Katechon...Armageddon...End time... end of days, last days, final days, or eschaton...Transhumanism...Eschatology..the Antichrist will come at the End of the World.

The gathering of all the nations of the earth refers to the uniting of the world's political powers, as a gradual process beginning in 1914 and seen later in manifestations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations following the First and Second World Wars.These political powers are said to be influenced by Satan and his demons in opposition to God's kingdom.Babylon the Great is interpreted as the world empire of false religion, and that it will be destroyed by the beast just prior to Armageddon. Witnesses believe that after all other religions have been destroyed, the governments will turn to persecute them, and that God will then intervene, precipitating Armageddon. One day gather in this city, but instead seems to predict only that "they (will gather) the kings together to .... Armageddon". The text does however seem to imply, based on the text from the earlier passage of Revelation 16:14, that the purpose of this gathering of kings in the "place called Armageddon" is "for the war of the great day of God, the Almighty".The Dispensational viewpoint interprets biblical prophecy literally and expects that the fulfillment of prophecy will also be literal, depending upon the context of scripture. In his discussion of Armageddon, J. Dwight Pentecost has devoted an entire chapter to the subject, titled "The Campaign of Armageddon", in which he discusses Armageddon as a campaign and not a specific battle, which will be fought in the Middle East. Pentecost writes: It has been held commonly that the battle of Armageddon is an isolated event transpiring just prior to the second advent of Christ to the earth. The extent of this great movement in which God deals with "the kings of the earth and of the whole world" (Rev. 16:14) will not be seen unless it is realized that the "battle of that great day of God Almighty" (Rev. 16:14)[13] is not an isolated battle, but rather a campaign that extends over the last half of the tribulation period. The Greek word "polemo", translated "battle" in Revelation 16:14, signifies a war or campaign, while "machē" signifies a battle, and sometimes even single combat. This distinction is observed by Trench, (see Richard C. Trench, New Testament Synonyms, pp.301-2) and is followed by Thayer (see Joseph Henry Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, p. 528) and Vincent (see Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, II, 541). The use of the word polemos (campaign) in Revelation 16:14 would signify that the events that culminate in the gathering at Armageddon at the second advent are viewed by God as one connected campaign.— Pentecost, p.340The religion's current teaching on Armageddon originated in 1925 with former Watch Tower Society president J. F. Rutherford, who based his interpretations on the books of Exodus, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Psalms as well as additional material from the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. The doctrine marked a further break from the teachings of Watch Tower Society founder Charles Taze Russell, who for decades had taught that the final war would be an anarchistic struggle for domination on earth.[41] Tony Wills, author of a historical study of Jehovah's Witnesses, claimed that Rutherford seemed to relish his descriptions of how completely the wicked would be destroyed at Armageddon, dwelling at great length on prophecies of destruction. He stated that towards the close of his ministry Rutherford allocated about half the space available in The Watchtower magazines to discussion of Armageddon. The end time (also called end times, end of time, end of days, last days, final days, or eschaton) is a future time-period described variously in the eschatologies of several world religions (both Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic), which believe that world events will achieve a final climax. believe that the gathering of all the nations of the earth refers to the uniting of the world's political powers, as a gradual process beginning in 1914 and seen later in manifestations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations following the First and Second World Wars.[35] These political powers are said to be influenced by Satan and his demons in opposition to God's kingdom.[33] Babylon the Great is interpreted as the world empire of false religion, and that it will be destroyed by the beast just prior to Armageddon.[36][37] Witnesses believe that after all other religions have been destroyed, the governments will turn to persecute them, and that God will then intervene, precipitating Armageddon. The Abrahamic faiths maintain a linear cosmology, with end-time scenarios containing themes of transformation and redemption. In Judaism, the term "end of days" makes reference to the Messianic Age and includes an in-gathering of the exiled Jewish diaspora, the coming of the Messiah, the resurrection of the righteous, and the world to come. Some sects of Christianity depict the end time as a period of tribulation that precedes the second coming of Christ, who will face the Antichrist along with his power structure and usher in the Kingdom of God. However, other Christians believe that the end time represents the personal tribulation experienced before they become enlightened with the Word of God.[1] In Islam, the Day of Judgement is preceded by the appearance of the Mahdi mounted on a white stallion. With the help of Isa (Jesus), the Mahdi will triumph over Masih ad-Dajjal (the false messiah). Non-Abrahamic faiths tend to have more cyclical world-views, with end-time eschatologies characterized by decay, redemption, and rebirth. In Hinduism, the end time occurs when Kalki, the final incarnation of Vishnu, descends atop a white horse and brings an end to the current Kali Yuga. In Buddhism, the Buddha predicted that his teachings would be forgotten after 5,000 years, followed by turmoil. A bodhisattva named Maitreya will appear and rediscover the teaching of dharma. The ultimate destruction of the world will then come through seven suns. Since the development of the concept of deep time in the 18th century and the calculation of the estimated age of the Earth, scientific discourse about end times has centered on the ultimate fate of the universe. Armageddon is viewed as a spiritual battle or struggle in the present age between the forces of good, i.e. righteousness, purity and virtue, and the forces of evil. The final struggle between the two comes as satanic influence is let loose with the emergence of Gog and Magog. Satan gathers all his powers, and uses all his methods to mislead people, introducing an age where iniquity, promiscuity, atheism, and materialism abound.Theories have included the Big Rip, Big Crunch, Big Bounce, and Big Freeze (heat death). Transhumanism (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international intellectual movement that aims to transform the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology. Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations as well as ethical limitations of using such technologies. The most common transhumanist thesis is that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into different beings with abilities so greatly expanded from the current condition as to merit the label of posthuman beings. The contemporary meaning of the term "transhumanism" was foreshadowed by one of the first professors of futurology, FM-2030, who taught "new concepts of the human" at The New School in the 1960s, when he began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles and worldviews "transitional" to posthumanity as "transhuman".The assertion would lay the intellectual groundwork for the British philosopher Max More to begin articulating the principles of transhumanism as a futurist philosophy in 1990 and organizing in California an intelligentsia that has since grown into the worldwide transhumanist movement. Influenced by seminal works of science fiction, the transhumanist vision of a transformed future humanity has attracted many supporters and detractors from a wide range of perspectives, including philosophy and religion. Researchers in futures studies and transhumanists investigate how the accelerating rate of scientific progress may lead to a "technological singularity" in the future that would profoundly and unpredictably change the course of human history, and result in Homo sapiens no longer being the dominant life form on Earth Eschatology /ˌɛskəˈtɒlədʒi/ (About this sound listen) is a part of theology concerned with the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. This concept is commonly referred to as the "end of the world" or "end times". The word arises from the Greek ἔσχατος eschatos meaning "last" and -logy meaning "the study of", and was first used in English around 1844. The Oxford English Dictionary defines eschatology as "the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind". In the context of mysticism, the phrase refers metaphorically to the end of ordinary reality and reunion with the Divine. In many religions it is taught as an existing future event prophesied in sacred texts or folklore. History is often divided into "ages" (aeons), which are time periods each with certain commonalities. One age comes to an end and a new age or world to come, where different realities are present, begins. When such transitions from one age to another are the subject of eschatological discussion, the phrase, "end of the world", is replaced by "end of the age", "end of an era", or "end of life as we know it". Much apocalyptic fiction does not deal with the "end of time" but rather with the end of a certain period of time, the end of life as it is now, and the beginning of a new period of time. It is usually a crisis that brings an end to current reality and ushers in a new way of living, thinking, or being. This crisis may take the form of the intervention of a deity in history, a war, a change in the environment, or the reaching of a new level of consciousness. Most modern eschatology and apocalypticism, both religious and secular, involve the violent disruption or destruction of the world; whereas Christian and Jewish eschatologies view the end times as the consummation or perfection of God's creation of the world, albeit with violent overtures, such as the Great Tribulation. For example, according to some ancient Hebrew worldviews, reality unfolds along a linear path (or rather, a spiral path, with cyclical components that nonetheless have a linear trajectory); the world began with God and is ultimately headed toward God's final goal for creation, the world to come. Eschatologies vary as to their degree of optimism or pessimism about the future. In some eschatologies, conditions are better for some and worse for others, e.g. "heaven and hell".Katechon is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7 in an eschatological context: Christians must not behave as if the Day of the Lord would happen tomorrow, since the Son of Perdition (the Antichrist of 1 and 2 John) must be revealed before. St. Paul then adds that the revelation of the Antichrist is conditional upon the removal of "something/someone that restrains him" and prevents him being fully manifested. Verse 6 uses the neuter gender, τὸ κατέχον; and verse 7 the masculine, ὁ κατέχων. the Antichrist will come at the End of the World. Since St. Paul does not explicitly mention the katechon's identity, the passage's interpretation has been subject to dialogue and debate amongst Christian scholars. The term is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7 in an eschatological context: Christians must not behave as if the Day of the Lord would happen tomorrow, since the Son of Perdition (the Antichrist of 1 and 2 John) must be revealed before. St. Paul then adds that the revelation of the Antichrist is conditional upon the removal of "something/someone that restrains him" and prevents him being fully manifested. Verse 6 uses the neuter gender, τὸ κατέχον; and verse 7 the masculine, ὁ κατέχων. Since St. Paul does not explicitly mention the katechon's identity, the passage's interpretation has been subject to dialogue and debate amongst Christian scholars.In Nomos of the Earth, German political thinker Carl Schmitt suggests the historical importance within traditional Christianity of the idea of the katechontic "restrainer" that allows for a Rome-centered Christianity, and that "meant the historical power to restrain the appearance of the Antichrist and the end of the present eon." The katechon represents, for Schmitt, the intellectualization of the ancient Christianum Imperium, with all its police and military powers to enforce orthodox ethics (see Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, G.L. Ulmen, trs., (New York: Telos, 2003), pp. 59–60.) In his posthumously published diary the entry from December 19, 1947 reads: "I believe in the katechon: it is for me the only possible way to understand Christian history and to find it meaningful" (Glossarium, p. 63). And Schmitt adds: "One must be able to name the katechon for every epoch of the last 1,948 years. The place has never been empty, or else we would no longer exist." Paolo Virno has a long discussion of the katechon in his book Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation. He refers to Schmitt's discussion. Virno says that Schmitt views the katechon as something that impedes the coming of the Antichrist, but because the coming of the Antichrist is a condition for the redemption promised by the Messiah, the katechon also impedes the redemption.[1] p. 60. Virno uses "katechon" to refer to that which impedes both the War of all against all (Bellum omnium contra omnes) and totalitarianism, for example the society in Orwell's Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four). It impedes both but eliminates neither. Virno locates the katechon in the human ability to use language, which makes it possible to conceive of the negation of something, and also allows the conceptualization of something which can be other than what it is; and in the bioanthropological behavior of humans as social animals, which allows people to know how to follow rules without needing a rule to tell how to follow a rule, then a rule to tell how to follow that rule, and so on to infinity. These capabilities permit people to create social institutions and to dissolve or change them. Wolfgang Drechsler and Vasilis Kostakis have recently interpreted the katechon as Law that in contemporary technological development holds up immediate dangers but also prevent the ultimate e-society; they combine the interpretations by Schmitt, Agamben, and Virno to that end.1 Concerning the coming [the presence: tēs parousias] of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, 2 not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. 3 Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion [apostasia] occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed [kai apokaluphthēi ho anthrōpos tēs anomias], the man doomed to destruction. 4 He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. 5 Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? 6 And now you know what is holding him back [to katechon], so that he may be revealed [apokaluphthēnai] at the proper time. 7 For the secret power of lawlessness [to mustērion tēs anomias] is already at work [energeitai]; but the one who now holds it back [ho katechōn] will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed [apokaluphthēsetai ho anomos], whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming [tē epiphaneia tēs parousias autou]. Paul’s letter inaugurates the long and fascinating history of the katechon as a political concept that is still producing its effects today. So many strata of interpretation have accumulated ever since. For Tertullian, John Chrysostom, or Augustine, the katechon is the Roman Empire. In his Apology for the Christians (XXXII, 1) Tertullian thus very clearly states: There is also another need, a greater one, for our praying for the Emperors, as for the whole estate of the empire and the interests of Rome. We know that the great force which threatens the whole world, the end of the age itself with its menace of hideous suffering, is delayed by the respite which the Roman Empire means for us. We do not wish to experience all that; and when we pray for its postponement are helping forward the continuance of Rome. [Est et alia major necessitas nobis orandi pro imperatoribus, etiam pro omni statu imperii rebusque Romanis, qui vim maximam universo orbi imminentem ipsamque clausulam saeculi acerbitates horrendas comminantem Romani imperii commeatu scimus retardari. Itaque nolumus experiri, ea dum precamur differri, Romanae diuturnitati favemus.] A divergent reading is proposed by John Calvin in his commentary on Paul’s Second Epistle, where he considers it “more probable” [probabilius] that the Apostle declared: “the light of the gospel must be diffused through all parts of the earth before God would thus give loose reins to Satan” [prius circumferendam per omnes terrae partes Evangelii lucem, antequam Deus ita Satanae frena laxaret].4 The katechon would thus be the evangelizing mission itself: “This, therefore, was the delay, until the career of the gospel should be completed” [haec igitur dilatio erat, donec completus esset Evangelii cursus]. According to Calvin, then, we could say that the katechontic deferral is the time the evangelic word needs to unfold its effects. It was Carl Schmitt who passed the concept on to contemporary political theory. In a letter to Hans Blumenberg dated October 22, 1974, Schmitt himself recognizes in the katechon the key to his political theory: “For more than 40 years I have been collecting materials on the problem of the ‘Κατεχων’ or ‘Κατεχον’ (2 Thess. 2, 6); and for all these years I have looked for a human ear that would listen to this question and understand it—for me the crucial question [Kernfrage] of (my) political theology.”5 Indeed, the word keeps recurring in Schmitt’s works from 1942 onward to characterize the most different entities or historical figures: it is used for the first time in an article published in the journal Das Reich on April 19, 1942, in order to negatively portray the United States as a “delayer of world history” [Verzögerer der Weltgeschichte] in front of the Nazi imperial project; it then appears later in the same year, in the essay Land and Sea, to describe the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire (said to have “acted as a rampart, a katechon, as it is called in Greek . . . against the onslaughts of Islam”) and the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (depicted as being “not an active hero, but rather a brake, a delaying factor . . . able to delay the Thirty-Years War by several decades”).6 Even Hegel ends up becoming katechontic in a 1950 article where Schmitt, discussing Karl Löwith’s book The Meaning of History, speaks of “a force that defers the end and restrains the evil one” [einer Kraft, die das Ende aufhält und den Bösen niederhält]: This is the katechon of the mysterious passage of Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians. The medieval empire of the German rulers understood itself historically as the katechon. Luther still understood it in these terms, whereas Calvin takes a significant turn by no longer taking the empire but rather the preaching of God’s words as the katechon. The conception of withholding and deferring forces and powers can in some form probably be demonstrated to be active for every great historian [die Vorstellung haltender und aufhaltender
Kräfte und Mächte lässt sich in irgendeiner Form wohl bei jedem großen Historiker nachweisen]. Nietzsche furiously identified Hegel and the sixth sense of the Germans, i.e., the historical sense, as the great deferrer on the way to expressed atheism [Nietzsche hat voller Wut gerade in Hegel und in dem sechsten, das ist in dem historischen Sinn der Deutschen, den großen Verzögerer auf dem Weg zum offenen Atheismus erblickt]. With Schmitt, the differentiation in the concept’s extension—the pluralizing of its possible embodiments—is well under way, thereby turning the katechon into a metahistorical structure beyond the historically identifiable forces that represent it.8 As Schmitt himself notes in an entry in his Glossarium dated December 17, 1947: The katechon is the only possibility as a Christian to understand history and find it meaningful [er ist für mich die einzige Möglichkeit, als Christ Geschichte zu verstehen und sinnvoll zu finden]. We have to be able to name the katechon for every epoch in the last 1948 years [Schmitt writes in 1947]. The place has never been unoccupied, otherwise we would not be present anymore [der Platz war niemals unbesetzt, sonst wären wir nicht mehr vorhanden] . . . There are temporary, transient, splinter-like fragmentary bearers of this role [es gibt zeitweise, vorübergehende, splitterhaft fragmentarische Inhaber dieser Aufgabe]. In Schmitt’s writings, then, we are witnessing a striking generalization of the katechon. It now becomes possible to consider the katechontic force that withholds as inherent to “every theory of the State, including Hobbes’s,” as Agamben puts it in The Time That Remains. It now becomes possible to ask, as Massimo Cacciari does in a recent book entitled Il potere che frena (“The Power That Withholds”): “Does not every constituted power that is effectively in force belong to the dimension of the katechon? Shouldn’t it have at its disposal a katechontic energy?” Katechon is here abstracted from its initial context, it undergoes a process of “secularization,” as Agamben emphasizes, while obviously retaining something of its original Christian logic (or theologics). With this (quasi-)secularization also comes a shift from the question “quid or quis est katechon?,” as Cacciari formulates it, toward the complex temporality of the katechontic as such.11 For the postponement that the katechon produces or enacts amounts to a double deferral. To borrow Roberto Esposito’s words in Immunitas: “[I]n delaying the explosion of evil . . . it also at the same time delays the final victory of the principle of good. The triumph of evil is held in check, true, but the divine parousia is also delayed by its very existence. Its function is positive, but negatively so.”Withholding the coming of an Antichrist who in his turn precedes the coming of the Messiah, the katechon amounts to a kind of postponement of a postponement. And this is the reason why Agamben goes as far as to identify Derrida as the paradigmatic thinker of the katechontic force of our times: The katechon, suspending and withholding the end [sospendendo e trattenendo la fine], inaugurates a time in which nothing can really happen [or occur: avvenire] because the sense of historical becoming, that has its truth only in the eschaton, is indefinitely deferred [differito] . . . . Schmitt’s katechontic time is a blocked messianism [un messianismo bloccato]: but this blocked messianism reveals itself as the theological paradigm of the time in which we live [il paradigma teologico del tempo in cui viviamo], the structure of which is nothing else than the Derridian différance. Christian eschatology introduced a sense and a direction in time: katechon and différance, suspending and deferring this sense, render it undecidable. Of course, on the one hand, Derrida himself would have protested against this reduction of différance to a mere characterization of “the time in which we live.” The unity or consistence of such a “time” has always been the target or focus of deconstruction’s questioning, from Derrida’s early insistence on the impossible closure of a context to his appropriation of the Shakespearian motto quoted over and over again in Specters of Marx: “Time is out of joint.”But, on the other hand, Agamben’s attempt to historicize différance could very well be supported by some of Derrida’s own statements: suffice it to recall here that even when Derrida defined deconstruction as “what happens” [ce qui arrive], i.e. as what disrupts the very epochality of an epoch or a “time,” he immediately added: “It remains then to situate, localize, determine what happens with what happens, when it happens. To date it.” In other words, even if Agamben’s unashamed historicization of deconstruction seems to be at odds with the latter’s insistence on untimeliness, even if it apparently yields too quickly and easily to Schmitt’s Christian-historical requirement that “we have to be able to name the katechon for every epoch in the last 1948 years”—ours supposedly being deconstruction itself—, he also might be said to further one of deconstruction’s constant concerns or efforts. And this should be a sufficient reason to try to take Agamben’s suggestion seriously, or at least take it as a sign, as a symptom worth analyzing, without procrastinating anymore. Indeed, you might be wondering what I am getting at with this long reconstruction of the history of the katechon, from Paul to Agamben and beyond. You might even be thinking that I keep deferring this very question—“what am I getting at?”—, that I delay the moment when, hopefully, I will finally spell out the political stakes of the katechon for today. In sum, you might be suspecting that I am using the archaeology of the katechon as the very katechon for my political discourse on it. Now, at the risk of appearing paradoxical, I would argue that nothing is more urgently needed than this concept of the katechon as general(ized) deferral, provided we pursue the movement initiated by Schmitt, i.e. its abstraction, the severing of its ties with its original Christian context. (Of course, the name of this abstracting process could well be Christianity itself as globalization, as what Derrida has called “globalatinization,” mondialatinisation.

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Taken on: January 25, 2018

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