at home. So they are willing to have fun with the stories they tell.
Daniel: That surely complicates the standard Protestant claim that the proper interpretation of the Bible is its “plain” and obvious meaning.
Jack: Yeah, though you know perfectly well that we don’t all agree to that line, nor should we! And it’s far from “standard” anymore, except in certain evangelical denominations and non-denominational churches. The Bible is much too rich to treat in such simplistic terms. Anyways, let me continue:
§23. This was, to repeat, contrary to then-prevailing conceptions of divinity. The heavenly host, as it was often conceived by their pagan counterparts, was a fickle bunch whose actions and desires in relation to humanity were frustratingly unpredictable. Sacrifice, whether human or animal, was developed as a way to mollify and propitiate the mysteriously transcendent forces that impinged upon reality. It is thus not wrong to note that, as a contemporary scholar has,
There is abundant evidence that the God of the Jewish Bible takes no delight in the cultic slaughter of beasts, and is impervious to the blandishments with which these carcasses are thrust upon his attention. He cannot be inveigled by such overtures because he is a non-god, a god of the poor rather than of burnt offerings, but also because he is inconceivably other…²⁵
Notice the importance of this last claim: the “god” of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is a “non-god”; the consciousness of the Divine expressed in these scriptures fails to meet most of the criteria for a god, as understood in the ancient theological imagination. This is well-illustrated by the tale of the Roman general, Pompey, who is said to have entered the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem, hoping to see (a statue of) the god of the Jews. He is reputed to have been profoundly confused to find the Kadosh HaKodashim empty.²⁶
§24. When we attend to the character of Jesus’ ministry as the redactors of the New Testament portray it, it becomes obvious that he conceives of God as perfect love, and when he invites his listeners to witness the kingdom of God and to participate in its ongoing unfolding, he seems to ask them to love love and thus seek to multiply the ways in which people have occasion to find themselves loved. Moreover, he invites them to trust that lives devoted to radically sacrificial love are both the means by which they will be known as his disciples and as a foretaste of the state of their consummated salvation.
§25. This provides us with the first important insight into the nature of an Antichrist persona. A person is an accidental, or de facto, Antichrist insofar as they ultimately love, adore, have faith in, or sacrifice to something other than love. For example, many people love, adore, and sacrifice to capital or wealth, which is referred to as Mammon in scripture. This type of person is quite common. They limit their capacity for love as well as the occasions in which the practice of love may be expected, and they do so by allowing capital to discipline them—perhaps by working day and night, not because they need to, or because doing so is an expression of their love, but because either they have relegated love to a lower place or because their productivity or the fruits thereof (e.g., wealth, esteem, power) are of greater concern to them than actually loving and cultivating the so-called virtue of love. This Antichrist form of life is chiefly noteworthy in that it is (if we might be permitted the appellation) extraordinarily ordinary. In some ways, it is so quotidian to seem inane. However, we shall take it as evidence that the inclination and desire to be Antichrist is far from rare. The question a devoted Antichrist ought to be concerned with is not whether they are Antichrist, but whether they are living their best Antichrist life. Woefully, many people do not consider this question and they thus squander the numerous opportunities life presents for more efficaciously and skillfully living in opposition to the love of love.
Daniel: Hahaha! I have to say, “living your best Antichrist life” seems like an Instagram influencer’s post.
Jack: Yes! I enjoyed playing around with such pervasive cultural tropes. I thought about including some comment about antichrist “self-care”! I ended up settling on “living your best life” because I wanted to elide the question of what really constitutes self-care. Continuing on:
§26. If one wishes to mature out of such undistinguished and often accidental forms of Antichrist being and cultivate a more distinguished and authentic Antichrist form of life, one must be clear in one’s own mind that one does not love love. If one values love as the summum bonum, if one is willing to sacrifice other things of value (e.g., wealth, power, esteem, familial blood ties, etc.) to the project of rendering the world in the image of Christ—i.e., as an absurdly disordered community structured principally and above all by love—and has faith in the soteriological sufficiency of love, then they fail to be Antichrist, except perhaps in a nominal sense. What distinguishes an accidental from an intentional Antichrist is that the latter willfully erects and orders ones life around an altogether different matter of ultimate concern, whereas the former does so unthinkingly and perhaps, in some sense, unwillingly. Those who do so unwillingly are tragic persons, not heroic ones. By contrast, those who do so intentionally have the capacity to achieve a kind of greatness; their lived denial is a manifestation of their spirit to contend.
§27. The aforementioned point does not entail that an Antichrist must not appreciate or desire love; while that is certainly compatible with being an Antichrist, it is not necessary. All that is necessary is that one deny that loving love is one’s ultimate concern, i.e., that one deny that love is sufficient as the telos of human life. Love of things is not denied, only the love of love, the inherent sufficiency of love. The Antichrist qua Antichrist is willing to sacrifice love for the sake of something other than love, whereas the Christ figure and those who genuinely seek to be “little-Christs” are willing to sacrifice things for the sake of love—e.g., concern with ritual purity and social norms, familial blood ties, economic obligations, etc.
§28. To summarize: an Antichrist qua Antichrist must have as their ultimate concern something other than love and the love of love. In this regard, the world is the oyster for the novice Antichrist, for it is quite easy to set up something other than love as one’s ultimate concern. We have already suggested some such alternatives: capital, pleasure, power, social esteem. But we can add innumerable other ends or teloi to the list of possibilities: art, beauty, wisdom, the family, the nation, etc. As the philosopher, Slavoj Žižek has rightly noted, for Stalinists, “History” served as the Big Other to whom they were willing to sacrifice or subordinate their own lives and loves and the lives and loves of other people.²⁷ The human capacity to invent and orient oneself to a Big Other, which can then rationalize the suspension of love as ultimate concern, is the condition for the possibility of cultivating an Antichrist persona.
Daniel: That, too, is very well-put—and powerful. I think I see where this is going.
Jack chuckles and once again gives Daniel a wink.
Jack:
§29. What is often overlooked—and such oversight is very unfortunate—is that a god can very easily be set up as a matter of ultimate concern, such that one is thereby able and willing to sacrifice love for the sake of that god.²⁸ Indeed, it may be said that the most effective way in which to cultivate an Antichrist personality is to explicitly orient oneself to a god (albeit a god which is not identical to love), for one then enjoys all of the social benefits that redound to those who are viewed as pious, and one has at one’s disposal the divisive social and psychological tools that help one militate against the love of love and faith, or trust, in love.
§30. A critical reader may doubt such utility on the grounds that the only socially acceptable form of religious theism in our society is the worship of the Abrahamic god. However, it behooves us, at this point, to recall the distinction between that which belongs to or is associated with the Christ and that which is nominally designated “Christian.” Few if any Christians take the “is” in their attested claim, “God is love” to be the “is” of identity. This is evidenced by the fact that they would deny the converse claim, “Love is God.”
Daniel: Oof. That hits home. Why does it seem wrong to say that love is God?
Jack: I think that is one of the key things we need to work out in fear and trembling!
Daniel: Touché.
Jack: Lest you dismiss the problem too quickly, my author has this to say:
As a simple matter of logic, if it is true that X is Y, where this is the “is” of identity, then it strictly follows that it is also true that Y is X. Hence, for example, if one says, “the Morning Star is the Evening Star,” then this is logically equivalent to the claim, “the Evening Star is the Morning Star.” Crucially, most so-called Christians think love is merely an attribute or property of their god, but not their god’s essence, and they certainly deny that love is identical to god. They may, of course, go to pains to explain that because their god is actus purus—“pure act”—that god has all attributes fully actualized. This requires that they adopt one of two positions:
(1) They must deny evil as a positive attribute, instead conceiving of it as a privation, else they would be committed to the notion that God, in addition to having the attribute of love also has the attribute of hatred, and in addition to having the attribute of justice has the attribute of injustice, etc.
Or (2) they must bite the bullet, so to speak, and acknowledge that their god has all such attributes: love and hatred; mercy and vengeance; justice and injustice.
§31. These philosophico-theological subtleties need not concern us. Suffice it to say, it is an open question as to whether the onto-theological conception of god assumed by the doctrine that god is actus purus is even compatible with the conception of god as love, for love is not a thing, but a relationship. We shall thus set aside this issue and the aforementioned dilemma as a matter for busybody philosophers and theologians to attend to.
Daniel: Haha, fine. But I have a lot I want to say about that!
Jack: Of course. Me too. But remember who our author is! He can’t be trusted to play fair.
§32. What is worthy of appreciation is that many Christians are no more willing to love love itself, to have faith in love itself, and to be disciples of love itself than an honest Antichrist. It is a well-known fact that Christians are more than willing to sacrifice their love of others for the sake of what they take to be pious obedience to their god and the moral truths they associate with that god’s commands (though they usually pick and choose which commands and moral insights they take to be important).
Daniel: You were definitely a bit salty when you wrote that!
Jack: Life is very savory! (He winks and continues.)
§33. Reference to a common phenomenon may help to illustrate the practical point of the aforementioned. It is widely understood that many politicians publicly confess to being Christians, but there is often little doubt that the master they serve—i.e., what they take to be of ultimate concern in their life—is not love itself. They do not, in practice, sacrifice things for the sake of love. They use the language of Christianity because it is expedient, but it can hardly be said that they stand for and structure their lives around the Christ figure. Such persons are Antichrists and, indeed, arguably stand as exemplar Antichrists, at least when their duplicity is intentional rather than accidental. The reason is twofold:
(1) In virtue of their public standing, such persons serve as models to others of what is thought to be “a Christian life,” thus confounding efforts on the part of religious seekers to find authentic models for a Christ-centered way of being. This is a cause worthy of an Antichrist’s admiration.
(2) Those Antichrists who eschew Christianity—who refuse to associate themselves with Christianity—thereby squander the opportunity to harness the social, political, and psychological tools of oppression, domination, and division, which the institution makes available. We presume that one who is truly committed to an oppositional orientation to the Christ will use whatever tools are available and at their disposal to both actively thwart others from becoming seduced into discipleship to Christ. Arguably the most effective way to do that is to contribute to the venerable tradition of claiming for oneself the mantle of Christianity while actively perverting the clear understanding, let alone the appreciation of, the true Christ.
§34. If such a person confounds matters in this way intentionally, they are both existentially an Antichrist and also they advance the broader social agenda that Antichrists might presume to share.
§35. This brings us to an important and delicate matter. There are some people who are merely Antichrist in name only; in fact, they are simply anti-Christian. There is a gulf of difference between these two oppositional stances. One who is anti-Christian may very well be—whether intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or unconsciously—very much in favor of living one’s life in a Christ-like manner. Consider, as an example, a person who holds the belief that nothing is more important than cultivating and sustaining loving relationships of authentic mutuality and self-gift, and they have faith that if they choose love, their lives will be fulfilled, even if their lives are not necessarily pleasing. In other words, love and the love of love are their ultimate concern. Now suppose that this person finds themselves opposed to the Churches or to Christian believers because they discern within those groups a characteristic malevolence and partiality, which is opposed to their own sense that love is of ultimate concern. In such a case, this person is—perhaps unwittingly—living their life in a Christ-like manner, and they are, effectively, judging the Church and Christians to be Antichrist.
§36. Such is the case with the master of suspicion, Ludwig Feuerbach. In his magisterial work, The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach argues that there is an irresolvable contradiction within Christianity. Morally, the essence of Christianity is expressed in the call or invitation to love one another, including our enemies. Love, he rightly observes, is Christ’s absolute command, and Christ is the embodiment of such sacrificial love. Practically, however, religious consciousness stands in tension with this command because it is concerned with orthodoxy and orthopraxy, with policing the boundary between doctrine and heresy. Truth, understood in doxastic terms, becomes a matter of ultimate concern, as does the purity of the membership within the community of believers, the kingdom of God, or the Body of Christ. Hence, within religious consciousness, Feuerbach explains, there is a malignant, anti-humanistic principle, a principle of division and separation, which is the antithesis of love.²⁹ What this argument suggests, however, is that Feuerbach is principally anti-Christian; he is not, in fact, Antichrist, assuming we have been correct in identifying love and love of love as properly belonging to the Christ figure. Indeed, one might suspect that Feuerbach is an exceedingly astute Christ-follower, since he is willing to suspend or deny religious devotion and religiosity for the sake of love itself—something which Christ’s contemporaries arguably could have said about him.
§37. While we have been and will remain chiefly concerned with the existential nature of the Antichrist form of life, it is worth noting that committed Antichrists may conclude that it advances the Antichrist social project that the Christian Churches remain and become ever more so de facto Antichrist, for by confusing and confounding such matters, the possibility remains open that those disaffected by the observed practices of the Churches and Christians will thereby fail to investigate the true nature of the Christ. For if they do, they might find themselves emboldened and their faith in the soteriological sufficiency of love deepened. They may even seek to actively reform or revolutionize the Churches in the hopes that they might be purged of their Antichrist tendencies. Such people are enemies of the Antichrist, for if such a Christ-oriented project were successful, it would thwart the Antichrist’s own ends.
§38. A word of caution should be made here. The most effective Antichrist is one who does not preach or practice hate. While hate is certainly the antithesis of love, an authentic Antichrist is not opposed to loving particular things or persons, but rather to the love of love, to faith in the soteriological sufficiency of love. An Antichrist personality is essentially opposed to the belief that embodying love for the sake of love stands as the ongoing project of ultimate concern.
§39. There are two important ways in which an Antichrist may use love, either in their own life or in the advancement of a broader Antichrist social agenda.
(1) They may articulate an object of love, which is not love itself, and structure their life around this object or goal.
(2) They may use love to unite people against others, thereby sowing division and animosity within the broader community.
§40. We have already alluded to the various ways of approaching the first; additional examples include love of country, love of one’s tribe, or love of one’s race and heritage. Again, there is no shortage of such possible objects. The second strategy is less obvious, so we shall now consider it in more detail, for using love to create division is not only a logical possibility but a highly effective strategy confirmed throughout history. Let us briefly survey some of the ways in which love has been so harnessed.
It is well-known that, although there were “true believers,” at least some Nazi personnel were not personally invested in the political success of the Third Reich; rather, they were, all things held equal, ambivalent about the social and political agenda. Nevertheless, they were induced to become active participants through the same means by which people in contemporary capitalist societies are induced into taking jobs within multinational corporations, to which they are otherwise ambivalent: namely out of love and concern to provide a life for their families. Or consider the ways in which highly effective Antichrists (not all of whom are necessarily intentional Antichrists) have successfully agitated for closing boarders, curtailing immigration, and either retaining or exacerbating racist divisions. While these people are often portrayed as “hate mongers” by liberals and leftists, the most effective among them actually succeed in implementing divisive policies by appeal to love—albeit parochial and restricted love as opposed to the universal and unconditional variety. Specifically, they rally people around the love of an idealization of the political community or nation.
§41. We may productively draw insights about how love and other Christian concepts and forms of discourse (e.g., “the dignity of the human person”) may be put to profoundly effective use in the service of an Antichrist agenda by examining the case of Apartheid South Africa. That system of radical racial segregation and the policy of rendering the majority population—the black residents—into aliens or non-citizens was successfully justified by Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of Apartheid, by appeal to a respect of their dignity as a separate people. Verwoerd claimed that whites and blacks had, if not different natures, at least distinct and mutually exclusive communal aims; they thus were engaged in a zero-sum game. By positing a concern for the well-being of these distinct peoples and claiming that both peoples had their own, unique forms of life and interests, he advocated Apartheid as a “policy of good neighborliness.” In other words, he argued that love of others and love of the volk necessitated preventing these distinct peoples from living in loving community with each other. Of course, he acknowledged the profound social benefits of devising a system in which blacks could nevertheless render labor within South Africa, so the resulting policy had the character of a sophisticated complementarianism, in which white citizens of South Africa were thought to be different than black citizens of the designated homelands to which they were assigned, but it was acknowledged that there was a sort of complimentary relationship that could be established and productively harnessed.
§42. In the early days of the United States, defenders of the emerging capitalist economy understood that it required a massive force of uncompensated or under-compensated labor (i.e., slaves). They thus developed a similarly brilliant and effective ideological rationale for their economic aims by claiming that blacks were intellectually, morally, and spiritually inferior to whites; hence, whites had a paternalistic duty to shepherd these quasi-human beings into a productive place within society (i.e., to enslave them).
§43. In both cases, these policies and social orders were Antichrist in nature. However, the key architects and apostles of these respective systems successfully utilized Christian concepts, principles, and beliefs to advance the Antichrist agenda. Much can be learned and arguably has been learned from these important historical cases, and they point up the importance of recognizing the claim made above, namely that an appeal to love is often a highly effective way to create division among people. Love can thus be used to thwart the Christ agenda.
§44. There are few mysteries associated with the Antichrist life, but there is one which must now be remarked upon. Here we use the word “mystery” in its proper sense, as meaning a secret teaching. The mystery, or secret, is this: although an Antichrist must necessarily will an end or goal of their own choosing—and if it is to be authentically Antichrist in character as opposed to just having a non-Christian or accidentally Antichrist character, it must be willed in opposition to the love of love—they need not and arguably should not take this to mean they are simply willing their own happiness or the aggrandizement of their own ego. Friedrich Nietzsche, understood this well. Happiness is not something one aims at; it is, rather, a consequence of having struggled and fought for, and then delighting in, some specific project, aim, or goal.³⁰ Similarly, one’s own ego or self is not a thing that can be aimed at. It is conceptually confusing to suppose otherwise, for the ego is that which aims, that which sets for itself a goal or end, that which succeeds or fails in attaining what it has willed. Hence, the naïve egoists, and even the less naïve so-called “rational egoists,” are among the lower ranks of the Antichrists. A true Antichrist does not take their own happiness or ego as an end: rather, they determine an external end and then pursue it, fight for it, and, if successful, delight in the sense of happiness that attends achievement. The mystery, the secret, consists in understanding this seemingly subtle difference, and we might say that the effective, lived appreciation of the subtlety, and the way in which it informs one’s will, is what differentiates the successful Antichrists qua Antichrists from their unsuccessful counterparts.
Jack sets his phone down.
Jack: So, that concludes Part I. There is a much shorter second part, which I’ve titled “Practical Considerations,” but I want to pause and hear what you think so far.
Daniel: Well! Where to begin? (He glances at his notebook.) I know that you know this, but I feel it is important to point out that, as a Roman Catholic, I don’t really think that everything the Church decides or does is the will of Christ.
Jack: Yes, I know.
Daniel: I suppose what I most appreciate about your ironic approach is that it provokes me to think about settled matters in a renewed light. For example, your anti-papal digs at the Catholic Church—
Jack: Not my digs! The author’s!
Daniel: Haha, yes. Anyway, those remarks reminded me that the best way to think about the papacy is in sacramental terms. The papacy is a way of acknowledging, in observable and institutional form, what is spiritually always the case: namely, that the Church is One.
Jack: Right. I appreciate that way of thinking about it—despite being a Protestant.
They both chuckle.
Daniel: Well, go on! I want to hear the second part.
Jack: Okay!
Part II: Practical Considerations
§1. Having articulated a general theory of the Antichrist personality, and having indicated general strategies associated with its cultivation, we are now in a position to briefly offer more specific advice about how these insights might be productively applied in an aspiring Antichrist’s life and projects. However, we must include an important proviso: as has already been explained, an Antichrist can order his or her life toward almost any end, goal, project, or matter of ultimate concern. The only thing which is, so to speak, off limits, lest one fall into a Christ-like form of existence, is the love of love. For this reason, it would be impossible to offer a comprehensive account of all practical applications. Nevertheless, certain key insights may be expounded upon, particularly those that relate to the sorts of matters on which every mature adult is expected to have a perspective: namely, economics and the proper structure of the political community, and what has been called “civic religion.” As we shall see, these matters are intimately connected and inextricably bound up with one another. Nevertheless, we shall begin with the matter of political economy.
§2. At least at the present time, there are prima facie reasons to suppose that committed Antichrists would be well-served in lending their support to the maintenance of the system of global capitalism and the neoliberal ideology which underpins it, particularly if they find themselves living in an industrialized society, or even a post-industrial society. Capitalism is a system which not only encourages but requires individuals to stand in competitive relations. Moreover, it empowers them—or at least those with sufficient resources—to pursue their own projects and material advancement. It is very difficult to imagine how, under capitalism, the Christ-followers’ dream of structuring the human community around mutuality and love could ever truly take hold. Moreover, and this is an under-appreciated but invaluable attribute of the system, capitalism allows Christians to feel as though they are acting in a loving manner—e.g., by charitably giving away portions of their disposable income—thereby pacifying them from engaging in the more disruptive and revolutionary actions that one might otherwise expect from those who are animated by faith and commitment to love as a matter of ultimate concern. And, of course, capitalism largely provides a system within which the diverse and different ends of various Antichrists can be pursued and rewarded.
§3. That having been said, should social and political tides turn, i.e., should anti-capitalist sentiment reach a tipping point, Antichrists need not necessarily dismay. Individualistic Antichrists will need to judge potential alternatives that come on offer (if they ever do) in accordance with their private ends. Antichrists who have a social or communal object of ultimate concern which is Antichrist in nature, may very well find that the collapse of capitalism opens up fruitful avenues for creative expression and experimentation. For example, if a particular Antichrist has taken the accumulation of social, political, or cultural capital as a matter of ultimate concern, such efforts may be pursued under some alternative political arrangements (though, presumably, the way in which such capital is amassed may change); however, it might be thwarted under others. There is no way to determine a priori whether a particular socio-economic system will frustrate or promote an Antichrist’s ends, but there is reason to suppose that creativity and ambition can be fruitfully harnessed to render almost any situation palatable.
§4. When evaluating political discourse, especially that which is religiously laden, it behooves an Antichrist to discern whether those who couch their political perspectives in religious language are merely nominal Christians or genuine Christ-followers. There is, perhaps, an understandable tendency on the part of Antichrists to balk at any and all religious language when it is brought to bear on matters of politics or economics. However, a reactionary dismissal of such ways of speaking may be self-thwarting, for much of what passes as “Christian” sermonizing about matters of political economy may be tolerated, if not actively promoted, by an advanced Antichrist. The basis for such tolerance would be a recognition that such claptrap can function as a “noble lie”³¹ (or if one prefers, an ignoble lie), which provides an ideological basis for maintaining the status quo.
§5. Karl Marx was not incorrect to note that religious devotion and one’s interpretation of one’s life and the world through the lens of a religious imagination can function to stabilize material economic relations. Indeed, his examination of the nature and function of religion is profoundly insightful. Consider, with fresh eyes, the following passages from his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right:
Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.³²
§6. The Antichrist qua Antichrist would not be expected to take this passage in the manner Marx intended; indeed, quite the contrary. He intends to expose the anthropological basis and social function of religion, all for the sake of clarifying why the masses—the wretched scum of the earth—ought to overcome religion. The Antichrist, much to Marx’s chagrin, can and should recognize that, in so doing, he has revealed precisely why and under what circumstances Antichrists the world over ought to support the continued maintenance of religiosity on the part of the masses. An Antichrist may very well be above such religiosity himself, but he ought not be above letting other people seduce themselves into religious complacency, at least not when doing so advances his own ends.
§7. Where Marx errs, the Antichrist must not. This famous theorist of capitalism mistakenly suggested that all religiosity has a stupefying and palliative effect. If only that were the case! While many religious people are blessedly escapist and quietist, there are, unfortunately, varieties of religiosity that direct their adherents to understand that their commitment to service, self-gift, and love put them in opposition to the status quo. Such religious movements actively encourage their disciples to set themselves in opposition to global capitalism, neoliberalism, and the associated civic and legal institutions, which ensure its proper functioning. For example, the Christian Marxist, Terry Eagleton, has, through a series of unfortunately somewhat popular books, sought to render Christian discipleship as a revolutionary form of life. “What is transgressive is the comradeship Jesus preaches. Authentic power is at war with the status quo, given that its source lies in solidarity with weakness.”³³ He later remarks, “The Gospel proclaims the vaingloriousness of all worldly power, the wreckage of all grandiose spiritual schemes and bright-eyed political panaceas. Only a solidarity with non-being, pressed if necessary to the point of death, can confound the principalities of this world.”³⁴
§8. Eagleton is, of course, not alone. There are a shocking number of academic theologians, Christian philosophers, and preachers who promote such a conception of the Christ’s teachings and its implications on discipleship. Lynice Pinkard, as a further example, casts discipleship as a form of life in which one is prepared to undergo “revolutionary suicide”:
Human life lived in God’s image, lived fully, is found in the crossing over from ourselves to the well-being of others—that is what love is. When we cross over from power to weakness, from strength to vulnerability, from inside to outside, from up to down, we rise above ourselves, we transcend ourselves. In other words, the descent into death of our own self-interest—this revolutionary suicide—is actually a rising, a resurrection.³⁵
§9. Of course, there is very little cause to worry that these admittedly accurate interpretations of the gospel and the nature of discipleship will actually have the effect of organizing Christ-followers into becoming anti-capitalist agitators—after all, blessed few are willing to pursue discipleship at such costs. Nevertheless, Antichrists ought not ignore the potential dangers that such theologies pose. Prudence would suggest that Antichrists adopt a precautionary stance and support the continued marginalization of these fringe voices. For this reason, though it may otherwise strike an Antichrist as odious, they are pragmatically justified in amplifying (or at least not quashing) opposing nominally Christian voices; it is in the Antichrists’ interests that the more scripturally sound but socially deleterious voices of the liberation theologians and cultural Marxists be drowned out by the relatively more acceptable mainstream theological perspectives.
§10. For better or for worse—and it is arguably loathsome to admit—there are further grounds upon which Antichrists might find common cause with vast swaths of contemporary religious people. Current social obsessions with identity politics are ripe for appropriation by an advanced Antichrist, and many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians can, with minimal effort, be seduced into joining an Antichrist in either opposing such efforts or reappropriating them to more amenable ends. And given the internally contradictory nature of liberal ideology, within which identity politics has blossomed, one can often manage to simultaneously achieve both: people are ready and willing to oppose identity politics in some regards while nevertheless finding succor in adopting an identity.
Conclusion
While emphasis has been placed in the foregoing essay on the theoretical basis of the Antichrist existential orientation, it is hoped that these brief practical suggestions may serve as models upon which individual Antichrists might productively reflect as they discern how to most effectively position themselves and their communities in opposition to the way of Christ.
Jack once again sets down his phone and then crosses his legs.
Jack: So, further thoughts?
Daniel: (Tentatively.) There is a lot to unpack there. (After a pause.) I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think the second part needs to be a bit more detailed. It went by rather quickly, and I think there’s more you could say, especially about the issue of identarianism.
Jack: Hah! I didn’t expect you to plead for more.
Daniel: Me neither! But you left me hanging in a sense.
Jack: That’s understandable. At a certain point in the writing, I started to think the whole thing was a bit supercilious. I worried it wasn’t a good use of my time, so I let it be for quite a while.
Daniel: Well, I don’t think it is time wasted; you’ve certainly used the opportunity to think through some complicated issues, and it’s provocative, to say the least. But obviously it’s up to you whether to add to it. (He pauses for a bit and stokes his chin before continuing.) Those remarks about religiosity bother me.
Jack: Do you mean the part about how religiosity can be put to anti-Christian ends?
Daniel: Yes. I’m trying to articulate my concern. (After a pause.) I guess I think that you’re right. And that is deeply troubling.
Jack: Yes, I agree. In some sense, that was the bothersome thought I had that ended up motivating the whole little project. I’ve always been irked by how our faith has been weaponized to support imperialism and all sorts of other forms of oppression. During the pandemic, I began to pay more attention to how nationalists and Western chauvinists had successfully usurped our religious faith and repackaged it for their own use.
Daniel: Unfortunately, I don’t think they are doing so in some intentional, conspiratorial manner. I assume they think they understand the truth of the religion.
Jack: Yes, that’s how I think of the matter too. It is tragic and despicable. And I don’t know how to respond to it other than by trying to explicitly draw out the assumptions and implications.
Daniel: Ah, and that is why you chose this ironic form of presentation?
Jack: Exactly. I don’t know what to do in the face of this bastardization of the faith except to try to show how ridiculous it is.
They both sit with their own thoughts for a moment.
Daniel: This isn’t a criticism, but it is a concern I have: I’m generally dismayed by how ironic our culture has become. All sorts of people use and hide behind irony—so much so that is seems we rarely speak directly to one another. Although that is my general view, I don’t exactly feel that your satirical approach succumbs to the same problem, but I don’t know how to explain why I think that.
Jack: I share that sentiment, and that is partly why I don’t know what to do with the document. I don’t want to contribute to the culture of irony, and yet I don’t know how not to. Part of me thinks that since we live in an age of irony, we must lean into it in order to get out on the other side. The only way to get past it is to push through it.
Daniel: Huh. You might be right, at least to a limited degree. But it sort of seems like the problem of using the master’s tools against the master.
Jack: Well, I’m not planning on sharing this with others—at least not by simply putting it out there without context. (Pauses.) I generally agree that we can’t dismantle the master culture’s despicable institutions and prejudices by using their own tools, but I suppose I don’t really think that satire and irony belong to the master culture. We can’t let them claim ownership of them, and we can’t deprive ourselves of them. They’ve certainly found a place within the dominant culture, but they are more properly the tools of the outsiders. There is something subversive about satire and irony.
Daniel: Very true. But we live in odd times. The people who end up supporting the master culture and existing systems of oppression claim to be outsiders. They think of themselves as persecuted and marginalized, even as they seek to continue the marginalization of others.
Jack: Right. People mistake having their views challenged with being persecuted. There are certainly persecuted people throughout the world, but the idea that living in a society where the hegemony of one’s views doesn’t go unchecked doesn’t amount to persecution.
Daniel: One of the things I deeply appreciate about Catholic social teaching is the preferential option for the poor, though I think it should be put in terms of the genuinely marginalized, whether it is economic, social, or what have you. It still doesn’t solve the problem of what to do with non-marginalized people who claim to be marginalized.
Jack: Right. The social situation we face is too daunting—everything is topsy-turvy, but not in the way Christ called us to make it topsy-turvy.
Daniel: Alas and alack!
Jack: Amen.
This does not entail that a particular Antichrist is not for anything; to the contrary, every Antichrist must, by necessity, be for something as well. See §4.
1 John 4. The notion of Antichrists (and later, the Antichrist) has its roots in the writings of the apostle Paul whose letters are the earliest documents to be gathered together in the Christian New Testament. In 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, Paul writes of “the lawless one” who “opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object worship” and declares himself to be God. Writing in the decades after Jesus’s execution, Paul declares, “the mystery of lawlessness is already at work” (2 Thessalonians 2:5). He goes on to say (9-10), “The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, and every kind of wicked deception…” (NRSVA)
For helpful background, see I. Howard Marshall, “The Development of Christology in the Early Church.” Tyndale Bulletin 18 (1967): 77-93.
It may be objected that a third route is available: namely, that one could simply forego any concern with the nature of Christ and thus remain ambivalent about one’s status as either Christ-follower or Antichrist. This is quite true; however, since our subject is how to intentionally cultivate an Antichrist personality, articulating how to achieve such ambivalence is beyond the scope of this inquiry.
The scriptural basis for this is Matthew 18:18-20: “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
In the infamous Grand Inquisitor scene from The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky places the following description of the Roman Catholicism in the words of Ivan, his storyteller: “That, if you like, is the most basic feature of Roman Catholicism, in my opinion at least: ‘Everything,’ they say, ‘has been handed over by you to the pope, therefore everything now belongs to the pope…’”
The term ‘Christian’ originally meant “little Christs,” and it was understood to be a derogatory term—a “damning name,” according **to Theophilus, who performed a reappropriation and transvaluation of the term. See Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus, Book I, Chapter 1, trans. by Marcus Dods, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2, ed., Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.)
In Matthew 12:48-50 Christ denounces his family and claims that his disciples are his true family (see also Mark 3:33 and Luke 8:21).
Aidan Kavanagh, “The Theology of Easter: Themes in Cultic Data,” Worship 42(4), p. 204.
Matthew 22:34-40
John 13:34
It is quite easy to reveal the absurdity and inaccuracy of saying, as many a contemporary is wont to do, that, for example, “For the Greeks, Eros was the god of love,” or “Chronos was the god of time.” In fact, Eros (Ἔρως) just is one of the words we translate as ‘love’, and Chronos (Χρόνος) just is the word we translate as ‘time’. Hence, to say “Eros is the god of love” would mean “Eros is the god of Eros” or “love is the god of love”; likewise, “Chronos is the god of time,” would mean, “Chronos is the god of Chronos” or “time is the god of time.” This is absurd. In the Greek religious consciousness, Eros and Chronos were gods of men; that is, they were transcendent forces, or universals, which bore on the nature, quality, and meaning of life.
For a contemporary and succinct survey of the development of the concept of religion, from virtue (or stable disposition of character) to a sociological type, see Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), p. 7ff.
Exodus 3:14-15
1 John 4:8
Michael Himes, The Mystery of Faith: An Introduction to Catholicism (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2004), p. 8.
Loren L. Johns and James H. Charlesworth, Hillel and Jesus: Comparative Studies of Two Major Religious Leaders (Fortress Press, 1997).
Matthew 25:31-46
Himes, op. cit., p. 8.
Hebrews 10:24; Romans 12:10
Romans 12:1 states, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - this is your true and proper worship.”
This is, arguably, the point of the creation stories found in the first chapters of Genesis, as well as the later flood narrative. In each case, the authors and redactors appropriated existing myths concerning creation but retold them in such a way that they changed the existential implications for their readers (or listeners, in the case of the earlier oral tradition). —itself clearly appropriated from Babylonian culture Cf. Genesis 6-9 and The Epic of Gilgamesh, trans., N.K. Sanders, chapter 5.
This is an important implication of the infamously confounding narrative of Abraham’s “sacrifice” of Isaac in Genesis 22. An appropriate reading of the story is premised on the realization that Isaac’s death was never desired in the first place; through the ordeal, Yahweh makes evident that he does not demand nor delight in—and, to the contrary, has brought a decisive end to—human sacrifice.
Ezekiel 18:32
Terry Eagleton, Radical Sacrifice, p. 21. Emphasis added.
Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 14:70-71 and Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 1:152-153
Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (Verso Books, 2009), p. 159.
Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity.
Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols.
Plato introduced the notion of the noble lie in his Republic.
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
Terry Eagleton, Radical Sacrifice (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), p. 27.
Ibid., p. 102.
Lynice Pinkard, “Revolutionary Suicide: Risking Everything to Transform Society and Live Fully,” Tikkun Magazine 28(4), 2013: p. 40.