“Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.” 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, ESV
What may it mean to proclaim oneself to be God?
The New Testament is a shocking book, proclaiming as it does the redemption of Creation. In Romans 8:19, Creation itself as described as eagerly waiting for the revelation of the sons of God. But this redemption is radically personal and dependent on the person.
In the Gospels, Jesus called His followers directly, or they sought Him out. His followers responded to a personal calling. You could use the term vocation. They were called by Him or by their spirit to follow Him.
One of the foremost parables that Ivan Illich relied on in his exposition of the Gospel is the Good Samaritan. In this story (Luke 10:30-37), an Israelite is attacked, robbed and left injured on the side of the road. A series of Israelites then pass the man, beaten, including a priest and a Levite, that is, a Temple assistant. None of the Israelite’s brethren decided to help him. Then, a Samaritan, a man descended from Abraham but a pariah to most of Jewry in the time of Christ, saw him, and experienced a turning in his guts. The language is very bodily and immediate. In response to this personal call to help the other, the Samaritan rescued the Israelite, tended his wounds himself, put him up in an inn and paid for his room and board.
Jesus said, responding to the religious expert who asked the question, “Who would you say was his neighbor?”
Just as the religious expert replied, we would have to say, “The one who helped him.”
For Ivan, this is the rupturing, rapturous nature of the Gospel. Ethics, which had come from the word “ethnos,” the same word from which we get ethnicity, began to be separated from the people one was related to and became about the personal, immediate response to the other person in front of me.
For Ivan, the former Catholic priest, this intimate, gut-based feeling of the spirit is essential to the Gospel. The Gospel, from the beginning with the Incarnation, began a radical, personal salvation and transformation of the person into the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. Now, the person in need in front of me is Christ Himself, as he said, and warned, in Matthew 25:31-46. This began the deification of man, not in terms of sanctifying impurity and corruption, but the redemption of man from the fallen creation, which is in darkness, to follow the Holy Spirit in the light. The Gospel bursts light forth into the darkness through the personal freedom of the Holy Spirit, burning through the ties that bind.
With the radical nature of God as man on earth, a new possibility of seeing opened, of caring for my fellow humans. However, this also opened the possibility of a choice never before seen: to reject this free gift, this presence of God in the other and oneself. For Ivan, this is sin, deeply connected to the mysterium inequitatis described in the Latin Bible in 2 Thessalonians 2. Unlike medieval forms of sin as the breaking of the law, here sin is a relational concept, one that, provided one turns back to Christ, always ensures healing and redemption.
The charity emphasized by Jesus Christ was operative in the Christian church for centuries as a personal practice. Ivan Illich, in his interview series with David Cayley called “Corruptio Optimi Pessima,” described how the Christian family would leave a candle lit and a room ready in the evening, just in case Jesus arrived at the door.
However, this personal, communal practice ended with the creation of government, professionalized programs that ensured the housing of the homeless. In a city in now-Turkey, Ivan cited how Saint John Chrysostomos opposed the creation of a government program that intended to house the poor and homeless. John insisted that it is a Christian’s personal duty to care for those in need, that is, Christ. By giving the responsibility over to professional services, a Christian forfeited their personal care of the other, that is, Christ, for a depersonalized institutional solution.
The replacement of personal responsibility with institutional fulfillment, for Ivan, is the corruptio optimi pessima, the corruption of the best becoming the worst.
He sees Christianity as heaven on earth for the blooming of fruitful personal relationships. In his words, the good is another person. What else could it be? In contrast to the personal calling Jesus gave each of His followers, including you, if you so decide, their gradual institutional, impersonal substitutions (medicine, schooling, technology, transportation etc.) as the replacement of the Gospel with something else entirely.
The replacement of personal relationship and care that the Gospel invites with the fulfillment of these desires by massive, impersonal, governmental, bureaucratic and technological alternatives, to Ivan, was the 2 Thessalonians 2 “man of lawlessness.” This man “opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god and object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.” So, you may have the earthly salvation offered by God, that is, charity to the poor, kindness and humility, but do not share it with others yourself because there are ‘trained professionals’ who are apparently schooled in that sort of thing.
These institutions, rather than inviting the sons and daughters of God to bring forth the new creation as invoked in John 1 and Romans 8, instead are not interested in someone so rocking the boat as to require them to check their policy prescriptives. Crucially, the people of these institutions have no interest in this, as they have, so to speak, sold their soul to the devil, requiring for their well-being not the personal success of health, wisdom and positive relationships, but the expansion of their institution.
Much of Ivan Illich’s work critiquing contemporary institutions and practices, from 1971’s “Deschooling Society” to 1973’s “Tools for Conviviality” to the 1975 “Medical Nemesis” can be read as what happens when the individual is absorbed into a collective process, apparently intended for good, that does not particularly care about him or her personally. He described school as the new ritual of participation of modern society, tools as damaging people, and the health-industrial complex as a danger to both health and medicine.
A significant influence for Ivan Illich’s thoughts on the Antichrist is Vladimir Solovyov’s “A Short Story of the Antichrist” (1900). In it, a man using knowledge and not Jesus, but nonetheless appealing to the good and humane, rises to world prominence. He sat in the temple of God, that is, a position of authority, desiring worship as God, that is, as the supreme authority. For Ivan, the Antichrist was not someone who was necessarily violent, not even criminal–the Antichrist was the man who proposed that he could do what Christ did, just without Him. His scriptural justification is Paul’s writing in 2 Corinthians 11:14, that “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”
The ancient world was a brutal and grim place. The poor received no help. It was a dark world. It is a very arrogant perspective to presume that we have outgrown the man whose hands fed us, let us put nails through them, and rose again to arouse our spirits through His Holy Spirit.
The Antichrist is that which stands between you and Jesus making a new life and seeing the redemption of creation. It is the gods of reason and organization, rather than Yahweh and the Holy Spirit.
If you find yourself struggling against the spiritual power of Antichrist, I invite you to pray this prayer:
Yahweh, I breathe in your name and receive your Holy Spirit through faith in Your Son Jesus Christ. I know that through Him, the veil was torn, the debts are paid and my salvation is complete. Just like your Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:5, I demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. I declare salvation over my life and freedom for my spirit. Through You, I run my race. Through You, I do good works. Through You, I am free. In the name of Jesus, amen.
May the Lord bless you, and may the Lord keep you. Yes, you. Personally.
Veracity as Virtue 
Beautiful.
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