PREFACE

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.

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. [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.] In the terms of the book of lies, anyone who denies that Jesus is “of God” is antichrist. [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. See also 2 Thessalonians 2:3.] However, 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. [For helpful background, see I. Howard Marshall, “The Development of Christology in the Early Church.” Tyndale Bulletin 18 (1967): 77-93.] In a strictly logical sense, then, there are an equal number of possible anti­christologies; for every “Christ” there is a correlative “anti-Christ.” 

§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 conceive; 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.

[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.]

§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 beings who have the capacity and option to cultivate either a Christ or an antichrist personality——i.e., persons, beings for whom the question of who they are is a question——are 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 essay, it should not be supposed that an individual who is antichrist can be understood solely in terms of such a status. Moreover, as we will see below, 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.

§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.

§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.

§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, whatever is said and done and laid down through proper ecclesial processes is thereby the will or actual reality of Christ. [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.”] This 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, 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).

[In the Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky places the following description of Roman Catholicism in the words of Ivan: “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...’”]

§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,” 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. [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).] Also included are “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. 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 ‘de-nomination’ most efficiently supportive of status quo.” [Aidan Kavanagh, “The Theology of Easter: Themes in Cultic Data,” Worship 42(4), p. 204.]

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.

§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.

§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 compli-cated 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.

§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. [Matthew 22:34-40] 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.” [John 13:34]

§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 Creator (or the idea of a 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.

§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. [For a 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.] It may be said, in light of the aforementioned, that the object of such worship is the universal. Greeks did not venerate erotic sensation (eros), they venerated Eros. They did not venerate chronological moments (chronos), they venerated Chronos. Of some gods, they were ambivalent. For example, Ares, 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 or Ruination is a universal-persona in regards to which one must be ambivalent.

§19. Unlike their polytheistic counterparts, Zoroastrians, Jews, and others, 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. [Exodus 3:14-15]

§19. The redactors of the New Testament——the first-century Jews who were followers of Christ——operated within this monotheistic tradition, as did their master, Jesus, whose life, teachings, death, and resurrection they committed to story form in various books, some of which were included in what we now know as the New Testament. 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.” [1 John 4:8] 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.” [Michael Himes, The Mystery of Faith: An Introduction to Catholicism (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2004), p. 8.]

§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. To the contrary, 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.” [Loren L. Johns and James H. Charlesworth, Hillel and Jesus: Comparative Studies of Two Major Religious Leaders (Fortress Press, 1997).] What allegedly distinguished Jesus from other rabbis of the time was his insistence that the command to love God is 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. [Matthew 25:31-46] 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? [Himes, op. cit., p. 8.]

§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 suggests [Hebrews 10:24; Romans 12:10]——is both the nature of proper religio (worship) and constitutes the wisdom that is soteriologically sufficient——i.e., sufficient to direct or order one toward their ordained end and ultimate good. [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.”]

§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 scrip-
tures, 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 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 world: i.e., that they belong here and do not need to appease the gods to ensure the continued maintenance of reality. [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. Cf. Genesis 6-9 and the flood story from the Epic of Gilgamesh.] The Divine, they insist, does not require human sacrifice; neither does the Divine delight in or require death. [Ezekiel 18:32]

§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... [Terry Eagleton, Radical Sacrifice, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), p. 21.]

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. [Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 14:70-71 and Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 1:152-153.]

§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 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 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.

§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——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 simply foolish persons, and certainly not heroic in any sense. 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. [Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (Verso Books, 2009), p. 159.] 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.

§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. [Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, Chapter XXVI.] 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 social 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.”

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.

§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).

§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, and 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. [Feuerbach, op. cit.] 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 (that is, individual) nature of the antichrist form of life, a committed antichrist should recognize 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 they otherwise would not care about: 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 a parochial and restricted love as opposed to a universal love: namely, a love of the existing 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 White people and Black people 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.” [Hendrik Verwoerd, Verwoerd Speaks: Speeches 1948-1966, ed., A.N. Pelser (APB Publishers, 1966).] 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 Africans 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 effective ideological rationale for their economic aims by claiming that Black people 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-Christ 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. [Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols; see Maxims and Arrows, number 12.] 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.

PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

§45. Having articulated a general theory of the antichrist personality and 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 which every mature adult is expected to have a perspective on: 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.

§46. 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 the 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.

§47. 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. Those 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. After all, the accumulation of social, political, or cultural capital can be pursued under alternative political arrangements. Of course, 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. 

§48. When evaluating political discourse and, especially, when evaluating religiously laden political discourse, it behooves an antichrist to discern whether those who couch their political perspectives in religious language are merely nominally Christian 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” [Plato, The Republic, Book III], or if one prefers, an ignoble lie, which provides an ideological basis for maintaining the status quo.

§49. 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. [Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.]

§50. 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.

§51. 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 that 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.” [Terry Eagleton, Radical Sacrifice (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), p. 27.] 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.” [Ibid., p. 102.]

§52. 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. [Lynice Pinkard, “Revolutionary Suicide: Risking Everything to Transform Society and Live Fully,” Tikkun Magazine 28(4), 2013: p. 40.]

§53. While 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——blessed few are willing to pursue discipleship at such costs——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.

§54. 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. Contemporary 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.