Saint Paul, the Apocalypse, and the mystery of evil

Satan­—the personification of evil, antichrist, whom Scripture calls “a liar, and the father of lies” (John 8:44)—relentlessly pursues the best so that the worst might be that much more effective a lie.

(Image: pixabay.com)

One of the most enigmatic tropes in the New Testament can be found in St. Paul’s comments to the Thessalonians (2 Thess 2) about the “mysterium iniquitatis”: the mystery of “lawlessness” or “evil” he tells us is “already at work.” This is a pervasive and apocalyptic evil able to inhabit and control human hearts, worldly powers, and worst of all, the earthly reality of Christ’s own mystical body, the Church.

Apocalypse and antichrist

At this point in these trying days for the Church, I’m inclined to think that we must reflect more urgently on this provoking Pauline perspective. This is, of course, by no means an easy or safe task. Disturbing, delusional, or fanatical possibilities await at every turn. The mysterium iniquitatis is therefore perhaps one of the more embarrassing New Testament themes, certainly for what passes as “civilized” (read: bourgeois) Catholic discourse today, which eagerly grasps at every opportunity to “spiritualize” away as much of it as possible. One can quite confidently expect accusing cries of “fundamentalist!” to ring in the ears of those who today take up this theme with any degree of seriousness.

And yet this teaching, along with the perspectives of apocalypse and antichrist that are part and parcel of it, is by no means peripheral to the New Testament as a whole: St. Peter and St. John pull no punches either. Properly understood, the mysterium iniquitatis furnishes an essential dramatic and eschatological dimension to Christian anthropology that we, heirs and citizens of the “flattest,” most dramatically and eschatologically arid eras of history (i.e. secular modernity), are wont to forget.

Here’s how St. Paul presents the teaching to the Thessalonians. He speaks, cryptically, about a “lawless one” (or, as one freer translation puts it, a “real dog of Satan”) (v. 3) who will “seat himself in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God” (v. 4). This, he assures his listeners, has not yet come to pass; but “the mystery of lawlessness is already at work” (v. 7). In more reassuring (but no less apocalyptic) vein he goes on to speak of the ultimate triumph over the lawless one, whom Jesus “will kill with the breath of his mouth and render powerless by the manifestation of his coming” (v. 8).

What’s most disturbing about this passage, of course, is how we’re told to look for an evil that will incubate in the heart of God’s own dwelling place—his “temple”—and even, as Paul tells the Ephesians, in the “heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). In other words, the worst evil is not outside the gates; it’s not even at the gates. Rather, the worst evil is always already inside the gates, at the very heart of the existential reality of faith, in us, in the Church.

Here we encounter the paradox that no person and certainly not the institutional machinery of the Church (“Surely not I, Lord?” (Matt 26:22), usually want to really confront. But what is confronted brutally and honestly by St. Paul is this unthinkable possibility: that the worst evils might be most at home and, indeed, find the most scope for their manifestation and legitimation in that which is most sacred.

Yet this should not be surprising if we consider what evil is in its essence. If evil is a “privation of the good,” this means that it cannot work on its own; it requires a host. In order to manifest itself evil must take a good thing and corrupt and desecrate it from within, transforming by parasitisation the icon into the idol. “Vice mimics virtue,” says St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Here’s the scary part: the more perfect the good, the more scope for evil to mimic and subvert.

Thus, in order to effect the most perfect corruption and desecration of everything good and pure, Satan­—the personification of evil, antichrist, whom Scripture calls “a liar, and the father of lies” (John 8:44)—relentlessly pursues the best so that the worst might be that much more effective a lie. It’s nicely expressed in the ancient Latin idiom: corruptio optima quae est pessima—the corruption of the best is the worst.

The assault on “the temple”

The genuinely disturbing implication of St. Paul’s teaching is therefore that we should expect—and not deceive ourselves—to find the most horrible possibilities in our own hearts, our own hands, and our own community. St. Paul’s reference to the temple, God’s dwelling place, is crucial in this regard. In a broad sense, “temple” represents those sacred and holy places where God’s presence is manifest (e.g. the Jerusalem temple). The holiest of these is Christ himself, the Son, the “temple” par excellence (cf. John 1:14), who pours himself out for his bride (cf. Eph 5), the Church, who in turn becomes the Sacrament of Salvation for all mankind, generating the children of God, sanctifying and purifying them for perfect union with the Father. We ourselves, bearers of the divine image, adopted into the eternal mystery as sons in the Son and bride of Christ, are in the entirety of our bodily selves sacramental temples of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 3:16-17; 1 Cor 6:19).

This means, then, that what evil will attack and corrupt most virulently is precisely the mystery of baptismal adoption, eucharistic presence, Holy Orders, and sacramental marriage—the central ecclesial, sacramental, and liturgical modes of God’s “temple,” the highest realities of truth, worship, and love. It explains a lot, I think.

This is the deep paradox of the Incarnation: even as the gift of the Son offers the possibility for the best, it also adds to the scope of the worst. It makes a more perfect, more demonic rejection of Christ possible. This is why David Bentley Hart argues—so effectively—that nihilism could only become possible after Christ; you could not have Nietzsche, with his frighteningly polished embrace of anti-value, without the Incarnation.

But St. Paul recognizes that the Incarnation does not just sharpen the existing conflict between good and evil, but in fact starts its final countdown. This is what the apocalyptic mode of antichrist­ is all about. And if this plays out in the summons to each adopted child of God to fight antichrist in the dramatic arc of their own lives, to “put on the armor of God” against the “devil’s schemes” (Eph 6:11) and the “spiritual forces of evil” (Eph 6:13), it also sets the fate of the world itself on its final trajectory. “Apocalypse,” both in the sense of unveiling and ultimate catastrophe, thus perfectly expresses the new dramatic trajectory that the Incarnation has set us on. Salvation and redemption are the beginning of the end. The truth of Christ is simultaneously the activation of the greatest evil, one that will cause the catastrophic end of the age: and it will happen—is always happening—from and at the very heart of the Church, God’s dwelling place (if this sounds, well, apocalyptic, consult the Catechism’s treatment of the theme, cf. especially CCC 675; Catholics should believe in this stuff too).

It’s in this context that we must not shrink from the extent to which evil can and will operate in the innermost recesses of God’s temple, the Church. Evil’s power extends, not just to corruption of individual hearts and minds, but in some sense to the institutional dimension of the Church itself. This accords, I think, with what St. Paul is trying to say in 2 Thessalonians (although how far it’s to be taken is the difficult point; both anti-Catholic bigotry and Catholic “progressivism” see an ideological wedge here). It was the contention of enigmatic Croatian-Austrian intellectual Ivan Illich, a radical critic of modern institutions, that serious awareness that the best can become the worst, that the Church itself as an entire institution could easily adopt modes more typical of the “whore of Babylon” (Rev 17:1–18) was very early on in the history of Christianity effectively sublimated. For Illich, explains David Cayley, this has come with a price: “by abandoning this goad to self-criticism and self-awareness, on which it should have centered its faith, the Church disowned its own shadow,” thereby rendering itself “less and less capable of discerning in the image of antichrist its own tendency to substitute power for faith….”

“Get behind me, Satan.”

But one need look no further for vivid corroboration of this “shadow side” than chapter 16 of Matthew’s Gospel. In verse 18 we have Christ’s words to Peter that have inspired the dogmas of the indefectibility and infallibility of the Church: “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” And yet, just 4 verses later we see Christ turn savagely on Peter, telling him “Get behind me, Satan. You are an obstacle [literally, skandalon] to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (v. 23).

My point is not, I wish to make clear, to deny the indefectibility and infallibility of the Church. Nor should we become fixated on the largely unanswerable question of the extent to which this pope or that pope is literally a figure of the “lawless one” or not. The important point, rather is to be attentive to the more general character of Paul’s cryptic insistence that a “hell” of a lot of deception, manipulation, and corruption (evil!) will operate in some way even inside the assurance of indefectibility and infallibility. It’s at this level that we must attend to Christ’s description of Peter—the first pope—as a stumbling block, and yes, even as “Satan.”

Here we face an “enigma,” a “hard saying” (and Christ has a few of these) not amenable to easy answers or control by merely juridical and rationalist categories. According to both Christ and St. Paul, then, there must be real acknowledgment that no pope, simply by virtue of being pope, is thereby immune from becoming an instrument of evil. And it’s also to affirm that somehow the office of the pope will be used by Satan as the instrument of evil par excellence. Every pope must therefore face this test and trial.

It’s not surprising that we should prefer to accent the reassuring message of verse 18: what institution wants to be up-front about an evil inside itself corrupting and perverting its operations and destroying its credibility? But indefectibility and infallibility in principle mean little, particularly for the “little ones” (cf. Matt 18:6) if the gatekeepers of the Church in any historical here and now are in the grip of heresy, apostasy, and false witness, especially at the level of praxis—it’s small, no, delusional consolation to appeal to theoretical doctrinal coherence and integrity while at the level of practices everything else is in pieces. My point, said with great caution, is that downplaying the mysterium iniquitatis capable of being actively propagated even by the Church’s highest office may well represent a crucial historical blind spot as regards treatment of Christ’s promise to Peter.

Modernity, the illegitimate progeny

There’s one more piece of the puzzle, particularly important for our own historical epoch: the way in which the mysterium iniquitatis at the heart of the Church comes to be mirrored in the world. Extending his reflection on the mysterium iniquitatis, Illich advanced the radical thesis that the modes and institutions of modernity were not post-Christian as much as they were perversely Christian—parodic perversions of faith bled of the vital sap of the New Testament, perhaps the beginning of the definitive (apocalyptic) “betrayal of Christian faith.” In other words, think of modernity as the illegitimate progeny of the Church’s own worst mode of itself­­­, an extension of ecclesial perversion into the heart of the world. It’s a weird idea: the worst things in the world come from the Church. We’d prefer it to be the other way round.

This might be a bitter pill to swallow: for we’d be crazy not to regard some developments of modernity as salutary, i.e. universal rights, modern medicine, technology, democracy, etc., all undeniably of Christian inspiration and which have in remarkable ways raised standards of living, stamping out immense suffering. And yet, note how each of these “salutary” gifts of modernity can be employed, with moralizing imperatives that brook little dissent, for evils capable of destroying the person, communities, cultures, if not the world itself: e.g. a “right” to abortion—embryo experimentation and sex reassignment surgery—the atomic bomb—the “dictatorship of relativism.” Here’s the point: but is not this profound ambiguity precisely what we should expect from antichrist? Weave evil with good so it becomes well-nigh impossible to distinguish and extricate the two. Trap souls and bodies in what John Paul II called “structures of sin,” where material cooperation with evil becomes almost impossible to avoid, where simple social and cultural acts become freighted with a nihilism that works like a cancer on those who perform them.

Illich was struck by the fact that “apocalyptic modernity’s” greatest stroke is to consummate a trend that had already been long gestating in the worst tendencies of institutional Christianity: to overcome the gratuity, radicality, freedom, intimacy, and foolishness of Christian love with stifling procedural, bureaucratic, corporate, and professional modes; and as a final flourish, we might add, to then convince the Church to ape these modes of its own perversion and thus unwittingly cooperate in its own destruction (surely, this is evil’s greatest stroke). The transformation can be subtle enough not to notice. But then, one day, you wake up and the deepest New Testament modes of existential, Gospel faith—including the mysterium iniquitatis—appear as incomprehensible, fundamentalist nonsense, an embarrassment to “respectable” ecclesial discourse in Catholic institutions.

All of this is why Illich concluded ominously that “I believe this to be, paradoxically, the most obviously Christian era which might be quite close to the end of the world.”

Watch and pray

Thus ends a rather bleak, and by no means complete, reflection; but one, I think, with great explanatory power. Note that none of it precludes the truth that “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more” (Rom 5:20). Christ has already triumphed over the lawless one. But this victory cannot to be an excuse for lethargy and blindness to the very real evil that this victory has unleashed. If the mysterium iniquitatis should not be the occasion for cheap attacks on the Church as divine institution per se, neither should we deny the profound ambiguity that Christ’s second words to Peter represent. The mysterium iniquitatis must be permitted as a goad forcing recognition that the central mode evil takes on is the corruption of the best for the worst, as the Gospel itself warns.

What always remains for us is to pray: “watch and pray that you will not fall into temptation” (Matt 26:41). And know that Christ always abides with us in this fight against evil:

One more thing, friends: Pray for us. Pray that the Master’s Word will simply take off and race through the country to a groundswell of response, just as it did among you. And pray that we’ll be rescued from these scoundrels who are trying to do us in. I’m finding that not all ‘believers’ are believers. But the Master never lets us down. He’ll stick by you and protect you from evil (2 Thess 3: 1–3).


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About Conor Sweeney 4 Articles
Dr. Conor Sweeney is associate professor of theology at Christendom College. He has a licentiate and doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Roman session of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family. He is the author of Sacramental Presence after Heidegger (2015), Abiding the Long Defeat (2018), and The Politics of Conjugal Love (2019).

16 Comments

  1. I would have a different approach on this topic and the quote from Thessalonians. In this passage there is a very specific statement that refers to a great “apostasy” (loss of faith). However, it regards a “coming” of Christ which is spoken of by St. Paul that is clearly not his final coming (i.e. the last judgment). Nevertheless, given the content of the prophesy, it is an event of enormous significance in world history. This one is basically ignored even in the liturgical readings (the passage is not in the lectionary). Just after calming his readers about any need to worry that the “day of the Lord is at hand” (2 Thess 2:2), St. Paul helpfully goes on to give the signs to know when this event is at hand. Curiously, none of this is included in the lectionary reading (31st Sunday of Ordinary Time in year c) so it is no wonder that almost nobody knows about it. In fact, in the Bible reading, the signs of St. Paul are rather detailed. It speaks first of all a great “apostasy” (apostasia in the original Greek) and the revelation of the “lawless one” who “opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship … claiming that he is a god [the rise of contemporary atheism and nihilism].” “And now you know what is restraining [the papacy], that he may be revealed … whom the Lord will kill with the breath of his mouth [i.e. the Holy Spirit] by the manifestation of his coming” (2 Thess 2: 3-8). All of his sounds like the Fatima prophesy [Russia will be converted and my Immaculate Heart will triumph and a time of peace will be given to the world, etc.]. Interestingly, 2017 was the first centenary of the Fatima apparitions and Pope Francis has declared that it was his desire that his pontificate be particularly under the patronage of Our Lady of Fatima. John Paul II said that prophesy of Fatima is still being realized. Of course, the list of other recent visionaries who speak in the same terms about our present times is too long to list here. They all recommend in a practical way personal prayer (especially the rosary) and conversion rather than indifference, complacency or wringing of hands.

    • Jacob, Christ comes twice and that is it. To interpret Paul outside of what all others say, particularly St. John’s writings, is wrong. There is a second coming and that is it. There is no half coming or short visit. Christ came once and when he comes again then we will be all judged.

      • From St. Bernard:”We know that there are three comings of the Lord.The third lies between the other two. It is invisible, while the other two are visible.” (office of readings for Wednesday of the first week of Advent). Once you understand this, the writings of Isaiah and the other prophets, not to mention the great Catholic mystics and the expression “Maranatha,” all put history into its correct perspective.

  2. Pope Francis breaks Catholic traditions whenever he wants because he is “free from disordered attachments.” Our Church has indeed entered a new phase: with the advent of this first Jesuit pope, it is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture.
    — Fr. Thomas Rosica

    Let no man deceive you by any means, for unless there come a revolt first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth, and is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself as if he were God.
    — St. Paul, 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4

    Fr. Rosica, Vatican advisor and member of Bergoglio’s inner circle, intended that remark to be high praise of Bergoglio, not a condemnation. See:


    The Ignatian Qualities of the Petrine Ministry of Pope Francis

    Was Fr. Rosica’s outrageous remark based on his knowledge of how Bergoglio sees himself?

    Whether or not that is the case, Fr. Rosica seems to be unfamiliar with some other thoughts of St. Paul:

    But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.
    — Galations 1:8

    Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle.
    — 2 Thessalonians 2:14

    And what I do I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.
    2 Corinthians 11:12-15

  3. Back in the beginning of the Catholic Church, humans realized the Light they received in their disordered minds. It was the “Morning Star” that guided individuals. The prelates ordered their guidance to people towards the supernatural light and spirit so that people remained consciously aware of their responsibility of Love to God first, to their neighbor and themselves secondly and because of the Reality of God First. And those people were shining flames of spirit in bodies. Nowadays, humans look to someone to tell them what to do, how to be a Catholic and there are a myriad ways to confuse people. The mystery of iniquity seems to be simply the formation and/or re-formation of darkness returning into consciousnesses after illumination with the statement of “that’s normal.” It’s not normal to God’s Purpose or Jesus’ Sacraments and Gospel Truth. We should all be able to enter our interiors and find God the Light and be thankful to know it is through Jesus’ Redemption this can occur. He will have to intercede with a change, but one can only envision disaster upon disaster until hearts are purified to receive Him personally once again.

  4. Conor Sweeney writes a coherent logical interpretation of The Apostle In 2 Thess 2 and the Apocalyptic world [at least as perceived] we’re in with sobriety. That’s a hard gamut given the plethora of scripture analyses theological conviction historical evidence mystic revelations appearances solid logical conclusions leading to hysteria here and cognoscenti ridicule there. Sweeney’s thesis is precisely isolating the dilemma within a dilemma. Which is the absurdity of a Pontiff, of the center of Christianity [apparently for Catholics only now that clerical homosexuality has demeaned our stature], of the holiest of holy places occupied by an interloper from the other, dark side as the faithful bishop priest cardinal religious pious nun laity cannot come to terms with as a possibility and the enlightened progressives see it as progress. Sweeney’s argument is too persuasive to dismiss and too absurd to be resist explanation.

    • If I have understood you correctly (and I believe I have)….some are in a thicket quite thick. May the Lord guide and protect us all.

      • Yes Meiron presuming you’re responding to my comment. For the majority the possible presence of the “Lawless one” possessing the Chair of Peter is too difficult to process. The dilemma within the dilemma is they are confounded and believe that this Pontiff is capable of redirection. Therefore the appeal to reasonable politics and waiting. If one finds the evidence points toward realization of the unimaginable then the only viable option is open repudiation.

        • Fr. Morello,

          I’ve been following your comments for some time–I love your comments, I should add that right away–and I was glad to see this one. What I am seeing–please tell me if this is what you mean–is that it seems more and more likely that the “Lawless One”, in the traditional understanding of the “Lawless One” in Scripture, is on the throne of Peter as Pope. Everything I am seeing, everything I have studied–and I am only interested in the truth–seems to point to this reality. I have studied Theology for almost 10 years now and I am working on my PhD in Systematic Theology specializing in Mariology; I am making a pretty educated guess on this. Indeed, history, theology, Marian apparitions (approved apparitions) and the timing (21 centuries since the time of Jesus’ first coming), and more seem to point to this conclusion. As you yourself seem to say, evidence seems to point to this, and I don’t think, given this, that any appeals or waiting will work, though we should pray for him. What I am asking then is this: Is this what you are seeing too? I think what I am saying is what you mean, but I want to be sure I’m understanding you correctly. If I am wrong about that or about what seems to be happening, please do correct me regarding my interpretation (which could be wrong, I admit) concerning the current papal situation. I should be ultra clear in that I am not saying he is not the pope or that we should not pray for him; we should in everything that is truly good, be obedient; but so much is truly evil from this pontificate, things that are manifestly contrary to Church teaching, to Scripture, to Tradition–that there is more and more much we cannot admit and follow along with. Whew. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on this. I hope I’m not being too blunt, and I am, as I say, quite open to correction on any of my points.

          • To A Professor. I just discovered your request since my entries Dec 3, 6.018. You are correct regarding what I allude to, that this nightmare possibility is real. Since Dec 2018 much has transpired in that direction. If it is actually so God apparently permits it as retribution, a chastisement for the decades of radical moral decline giving us a choice of remaining with Apostolic Tradition and Christ or following a New Paradigm estranged from that Tradition. That appeals to those already in moral decline. The deception ironically is embodied in the Pontiff’s moral duality. His double message. What is contrary to the Gospels is never stated formally and definitively in accord with standards for Magisterial authoritative doctrine. God will not permit the Chair of Peter to be corrupted. That guarantee of our faith however does not cover its occupant when he acts and speaks outside of that definitive Magisterial context. My counsel is prayer and sacrifice for the salvation of those distancing themselves from Christ. Tomorrow Pentecost is a good day to place accent on that effort.

  5. Very interesting essay. Much to think about here.

    One question: Is there significance to the fact that Our Lord’s rebuke of St. Peter occurred before His passion, death and resurrection and most importantly, before Pentecost (i.e., before the Holy Spirit had been breathed into them, or had descended upon them in tongues of fire? One might argue that St. Peter was a “new man” when he stepped out on the morning of Pentecost to preach the Good News to the crowds that had gathered in Jerusalem. The St. Peter of Good Friday denied Christ three times; The St. Peter of Pentecost was willing to suffer martyrdom.

  6. I am extremely worried to hear that the Vatican’s website VaticanNews has since almost one year several times labelled the Pope as the “Successor of Christ”, which is blatantly heretical since Francis is only the Successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ on Earth.
    https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3700365/posts
    Is this an ignorant journalist’s mistake or purposely intended by some hierarchs of the Pope’s inner circle, if not by the Pope himself? I don’t know, but isn’t someone claiming to be the Successor of Christ, already claiming he is God himself ?

    • Jack you’re correct. It is heresy to state that the Pope is the “successor” of Christ. He is the vicar of Christ, his representative. All popes since Peter are rightly called successors of Peter. Never of Christ. For this to be misstated by Vatican News indicates mistakenly or intentionally Pope Francis as the messiah of the New Paradigm.

  7. Wow, someone who actually understands who the person of the antichrist is, and that he will be Catholic, and operate on the level of pope! How few people realize this, because they don’t know Sacred Scripture enough to deduce it from those pages.

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