Antichrist truths by Catholic scholars in the wake of Adventism

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

16 February 2012

                     Advent awakening as movement started slightly earlier than 1844 but Adventism as we know it today in the form of Seventh-day Adventism started already in 1843. It was based upon Daniel 8:14 with the 2300 days prophecy and calculating one day for a year, very legitimate in historicistic prophetic interpretation and well established in Christianity and Judaism as method, one can arrive at 1843/1844 when one starts the period from 457 BCE as the year for the decree to build the city and temple in the days of Ezra. It is logic, it is biblical, it is historical and it is theological. That is why it impressed so many Christian denominations around 1843 and 1844. With the focus on the date for the coming of the Messiah during those days, there was not much time to ask questions like, who is the Antichrist? In fact, those truths were meted out in similar shape as the Seventh-day Adventist views [albeit with slight modifications and misunderstandings by the one we will mention soon]. It was the catholic scholar and cardinal John Henry Newman who outlined the characteristics of the Antichrist in the wake of the Advent movement, namely between 1838-1840 with a series of four articles published in Brittain in a journal called, Tracts for the Times vol. V [which is also available online].

                     Before we get the idea that Newman is the father of thinking on the Antichrist in Theology, we need to think again. It is first of all biblical. Then the church fathers also had something to say about it. A major magnus opus on the antichrist was the work by Andrew Willet in 1610 which is available online in English. The focus is very similar to Seventh-day Adventists on the Antichrist and much statistics and facts are mentioned that are taken from reliable church historians earlier than Willet. A number of major works followed and around this time also the link was made between 666 and vicarius filii dei adding up to a total of 666 in Roman Latin counting.

                    Our source here is the catholic scholar Vincent P. Micelli's book, The Antichrist (New York: Roman Catholic Books, 1981), 102-124. One can assume that his analysis of Newman is very realistic and close to what one would expect from Newman. Micelli's said that Newman was "the great Christian and Catholic apologist, the Augustinian type of controversalist in an epoch of Agnosticism amid the forces of evolution" (Micelli, 1981: 103). This is as Adventist as you can get. The analysis of the time of Newman is decried by every Adventist scholar until the present. Evolution and Higher-Critical destruction of the Bible as Word of God.

                   Micelli then becomes lyrical by explaining how Newman went on a world trip to North Africa, Italy, Western Greece and Sicily between December 1832-July 1833. "Newman the Anglican stopped in Rome and for the rest of his life the city laid a spell of religion upon him which was never to be diminished" (Micelli, 1981: 103). Although Adventists did not say the spell part, they would agree with it. In Sicily he became very sick and when he became well again he realized that God has a high calling for him. Back in England he began writing about the Antichrist "out of my own head" (Micelli, 1981: 103). He was trying to justify his own church, the Anglican one as one branch, the corrupted Catholic church as another and the Greek Orthodoxy as another branch, as the true church. He thought that the three churches are accidental ritual variations of the one true Christian society. In 1841 in Tract 90 he tried to reconcile the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles with the Council of Trent but failed. For eight years prior to writing the tracts he took his motto from the Iliad of Homer, "They [the enemies] shall know the difference now" (Micelli 1981: 103). He fought victory after victory, says Micelli but was defeated by his own weapon, Tract 90, which antagonized the Anglican church. He was censored in 1841 but in 1845 he was received into the Catholic faith. His emancipation from the Anglican church is hailed by Catholics and reviewers were quick to say the same about him what they said about the modern Calvinist turned Catholic, Peter Kreeft, that "the emancipated portion of his [Newman] career, far surpassed the writings of his theological apprenticeship" (Micelli 1981: 104).

                     There is even a Seventh-day Adventist couple who left the church and became Catholics and they have a site online. In similar manner as Newman's essay, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, this couple also try to show that the variations in Catholic dogma is linked with the claim of the Catholic church that their doctrine goes back to the apostles. My own note here is that one of the fallicies that the Catholic church like very much, higher-critical methods that destroys the unity of the Bible, is popular since the assumed variety that they have created in the Word of God now makes it easier to align their own variations on matters later and claim it to be "in line" with biblical situations. A pseudo self-created construct that is methodologically horizontalism in its highest form.

                    But Newman was against higher-criticism it seems, since in a lecture at Dublin "A Form of Infidelity of the Day", he anticipated a great apostacy in the Catholic church via the heretical road of Modernism and neo-Modernism. He called this heresy "the religion of reason" and he condemned it as a ruin of all revealed truth, of all supernatural faith" (Micelli 1981: 105). This is very Adventist as well. Newman was not the first since a book written in 1864 outlined the very same problems with Rationalism since the Reformation, namely the History of Rationalism by John Hurst. Gerhard Hasel's works followed the same criticism as Newman and Hurst about the dangers of Rationalism in Theological pursuit.

                   Although the ideas of Newman on the Antichrist was formed while he was still an Anglican, his concept of Anglicanism and Catholicism was such that he did not see before his 1841 problem with the Anglican church and after 1845 when he became a Catholic, a difference between the two churches in relation to the true church. That is why his work on the antichrist, which originated with the pen still Anglican is accepted and endorsed by a person like Vincent P. Micelli, a Catholic scholar.

                  Newman had the motto that cor ad cor loquitur, the heart speaks with the heart. This sounds all nice and true but one must clarify. Augustine said "The final word is not with the thought, nor with the reason, nor with the head, but with love, with the will, with the heart" (Micelli 1981: 105). The dichotomy here is not correct. Love will be thoughtful, reasonable, with the head, and willful. If any of these ingredients are absent, love will not fully be love. Love is not thoughtless, unreasonable, without the head, unwillful. The purpose of biblical revelation is to supply man with enough reason, thoughts, calculation to understand the why and how of salvation and to will it or act on it. Love is the binding principle that connects all these. The final word is with thought, is with reason, is with the head and in sum, with love, with the will, with the heart and mind. Saturday is the seventh day and Sunday is the first day of the week yet God says we should worship Him on the seventh day of the week, which is reasonably and logically, Saturday. I cannot say that love is blind and that I do not need to care about what God says, just love Him on Sunday the first day of the week, He will not mind because the two of you love each other. Not when He explicitly called for Saturday in so many places throughout His revelation. The logic, the reason, the heart, the will, the love all work together here. Just like Adam was told not to eat of the tree in the middle of the garden, yet he did. Satan told him that a God of love will overlook small things like this. But the small thing is a test and passing the test is a sign of trust and love. Will, reason, heart all work together here. Augustine was not right.

Newman set out to explain the Antichrist in four headings: 1. The Times of the Antichrist; 2. The Religion of the Antichrist; 3. The City of the Antichrist; 4. The Persecution of the Antichrist.

                   What one finds in his treatment is that he is using exactly the same texts used by Seventh-day Adventists for the Antichrist. There is sometimes a slight difference, though. To understand that difference, one should imagine two car mechanics working on a new engine. Both are picking up part for part and study them very well and search for connections to the main engine, but whereas Newman can connect some parts to each other, he fails to find a connection to the main engine. The SDA mechanic knows his engine and link the parts to the main engine very well. In fact, most of the linkings to the main engine was done by historical scholars in the past in one way or another. It is not the thought or trial and error of one person alone. There is a whole line of interpreters in the history of theology that has seen the same link. Adventists brings all these good links together in one composite understanding that is holistic supporting and harmonizing the Bible. There is no polarizing. There is no multiple applicational tricks. This is one of Newman's greatest weaknesses. As soon as scholars do not know what to do with an antichrist verse, and they refuse to align it historical to the most obvious explanation, in order to explain it away, they seek for alternative slots in history elsewhere, ending up with multiple applications. God does not speak with a fork tongue. Application is one on one. What about Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21 on the troops at the gates of Jerusalem? Is this not multiple application from Daniel? No, each section speaks from a different verse or clause in Daniel 9:26-27. It is two predictions, not one. Each one has its own historical domain or zone. The fallacy of one through the other pointed out by so many scholars makes Jesus presenting Daniel's predictions as a hoax and a confused description. That is not the case. Jesus presented two predictions of which two gospels only reported the second one but Luke reported the first one only. Now scholars are fusing the two predictions into one and the same one and point out to two historical applications and then want to create a methodological hermeneutical principle of application that wishes to see multiple application as the rule. That is not the case. This fallacy was also the trap of Desmond Ford in his commentary on Daniel. He got it from Calvinistic and Anglican scholars listed in his footnotes. Many Adventists in the seventees were misled by the logic of this apparent rule, but closer scrutiny only reveal the opposite. There is no such thing as a multiple application of one prophetic utterance in the Scripture. Ford has become outdated. There may be new fellowships and new mega-churches here and there existing but the fallacy is clear. If one goes back to the core of the dissent then it is this eschatological utterance of Christ in the three gospels. Once this method of multiple application is accepted the whole chemistry changes, EGW is wrong, the prophets are wrong sometimes, and the whole mechanism of prophetic interpretation is watered down to an idealistic interpretation, nothing specific, just broad outlines existentially acclaimed but which in reality had a different target in mind by God. As right as Newman was in his sentence below, the wrong he is in his application.

1. The Times of the Antichrist

                      There is one comment by Newman that, if taken apart from anything he has written, is in complete agreement with the Seventh-day Adventist analysis of the bible: "Just as Rome succeeded Greece in Daniel's vision, so the Antichrist succeeds Rome and Christ the Savior succeeds the Antichrist" (Micelli 1981: 106 citing from Newman Advent Sermons on the Antichrist 1840: 5). Before Seventh-day Adventism was organized in 1860, twenty years prior an Anglican with a Catholic heart expounded the biblical analysis of the book of Daniel as saying that Rome will be an empire after Greece and after the Roman empire fell, it will be the Antichrist and after the Antichrist period, the Second Advent will be there. Today SDA's in their theological analysis of Daniel are saying exactly the same thought: Greece until 61 BCE and then Rome until 538 CE and in that year with the change of Justinian into a theologian, the Holy Roman Catholic Empire for 1260 years until the deadly wound in 1798, but not elimination, just wound that was to heal and play a major role until Christ comes. Newman agrees with SDA's in main but not in detail as we will show below. His main thesis is also that of SDA's even in modern times but when he applied it to history, he made some gross errors.

                    Almost in Adventist terms, Newman says that the time of the Antichrist will not be until there is a great apostacy. "This figthful apostacy and the advent of the man of sin shall precede Christ's final coming" (Micelli 1981: 105). Signs of the Antichrist coming shall be false prophets, false Christs, the showing of signs and wonders, iniquity abounding, love waxing cold in the whole world. These signals will tell us that the Day of the Lord is near since the Antichrist is to come prior to the coming of the Lord. Two great signals of the arrival of the Antichrist is tribulation as there never was and the preaching of the gospel all over the world (Micelli 1981: 105).

                   But then Newman asked the question, what Paul meant to say that the mystery of iniquity is already at work? Many Protestants like the Calvinist Adrio Koenig and also the Anglican Newman, had trouble here. For Adventists it is simple: Satan never stops working and already in Paul's day he was setting his lines ready for the arrival of the predicted times by Christ to prophets in the Old Testament, like Daniel, and Christ to people in His sermons. Newman took the words to mean that just as there were types of Christ before His coning, so there are shadows of the Antichrist before his coming (Micelli 1981: 106). He saw in the days of the Apostles a type of the Last Days. "In truth, every event in the world is a type of those that follow, history proceeding forward as a circle ever enlarging . . .For every age presents its own picture of those events which alone are the real fulfillment of the prophecy which stands at the head of them all" (Newman "Advent Sermons on Antichrist" Tracts for the Times V [1840]: 4-5 op. cit Micelli 1981: 106). We cannot miss the Ford fallacy here in the words of Newman. Multiple applications in every generation was a small type of the reality that will be one day in its verity. It is rudiments of the apotelesmatic principle which is a human construct to come to terms with self-created hazards in the interpretation of biblical prophecy.

                   Newman said that the last animal of Daniel was Rome and out of the successive ten horns a little horn "will eventually arise the Antichrist with the eyes of a man and a mouth speaking great things" (Newman "Advent Sermons on Antichrist" Tracts for the Times V [1840]: 4-5 op. cit Micelli 1981: 106). It is as Adventist as you can get. But then he made an error. Elements of Rome still exist in 1840 and thus the ten horns did not arrive and thus the little horn as well and thus the Antichrist did not come yet. "Until they are thoroughly removed [pockets of Roman elements] the Antichrist will not come" (Micelli 1981: 106). Here Newman was correctly describing the engine part in his hand but failed to link it properly to the engine due to some miscalculations. He failed to see that the Roman empire fell theologically and religiously the day Justinian the Lawmaker changed his style to be Justinian the Theologian on his coins, the 12th year of his reign in 538 CE. Although Constantine enacted by law the change from Saturday as worship day to Sunday, the day of the sun worship, already prior to 321 CE, it was really this date at 538 CE by the lawmaker Justinian that inaugerated the Holy Roman Empire. It was to last 1260 years according to prophecy. A period in Adventism linked with the arrival of the Antichrist or the Little Horn, coming out of the nations or ten horns prior to 538 CE. But think about it, if Newman correctly understand the order of events regarding the Antichrist but he miscalculated one of the events in the chain, he will miss the fulfillments since he wants to apply it in the wrong century or the wrong events.

                  Whereas Adventism sees the Antichrist as a system embodied or represented by a human person unbroken for centuries since 538 CE, Newman asked the same question, whether the Antichrist is one man, an individual, or a power or a kingdom (Micelli 1981: 106). "The Holy Scriptures, the living tradition of the Church and the consensus of the Fathers led him to conclude that the Antichrist will be one man, a person" (Micelli 1981: 106). The papacy was allocated as such a person already by Andrew Willet in 1610. The papacy is a successive human role reprenting the same system which has the characteristics describe to one person by Paul and the rest of Scripture. There is not two popes at the same time and there is not a broken period of non-pope existing. Thus, the human figure plays a continuous role and is upholding the system that is problematic in terms in which the Scriptures describe it.

                  The one single strong connection of the papacy as Antichrist lies in the identification of vicarius filii dei which is 666. The identification of it dates since 1611 and Edwin de Kock has fully discussed this term in historical terms connected to the papacy.

                  Newman set himself the task to search for shadows of the Antichrist that were to be before the real Antichrist arrived. They are the following: 1. Antiochus Epiphanes 167-164 BCE; 2. Julian the Apostate 331-363 CE; 3. Mohammed in 640 CE; 4. The secular and agnostic forces that captured the pope in 1798. This one is especially important for Seventh-day Adventism. Newman recognized that in that year an attack was carried out against the Catholic Church and he took the side of the forces ending the period of 1260 years, calculated since 538 CE. In this Newman is wrong and the clarity of historical analysis of Adventism linking it with this period is far more convincing than Newman's reaction against forces captivating the papacy in that year.

                 Characterizing the new age power, after 1798, Newman gives us a realistic assessment worth looking at:

"Everywhere in the world, but quite visibly and formidably in the most peaceful, civilized nations, we are witnessing a supreme effort to govern men and dominate the world without religion. It is a widely accepted and spreading dogma that nations should have nothing to do with religion, that religion is merely a private matter, an affair of one's own conscience. In effect it is widely accepted that Truth is neither a personal nor a social need and, therefore, society ought to allow Truth to fade from the face of the earth. It is considered futile social action to continue to advance a system of Truth and absurd to attempt to hand it on further developed organically to our posterity. [If Newman is pleading for the role of a religious state power, he will not get support from Adventists]. In almost every country there is a united, powerful movement to crush the Church, to strip her of power and place. Everywhere we discover a feverish, litigious endeavor to get rid of religion in public actitivities - in schools in mass media, in social transactions, in political affairs. Societies are said to be built on the principle of Utility, not on the principle of Truth. Experience, not Truth or Justice, is accepted as the end or rule of state actitivies, enactments of law included. Numbers not Truth is the final ground for maintaining this or that creed, morality or law, it being generally believed that the many are always in the right, the few in the wrong. Even the Bible is given so many meaning over and against its obvious one that it is reduced to having no meaning at all, to being at best a pleasant myth, at worst a dead letter. In the end religion is denied any objective, historical reality such as is displayed in written dogmas, ordinances and sacraments [Adventists will agree with Newman if it was the Bible or biblical dogmas, ordinances and sacraments, but Newman thought wider and with this Adventists cannot agree with his desire to recreate a State-Church]. Religion is rather confined to each person's inner feelings, experiences and psychological reactions. Thus cast into the dark world of variable, evanescent, volatile feelings, religion is discredited in the minds of many when, it is not already destroyed" (Newman in 1840: 12 as cited by Micelli 1981: 109-110). What Newman is describing here is the characteristics of the second beast of Revelation 13 that will actually increase the power of the first beast again as was done in the 20th century to such an extend that five presidents of the USA attended the funeral of the pope in Rome in 2005. Ecumenism and pluralism provides a backbone tool for the Catholic church to embrace agnosticism and secularism just to use them for its own purpose. If they did not create the tools of ecumenism and pluralism at Vatican II in 1964 it would not have been possible for the Catholic Church to be supported by secular and agnostic forces, powers and governments, as is done today. Populism is carried by the wings of media and image and thus the papacy's cries against secularization all over the world, goes unheard by secular societies and governments because the image and the media keeps the papacy popular.

                  Newman's shadows are thus multiple applications of prophecies in the Scripture and this principle caused Desmond Ford to be rejected by Adventists at Glazier View and also Newman and other scholars' suggestion in this direction will not be accepted. There is no such thing as multiple applications. If one of your socks is lost in the room, there is only one place it will be: where it is. You can wish it to be here or there but in the end, only where it is, is the place you will find it. The same with prophetic interpretation. Multiple places for my sock to be, does not work.