Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Jerome's Christological Interpretation of Psalm 85:11 in Epistle 121

  

As for what follows: “For the mystery of iniquity is already at work, only so that he who now holds [it] back, may hold until he be taken out of the way. And then that wicked one shall be revealed.” The sense is as follows: The coming of the Antichrist is in trivial by means of the numerous evils and sins with which Nero, the most impure of the Caesars, is oppressing the world. And what he will carry out later is being partially fulfilled in him [Nero]. It only remains for the Roman Empire, which now has all nations under its control, to withdraw and be taken out of the way. And then the Antichrist will come, the source of iniquity, “whom the Lord Jesus will destroy by the breath of his mouth,” that is to say, by his divine power and by the command of his majesty, for whom to have given the command is to have done it. The Antichrist will be killed not by the multitude of an army, not by the strength of soldiers, not by the assistance of angels; but immediately as soon as [Christ] arrives. And just as darkness is put to flight by the arrival of the sun, so “by the brightness of his coming” the Lord will destroy and annihilate him whose works are the works of Satan. And just as the fullness of the divinity was in Christ bodily, so in the Antichrist there will be all forces, signs, and wonders, but all will be lies. For just as the magicians by their own falsehoods opposed the signs that God worked through Moses, although the rod of Moses devoured their rods, so the truth of Christ will devour the lie of the Antichrist. But they will be seduced by his lie, those who are prepared for destruction. Here a tacit question could be raised: Why indeed has God allowed the Antichrist to have all this power to perform signs and wonders, to be capable, if possible, of seducing even the elect of God? He anticipates this question with a solution, and he resolves what could have been proposed as an objection, before the objection is made. He will do all these things, he says, not by his own power, but by the permission of God, on account of the Jews, so that those who were unwilling to receive the love of the truth, namely, Christ, since the love of God has been poured out into the hearts of the faithful, and he himself says, “I am the truth,” of whom it is written in the Psalms: “Truth has arisen from the earth.” Therefore, those who did not receive love and truth in order to be saved by receiving the Savior, God will send to them not a worker, but the very working, that is, the source of error, so that they believe the lie: “For he is a liar, and the father of a liar.” And if indeed the Antichrist had been born of a virgin and had come into the world first, the Jews would have had an excuse. (Jerome, Epistle 121, in St. Jerome: Exegetical Epistles, 2 vols. [trans. Thomas P. Scheck; The Fathers of the Church 148; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2024], 2:228-29)

 

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