Antichrist transformations in the Catholic church

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

7 June 2011

Relevancy Introduction

Samuel Bacchiocchi's transformation attempts of the Antichrist in the Seventh-day Adventist church, stands in the backdrop of similar transformation at his Alma Mater at the Vatican. Bacchiocchi's focus on the non-essential regarding vicarius filii dei, by debating the presence or absence of the inscription on photos and creating church politics regarding the removal or non-removal of articles or photos on the matter of the inscription on tiaras or mitres, or the same, was an attempt to eventually shelve the whole title on the basis, not of essential issues pertaining to the title itself, but offroad issues pertaining to its inscription on objects or not. Some of his students then followed their "master" and considered to "dump" the title. In its place they tried their best to substitute other aspects for it, but those examples are non-specific, non-descript and non-effective in comparision to the specific, descriptive title of vicarius filii dei = 666. Even key evangelists in Australia are impressed by Bacchiocchi and his few students who wish to dump the title as identification altogether.

After De Kock and his specialist did a historical investigation of the origin, discovery of identification with Latin numerals to 666 of vicarius filii dei in a magnus opus of more than 800 pages, the reaction of the evangelist of Australia and his team of helpers is that the issue is not that crucial, Ellen White did not mention it and so let us move on to other issues. Different is the approach of the key evangelists of South Africa than those in Australia. Dr. Walther Veith was dean of the Zoology department of a national university for years, and on top of that, as creationist. He taught both creationism and evolutionism in his curriculum and left it to students to select the best option. Years ago, as a catholic he became converted to Adventism because of the Sabbath command in the ten commandments based on the creation sabbath description of the example set by the Creator Himself. The description of his conversion is on youtube. Veith defends the retainment of the title vicarius filii dei in all his dealings with the public and lectures, contrary to the evangelists of Australia who's educational background is law and computer technology, on an undergraduate level. CD's, tapes and lectures of Veith is on youtube as well. Needless to say, he is baptizing scores every year from every denomination that you can think of, catholics included. Just the end of last year, a whole group of Lutherans accepted the Sabbath truth after his evangelistic campaign in my hometown, many who are wealthy business men and women, but with a honesty in their hearts.

In comparison with the South African evangelists, the evangelist of Australia became acquainted with the research of De Kock and his team, corresponded with them and still maintained his quietistic approach to the topic of vicarius filii dei, in his editing of his controversial article online, wishing not to be traditional on this issue, in line with Bacchiocchi's errors. We also know that Bacchiocchi himself admitted to have troubles with some in the Adventist church, as his Endtime Issues clarified. I can't remember whether it is his Endtime Issues or his email to me, wherein he said that he said to the bretheren that he refused to speak on a certain topic unless the GC called him in to testify in front of a committee of Inquiry. He said he asked for it several times.

When academics do not speak to a person, other factors are involved in his/her/their ontology preventing their epistemology to improve their methodology leading to the end products, strange articles, strange books, strange opinions, strange comments, strange positions, strange lectures, as we have it. The last comments thanks to the insights of Hendrik Stoker, the South African Christian philosopher on the methodology of science.

Is vicarius filii dei a doctrinal issue? If vicarius filii dei is a reality that John foresaw, then it is a doctrinal issue, just in the same vein that if Jesus is really going to come to this earth, it is also a reality foreseen and thus a doctrinal issue. The "switch on" of understanding pertaining to biblical truths, is fully understood by all Seventh-day Adventists and the disappointment of 1843/1844 stands in this paradigm. Anything that clarifies prophecy and has a strong backing in all languages, cultures, media, and is so simple that children and geronti can understand it with no problems, are important for doctrines. Like the 1260 years prophecy. Like the 2300 years prophecy. Did Ellen White say somewhere we should calculate 2300 years from 457 BCE?

It is for this matter, that the quietistic syndrome of vicarius filii dei in some Adventist circles post-1963, should be investigated in the light of similar developments in the Catholic understanding of the Antichrist.

Catholics and Antichrist

Andrew Gow, from the department of History and Classics, at the University of Alberta, wrote in the summer of 1999 a study on "Engendering evil: sinful conceptions of the antichrist in the Middle Ages and the Reformation" Special issue of the Journal of Millennial Studies (Summer 1999). He is not an Adventist and some observations on Catholics and their Antichrist design of the Middle Ages are important here.

Gow based his descriptions on sources and findings that the Catholics in the Middle Ages created non-biblical legends or stories and in essence constructed their own Antichrist "image" that is linked to the life and works of Christ.

The antichrist was to be on all aspects similar to Christ in such a way that his birth, life and actions are copying Christ but just anti and not pro-Christ.

They focused on the Antichrist's strange birth, sexual deviations, women like Delilah, Jezebel and a certain self-created Pandora as types of the Antichrist in past history.

But when the Reformation came, thinkers, bible readers and reactionists were more interested to apply the Antichrist texts of the Bible itself, to the papacy.

Says Gow about a book by Bernard McGinn:

"Bernard McGinn has provided a detailed geneology of the traditional Antichrist legend of the Middle Ages. In this

tradition, Antichrist is understood as an evil human analogue of Christ. It is based more on the fourth-century Tiburtine Sybil and the seventh-century Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius than on Biblical sources".

The Catholic legendary reconstruction of the Antichrist is at variance with the Jewish and biblical data of the Antichrist (For the Jewish and Biblical traditions and their interpretation by the early Church, see Bernard McGinn, Antichrist:

Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil [SanFrancisco: Harper, 1996/1994], 9-78).

The catholic traditions created an Antichrist that were to be superhuman, superstitious, doing supernatural things filled with all the evil one cannot even imagine.

According to Gow, the Reformers came and applied it to the papacy.

Early evidence of papacy = Antichrist applications

Gow is not totally correct about the earliest applications to the papacy of what was expected to be the Antichrist. The prophecies of Revelation were considered by Patristics and the Middle Ages exegesis to be solved only within the content of Revelation and nowhere else. This principle worked against the heretics of the Catholic church who tried to work with one eye on the content of Revelation while looking for reality outside in history (such is the remark by Sabine Schmolinsky, Der Apokalypsenkommentar des Alexander Minorita: Zur frühen Rezeption Joachims von Fiore in Deutschland [Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1991], 32. She did her doctoral under Hans Fromm, the German professor of Philology of the Middle Ages at the Ludwig-Maximillians-University in München).

Thus we had two approaches in the Middle Ages, self-created legendary Antichrist images of Catholics and Catholic doctrine on the issue, and conflicting biblical image of the Antichrist supported by bible readers who became heretics.

Pope binding Antichrist's in bottomless pit

In the research of Schmolinsky (1991: 107), it is indicated that according to the widely known Middle Age Sylvester legend, the pope bound in a dark pit, that contained many poisoness dragons, heathen Romans, who as a result converted subsequently (see Arfuro Graf, Roma nella memoria e nelle immaginazioni del Medico Evo 2 [1883]: 91-93, 585ff). In this legend, unconverted heathen people were regarded beasts who were to be converted by thrown into a dark confinement. Similar examples of persecution is cited in the 1610 book of Andrew Willis, Hexapla in Danielem, the addition on the Antichrist (which is available online). His examples dealt with the South American conversion of Indians by Catholics in the fifteen and sixteen centuries. It is in the heart of the 1260 years period of persecution of the Catholic church.

Heretics' historicism caused problems to the Catholic Church

Historicism has this element that it seeks to find reality for prophetic statements in events in history, whether people or actions. Because of 1 Thessalonians 2, the bible readers in the Middle Ages that became counted as heretics by the Catholic church, in actual fact was looking for a person, ruler, king, who could be regarded as Antichrist. Many names were considered in the Catholic church like Antiochus Epiphanes, following the heathen scholar Porphyry, Nero, Titus, Diocletian. The Catholic considered heretic Alexander Minorita wrote a couple of Revelation commentaries, or one which saw many editions: 1235; 1242; 1248 and 1250. Glossed in were sometimes changes he suggested for the Antichrist:

Mohammed (1235 edition, 1242 edition) but in the 1248 edition it is Frederick II (Schmolinsky 1991: 41). The main point is that he was looking for historical persons as the Antichrist in his own time since he calculated the millennium to start from Sylvester, thus the endtime to be in 1235 or shortly afterwards.

Joachim de Fiore did not say that Islam is 666 (Schmolinsky 1991: 64).

Father Innocentius presented his view of Islam as the beast of Revelation 13 to Pope Lucius III at Veroli in 1184 (ibid). In 1198 he became pope and it is surmised that Innocentius III used an earlier document, Oracle of Sibylle to consider Islam to be connected to the beast of Revelation 13 (Schmolinsky 1991: 65). The concept was that the vicar of Christ will free Jerusalem, the holy city from the beast and a major conversion of Islam will take place, ca. 1249. The way this date is derived is that they have based their calculations on 666 years from the birth of Mohammed, thus until 1249. Although the pope was calculating his agenda for the crusade according to these facts, Alexander Minorita, had his own agenda not fully based on the same sources. He considered the beast as Frederick II in 1242 in that commentary on Revelation 13. In his 1235 commentary on Revelation edition, Alexander Minorita suggested the first beast of Revelation 13 to be Cosdrae the persian ruler and Mohammed, the leader of Islam, as the second beast of Revelation 13. He became the heretic of the Catholic church who's books were destroyed.

The books of Alexander Minorita were not favored.

Reformatists as Antichrists of the papacy

The Refomers like Wycliffe, Huss, Luther and Calvin allocated the papacy as the Antichrist.

The Catholic author Herculis Pinti in his Daniel Commentary (1579) pinpointed Calvin and Luther as the Antichrists. Heretics were shown to be Antichrists since they oppose the vicar of christ in Rome.

Enemies of the pope were considered the antichrists in the Middle Ages and a wide range of people could be identified specifically as Antichrist and receive punishment accordingly.

Catholics and the French Antichrist, Deadly Wound concept (1798)

After the deadly wound in 1798, the pope wrote a letter with the title Constantiam vestram in which he declared that France is the Antichrist since it attacked the church and wounded it. He describes himself as the victim that had to suffer as Christ did. Pope Pius VI cites Revelation 13 and the mark of the beast in his letter on 10 November 1798. He said that the opponents have the character of the beast on their foreheads "they fought against the lamb and they lead against the church a pitiless war". In this letter he calls his suffering "the most serious tribulations". The French forces that captivated him is considered to be the once with the mark of the beast and also antichrists.

Father Miceli and the Antichrist (1981)

Father Miceli described the Antichrist in a book of over 200 pages. The book is written after Vatican II and the Antichrist is reformated to fit the new Catholic church of the post-Vatican II era. Just as the church has shifted its thinking from monistic to pluralistic, ecumenical, inclusive, so the new Antichrist is a force that is non-specific but that is against the truth: secularism, materialism, communism, nazicism, atheism, post-colonialism, feminism, gender studies. This multi-facetted Antichrist is a quietism of what was known about the Antichrist before. Heathen antichrists, facist antichrists, royal antichrists, Protestant leaders as antichrists, non-Christian religious leaders such as Mohammed as Antichrist, political Antichrists, military Antichrists like Saladin was the allocated specified antichrist of the past but with Father Miceli it now becomes a force, not an identifiable figure.

Vincent P. Miceli S. J. (1915 - June 2, 1991) was a Catholic priest, theologian, and philosopher. The full detail of his book is: Vincent P. Miceli, S.J. The Antichrist: Has he launched his final campaign against the Savior? (Roman Catholic Books, Fort Collins-CO, 1981). In his book he covers the following areas:

The Antichrist Revisited

Is the AntiChrist Theology - Fiction?

The Antichrist in Scripture

The Antichrist and the Greek Fathers

The Antichrist and the Latin Fathers

The Antichrist in Medieval Thought

Newman and the Antichrist

Modern Shadows of the Antichrist

The Antichrists Within

Detente All Round: Catalyst to the Antichrist?

The Apocalyptic Atmosphere

Mary and the Antichrist

When we talk about Mary in the Catholic church and catholic doctrine we have to do with a deification of Mary to take over the role of the Holy Spirit as vicarius filii dei. As the pope is considered to be the vicarius filii dei on earth intervening with Christ on behalf of saints, so Mary is now in heaven to intervene directly to Christ on behalf of all on earth. Cardinal Newman in the Victorian period is also a very special case. Just like the modern day philospher Peter Kreeft, so also Newman became converted to Catholicism from Protestantism. Newman argues that not all church fathers agree among themselves but they just presented rightly so, the conventional accepted doctrine of their day and we should not argue with them, since that was popular that day. We should not say, let me see what the scriptures say about it before we accept what they read in the scriptures. Acceptance uncontested is necessary in the eyes of Newman. For a Seventh-day Adventist this naiveness with the traditions of church history, is problematic in the light of sola scriptura.

In Miceli's definition of the Antichrist,

"the Antichrist will not be merely against Christ in the literal sense, he will be the personification of Satan's attempt to supplant God's will and introduce his own."

The medieval understanding of the Antichrist is summarized as follows:

"They believed that he will be of Jewish heritage with origins in Babylon (which is present day Iraq, by the way), and will rebuild the Jewish Temple (presently the site of the Islamic Dome of the Rock). All the peoples of the world will bow to his rule as Christ incarnate, as he deceives the world with many false miracles and spectacles, pretending to be a teacher of universal enlightenment, peace, brotherhood and love. His reign will become hell on earth, as God pours out his wrath on Earth for the sins of humankind. The final battle will be between the Antichrist's assembled worldly forces and Christ at His Second Coming."

As one book reviewer (zonaras) summarized the results of Newman's view of the 19th century on the Antichrist:

"It may even be that the Antichrist's persecution of the Church will not in fact be of a physically violent nature. Possibly it could be a much more insidious psychological attack against Christ and his Church on all fronts. Christianity will be held up to ridicule as an outdated religion of ignoramuses, while all sorts of neo-Gnostic philosophies will be extolled instead (examples of which can be seen today are New Age, dialectic materialism, Darwinism, liberalism, feminism, post-modernism, existentialism, to name a few)."

Totalitarian states and their rulers are seen as forerunners to the Antichrist, Hitler, Mussolini and the Communist revolutionaries (Stalin, Mao, Castro, Che Guevara, et al.) because they tried to create a human utopia based upon totalitarian-state control systems.

The Western democracies, particularly the Churchill, FDR and Kennedy administrations also share in the (dis)honor of being forerunners to the Antichrist as well. Kennedy is said to have betrayed the Catholic controlled Diem government in Vietnam by ordering its overthrow.

Father Miceli also considered Israel as a modern shadow of the Antichrist in the Middle East today because it is the Zionist State of Israel.

Movements or activities in the Catholic church would be forerunners or shadows of the Antichrist. He also discusses the heretical elements in the Catholic Church being pre-cursor to the Antichrist as well. Liturgical problems after Vatican II are some of these.

The book reviewer went on to say that Miceli sites the demands made by radicals within the laity to make the Roman Church up to date with avant-garde political and theological liberalism. Miceli writes that the liberals like to make fun of the Church because of its "allegedly intransigent, dogmatic, authoritarian, rigid, anti-Semitic, legalistic, Constantinian, triumphant, Roman posture and policies."

It is well known that Vatican II changed the Catholic church from a monistic particularistic paradigm to an ecumenical, pluralistic, inclusive paradigm. Many theological definitions changed, but more in a utiliter sense than in reality.

When he looked at the apocalyptic atmosphere of the Antichrist he was outlining all the -isms of theology, gender crisis, etc. Deviant liberal trends are considered to create the atmosphere for the Antichrist. Here is actually the irony of Miceli. The Catholic church after Vatican II is a liberal church since it is doing many things contrary to what they did before 1963, or the style they did it before that. Miceli is aware of those conservative catholics who are fighting that the church should go back to what they were before 1798. There is a website online explaining that the post-Vatican II popes are all antichrists because they are too liberal. The liberal atmosphere is thus welcomed by the post-1963 Roman Catholic Church. Samuel Bacchiocchi is a product of that era. Whether Bacchiocchi and his students fell in love with the catholic form of post-1963 as opposed to the form they did not like pre-1963 is not clear. That Bacchiocchi studied under the conservative Catholic considered liberals and Antichrists of the post-1963 period, is a fact.

So finally, what do we say about Bacchiocchi's challenging the traditional view of vicarius filii dei = 666 position of the Seventh-day Adventist church by dumping the baby and the bath water and the bath just because of photo misidentification at the end of the Victorian Age and press politics surrounding its printing? Even when I repeatedly pointed out to him the presence of vicarius filii dei in the Catholic church, which he denied, he brushed the evidence aside and kept writing the same strange formulations of his regarding the issue. So what can one make of a horse that is brought to the water but refuse to drink? I said to myself, no wonder his opponents called him a Jesuit or affiliate with Jesuits.

Where from here?

The General Conference of SDA's will have to bring a large group of researchers together to study thoroughly all aspects of vicarius filii dei = 666 in history, in theology, in liturgy, in EGW writings or absence thereof, in pioneer writings, in modern analysts like Froom, Bacchiocchi, his students, De Kock and others. A consensus statement would be very helpful to the local churches to be able to decide and see for themselves what is at stake. Said one famous salesman of the Andrews Study Bible to me, "we left vicarius filii dei =666 out because our space allocated were limited." Says my wife to me, "but you need only five words and one line!"

Some sources:

www.mille.org/journal.html 1 Summer 1999