Mortal Remains
The Religion of Antichrist
by S. M. Hutchens
In the summer issue of 1990, Touchstone published a somewhat reduced version of Vladimir Solovyov’s “A Short Story of Antichrist,” which may be found in our online archive and elsewhere as part of a longer work. I am not sure what inspired this selection thirty years ago, which I had not encountered before and have referred to many times since, but I find it interesting and significant that at this early stage of the journal’s development, it took up this eschatological theme—and not from the environs of Left Behind (however despised by those who are above it all, a modern representative of something very old, in the tradition of the ludi Antichristi of the medieval marketplace) but from those of Eastern Christianity.
Those who study the history of apocalyptic literature will recognize that here Solovyov represents an ancient and pervasive Christian concern, which is not at all surprising given the importance of the theme in both Testaments. Stories of the Antichrist can be traced back at least to the tenth century, when the first of his biographies, De Ortu et Tempore Antichristi (Of the Rise and the Times of the Antichrist), was written at the request of the Queen of France by Adso, a learned monk of the Benedictine monastery at Montier-en-Der. In the September 19, 2019 online column Settimo Cielo, Sandro Magister, a long-time observer of Vatican affairs, upon which he is commenting, takes up the theme again, with reference to a writing by the theologian and cardinal Giacomo Biffi. I have decided to devote this Mortal Remains to an excerpt I think will be of interest to Touchstone readers, but is too long for a Quodlibet or Commonplaces entry. Magister writes,
[A] “new humanism” without Christ is not an original, but a constant in the thought of the West of the last two centuries.
From the Grand Inquisitor of Fyodor Dostoevsky, to the Gospel according to Leo Tolstoy, to the Antichrist of Vladimir Solovyov, to the “new humanism,” no less, of Edgar Morin—the French philosopher whom Francis received in private audience last June 27 following a conference in Rome precisely on the “convergences” of his thought with the vision of the current pope—there are many forms under which the unique and incomparable person of Christ is dissolved, replaced with a generic love for humanity.
“Within this project,” Luisella Scrosati commented in La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana of September 16, “God too is accommodated nicely, as long as he takes his seat among the guests of this new united humanity and does not claim to be the Bridegroom who calls to the wedding, and even decides to keep out those who do not have the wedding garment.”
In 2005 . . . a great theologian and cardinal, named Giacomo Biffi (1928–2015) . . . powerfully brought attention back to the “great crisis that struck Christianity in the last decades of the nineteen-hundreds,” hollowing out its substance in the name of a universal fraternity.
Biffi, in a chapter of one of his books, took up the account of the Antichrist written in 1900 by the Russian theologian and philosopher Solovyov, and applied it to the Church of today.
Here are some of its dazzling passages—as relevant as ever:
The Antichrist, says Solovyov . . . believed in goodness, and even in God. . . . He gave “the greatest possible demonstrations of moderation, disinterest, and active beneficence.” . . . The book that had gained for him universal fame and consensus bore the title: The Open Road to Universal Peace and Prosperity. . . .
It is true that some men of faith wondered why the name of Christ did not appear even once, but others replied: “If the contents of the book are permeated with the true Christian spirit, with active love and universal benevolence, what more do you want?” . . .
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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