- Teaching
- Against the view that “Antichrist” names a succession of men in an office, Bellarmine argued, with the Fathers, that the Antichrist will be one particular man, and that he had not yet come: “as Christ was one single man, so the Antichrist will be one single man” (ita et Antichristus unus et singularis homo erit). Chapter 3 is given over to showing that he has not come. Francisco Suárez, writing a generation later against the same claim, sent his readers to Bellarmine's lengthy treatment there (Defensio Fidei V.5.3).
- Afterward
- St. John Henry Newman reached the same conclusion from the Fathers: the Antichrist “is one individual man, not a power,” and this was “the universal tradition of the early Church” (Newman on the Antichrist). The Catechism teaches what the Antichrist is, “the supreme religious deception,” and names no one (CCC 675).
Pillar III · Fathers, Saints & Teachers
St. Robert Bellarmine on the Antichrist
In the sixteenth century many of the Reformers taught that the pope was the Antichrist. St. Robert Bellarmine answered them, not with insults, but with Scripture and the Fathers. His answer gathered the old tradition into one place: the Antichrist will be one man, he has not yet come, and his reign will be short.
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At a glance
| Who | St. Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), born at Montepulciano in Tuscany, Jesuit priest, professor of controversies at the Roman College from 1576, cardinal and archbishop of Capua; he died in Rome on September 17, 1621 |
|---|---|
| Standing | Saint canonized in 1930 · Doctor of the Church proclaimed by Pope Pius XI in 1931 |
| The work | De Summo Pontifice (also called De Romano Pontifice, “On the Roman Pontiff”), Book III, on the Antichrist. It is part of his Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei, the lectures of the Roman College, first printed at Ingolstadt from 1586. |
| Translation | The Latin original is in the public domain. The only English translation we know of is Ryan Grant's Antichrist (Mediatrix Press), which is under copyright. We read Book III only in an imperfect machine-read scan of the Latin (Naples edition, at the Internet Archive), so this page mostly paraphrases him and gives the book and, where we could confirm it, the chapter. Where it quotes a short Latin phrase, the English is our own. |
| Weight | A Doctor of the Church writing as a controversialist. Where he hands on what the Fathers commonly taught, his witness is theirs. On many details he chose among the Fathers' opinions, and those choices are his own; the Church has not adopted them. |
Why Bellarmine matters here
Bellarmine wrote in a time of bitter quarrel. For many of the Reformers, “the pope is the Antichrist” was a settled conviction, and some built timetables of the end on it. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes one such scheme, which dated the Church's supposed change into the reign of Antichrist to A.D. 607 and expected the end of the world in 1866, and records that Bellarmine refuted this kind of reckoning “both from an exegetical and historical point of view” (“Antichrist”).
His method is the one this site tries to follow: begin with Scripture, read it with the Fathers, and test every identification against what the texts actually say. His conclusion cuts both ways. The Antichrist is not the pope; and he is not any other office, church or people either, but one man still to come.
His teaching, point by point
- Teaching
- Bellarmine lists six signs that Scripture and the Fathers place before or with the Antichrist, and gives each its own “demonstration” that they had not yet been fulfilled. Among them: the Gospel preached in the whole world (Matthew 24:14); the full breaking up of the Roman Empire, which in chapter 5 he argued had not yet happened in the way the prophecy describes; and, in chapter 6, the return of Enoch and Elijah.
- Enoch and Elijah
- With many Fathers, he held that the “two witnesses” of Revelation 11 are Enoch and Elijah, who never died (Genesis 5:24; 2 Kings 2:11) and will return to preach against the Antichrist. God promised through Malachi, “Now I am sending to you Elijah the prophet, before the day of the LORD comes” (Malachi 3:23). John saw the witnesses “prophesy for those twelve hundred and sixty days,” until “the beast that comes up from the abyss will wage war against them and conquer them and kill them” (Revelation 11:3, 7). Bellarmine took this literally, and placed their death shortly before the Antichrist's own end.
- Why mystery
- That Elijah's coming is promised is Scripture. That the two witnesses are Enoch and Elijah in person is a common opinion of the Fathers, not a teaching the Church has defined; others have read the witnesses as figures of the Church's prophetic witness. See Revelation 11 at The Lamb's Victory.
- Teaching
- Daniel's “time, two times, and half a time” (Daniel 7:25), John's forty-two months (Revelation 13:5) and his 1,260 days (Revelation 12:6) all point, Bellarmine argued, to a reign of about three and a half years, taken literally: “the Antichrist will reign only three years and a half” (Antichristus non regnabit nisi tres annos cum medio). From this he drew his sharpest argument: the popes had already sat in Rome for some fifteen hundred years, so the papacy cannot be the Antichrist.
- Afterward
- The Fathers commonly held that the last persecution would be short, and St. Augustine said the same (City of God 20.13). Whether the numbers are to be counted exactly, the Church has not said. Their main point is the one that matters: the trial is measured and limited by God, “shortened” for the sake of the elect (Matthew 24:22).
- Teaching
- Bellarmine gave a long chapter to the number 666 (Revelation 13:18). He reviewed the solutions that had been proposed, including those the Reformers aimed at the papacy, noted how much they disagreed with one another, and rejected those aimed at the papacy.
- Why mystery
- He stood where St. Irenaeus had stood fourteen centuries earlier: “It is therefore more certain, and less hazardous, to await the fulfilment of the prophecy” (Against Heresies 5.30.3). See the Fathers on Revelation 13.
- His opinion
- In chapter 12 (De generatione Antichristi), Bellarmine first set aside as plainly mistaken some fanciful ideas, such as that the Antichrist would be born of a virgin by the devil's work. Then, following several Fathers, he held that the Antichrist would be of Jewish origin; he cites those Fathers who, from Genesis 49:17 (“Let Dan be a serpent by the roadside”), placed him in the tribe of Dan; and he held that many would at first receive him as the Messiah they awaited. Against the Reformers, who placed the Antichrist's seat in Rome, he argued in chapter 13 (De sede Antichristi) that “the true view is that the Antichrist's seat will be Jerusalem, not Rome” (vera sententia est, Antichristi sedem fore Hierusalem, non Romam). He also discusses which temple is meant; we could read that argument only in a poor scan, so we do not report it.
- What the Church has not adopted
- These are his opinions, gathered from a strand of the Fathers; the Church has never taught them. St. Thomas Aquinas, three centuries earlier, had only reported such views as what “some say” (Aquinas on 2 Thessalonians).
- Read with charity
- Speculation of this kind has too often fed suspicion of the Jewish people, and that is a grave wrong. The Church teaches that what happened in Christ's passion “cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive,” nor against the Jews of today; that “the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God”; and that she “decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone” (Nostra Aetate 4). What the Church does hope for is the opposite of hostility: the Lord's coming awaits “his recognition by ‘all Israel’” (CCC 674; Romans 11:25–26). Nothing on this page may be used against any people.
Where Bellarmine speaks for the tradition, and where for himselfThat the Antichrist will be one man, that he is still to come, that his reign will be short, and that Christ will destroy him: here Bellarmine hands on what the Fathers commonly taught. The Church's own teaching is simpler: before Christ's coming the Church must pass through a final trial, the “supreme religious deception” of the Antichrist, and God's victory over evil will come at the Last Judgment (CCC 675–677). That the two witnesses are Enoch and Elijah in person, that the numbers are to be counted literally, that the Antichrist will be of Jewish origin and reign from Jerusalem: these are his choices among the Fathers' opinions, which the Church has not adopted. He wrote to defend the Church, not to name a man or fix a date, and he did neither. Neither do we.
For reflection
Answering without hatred
Bellarmine answered a charge aimed at the heart of his Church with arguments, not abuse. When my faith is attacked, or when I disagree with other Christians, do I answer with truth and charity, or with contempt?
Sources
- St. Robert Bellarmine, Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei, De Summo Pontifice, Book III (De Antichristo), in Opera omnia, vol. 1 (Naples: Giuliano, 1856), Internet Archive. English: Antichrist, trans. Ryan Grant (Mediatrix Press), publisher's page. We read Book III in the Internet Archive's machine-read text of the Naples volume (pp. 433–472), which confirms chapters 6, 12 and 13 by their headings and chapters 5 and 8 by the sequence of his “demonstrations”; we also consulted LeRoy E. Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2 (1948), pp. 498–502, online, a Protestant history that summarizes the book chapter by chapter; chapter 3 is also confirmed by Suárez
- Francisco Suárez, Defensio Fidei Catholicae, Book V, ch. 5, §3, Latin text (University of Birmingham)
- Sydney Smith, “St. Robert Francis Romulus Bellarmine,” Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), New Advent; Vatican City State, “September 17: Saint Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church”
- Anthony Maas, “Antichrist,” Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), New Advent
- Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate (1965), 4
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 673–677, vatican.va