Home › Fathers, Saints & Teachers › St. Thomas Aquinas
At a glance
| Who | St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274), Dominican friar, priest and theologian, who taught at Paris and in Italy and died at the abbey of Fossanova on March 7, 1274 |
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| Standing | Saint canonized by Pope John XXII on July 18, 1323 · Doctor of the Church proclaimed by Pope St. Pius V in 1567 |
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| The works | His Commentary on the Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, lectures 1–2, part of his commentaries on the letters of St. Paul; the Summa Theologiae, Third Part, question 8, articles 7–8; and the Supplement to the Summa, question 73, on the signs before the judgment, which was completed after his death (see below) |
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| Translations | The commentary in the translation of Fabian R. Larcher, O.P., Latin and English side by side, at aquinas.cc (The Aquinas Institute). The Summa in the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (2nd ed., 1920), at New Advent. |
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| Weight | Very great as theology, but theology all the same. St. Thomas writes as a teacher explaining Scripture and the Fathers. Where he reports what “some say,” he is passing on opinions, and he usually says so. |
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Why St. Thomas matters here
St. Thomas did not write a book about the end of the world. What he left is quieter and in some ways more useful: a line-by-line reading of 2 Thessalonians 2, the chapter on which the Church's teaching about the Antichrist chiefly rests, and a short passage in the Summa that asks what kind of “head” the Antichrist is. In both places he gathers what the Fathers had said, weighs it, and keeps Christ at the center.
He is also a model of restraint. He gives more than one reading of the hard verses, reports the opinions of others without making them his own, and, in the Supplement drawn from his writings, warns against reading the ordinary troubles of history as sure signs of the end.
His teaching, step by step
“…the revolt from the Roman empire should be understood not only as a revolt from the temporal but from the spiritual empire, namely from the catholic faith of the Roman church.”
- Scripture
- “For unless the apostasy comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one doomed to perdition” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). Thomas's Latin Bible has discessio, which his translator renders “revolt.”
- Teaching
- He gives two readings. The revolt may be “a revolt from faith,” since the faith was to be accepted by the whole world; or “a revolt from the Roman empire, to which the whole world was subject” (n. 34). Then he faces the obvious objection: the nations had long since broken away from the Roman Empire, “and yet the Antichrist has still not come?” His answer, citing a sermon of Pope St. Leo the Great on the apostles, is that “it is not over yet, but has changed from a temporal revolt into a spiritual revolt,” so the falling away that matters is a falling away from the Catholic faith (n. 35).
- Why two labels
- Falling away from the faith has happened in every age and is happening now. The final apostasy, and the lawless one it prepares, are still to come (CCC 675).
“And so he is called the man of sin, because he will be wholly given over to sins.”
- Teaching
- Following the Gloss, Thomas sets the Antichrist over against Christ: “as the plenitude of virtue abounded in Christ, so a multitude of all sins will abound in the Antichrist.” He is “the son of perdition” because he is consigned to the utmost perdition (n. 37). Paul's lawless one “opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship” (2 Thessalonians 2:4); Thomas explains that he will set himself against God and above Christ (n. 39), and that “the Antichrist's pride is greater than the pride of all who came before him.” Like the emperor Gaius, who wanted to be worshiped while still alive, it is “quite believable that the Antichrist will act as they did, saying that he is both God and man” (n. 40).
- The temple
- Paul says he will “seat himself in the temple of God.” But which temple, Thomas asks, since the Romans destroyed the one in Jerusalem? He reports two opinions held by “some”: that the Antichrist will come from the tribe of Dan and be accepted at first by the Jews, who will rebuild the temple; and, on the other side, that neither Jerusalem nor the temple will ever be rebuilt. He then gives the reading he can stand on: “in the temple of God, i.e., in the Church, since many from the church will accept him.” Or, with St. Augustine, the Antichrist would rule as though he himself, with his messengers, were the temple of God, as Christ is the temple with his adherents (n. 40).
- Note
- The opinion about the tribe of Dan is one Thomas reports, not one he argues for, and the Church has never adopted it. It must never be turned against the Jewish people; as the Council taught, “the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God” (Nostra Aetate 4). See The Temple of His Body.
“And now you know what withholds, i.e., what is the cause of his delay.”
- Scripture
- “And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. But the one who restrains is to do so only for the present, until he is removed from the scene” (2 Thessalonians 2:6–7).
- Teaching
- “In his time” means “at a fitting time” (n. 43): God, not the Antichrist, sets the hour. The mystery of lawlessness, Thomas says, can be read two ways. Either it is a hidden thing “at work in false men who seem good and yet are evil,” who already play the Antichrist's part; or the devil “has already secretly begun to work his wickedness through tyrants and deceivers,” so that the persecutions of every age are figures of the last one, and imperfect beside it (n. 44).
- As for the one who restrains, Thomas notes that “some thought that Nero, who first persecuted the Christians, was the Antichrist.” He sets that reading aside and takes the verse instead of the Roman Empire, so that the restraint lasts “until the Roman empire is removed from this world”; he then adds still other readings (n. 45). Read with his earlier answer (n. 35), that empire lives on in a spiritual form, in the faith of the Roman Church.
- Why mystery
- St. Augustine confessed that he did not know what Paul meant. St. Thomas gives the readings of the tradition, with reasons, but the Church has never defined what or who restrains. See 2 Thessalonians 2:6–7 and Augustine on the restrainer.
“…the Antichrist himself will seem to darken the church, but the darkness will be driven out by brightness; for whatever the Antichrist claims will be shown to have been a lie.”
- Scripture
- The Lord Jesus “will kill with the breath of his mouth and render powerless by the manifestation of his coming” the lawless one, “whose coming springs from the power of Satan in every mighty deed and in signs and wonders that lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:8–9).
- Teaching
- The breath or Spirit of the Lord's mouth is first of all his love: “the zeal for justice, which is love,” for “the Spirit of Christ is the love of Christ.” Thomas also reports a reading in which the Lord's command is carried out by St. Michael “on Mount Olivet whence Christ ascended”; that detail is an opinion, not the Church's teaching. What is certain is the end: Christ will destroy him “with the brightness of his coming, i.e., bringing all things to light” (n. 46).
- The Antichrist's wonders are called lying because they fall short of what they seem: some will be illusions, others natural marvels with hidden causes passed off as miracles. In any case “they will not have the true nature of a miracle because the demons have no power to work what goes beyond nature” (n. 50).
- Hope
- Thomas's last word on the Antichrist is about Christ. However dark the trial, it ends in light, and every lie is exposed. See 2 Thessalonians 2:8.
“Therefore it remains to be said that he is the head of all the wicked by reason of the perfection of his wickedness.”
- Context
- In the part of the Summa on Christ, Thomas asks how Christ is head of the Church. Then he asks whether there is a counterfeit head. The devil, he answers, is head of all the wicked, not by pouring life into them, as Christ does for his members, but by outward rule: the end the devil pursues is “the aversion of the rational creature from God,” and the wicked “fall under the rule and government of the devil, and therefore he is called their head” (a. 7).
- Teaching
- Can the Antichrist be called head of the wicked too? Only in a sense. He is not first in time, “as if his sin had preceded,” as the devil's did. Nor does he pour wickedness into others; “although he will pervert some in his day by exterior persuasion,” those who lived before him were not led into sin by him. He is head “by reason of the perfection of his wickedness.” Thomas cites a gloss on 2 Thessalonians 2:4: “As in Christ dwelt the fulness of the Godhead, so in Anti-christ the fulness of all wickedness.” This does not mean the devil takes on a human nature, as the Son of God did, but that “the devil by suggestion infuses his wickedness more copiously into him than into all others.” So “all the wicked who have gone before are signs of Anti-christ,” as Paul says, “the mystery of lawlessness is already at work” (2 Thessalonians 2:7) (a. 8).
- One head, not two
- The devil and the Antichrist “are not two heads, but one,” since the Antichrist is called head “inasmuch as the wickedness of the devil is most fully impressed on him” (a. 8, reply 1).
- Why two labels
- The Antichrist himself is still to come. But every wicked life before him is, in Thomas's phrase, a sign of him, which is the Catechism's teaching that his deception “already begins to take shape in the world” (CCC 676).
“But it is not easy to know what these signs may be.”
- Who wrote it
- When St. Thomas stopped writing, the Summa “had been completed only as far as the ninetieth question of the third part.” The Supplement that completes it was put together after his death, “drawn from other writings of St. Thomas.” The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that it has been attributed to various compilers and reports Mandonnet's “very probable opinion” that it was compiled by his companion Reginald of Piperno (“St. Thomas Aquinas”). Its words are Thomas's material, arranged by other hands.
- Teaching
- Signs will come before Christ's coming in judgment. But, citing St. Augustine's letter to Hesychius “about the end of the world,” the article says the signs in the Gospels refer “not only to Christ's coming to judgment, but also to the time of the sack of Jerusalem,” and to Christ's coming “in ceaselessly visiting His Church.” “So that, perhaps, if we consider them carefully, we shall find that none of them refers to the coming advent,” for wars, fears and such things “have been from the beginning of the human race,” “unless perhaps we say that at that time they will be more prevalent.” Even then, it adds, it is uncertain how great an increase would announce that the end is near.
- After the Antichrist
- The article also repeats an old opinion that there will be an interval between the death of the Antichrist and Christ's coming, when the wicked “will think themselves to be in peace and security” (reply 1). That is a detail of interpretation the Church has not defined.
- Why mystery
- This is the opposite of a timetable. If wars and alarms have always been with us, they cannot be used to date the end. “But of that day or hour, no one knows” (Mark 13:32; CCC 673).
Where St. Thomas speaks for himself, and for othersWith the Fathers and the Church, St. Thomas holds that a great falling away and a final deceiver will come before Christ's return, and that Christ will overcome him (
CCC 675–677). Much else he offers as one reading among several: the Roman Empire as the restrainer, St. Michael on the Mount of Olives, the interval after the Antichrist's death. The opinions he reports from “some,” such as the tribe of Dan and the rebuilt temple, are not his conclusions and not the Church's teaching. He names no one as the Antichrist and sets no date.
For reflection
Brightness that drives out darkness
St. Thomas says the Spirit of Christ that overcomes the lawless one is “the love of Christ.” Where is there darkness in my own heart that only his love can expose and heal? Can I let his light in today?
Sources
- St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Second Letter of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians, ch. 2, lecture 1 and lecture 2, trans. Fabian R. Larcher, O.P., in Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul to the Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute, 2012), at aquinas.cc
- St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 8, aa. 7–8, and Supplement, q. 73, a. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd rev. ed. (1920), III q. 8 and Suppl. q. 73 at New Advent
- “St. Thomas Aquinas,” Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent, for his dates, canonization, title of Doctor and the Supplement
- Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate (1965), 4
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 673–677, vatican.va
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