Our received ideas of power, sovereignty and the relationship between political and religious, worldly and spiritual authority continue to be informed, even though we are hardly aware of it, by a jumble of theological-political issues stemming from the set of relations just described. They are questions that ‘secularization’ as the dissolution of every idea of epoch conceals in itself rather than resolves or overcomes.
We have already encountered the fundamental contradiction undermining the figure of the katechon: if it is to matter (se essa deve valere) it will inevitably have to turn or try to turn itself into empire, but the latter will necessarily compete with other authorities to represent the Age. How can its potestas otherwise restrain, contain and withhold anomie? At the same time, is not the claim to represent the ultimate meaning of the Age within epochal time not the very sign of anomie? For its part, when the Church claims to know and expectantly await the End with certain hope it affirms that it is the ‘place’ where the Age represents itself while never accepting a similar claim by another power. When it comes to the eschaton every empire must leave the last word to the pilgrim, to the civis futurus, to the community that on earth stands for the true image of politeia en ouranois, of celestial citizenship. This is the only holy city, the only good promised by the Lord, and all hope whose seed is preserved in the heart of the believer turns towards it (Augustine, Psalm 105).
But how could the civis futuris not claim to speak on all aspects of civil life, especially when the ultimate meaning of shared history can only become fully comprehensible in the light of the eschaton. This is an open and irrepressible asymmetry that is intolerable for imperial power. And why not for a merely catechontic power? It may become able blandly to ‘put up with’ the sermons of spiritual authority but only at the cost of powerlessness, even to feign some auctoritas and thus showing itself every day to be incapable of fulfilling its officium, its mission, to serve as a barrier against anomie.
How is opposition to the advance of anomie conceivable in an apocalyptic context if we remain indifferent to the meaning of the eschaton? Such opposition would have only the stamp of an autarchic will to endure, a will to survive but not oppose the Adversary; perhaps it is even a sign of covert complicity with him? But if as seems to be the case the katechon wants to become epoch-making in thus assuming some kind of imperial physiognomy, it must withhold, arrest and contain above all whoever disputes or denies the autonomy or power to constitute law by its own means characteristic of empire. This entails opposition to the eschatological community. How will the katechon be able to do its work in a productive-constructive way if it finds itself, in at least in one of its guises at the service of the Adversary, of the spirit of apoleia, of destruction? Whether catechontic power is forced into an exclusively functional/instrumental role or whether it assumes imperial form, it seems to risk itself at the borders or even inside the realm of tîmê,1 of the Iniquitous. If this is the outcome then the anomie of the latter can no longer simply appear as the absence of nomos. The ultimate power advancing before the Last Judgement is such in every sense. It is there in the commander, it is hierarchy, organization and worship. The final catastrophe does not announce itself with anarchic chaos nor in the savage features of the Forester in Ernst Jünger’s On the Marble Cliffs, but through the metamorphosis of imperial form into the figure of an unheard-of (in-audito) empire that ‘overcomes’ both the figure of the katechon and that of earthly auctoritas while wrestling with the Church for spiritual supremacy.
Before addressing the last question, we need to take a closer look at the catechontic traits that can be ‘detained’ by empire and then enquire into the relation or compromise that spiritual authority might attempt to establish with them.
Quid o quis est katechon, who or what is the katechon? The context of Paul’s preaching (both in the pseudepigraph 2 Ts and in 1 Ts) is the eschatology of Matthew 23–24 (and its parallels in the Gospels of Mark and Luke), of the First Letter of John, of the Book of Revelation and in the most ancient Christian literature of the Didache, 16:1–7. The Adversary who presents himself as God demands to be worshipped as the One God, and to fight with God on the same ground of the most rigorous monotheism (‘he will topple the idols in order to make them believe that he is God’, Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, V, 25.1; incidentally, Irenaeus is the first to cite the Second Letter to Thessalonians). This Adversary cannot be confused with any form of ‘reactionary’, polytheistic or pagan nostalgia and will only be defeated by the breath of the Lord, by Spirit. Therefore the energy of the Adversary is much more potent than any catechontic force and will only surrender to the parousia of the Kyrios, the Lord Jesus.
But first, it is essential to understand properly the novelty represented by the figure of the Son of Perdition for it fully participates in the novitas of the Logos incarnate and the Age it inaugurates. The Deceiver of the world presents himself as the Son of God (Didache, 16:4), and his energy is expressed in se-ducing from faith in the Lord Jesus: his apostasy is not a vague discessio or secession from God and has nothing to do with any form of ‘atheism’; it has only one target – to eradicate faith in Jesus as the Christ. The Son of Perdition is the Antichrist, and as such only conceivable within this Christian Age. It is not possible to oppose Christ, to be Antikeimenos2 through the power of the ancient idols. To a Son there must be opposed the Son: to a spirit of apoleia (destruction) that of soteria (salvation). Whatever opposes this apocalyptic duellum will be crushed and all that is ‘lukewarm’ will be spat out. Everything stands helpless before the power of the Antikeimenos whose own impotence before the Lord will reveal itself only at the very last.
Thus without doubt the katechon will be swept away, but will it be swept away by the One Idol3 who is ‘anti-idolatrous’ with respect to every previous form of idolatry because he really experiences these as an effective obstacle? Or will it be swept away by the prayers of those who with steadfast hope yearn for the Lord’s breath (pneuma)? In the first case one could think of a ‘compromise’ between those waiting in faithful forbearance and the katechon; in the second case, of a ‘perspective’ shared by the Christian and the Antikeimenos since both long to hasten the elimination of the withholding power. The verdict on the nature of the katechon will change radically according to the response it provokes.
It is clear that the power of the katechon is inscribed a priori in the abyss of the divine will. The same holds for the force of Satan sent by God to condemn those who do not welcome the love of truth (agape tes aletheias). Neither katechon nor Adversary have the effective power to delay or hasten the parousia. The Last Day comes like a thief in the night and not even the Son knows the hour (Matthew 24:36, 43; 1 Ts 5:2; Rev 16:15). It is written that before that day the full uncovering of the apostasy must first be completed. The drama is real for precisely this reason. The brief time, the pre-judged time stretching before us has not yet acquired the shape that it will come to assume. It is a stage for proto-agonists and not for puppets. These carry out their ‘missions’ without being able to know where it will end. What is clear and inalterable is the mere meaning of these ‘missions’. History is their manifestation and confirmation – but it is nevertheless history, an authentic agon, a conflict between the wills to power of real subjects. And thus even catechontic force is a containing-withholding subjectivity just as vital as that of the Antikeimenos, who only exists in the life of those who act as antichrists according to the words of the First Letter of John, 2:18–23, whose dramatic force far exceeds that of the Pauline Antikeimenos (and even more noticeably that of the antikeimenoi of the First Letter to Corinthians 16:9, where the term is reserved for those who oppose the Apostle of the Gentiles). The Antichrist forms a community in the inverted image of the ekklesia. It has a body made up of those who, having fallen for the deception, act as antichrists. In the Hour at hand the energy of this community becomes uncontainable. As proof of its full belonging to the Age, it is constituted by many who ‘came from us’ (1 John, 19), even if by their nature they were not ‘of us’. These words can only be understood this way: the Antichrist shows all his power in dividing (diabolos) the Church, wrenching from its midst all those who do not belong there in gratia. In his Treatise on John’s Epistle Augustine went further and forcefully argued that many antichrists revealed themselves and left our Church, but there are many who still remain (‘multis intus sunt, no exierunt, sed tamen antichristi sunt’), and everyone must ask themselves whether they too are not one of their number.
Might not ‘those who remain’ be numbered among the ranks of the catechontic powers? The katechon, in fact, must be understood as plural as we have done up to now, but not just as a civil and political plurality. The antichrists who remain in the Church impartially exercise the function of containing and restraining; they hold back the day when the ranks of the Antichrist will be completely filled and the last battle must take place. Why, indeed, would they not make their ‘exit’, if they did not will to defer the pleroma of the power of the Iniquitous? Is there then a possible catechontic dimension within the ‘increasing’ body of the Antichrist still ‘harboured’ in the Church? Is the contradiction at the heart of the ekklesia at the same time a conflict in the ranks of the Antichrist? Read in the light of the figure of the katechon these dramatic passages of Augustine acquire an even greater significance.
The more the protagonist of the eschatological conflict is examined, the more complex and problematic it appears. We have seen how difficult it is to assimilate it to empire. If the fourth beast of Daniel is interpreted as an image of the Romans then it is clear that nothing in the power of Rome could restrain the Adversary’s momentum as Hippolytus inconsistently maintained.4 If indeed Rome extolls its force of law and right – however unjust when applied against the Christians – in an effort to reduce it to the katechon (which seems very much to be Tertullian’s position, even in his anti-Marcionite guise) then its power cannot be defined as truly imperial. The vision of Romans 13 seems to relate to the general problem of the necessity of political power and not to this or that form of it – and it is clear that Paul is also thinking of an eminently bureaucratic and administrative authority with which the Christian could and should live in peace (as with the enemy!). That it was possible on the basis of Romans (or any other early Christian text up to the fourth century, in my view) to think in terms of the sanctity of political authority became the monstruum of Restoration theology.5 For the Church Fathers diakonia, servitium (care and service) are essentially considered within the horizon of a ‘juridification’ of the Political and the neutralization of its auctoritas. In the end, the emperor is reduced to the figure of one who reigns, a mere rex, a ‘servus servorum Dei’.6
1 τιμή (tîmê): honour, honour by reason of rank or office, received and perceived honour; reverence; price, value. Tîmê may refer here to the culture of honours paid to heroes and gods in cult. In short, it is another word for ritual. When faith is absent, worship is no longer reverence but mere ritual, i.e., tîmê (tr. note).
2 Antikeimenos (the Adversary), from the verb antikeimai (to confront, to oppose), literally means ‘he who opposes, who is against (anti)’ (tr. note).
3 ‘Idolo Uno’. A reference to Irinaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, Book V, XXV, 1, who speaks of the Antikeimenos as the one who strives to become the One Idol after taking all other idols out of the way and installing himself as God in the place of the true God (tr. note).
4 On the catechontic theme in Irenaeus and Hippolytus, see M. Rizzi (2009).
5 The highest ‘meridian’ to which this idea of power can ‘logically’ attain can be found in Donoso’s Letter to Cardinal Fornari on the Errors of our Time, as well as de Maistre’s The Pope (1819).
6 Servant of the servants of God, one of the titles of the Pope (tr. note).