Pillar III · Fathers, Saints & Teachers
St. John Henry Newman on the Antichrist
In four lectures, Newman gathered what the early Church believed about the Antichrist. His central lesson is one the Church still teaches: the man of lawlessness does not come out of nowhere. He comes through an apostasy, a falling away from faith that prepares his way.
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At a glance
| Who | St. John Henry Newman (1801–1890), Anglican priest and Oxford scholar, received into the Catholic Church in 1845, made a cardinal in 1879 |
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| Standing | Saint canonized October 13, 2019 · Doctor of the Church declared by Pope Leo XIV on November 1, 2025 |
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| The work | The Patristical Idea of Antichrist, four lectures first given in Advent 1835 while Newman was still an Anglican, later republished by him as a Catholic in Discussions and Arguments (1872) |
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| Weight | A faithful summary of what the Fathers taught, by a Doctor of the Church. Where Newman reports the Fathers' consensus, it carries their weight; where the Fathers only offered opinions, Newman says so himself. |
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Why Newman matters here
Newman did not set out to identify the Antichrist or to date his coming. He set out to recover what the early Church believed, so that Christians would recognize the signs without being carried away by them. His method is the one this site tries to follow: Scripture first, then the Fathers, carefully distinguishing their shared tradition from their private speculation.
He is especially clear on the point the Catechism makes today: before Christ's return the Church must pass through a final trial, and “the supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist” (CCC 675).
The four lectures
Lecture 1 · The Times of AntichristPatristic teachingUnfoldingFuture
“The Man of Sin is born of an Apostasy, or at least comes into power through an apostasy.”
- Teaching
- Newman builds on St. Paul: “that day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the lawless one is revealed” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). Before the Antichrist comes, a great falling away from the faith prepares the ground.
- One man
- With the Fathers, Newman holds that the Antichrist “is one individual man, not a power,—not a mere ethical spirit, or a political system,” and calls this “the universal tradition of the early Church.”
- Our own day
- Looking at his own century, Newman wrote: “Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world.” Yet he refused to go further: whether that apostasy would itself give birth to the Antichrist, he said, “we cannot know.”
- Why two labels
- Apostasy has recurred in every age, and is unfolding now. The final apostasy and the man of lawlessness himself are still future (CCC 675).
Lecture 2 · The Religion of AntichristPatristic teachingFuture
“Antichrist will be an open blasphemer, opposing himself to every existing worship, true and false.”
- Teaching
- Following 2 Thessalonians 2:4 and Daniel 11:36–37, the Fathers expected the Antichrist to exalt himself above every god and to set up a new worship of his own. Newman points to the French Revolution as a foreshadowing, when men enthroned an abstraction in place of God: “They called it LIBERTY, and they literally worshipped it as a divinity.”
- See also
- The beast that is worshiped and the image it demands (Revelation 13).
Lecture 3 · The City of AntichristPatristic opinionMystery
- Teaching
- Newman identifies the “great city” of Revelation 17–18 with Rome, the imperial city that persecuted the Church, and reads the beast she rides as the Roman Empire, whose ten kings have not yet arisen. Rome has suffered many judgments but has never been utterly destroyed, he observes, because “a Christian Church is still in that city.” He also sees in Babylon something wider: the proud, worldly spirit of every great city, which Christians must not absorb.
- Why mystery
- On the place and form of the final city, the Fathers offered opinions, not a settled tradition, and Newman treats them that way.
- See also
- Who is Babylon? at The Lamb's Victory.
Lecture 4 · The Persecution of AntichristPatristic teachingFuture
- Teaching
- The Fathers expected the last persecution to be fiercer than any before it, with public worship suppressed and false miracles that could deceive even the elect, and to last about three and a half years, “a time, two times, and half a time” (Daniel 7:25; Revelation 12:14), shortened for the sake of the elect (Matthew 24:22). Newman holds that the Church passes through this trial rather than being taken out of it.
- Counsel
- Not fear but vigilance: “every generation of Christians should be on the watch-tower, looking out.”
- See also
- Matthew 24:15–28; Is the rapture in Revelation?
Newman's own cautionNewman distinguishes what the Fathers hand on as the Church's tradition from what they offer as interpretation of prophecy. On the details of prophecy, he says, they are often “giving, and profess to be giving, either their own private opinions.” He names no one as the Antichrist and sets no date. That restraint is part of his lesson.
For reflection
Where is the falling away in me?
Newman teaches that the great apostasy is prepared by many small ones. Where have I let my faith grow cold, or traded it for something the world offers instead? What would it mean to stand firm in that place this week?
Sources
- John Henry Newman, “The Patristical Idea of Antichrist,” in Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects (1872), Lectures 1–4, Newman Reader
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 675–677
- Pope Leo XIV, declaration of St. John Henry Newman as Doctor of the Church, November 1, 2025 (report)
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