Most of us have heard of a figure called "The Antichrist." It sounds like the name of the ultimate evil nemesis we'd find opposing all things good in the Bible. But is that what the Antichrist is and is the Antichrist actually mentioned in the New Testament?

First, when I say "Antichrist," what images come to your mind? History is littered with theories and ideas—from Peter the Great and Napoleon, to the pope and secret societies, to Presidents Obama and Trump—all depending on where someone stands on the political or religious spectrum. But moving beyond conspiracy theories, the general belief of most people is that the Antichrist will pretend to be Christ (the Greek word for the Jewish "Messiah"), performing signs and wonders while taking over the world at the time of the apocalypse.

But what does the Bible actually say? This seems kind of important since the Bible is supposedly the origin of the Antichrist tradition.

The "little horn" of Daniel 7 and "the Beast" and "false prophet" of Revelation 13 have been popular representations of the Antichrist, but they have other names, and are never called "Antichrists" in the Bible, although church leaders in the second and third centuries CE attempted to merge these texts with the Antichrist tradition.

2 Thessalonians describes one potential candidate:

This being possesses many of the perceived Antichrist characteristics—rebellious, exalts himself, declares himself to be God, works with Satan, and agent of deception. However, this being is never called "the Antichrist," but instead is referred to as "the Lawless One" or "the Man of Sin" (ὁ ἄνομος; ho ánomos).

Jesus's apocalyptic discourse describes another candidate:

We have what appears to be another presumably accurate description, and this time we even have a name that includes the word "christ." However, this individual is called a "false/pseudo" (ψευδόχριστοι; pseudóchristoi) christ, and not "anti-christ."

 

The New Testament Antichrist

Before we decide that pseudo is close enough, a quick search of the Johannine Epistles reveals that these are the only five appearances of the word "antichrist":

So here we have our answer: the word "antichrist" does, in fact, appear in the Bible. And we read several things about this figure that we've come to expect by now—it comes in the "last hour," it is a "liar," it "denies Jesus is Christ," and it is a "deceiver."

But, note also some odd facts about the term antichrist. First, the term only appears in 1 and 2 John. Second, it doesn't appear to refer to a singular, apocalyptic being. Interestingly, 1 John 2:18 doesn't even employ a definite article; it just uses "antichrist" to describe someone. In fact, the author sounds like he has a specific group in mind because 1 John 2:18 says that there may be many antichrists.

Let's look at 1 John 2:18–19 again a bit more closely:

The author is focused on a division within the community that has caused some to leave—which means that the first documented use of the word "antichrist" in the Bible is slander used by Christians directed at other Christians. We call this group that split off the secessionists, but this clarification raises another question.

Above the author argued that the antichrist denied that Jesus was the Christ and obviously sees an antichrist as a threat to the community. You wouldn’t immediately assume that someone who simply denied Christ would be a threat to any Christian community, but we get further clarification in 1 John 4 and 2 John 1:

Here we see that these antichrists also deny that Jesus came "in the flesh." This sounds like an odd accusation, but it helps explain some characteristics of 1 and 2 John. Notice how often the beginning of 1 John stresses senses of physical perception like seeing, hearing, and touching:

You obviously cannot touch what doesn't have flesh, but was this really a debate among early Christians?

Actually, yes it was. There were several different beliefs about Jesus's relation to his body, but the most relevant one for us was called docetism, from the Greek verb dokeō, meaning "to seem or appear." Docetists believed that Jesus only appeared to take human form, since as a divine being he couldn't enter an impure human body to provide the teachings that would enable his followers to escape from an evil world that was created as a type of prison. So the author of the Johannine Epistles appears to define an antichrist (again, there can be many according to 1 John 2:18) as anyone who denies that Jesus, the Christ, had a fully human body.

But what does it really matter if Jesus did or did not have an actual body? Here, two other recurring themes from the Johannine Epistles explain:

Notice the emphasis on both blood and sacrifice. The blood is the life-force that is the essential element of the sacrifice (cf. Genesis 9:4 ff.). According to the author of 1 and 2 John, in order for Jesus to act as the atoning sacrifice for sins, his blood must be spilled. But in order for his blood to be spilled, Jesus had to have a physical body.

This remained a significant debate among early Christians—Christians who possessed varying positions on the matter. Some agreed with the docetists that a divine being couldn't die, but they solved this by arguing the divine being of "Christ" possessed or inhabited the human Jesus at the moment of his baptism, and then departed his human body at the time of his crucifixion.

There were also some that went a completely different direction, agreeing with 1 and 2 John that Jesus was born with a physical body, but added that he was divinely "adopted" by God at his baptism.

A middle position (that would eventually lead to the doctrine of the Trinity) is what I like to call the "politician's answer" to the question. Was Jesus fully human or fully divine? Yes. Even after the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, when St. Nicholas (better known as Santa Claus) punched Arias for believing that the Trinity was only of a similar substance ("homoousias") and not the same substance, they would continue debating the technicalities of this "politician's solution" by arguing how Jesus could at the same time be fully divine and fully human, while praying to God as a human, and dying as a human, but resurrecting (or being resurrected) because of his divinity—something that a typical "full human" cannot do.

Later on, those Christians that ultimately embraced this view of Jesus as sacrifice would struggle to answer whether he was sacrificed to satisfy God or Satan, but that is a discussion for another day. What concerns us in this study is that the "antichrist" was not initially some supernatural apocalyptic figure in the Bible; such figures are given different names and are described differently in Scripture. Antichrists in the Bible are simply those who deny Jesus was the Christ, and that he came "in the flesh." Everything else is a much-later conflation of other words and verses into the concept of "antichrist" that was originally limited to the author of 1 and 2 John.

(Originally published: May 9, 2022)