This is a post that deals with theology, mythology and history. It focuses on the struggle prophesied by the apostle Paul between good and evil in these present days. The plotline suggests that there are already spiritual forces with human confederates and combatants equally foul and ruthless that are gathering to overwhelm humankind, whether Christians or those of other religions as well as those who have no religion. The wicked spiritual entities focus on hopelessness, madness, murder and mayhem while their mortal minions traffic in betrayal, racism, pornography and war. We see this already in our countries and our cultures, but this is just a preview of what is to come. What keeps catastrophic collapse from happening at this very moment is a layered defense of people called by God to perform certain tasks. The nefarious powers are confounded and held more or less in check by secular institutions in government, people of good will with sound moral convictions, merciful and just who will not yield or compromise. They are supported by legions of angels under the authority of the Holy Spirit as well.
In II Thessalonians 2:2-6 St. Paul speaks of the ‘man of lawlessness’ who comes before the Second Coming of Christ. The phrase ‘man of lawlessness’ is thought by most New Testament commentators to mean the Antichrist of Revelation. But this ‘man of lawlessness’ or Antichrist cannot come any sooner because his appearance is being restrained (κατέχον) by something (verse 6) or someone (verse 7). Κατέχον means ‘hold back’, ‘hold fast’, ‘detain’ or ‘retain.’ In other words, there is some sort of impediment or invisible spiritual shield that keeps this Ambassador of Hell from emerging into our world. This person is described as a man, but he is much more than a man because he represents Satan himself. And sheer lawlessness (ἀνομίας) follows closely on his heels.
In Virgil’s Aeneid 1.52–63, Jupiter saw an ongoing need for the winds to be confined against their will, lest they overwhelm sea and land as well as sky. So the winds were imprisoned in a vast cave, where they vented their fury at being restrained. Virgil describes them as straining against the cavern walls with hurricane force, and then gives us their rage in his own words:
indignant, with a great mountain roar, they fume around the barriers1
This confinement of the winds also illuminates the predica-ment of the Watchers better known as the fallen angels described in I Enoch and in Scripture. Even now they strain against the chains of their gloomy cells in Tartarus. Yet if the force that restrains them were to weaken or collapse, these impenitent angels with their demonic hosts might destroy mankind in an apocalyptic frenzy before we realized we were even in peril
A spoiler alert!
What can we expect when the defenses collapse and the enemy crosses the lines? Thucydides gives us a small hint when speaking of the plague of 430–429 BC that killed tens of thousands of Greeks — perhaps a quarter of the population of Athens. He describes how almost all of the people alive thought themselves dying and did whatever they wanted with no concern of punishment. The historian writes:
There was neither fear of the gods nor law of man to restrain them. As for the first, they judged it to be just the same whether they worshipped them or not, as they saw all alike perishing; and for the last, no one expected to live to be brought to trial for his offences, but each felt that a far severer sentence had been already passed upon them all and hung ever over their heads, and before this fell it was only reasonable to enjoy life a little.'
So, the people in Athens were completely lawless. As you might imagine, they stole what they wanted, murdered who they wanted and set fires to buildings as they wanted. Being caught on the streets in daytime meant certain death, yet along what might follow after dark.
I want to offer three examples of how kατέχον has been used in antiquity and a an example of ἀνομίας taken from the French Revolution.
There is one more analogy on the word restraint, this one from history.
It was close to noon on August 9, 378. Fifty-year-old Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire Flavius Valens Augustus had marched his 15,000–20,000 men over seven miles (twelve km) that morning as the summer sun rose in the sky. Each legionnaire carried 40–70 pounds of armor and weaponry across hilly plains and rough terrain. In spite of their excellent conditioning, they arrived at the battlefield north of Adrianople, in the province of Thrace, weary and dehydrated by the heat. Waiting for them over the next hill were the rested and ready-for-battle Goths who were eager for battle. Led by a crafty Goth leader named Fritigern, he stalled the battle several hours pretending to negotiate, while waiting for his own cavalry to arrive. As the temperature became increasingly hot, he knew that his opponents would only grow more fatigued. When the battle began, the Roman cavalry was divided into two parts, one on each flank of the thousands of legionnaires on foot. The job of the Roman cavalry was to protect the center of the Roman line. Roman generals could point to very few defeats over the past five hundred years — Hannibal’s victories at Cannae being the most humbling exception. It was almost impossible to break through the Roman line, which was often three deep. It was impossible to even get them to budge once engaged.
However, on this occasion, the cavalry on the left inexplicably broke first, with the right following — whether through an uncoordinated and uncommunicated strategic retreat or through no desire to fight given the field. This left the thousands of foot soldiers to be savaged and cut to pieces by the Goths, which they were in short order. Valens himself was killed that afternoon. The trained, disciplined legions Rome was known for were nowhere in sight. Roman soldier and historian Ammianus Marcellinus describes the aftermath:
Bodies prostrate on the earth, fields were filled with the slain, and groans of the dying, from the deep wounds of those run through, these were heard with enormous fear.
The post mortem
The military catastrophe, however, had a deeper spiritual dimension. To the citizens of Rome, the Goths, like the Franks, Huns and other tribes, represented cruelty and lawlessness. This was a form of the lawlessness that Paul warned about in II Thessalonians chapter 2. Behind the hordes of Goths and within their camps and counsel were lawless spirits intent on wreaking incredible harm on the Roman forces. Adrianople was just one battle of many where these Roman forces would be confronted by the powers of darkness. For these legions to be conquered by them would mean the end of Rome — and that is a truth as it turned out. Yet Rome, including its armies, had already been demoralized and compromised by greed, politics, betrayal and pride. They were no longer their once invincible selves. They could not restrain the enemy any longer, and when the center fell, the savages poured through and the barbarians were at the gate.
Nevertheless, Valens was a Christian as he understood Christianity. Yet he allowed himself to be overcome by pride and died on the day of the battle. Nor am I claiming, as some early fathers did, that Rome was particularly blessed by God. Like other empires before and after them, they had their good points and their bad points. They provided a peace — Pax Romana — to those countries that submitted to Roman law, but they also persecuted Christians, at least until Constantine became Emperor. We know that God will prevail in the end, but the success of every battle until now and beyond is not assured. The Bible does not say that we should eat, drink and be merry and let God and His angels take responsibility for our safekeeping. In fact, we have important roles to play in terms of resisting evil. We need to pray earnestly (1 Thessalonians 5:17). We need to speak out against evil (Ephesians 5:11). We need to be faithful (1 Cor. 4:2) to the calling God has given us. In some small way, my safekeeping may depend on you interceding with our Father on my behalf, and your preservation may well depend on me doing the same. Because once the line is breached, it is difficult to restore the balance. So, when evil tries to force its way into your world, your home, your heart and mind, you need to resist it, don’t let it in, hold the line even as the legionnaires at Adrianople did at the cost of their lives.
Before moving on, I want to present a modern example of the need to ‘hold the line.’ This is seen every spring, primarily along the Mississippi, as snowmelt makes its way down from the northern states. Then again in summer and fall, hurricanes with rain clouds driven by powerful winds can cause devastating flooding as well. Take Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, when it made landfall just east of New Orleans as a Category 3 storm, having weakened from its peak Category 5 strength over the Gulf. The levee canals failed under the surge, and the city of New Orleans (with some districts as much as eight feet below sea level) was inundated from multiple directions. Jails filled with prisoners had water levels so deep that inmates were standing neck-deep, making it impossible to operate the facilities. These waters carried alligators, snakes, raw sewage and other hazardous debris. Meanwhile, the anarchy in the city meant that people were constantly being arrested with no place for police to hold lawless felons, until the Navy could send in a barge to warehouse them and a hospital ship for the critically ill and injured. Once again, ordinary citizens had to pitch in to hold off the lawless and the predatory — men and beasts alike. It is perhaps the most visceral modern reminder of why the ancients thought it wisest to keep the destructive forces of nature caged and under firm control.
Aνομίας: The French Revolution
The French Revolution (1789–1799) warns us of what friends and neighbors are capable of when they come under the influence of demonic forces. Without rehearsing the politics that led to the fall of Louis XVI and the rise of Maximilien Robespierre, it is enough to note that the guillotine was the last thing many royals and commoners alike saw before the blade came crashing down. History tells us that between 15,000 and 17,000 people met their deaths thus by official execution alone — with estimates of total deaths, including summary executions across the provinces, running far higher. Among them was the Princess Marie-Thérèse-Louise de Lamballe, age 42 who was stripped naked and beheaded by the mob. Her crime was being a friend of Marie Antoinette. The Victorian historian and man of letters Thomas Carlyle describes her fate in his landmark work The French Revolution: A History (1837).
She shivers back, at the sight of bloody sabres; but there is no return: Onwards! That fair hind head is cleft with the axe; the neck is severed. That fair body is cut in fragments; with indignities, and obscene horrors of mustachio grands-lèvres2, which human nature would fain find incredible, — which shall be read in the original language only. She was beautiful, she was good, she had known no happiness. Her head is fixed on a pike; paraded under the windows of the Temple; that a still more hated, a Marie Antoinette, may see.
Scenes such as this (or those even more grotesque) were repeated virtually daily as the hunters became the hunted themselves. Thousands of priests along with other men, women and children were drowned in the Loire River. In other cases, people were lined up and killed with grapeshot and canister. This weapon essentially turns cannons into shotguns, and many people can be murdered or mortally maimed with a single shot. During the French Revolution, anyone could say those feared words “j’accuse” to another for any reason and blood would soon be spilled.
Why we fight
This person likely has no idea what he is up against. But if he serves the living God, there is a chance that humanity will prevail — though not a promise that the innocent will be spared. Sometimes the innocent are taken from us and we are left with questions and bitterness toward God who let this happen. I certainly have no answer, nor do I know anyone who does. I do not know why six million Jews died in the Holocaust of World War II. Where was God? It is small comfort — though nonetheless true — to say that had people such as Oskar Schindler and Dietrich Bonhoeffer not resisted, and had nations such as Great Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union not formed an alliance, things might have been incomparably worse. Germany had proposed deporting the Jews of Europe to Madagascar before settling on extermination. Axis ambitions, left unchecked, harbored designs that could eventually have reached American shores.
Yet there were also moments of miraculous deliverance within that darkness. The Blitzkrieg allowed the Germans to conquer France in six weeks. It was barely six weeks after German armor crossed the border before they marched down the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The British staged a strategic withdrawal to the north and found themselves trapped on a narrow strip of beach near Dunkirk — 338,000 British and Allied forces, praying and waiting for deliverance. The German advance paused unexpectedly on orders from Generaloberst Gerd von Rundstedt, confirmed by Hitler himself, much to the fury of Panzer commander Heinz Guderian. Why did these senior commanders recommend that their forces stand fast, allowing the British to escape and fight another day? Perhaps an angel of God put the notion of a halt into the German officers’ heads?
God is not concerned with numeric superiority. In the deuterocanonical 1 Maccabees 3:18–20 (a text beloved by Catholic and Lutheran readers alike) we read:
'It is an easy matter for many to be shut up in the hands of a few: and there is no difference in the sight of the God of heaven to deliver with a great multitude, or with a small company. For the success of war is not in the multitude of the army, but strength cometh from heaven.
And then there is the resurrecting power of the Lord of Hosts, described in Ezekiel 37 — the valley of dry bones restored to life. Total defeat becoming the theatre of divine power. St. Paul reminds us that God’s power is perfected in human weakness — the weaker the vessel, the more visible the power working through it. This is one reason I am troubled to hear people speak today of how invincible America is. I fear we are inviting a demonstration of God’s power to overturn that presumption.
So while I cannot fully explain why the innocent suffer and die, I do believe we are called to soldier on — until that day when we are relieved of duty.
Footnotes
1Aeneid 1.55–56, Fairclough translation, Loeb Classical Library, 1916. Public domain.
2A reference to the woman’s labia.
