Anthony Esolen counters the antichrist by giving us a profound and moving meditation on the true Christ. If you were swamped with all the frippery and foolishness of a commercialized Christmas, take up Professor Esolen’s book and plunge into the depths of the mystery of the incarnation of Christ the Lord.
It was apt that on the seventh day of the Christmas octave that I should pick up Anthony Esolen’s new book, In the Beginning Was the Word – An Annotated Reading of the Prologue of John. Apt because Prof. Esolen’s book is a word-by-word dissection of those famous eighteen verses that expound the mystery of the incarnation, and those eighteen verses are read at Mass on this seventh day of the Christmas octave.
The solemn declaration of the incarnation, as Prof. Esolen describes, is a kind of incantation of the incarnation. It is a complex poem, a dance in which the enfleshment of the perichoresis of the Holy Trinity is announced, so if those eighteen verses are an incantation of the incarnation, they are also an annunciation of the incarnation—a hymn to the mystery of the Father’s love begotten. Indeed the prologue is a kind of verbal dance in which the complex of ideas which compose the essence of reality are intertwined in a solemn roundelay.
Am I being obtuse? I apologize, but I am attempting to hint at the complex beauty of Prof. Esolen’s scholarly exegesis—an exegesis that is itself poetic as one would expect from this linguist and translator of Dante. To put it simply, Prof. Esolen’s book is a paean of praise to the evangelist and his theme. It is an exposition of the incarnation and a reminder that this truth is the kernel and the cornerstone of the Christian faith.
With this in mind, it is with a complementary beauty that the epistle for the Mass on the seventh day of the Christmas octave is also taken from the writings of the beloved disciple. In the second chapter of his first epistle Saint John writes,
Children, it is the last hour;
and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming,
so now many antichrists have appeared.
Thus we know this is the last hour.
They went out from us, but they were not really of our number;
if they had been, they would have remained with us.
Their desertion shows that none of them was of our number.
The antichrist! That fearful beast! The one that “slouches toward Bethlehem to be born….” How curious we are to learn who the antichrist might be, for his appearance presages the return of the Lord. How anxious we are to assign his title to our enemies! This political figure we loathe must be the antichrist… that religious leader we despise must be the antichrist. But Saint John says there were—even in his day— many antichrists. Who is the antichrist?
He answers the question further in the same chapter: “Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son.” He means by “denying the Father and the Son” denying the consubstantiality of the Father with the Son.
The antichrist is therefore any teacher, any religion, any ideology that denies the incarnation—denies the divinity of Christ. In the early days of the church the heretics were named. They were Arians or Apollonarians, Nestorians and Gnostics. Now they eschew such theological nomenclature and formal teachings and simply present an attractive Jesus who is anything but the God who has taken flesh of his human mother.
We have Jesus the rabbi, Jesus the guru or Jesus the proto-Saint Francis. We have Jesus the revolutionary, Jesus the fanatic, Jesus the Jedi. We have Jesus the All-American hero, Jesus the healer, Jesus the self-help expert. We have Jesus the hippie, Jesus the Judge, Jesus the Merciful Man of Prayer. We have Jesus who is the self-portrait of most everyone who attempts to tell us who Jesus is, and all of them are vain idols and purveyors of shallow ideologies.
Those who would have any other Jesus than the one John gives us in his prologue are among the many antichrists that he tells us have already come.
The other antichrists are, therefore, those who not only offer an artificial Jesus, but those who offer a false Gospel on which they build a false Christianity. Christianity is the worship and service of Jesus Christ—God from God, Light from Ligh,t Very God of Very God, begotten not made and consubstantial with the Father. A Christian religion that substitutes anything else—no matter how worthy a cause—is the religion of antichrist.
The Church is the Body of this Christ—administering faithfully the saving sacraments. It is not an orphanage or a refugee center. It is not a soup kitchen, a legal rights advice center or an environmental advocacy group. It is not even a school, a college a hospital or a clinic. All these are organizations Christians might start, finance and run, but they are not the Church. To substitute these worthy works for the worship of Jesus Christ God incarnate is to create a new religion which is the religion of the antichrist.
Anthony Esolen counters the antichrist by giving us a profound and moving meditation on the true Christ. If you were swamped with all the frippery and foolishness of a commercialized Christmas, if you overlooked the child in the manger, take up Professor Esolen’s book and plunge into the depths of the mystery of the incarnation of Christ the Lord.
Dwight Longenecker’s latest book, Beheading Hydra-A Radical Plan for Christians in an Atheistic Age is published by Sophia Institute Press.
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
The featured image is “Saint John” (1820s-1850s) by Konstantinos Fanellis. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
I love to read….but how safe is it to read about all the “Jesus” you mention above? How do you balance your reading? With what books?
C S Lewis suggested twice as many OLD books as new because errors in new not worked through yet. But that is assuming that are well enough educated to not be corrupted by the old.
Staying with just the scriptures is not profitable for the layman with only a secular education. But which scriptural scholars are safe?
Do I just read widely & hope that only Truth sticks…..
Perhaps a book on this subject?
In the play Inherit the Wind, Bert Cates is alleged to have said, “God created Man in His own image—and Man, being a gentleman, returned the compliment.”
That remark can be taken to be a slur on religion, but it really isn’t. It is a description of those who, after denying that Jesus is who he said he is, cobble together an image of Jesus which is more palpable to their ego – – and their appetites.. It “defangs” the Christ into one which cannot judge them, and who is essentially an accomplice in their debauchery. Not just one antichrist, many.