“However, brothers, concerning the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you 2 not to be quickly shaken from your reason nor to be alarmed either by an inspired statement or by a spoken message or by a letter appearing to be from us, to the effect that the day of Jehovah is here. 3 Let no one lead you astray in any way, because it will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness gets revealed, the son of destruction. –2 Thessalonians 2:1-3 NWT
Scholars and exegetes are divided over who this man of lawlessness could be. Will he prove to be one person, a group of men, an institution or a concept? For example:
“…this passage has been the hotbed of every imaginable eschatological movement in the history of the church; and that in turn has caused a large part of the church to avoid the passage with benign neglect. On the one hand, what was intended by Paul to be corrective of a false eschatology has in turn become the basis of later competing eschatologies; on the other hand, because Paul’s eschatological outlook and language have made some later Christians uncomfortable, they have simply acted as if it were not a part of inspired Scripture. But neither of these views is fair either to Paul or to the Thessalonians. (New International Commentary on the New Testament)
Albert Barnes comments:
For that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first – Until an apostasy (ἀποστασία apostasia) shall have occurred – the great apostasy. There is scarcely any passage of the New Testament which has given occasion to greater diversity of opinion than this. Though the reference seems to be plain, and there is scarcely any prophecy of the Bible apparently more obvious and easy in its general interpretation; yet it is proper to mention some of the opinions which have been entertained of it.
Some have referred it to a great apostasy from the Christian church, particularly on account of persecution, which would occur before the destruction of Jerusalem. The “coming of the Lord” they suppose refers to the destruction of the holy city, and according to this, the meaning is, that there would be a great apostasy before that event would take place. Of this opinion was Vitringa, who refers the “apostasy” to a great defection from the faith which took place between the time of Nero and Trajan.
Whitby also refers it to an event which was to take place before the destruction of Jerusalem, and supposes that the apostasy would consist in a return from the Christian to the Jewish faith by multitudes of professed converts. The “man of sin,” according to him, means the Jewish nation, so characterized on account of its eminent wickedness.
Hammond explains the apostasy by the defection to the Gnostics, by the arts of Simon Magus, whom he supposes to be the man of sin, and by the “day of the Lord” he also understands the destruction of Jerusalem.
Grotius takes Caius Caesar or Caligula, to be the man of sin, and by the apostasy he understands his abominable wickedness. In the beginning of his government, he says, his plans of iniquity were concealed, and the hopes of all were excited in regard to his reign; but his secret iniquity was subsequently “revealed,” and his true character understood.
Wetstein understands by the “man of sin,” that it referred to Titus and the Flavian house. He says that he does not understand it of the Roman Pontiff, who “is not one such as the demonstrative pronoun thrice repeated designates, and who neither sits in the temple of God, nor calls himself God, nor Caius, nor Simon Gioriae, nor any Jewish impostor, nor Simon Magus.”
Koppe refers it to the King mentioned in Daniel 11:36. According to him, the reference is to a great apostasy of the Jews from the worship of God, and the “man of sin” is the Jewish people.
Others have supposed that the reference is to Muhammed, and that the main characteristics of the prophecy may be found in him.
Of the Papists, a part affirm that the apostasy is the falling away from Rome in the time of the Reformation, but the greater portion suppose that the allusion is to Antichrist, who, they say, will appear in the world before the great day of judgment, to combat religion and the saints. See these opinions stated at length, and examined, in Dr. Newton on the Prophecies, Dissertation xxii.
Some more recent expositors have referred it to Napoleon Bonaparte, and some (as Oldshausen) suppose that it refers to someone who has not yet appeared, in whom all the characteristics here specified will be found united.
Most Protestant commentators have referred it to the great apostasy under the papacy, and, by the “man of sin,” they suppose there is allusion to the Roman Pontiff, the Pope. It is evident that we are in better circumstances to understand the passage than those were who immediately succeeded the apostles.
Eighteen hundred years have passed (written circa 1880’s) away since the Epistle was written, and the “day of the Lord” has not yet come, and we have an opportunity of inquiring, whether in all that long tract of time any one man can be found, or any series of men have arisen, to whom the description here given is applicable. If so, it is in accordance with all the proper rules of interpreting prophecy, to make such an application. If it is fairly applicable to the papacy, and cannot be applied in its great features to anything else, it is proper to regard it as having such an original reference. Happily, the expressions which are used by the apostle are, in themselves, not difficult of interpretation, and all that the expositor has to do is, to ascertain whether in any one great apostasy all the things here mentioned have occurred. If so, it is fair to apply the prophecy to such an event; if not so, we must wait still for its fulfillment. (Barnes Notes on the New Testament)
So if we are going to understand the identity of the one mentioned in this passage, we are going to need all the help we can get.
First, let’s see what we can learn from the rest of Paul’s description:
“He stands in opposition and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he sits down in the temple of God, publicly showing himself to be a god. Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is acting as a restraint, so that he will be revealed in his own due time. True, the mystery of this lawlessness is already at work, but only until the one who is right now acting as a restraint is out of the way. Then, indeed, the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will do away with by the spirit of his mouth and bring to nothing by the manifestation of his presence. But the lawless one’s presence is by the operation of Satan with every powerful work and lying signs and wonders and every unrighteous deception for those who are perishing, as a retribution because they did not accept the love of the truth in order that they might be saved. That is why God lets a deluding influence mislead them so that they may come to believe the lie, 12 in order that they all may be judged because they did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness. –2 Thessalonians 2:4-12
Regarding verse 4 the NICNT states:
…what Paul does next is to describe the Rebel’s activities in a way that offers the divine reason for his doom. Everything about him reveals him as “anti-God,” [1]not in titular terms, but in terms of his activities. For much of the rest of the sentence Paul is indebted to the language of Daniel11:36 LXX and Ezekiel 28:2 The first passage is a description of the self-exaltation of Antiochus IV, who styled himself as “Epiphanes” (the divinely manifested one); thus Daniel described him as “exalting himself against every deity and against ‘the God of gods,’ ” meaning the one God above all others that might be thought of as “gods.” This is both the language and the imagery that Paul uses in the first half of this clause. The description of the Rebel as “opposing and exalting himself over everything that is called [2] God or is worshiped” [3]is, as in the Old Testament passages, a way of describing his total arrogance. Thus with this adoption of the language of Daniel, Paul reveals his understanding of that passage as referring to an event that was yet to come, [4]as a reduplication of one of the truly awful tragedies in Jewish history, when Antiochus did this very thing.
The Ezekiel passage is a prophecy against the king of Tyre, who “in the pride of [his] heart” said, “I am a god; I sit on the throne of a god.” Using Ezekiel’s language and imagery, Paul thus reminds the Thessalonians that the evidence of the Rebel’s arrogance will be to “set himself up [5]in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.[6] The temple, of course, is the one in Jerusalem, [7]which by this time had already been desecrated three times. The Holy Place had been entered by Antiochus in the third century bce, by Pompey in the first century bce, and by the Roman emperor Caligula in 41 ce. What cannot be known from our distance is whether in the present passage Paul expected this to happen yet another time, or whether he was simply using well-known “anti-Christ” events to describe the Rebel’s self-deification. More likely it is the latter, since by the time Paul wrote this letter the temple in Jerusalem no longer held any importance to him, except in a symbolic way to remind others of God’s past presence with his people.
Thus in this opening description, Paul emphasizes the Rebel’s opposition to God; indeed, when he does appear on the scene, he will stand in opposition to every known religious expression. The second description of the Rebel in 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10 will emphasize his relationship to those who are to perish with him. But before that, Paul continues to remind the Thessalonians of previous instruction, in this case about the fact that the Rebel will be kept at bay until the appointed time. (New International Commentary on the New Testament)
Regarding the temple of God where the man of lawlessness seats himself, Lenski comments:
“The sense is plain to the ordinary reader whether he be Greek or English. This Antichrist reveals himself as the Antichrist by this pagan act of seating himself in the true God’s own sanctuary. He does not deny the true God, he is neither atheist nor agnostic; in fact, he worships the true God. But he does it by this pagan act, the climax of all anti-Christianity. He sits in God’s own place as if he, too, were God and shows and exhibits himself to all Christendom with the claim “that he is God,” that no less than deity belongs also to him. The very idea of extending deity in this way is utterly pagan. The great apostasy accepts this claim and honors this Antichrist with divine honor. That is what constitutes this apostasy.” (R.C.H. Lenski “Interpretation of Second Thessalonians pages 411-412)
Given what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2, I would tend to agree with Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Jerome, Lightfoot etc. that the term “temple” was transferred to the Christian congregation:
“So you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens of the holy ones and are members of the household of God, and you have been built up on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, while Christ Jesus himself is the foundation cornerstone. In union with him the whole building, being harmoniously joined together, is growing into a holy temple for Jehovah. In union with him you too are being built up together into a place for God to inhabit by spirit. –Ephesians 2:19-22
I’ll post this much for now and give myself time to think about all of this. For additional insights please see the article “Who Is the Man of Lawlessness Part 2” by contributing writer Vox Ratio. If you have any thoughts you would like to add, please don’t hesitate to leave me a comment. In the next article I will try and put together who the Watchtower society identifies the man of lawlessness to be. Yes, to them he is no mystery. They believe he has already been revealed to them.
[1] [It is not clear historically how or where the term “Antichrist” originated. Its only biblical use (ἀντίχριστος) is in 1 and 2 John (1Jn_2:18, 1Jn_2:22; 1Jn_4:3; 2 John 7).]
[2] [Gk. πάντα λεγόμενον θεόν. By inserting the λεγόμενον into the language of Daniel, Paul betrays the absolute monotheism that belongs to his generation. Thus Daniel’s “every deity” in Paul’s terms is “every so-called deity.”]
[3] [Gk. σέβασμα, meaning “object of reverence,” which refers to things as well as to people. This phrase is the sure giveaway that Paul is echoing the Daniel passage, since it is otherwise so unnecessary to his present concerns.]
[4] [At least that seems to be the plain sense of the passage; Lightfoot (112) preferred to understand the whole passage as representing “the impersonation of some evil principle or movement.”]
[5] [Gk. ὥστε αὐτὸν … καθίσαι (lit. “so that he sits …”). Part of the arrogance is not simply that he would “set himself up” (as T/NIV), but that he would assume to sit on another’s throne, thus assuming a divine role for himself.]
[6] .” [Gk. ὅτι ἐστὶν θεός; although the English translations have consistently rendered this as “God,” in light of the anarthrous θεός, it is possible that Paul intended simply that “he was a god,” or “divine.” After all, Antiochus himself was not a monotheist!]
[7] [Although some early interpreters (Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Jerome), given that the temple had by then long been destroyed, understandably transferred it to the church—a view also adopted by some later interpreters as well (e.g., Lightfoot; Giblin, Threat, 76-80). Green (312-13) argues for a temple of the imperial cult in the city of Thessalonica itself; but that seems to be a bit of a stretch for Paul’s use of such biblical language as τὸν ναὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, especially with the combined definite articles.]