2 Thessalonians Chapter 2: The Man of Lawlessness

[Mort_Alz]

I have often seen these verses used as an accusation against the papacy, so, naturally, I wanted to see what Catholics say to refute that accusation.

So far, I have heard some (fairly) good refutations as to why the Man of Lawlessness is NOT the papacy, but I have not heard Catholics say what they think this verse DOES say.

Know what I mean? I’ve seen all kinds of Catholic commentary on what this chapter DOESN’T mean (that the papacy is this established Man of Lawlessness), but I haven’t heard any Catholic commentary on what this chapter DOES mean.

What’s the proper (Catholic) exegesis on this? Why is Paul writing this to the Thessalonians? I know that he was trying to set their minds at ease that Christ had not yet come, but why was he describing the Man of Lawlessness to them as if they would be able to recognize him in their lifetimes?

Any help as to what this chapter DOES mean?

 

[puzzleannie]

google turned this up on the us bishop’s website bible link
usccb.org/bible/2thessalonians/2thessalonians2.htm
hope this is what you are looking for

I find it interesting that if your source is correct, there are some non-Catholic commentators using this verse to prove the existence of the papacy at the time of Paul, yet there is a concurrent thread here challenging a letter of Clement claiming a papal authority for the bishop of Rome in the first century. In other words, it seems depending on the non-Catholic source either there is, or is not, a precedent for a pope in the person of the bishop of Rome in the earliest days of the Church. Wonder if these folks ever get confused tripping over each other.

 

[Mort_Alz]

Hmm, that’s a good point (and a good source). However, it does not much say more than a typical NIV study bible would say.

I guess what I’m really asking is what do Catholics believe about the Man of Lawlessness? Has he already come? Has he yet to come? Is he here?

 

[TimothyH]

I don’t know about any official teaching of the Church about the Man of Lawlessness. There probably isn’t. I always try to remember however, that Paul was a master of the Old Testament, often quoted or reused phraseology from the Old Testament and often did so using rabinnical teaching techniques. Paul was a scholar and teacher of the Old Testament, and whenever he quoted from or used the Old Testament to make a point, he assumed that his audience had read the Old Testament scriptures and understood them.

The man of lawlessness spoken about by Paul…

Let no one deceive you in any way. For unless the apostasy comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one doomed to perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship, so as to seat himself in the temple of God, claiming that he is a god— (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4)*

Was a reference to what was written in the Book of Daniel…

The king shall do as he wills, exalting himself and making himself greater than any god; he shall utter dreadful blasphemies against the God of gods. He shall prosper only till the wrath is finished, for what is determined must take place. He shall have no regard for the gods of his ancestors or for the one in whom women delight; for no god shall he have regard, because he shall make himself greater than all. (Daniel 11:36-37)*

Daniel was talking about specific historical events, mostly surrounding the Babylonian exile, and Paul was using this to make points and as a mechanism for teaching.

Its a funny thing about how the Bible is arranged. Certain books were placed at the end because they were written under the assumption that one had read and understood the books prior. Revelation is one such book, which is not understandable until one reads and understands everything prior. Much of what Paul wrote was like that, written to audiences who he assumed knew Old Testament scripture well. Reading Paul’s writings without that understanding of history and Old Testament scripture, we get all kinds of whacky theology like the rapture and automatic salvation through a one time act of faith.

Rather than get in to a lengthy discourse, I’ll stop there and just say that the one doomed to perdition is the one who exhalts himself above God. Call it Satan. Call it the beast and his master in Revelation. Call it the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Call it you and I whenever we put ourselves before God and his commandments, whenever we sin. Call it whatever name you want but it is the power of the enemy and all who obey him.

These are my thoughts only. I confess to having not studied this chapter and it is extremely interesting to me. I would like to hear what others have to say about the original question as well as my comments.

-Tim-

 

[po18guy]

First, some non-Catholics maintain that there was no Pope. Then, when shown that there was, they turn around and agree, but say that he was evil. This is not only silly, but illogical. If there was no Pope, this passage cannot be about him. If there was a Pope (Peter at that time), it was certainly not about him - Paul went to Peter twice to clear doctrinal matters up and to ensure that they were teaching the same Gospel (Galatians 1:18, Galatians 2:1-2). They were brother Apostles, and Paul wrote that he and Cephas (Peter) were sent by the same God, but to different groups - namely Gentile and Jew (Galatians 2:8-9).

The assertion that you have heard results from the private interpretation of scripture, which is condemned in 2 Peter 1:20. The results of private interpretation are given in 2 Peter 3:15-16. The “ignorant and unstable” twist and distort - note this - Paul’s writings specifically.

In that culture, and in that time, it was not common to name such offenders, if indeed they were human. Paul does not name this offender, or the human fornicator mentioned in 1 Corinthians 5. Neither does Peter name the heretics he speaks of in 2 Peter 2.

Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J. in his great little book Inside the Bible, teaches us that we should not look for men in such writings, but rather powers or forces which oppose Christ.

 

[_L]

The man of lawlessness is the antichrist, the “little horn” spoken of by the prophet Daniel, and one of the beasts of revelation. But he is certainly not the Pope; the antichrist will be jewish and will trick many jews into believing he is the promised messiah, thus denying that Jesus is the Son of God, does this sound like the Pope to you? The Pope would not be a follower of Judaism let alone have Jews believe him to be the Christ, thus having him deny the very faith that he is designated to protect.

 

[po18guy]

The man of lawlessness is the antichrist, the “little horn” spoken of by the prophet Daniel, and one of the beasts of revelation. But he is certainly not the Pope; the antichrist will be jewish and will trick many jews into believing he is the promised messiah, thus denying that Jesus is the Son of God, does this sound like the Pope to you? The Pope would not be a follower of Judaism let alone have Jews believe him to be the Christ, thus having him deny the very faith that he is designated to protect.

Source?

 

[_L]

Source?

Catechism on the antichrist:

675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.574 The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth575 will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.576

676 The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism,577 especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.578

Church Fathers:

St. Hippolytus

“[W]e find it written regarding Antichrist . . . ‘Dan is a lion’s whelp, and he shall leap from Bashan’ [Deut. 33:22]. But that no one may err by supposing that this is said of the Savior, let him attend carefully to the matter. Dan, he says, is a lion’s whelp. And in naming the tribe of Dan, he declared clearly the tribe from which Antichrist is destined to spring. For as Christ springs from the tribe of Judah, so Antichrist is to spring from the tribe of Dan. And that the case stands thus, we see also from the words of Jacob: ‘Let Dan be a serpent, lying upon the ground, biting the horse’s heel’ [Gen. 49:17]. What then is meant by the serpent but Antichrist, that deceiver who is mentioned in Genesis [Gen. 3:1], who deceived Eve and supplanted Adam? . . . *t is in reality out of the tribe of Dan, then, that tyrant and king, that dread judge, that son of the devil, is destined to spring and arise” (ibid., 14).

“Above all, moreover, he will love the nation of the Jews. And with all these [Jews] he will work signs and terrible wonders, false wonders and not true, in order to deceive his impious equals. . . . And after that he will build the temple in Jerusalem and will restore it again speedily and give it over to the Jews” (Discourse on the End of the World 23-25 [A.D. 217]).

Tertullian

“[T]he man of sin, the son of perdition, who must first be revealed before the Lord comes, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped; and who is to sit in the temple of God and boast himself as being God. . . . According indeed to our view, he is Antichrist; as it is taught us in both the ancient and the new prophecies, and by the apostle John, who says that ‘already many false prophets have gone out into the world,’ the forerunners of Antichrist, who deny that Christ is come in the flesh, and do not acknowledge Jesus, meaning in God the Creator” (Against Marcion 5:16 [A.D. 210]).

Augustine

“Daniel prophesies of the last judgment in such a way as to indicate that Antichrist shall first come and to carry on his destruction to the eternal reign of the saints. For when in prophetic vision he had seen four beasts, signifying four kingdoms, and the fourth conquered by a certain king, who is recognized as Antichrist, and after this the eternal kingdom of the Son of Man, that is to say, of Christ” (The City of God 20:19 [A.D. 419]).

Plenty more from the Church fathers, but I thought this was plenty for now.

The tribe of Dan is also excluded from the tribes of Israel when they are listed in Revelation, Dan is replaced with Manessah. Something many theologians including the Church fathers key in on when saying that the antichrist will come from the tribe of Dan. Not only this, but the antichrist will be what the pharisees wanted the Christ to be; they wanted a worldly powerful leader, and that is exactly what those of their ilk will get, but he will be a mad man whose iniquity is unmatched, and in coming to their senses, they will reject the man of lawlessness and come to realize Jesus is the messiah at the end times, which Paul talks about in Romans 11 where in the end times, the jews will corporately convert to Christianity in droves after the fullness of gentiles has come in. This has long been an aspect of the Catholic faith that Pope Benedict spoke about not too long ago speaking out against those (probably directed at fundamentalist protestants) who think they can fulfill prophecy by trying to corporately convert Jews:

“Israel is in the hands of God, who will save it ‘as a whole’ at the proper time, when the number of Gentiles is full,” the pope writes. The historical duration of this “proper time,” Benedict says, cannot be calculated.

from this article: ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/church-should-not-pursue-conversion-jews-pope-says*

 

[Mort_Alz]

Hmm. Very interesting. All of these are very good points.

 

[Nate13]

I suggest doing some research into the preterist view of Revelation. In my mind in 2 Thess 2:4 it speaks about how the Antichrist will take his seat in the temple of God. This seems to me to be a pretty direct reference to the temple in Jerusalem. Rather than assume that it will be rebuilt at some future point why not think about the possibility that these events have already occurred? I suggest reading the writings of the historian Josephus who had a first hand account of the destruction of Jerusalem in his writings The War of the Jews.

sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/war-5.htm
sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/war-6.htm

Also don’t assume I’m saying everything in Revelation and all the prophesies have been fulfilled. Rather I’m saying we have seen a foreshadowing of what is to come at the end of the world. The temple in Jerusalem was created to be a microcosm of the Universe. When you read about the events describing the destruction of the temple look back in the Old Testament and compare that according the woes that are prescribed should Israel break the covenant they made with the Lord.

I like to think about the same way we think of salvation i.e I’ve been saved, I’m working about my salvation, and I will be saved. It is not a one time event, its an on-going process. The second coming could be said to be the same way. Jesus came and ended the Old Covenant, He is constantly with us through sacrament of the Eucharist, and he will come at the end of time The antichrist did come, is still here in many forms, and will be around till the end of time.

 

[Mort_Alz]

I suggest doing some research into the preterist view of Revelation. In my mind in 2 Thess 2:4 it speaks about how the Antichrist will take his seat in the temple of God. This seems to me to be a pretty direct reference to the temple in Jerusalem. Rather than assume that it will be rebuilt at some future point why not think about the possibility that these events have already occurred? I suggest reading the writings of the historian Josephus who had a first hand account of the destruction of Jerusalem in his writings The War of the Jews.

sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/war-5.htm
sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/war-6.htm

Also don’t assume I’m saying everything in Revelation and all the prophesies have been fulfilled. Rather I’m saying we have seen a foreshadowing of what is to come at the end of the world. The temple in Jerusalem was created to be a microcosm of the Universe. When you read about the events describing the destruction of the temple look back in the Old Testament and compare that according the woes that are prescribed should Israel break the covenant they made with the Lord.

I like to think about the same way we think of salvation i.e I’ve been saved, I’m working about my salvation, and I will be saved. It is not a one time event, its an on-going process. The second coming could be said to be the same way. Jesus came and ended the Old Covenant, He is constantly with us through sacrament of the Eucharist, and he will come at the end of time The antichrist did come, is still here in many forms, and will be around till the end of time.

That’s definitely one of the better ways I’ve heard it explained.

 

[_L]

I suggest doing some research into the preterist view of Revelation. In my mind in 2 Thess 2:4 it speaks about how the Antichrist will take his seat in the temple of God. This seems to me to be a pretty direct reference to the temple in Jerusalem. Rather than assume that it will be rebuilt at some future point why not think about the possibility that these events have already occurred? I suggest reading the writings of the historian Josephus who had a first hand account of the destruction of Jerusalem in his writings The War of the Jews.

sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/war-5.htm
sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/war-6.htm

Also don’t assume I’m saying everything in Revelation and all the prophesies have been fulfilled. Rather I’m saying we have seen a foreshadowing of what is to come at the end of the world. The temple in Jerusalem was created to be a microcosm of the Universe. When you read about the events describing the destruction of the temple look back in the Old Testament and compare that according the woes that are prescribed should Israel break the covenant they made with the Lord.

I agree with your basic premise that foreshadowing does occur in scripture, not only this, but prophecy itself can be repeated in distinct manifestations. 666 could apply to Nero, but then again it could also apply to the antichrist of the end. So I don’t think the Preterist view and Futurist view are at odds since fulfillment of prophecy can include more than one instance of such fulfillment. Instances of prophecy in the OT can have immediate significance, later significance, and apocalyptic significance in my opinion; It is something we see often… the various instances where the Jewish temple was desecrated evokes images of the end times such as when the temple was desecrated by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and then desecrated and destroyed by the Romans a few centuries later.

But in regards to the Temple, I do not see how that prophecy has been fulfilled in its fullest form. No antichrist “candidate” has ever set foot in the temple let alone set himself up in there to be worshipped as God. There have been similar abominations; statues of pagan gods, pagan army battle standards, etc. But nothing that St. Paul describes in 2nd Thessalonians. Those lesser abominations could simply be prefigurements and partial fulfillments of the ultimate abomination of desolation in the end times where an actual man will have the gall to set himself in the temple as one to be worshipped, that is the man of lawlessness, the antichrist.

I am not one of those end times focused people who makes predictions but I believe it is certainly important to examine these sorts of things, because there is a tremendous deal of confusion over what the Church teaches regarding the end times even amongst faithful well informed Catholics. Seeing people denying the reality of an end times antichrist is troubling when it is explicitly stated in the catechism, and this is where I get concerned that people take Preterist interpretations too far and accept them at the exclusion of anything else, not that I’m pointing fingers at anyone in particular, but it just seems to be a common attitude these days. For example, Scott Hahn’s wonderful book, “The Lambs Supper,” its a great read, but I have spoken to people that accept that one interpretation of Revelation at the exclusion of other interpretations that can coincide which can occur because scripture has many layers, something we tend to forget sometimes.

 

[COPLAND_3]

Here is the footnote from the Aquinas Study Bible

2:3 the rebellion comes first: The Great Tribulation at the end of time. It will be a time when almost all men shall rush from the Truth to that Deceiver. (Ishodad of Merv) man of lawlessness: he is the Antichrist; as it is taught to us in both the ancient and the new prophecies, and especially by the Apostle John 1Jn 4:1-3. (Tertullian)