LOOKING FOR ANTICHRIST/EVIL

Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York: HarperSanFrancisco/HarperCollins, 1994) ("This book is not written for those who are convinced that Antichrist is imminent . . . Rather, I write in the conviction that Antichrist has already come--that is, that the most important message of the Antichrist legend in Western history is what it has to tell us about our past, and perhaps even about our present attitudes toward evil." Id. at xii. "The nature of Antichrist's malice as the image of absolute human evil has varied over the centuries . . .  Still, it is clear that the dominant view of ultimate evil has not been one of cruel tyranny so much as one of deception, the masquerading of the lie that perverts the good that saves. Each age has had to contend with it own forms of deception. These deceptions have done more than anything else to shape the development of the Antichrist legend." "I would suggest, in closing, that contemporary forms of deception, especially deception on a worldwide scale never possible before, might spur our meditation on the meaning of the legend of Antichrist as the image of essential human evil. The dominance of appearance [branding, marketing, etc.?] over substance [over fact?] may not have been invented in the electronic era, but some contemporary social critics remind us that deceit has reached new levels of sophistication as we approach the beginning of the third millennium. [Note: This book was published, and thus the comment was made, in 1994, so the third millennium has yet to arrive. Now it has.] Even the recent Fundamentalist interpretations of Antichrist have emphasized how their literal Final Enemy will be a master of deception, both in himself and in his ability to project an artificial image of his intentions to the world through the latest means of communication." Id. at 279. Food for thought, especially for those concerned with political evil.).