Lecture 1: Knowledge Shall Be Increased

These notes are adapted from Peter's lectures on the Antichrist. Any errors or omissions are mine.

[image] The Preaching of the Antichrist by Luca Signorelli

The Question of the Antichrist

But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. — Daniel 12:4

The Biblical historian Daniel foresaw an increase in knowledge toward the end of time. As knowledge increased, apocalyptic fears would mount, leaving room for a tyrant to rise.

In late modernity, such worries are unfashionable and the Antichrist is a forgotten figure. Our universities tell us that fears of the apocalypse are irrational, and that the world is simply getting better. And yet, our news tells us otherwise; we are worried about existential risks from AI, bioweapons, and nuclear war. How can we understand our apocalyptic time?

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. — Matthew 24:35-36

The apocalypse is not a fixed date on a calendar. Attempts to predict it have ended in disappointment. The Millerites set 1843 as the date of the Second Coming of Christ. Josef Pieper's The End of Time (1950) also could not escape the paradox: we sense an end, but the exact moment is sealed. Still, if the day and hour remain hidden, perhaps we may at least suspect the century.

If we are to take the Antichrist seriously, we can at least ask four questions:

  1. What is the Antichrist's relationship to Armageddon? He is imagined as the tyrant of the last empire, the Beast of the sea heading a world government, the final antagonist before the revelation of Christ.
  2. When will he arrive? He comes after Christ but through many forerunners. 2 Thessalonians 2:6 reminds us that something is holding back his arrival: "And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time."
  3. What is his relationship to Christ? He deceives even the elect, performs false miracles, and appears "more Christian than Christ".
  4. Who is the Antichrist? A single tyrant, a system, or a type that repeats across history?

The University Studied the Universe

If any institution might have taken history as a whole, it would have been the modern university, heir to the Enlightenment. The end of time would be naturally interesting as a matter of history. But today, the university is fragmented. Where Bacon or Goethe could grasp the totality of knowledge in a single lifetime, we now live in Adam Smith's pin factory: ever smaller cogs in an ever larger machine. We must try to integrate history, theology, politics, and technology into one coherent picture.

Here, the Christian revelation stands apart. Classical thought saw only cycles: for Thucydides, Athens vs. Sparta, Germany vs. Britain, and China vs. America were one and the same. They were just steps in an eternal recurrence. But Daniel is the first real historian, because he foresaw a one-time sequence of world empires. Their end would be the end of the world. Christianity is therefore progressive: the New Testament supersedes the Old, not only because it is truer, but because it is new. Revelation unfolds forward.

[chart] Classical Cycles

[chart] Progressive Revelation

For this reason, it seems inconceivable that we could unlearn what we have discovered. Knowledge increases, and once revealed, it is difficult to seal away again. Even if our universities cannot grasp the whole, knowledge has a way of seeping out. History is moving forward.

Late Modernity

In those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. — Revelation 9:6

From 1750 to the early 1900s, technology accelerated at a pace that defies comprehension. In the 20th century, lifespans doubled. We moved faster physically: steam engines led to automobiles and jet airplanes. In the 21st century, technology only means information technology; progress in all other fields has halted. The question naturally arises: is the singularity in the past or in the future?

[chart] In the Past

[chart] In the Future

But the modern university cannot answer this question. Measured by inputs, science is growing. Derek de Solla Price, in Science Since Babylon, noted that the number of PhDs was doubling roughly every fifteen years. Has scientific output grown correspondingly?

The evidence suggests diminishing returns. Nobel laureate Bob Laughlin tried to measure scientific productivity at Stanford; he was promptly defunded. Outputs are worse than inputs. The NSA is managed worse than the DMV or the post office not because it lacks resources, but because it is less comprehensible. We should expect the same for string theory.

The world feels stuck. We are running a "red queen's race": working harder, running faster, yet standing still. Wages have stagnated, health is plateauing, and optimism is fading. Nixon declared a "war on cancer" in 1971, promising victory by the bicentennial in 1976. No president today would dare declare war on Alzheimer's.

Science once promised radical life extension; today, the closest we come to mastery over death is legalized euthanasia.

Our Imagined Futures Scare Us

The Baconian science project ended at Los Alamos with the development of the atomic bomb. Technology itself became apocalyptic. In 1945, the National Committee on Atomic Information published One World or None, starting the era of apocalyptic war films. Coincidentally, this is also when the Catholic Church stopped giving apocalyptic sermons. Humanity faced a new dual-use problem: the same physics that could power civilization could also end it.

Since then, secular apocalyptic fears have multiplied:

Bioweapons

If we are to make this list complete, however, we should add the risk of the Biblical Antichrist, manifesting as a one world government. Here the secular maps neatly onto the theological: the "one world state" of the Antichrist on the one hand, and the "no world" of Armageddon.

We should at least suspect that the apocalypse in our newspaper headlines is the apocalypse of the Bible. This is not mysticism but simple extrapolation of human nature. Wisdom has not increased, even if information has. The one point on which the atheist and fundamentalist agree is that violence comes from God. The Christian, however, knows it comes from man.

Antichrist and Armageddon

For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. — 1 Thessalonians 5:3

Matthew 24:6–13 warns of wars and rumors of wars. If we are headed for war or Armageddon, is it unreasonable to fear the rise of an Antichrist who will promise peace and safety? The two major Antichrist novels of the early 20th century, Vladimir Solovyov's War, Progress, and the End of History and Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World, both prophesied his rise to lead a world government. However, they share a plot hole: how does the Antichrist actually seize power?

In late modernity, we finally have the answer: by talking constantly of Armageddon (or in secular terms, of existential risk). He rides the wave of apocalyptic anxiety.

Oppenheimer lamented, "We need new knowledge like we need a hole in the head." Nick Bostrom has proposed "preventative policing" and "global compute governance" in his Vulnerable World Hypothesis. Eliezer Yudkowsky's latest book is If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.

War Peace
Just. WWII Cold War.
Unjust WWI Cold War II?

This has geopolitical consequences. If there was ever a just war, it was World War II, and if there was ever an unjust war, it was World War I. The peace of the Cold War was largely a just one; the United States and the Soviet Union remained decoupled. There is a cost to choosing "peace at any price". A bad peace may prove worse than war. The risks of Antichrist and Armageddon are not contradictions but complements: false peace on one side, destruction on the other.

Reason and Revelation

Reason tells us that we should be worried about existential risks. Its framing is binary: "one world or none". Naturally, one world sounds like the rational option.

But the Christian revelation reframes the choice: "Antichrist or Armageddon". Here, the answer is neither. We must find a third path.

Philosophy leaves us with insanity. Theology insists on a third way. History is not fated. It is not locked into cycles, nor is it a prewritten play. Daniel's book was sealed, but we are given the tools to understand it. Jonah preached to Nineveh and saved it. In the garden of Gethsemane, Christ told his disciples to pray. Had they not fallen asleep, perhaps even Christ might have been spared the crucifixion. There is freedom in history. Knowledge shall be increased, but how we use it is not preordained.

Q&A; with Peter Robinson

Q: Daniel 12:4 is an ancient text. Why should anyone still care about it today? It matters because Christianity gave the world the very concept of history as a linear unfolding. In the classical world, history was often seen as cyclical, an endless recurrence of events. Given that Daniel's prophecy predicts a series of kingdoms culminating in the Antichrist, we should at least suspect that our history is the one he foresaw.

Q: The West emphasizes linear history, while much of Asia sees history as cyclical. Who is right? There is a linearity to science and technology that cannot be ignored. Once a truth is discovered, it cannot be undiscovered. In that sense, history moves forward, not in circles.

Q: Is the Antichrist an individual person, or an institution? Early Christians thought it was Nero. Lutherans and Anglicans pointed to the Pope. But until the modern age, humanity lacked the power to destroy itself. That has changed. Because our era uniquely possesses this destructive capacity, the Antichrist today can only be understood as an individual, not merely an institution.

Q: Cardinal Newman wrote on the Antichrist in 1835. What was his view? In The Patristical Idea of Antichrist, Newman argued that Christ's return would be preceded by widespread apostasy and the appearance of Christ's great enemy. In the Middle Ages, obsession with the Antichrist ran high, understandably due to the Reformation's schisms. But those fears faded after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, when Europe settled into relative peace. The Enlightenment that followed was, in many ways, a slumber from worries about the Antichrist and religious questions. By 1945, after the Second World War, most churches had stopped preaching end-time sermons altogether. Today, all we can talk about is Armageddon, so we should be even more suspicious of the Antichrist.

Q: But isn't there a "plot hole"? How would the Antichrist actually rise to power? The major Antichrist books were written pre-World War I and Cardinal Newman was speaking in the 19th century. Today, the answer is obvious: he would rise through the crises of modernity, leveraging the fear of technology and the constant talk of apocalypse.

Q: How do you view Silicon Valley's "Techno-Optimist Manifesto"? It represents a kind of corporate utopianism. In the 1990s, there was a broad cultural optimism that technology would solve everything. But by 2025, that optimism has shrunk. Today's visions are narrower, less inclusive, and far less confident. The grand, utopian projects have given way to incremental gains, overshadowed by fears of collapse.

Q: Can we expect a leader, political or technological, to solve everything? No leader can bear that burden. Oppenheimer could not solve all scientific problems, just as Trump, or any politician, cannot solve all political ones. No human figure can deliver a final solution for all time. That expectation belongs to messianic hope, not politics. transcribed by Kshitij Kulkarni