Naming the Antichrist: Ancient and Medieval Views

5 Minutes in Church History with Stephen Nichols

Ligonier Ministries

Christianity, History, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

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Summary

Who is the antichrist? The beast? The man of lawlessness? Today on episode 666 of the podcast, Stephen Nichols explores how several church fathers and medieval theologians wrestled with these questions—and whom they named as the antichrist.

Read the transcript: https://ligonier.org/podcasts/5-minutes-in-church-history-with-stephen-nichols/naming-the-antichrist-ancient-and-medieval-views/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.
0:10.0	With this episode, we have reached what you might say is an eschatological milestone.
0:16.0	We are at episode number 666, and I could not resist the temptation to explore a fascinating piece of
0:24.1	church history, that is the history of interpreting and naming and identifying the Antichrist.
0:31.0	Well, we begin with Scripture. The word Antichrist appears three times in the singular in 1 John and also over in 2nd John,
0:40.6	and then one time in the plural back in 1st John, at chapter 2, verse 18.
0:46.1	There's also in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2, the reference to the man of lawlessness.
0:53.0	Then we move on to Revelation 13, or introduced to the beast,
0:56.3	and that chapter ends with identifying the mark of the beast, and that is 6, 6, 6.6. Well, let's start
1:05.5	in the early church with the interpretation, the naming of the Antichrist, and we'll first go to the Church Father Polycarp.
1:13.5	A Polycarp sticks with First John. He doesn't jump over to Second Thessalonians, does not jump over
1:19.3	to Revelation, just sticks with First John and the focus on the Antichrist, and he zeroes in on
1:24.1	John's teaching that the Antichrist, and also the plural Antichrist's and also the Spirit of Antichrist, on John's teaching that the Antichrist and also the plural Antichrists and also the
1:29.4	spirit of Antichrist, as John says, is alive and well in the first century, and it is anyone
1:35.7	who denies that Jesus has come in the flesh. So for some of these early church fathers,
1:40.0	the Dossatists, those adherents to the heresy that Jesus only appeared to be human,
1:47.0	which is the Greek word dokeo to appear. So Dossitism is the name of the heresy. They denied
1:54.0	the incarnation. They denied the truly human nature of Jesus, and that was enough for
2:00.5	Polycarp, and he left it at that.
2:02.9	As we move on into the later Church Fathers, we have to stop at Augustine.
2:06.8	Augustine is crucial for all sorts of things in the history of interpretation.
2:11.3	He not only links the mentions of Antichrist in the Epistles of John to Thessalonians and to Revelation. He also goes
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