16. The Four Kingdoms and the Roman Restraint

"And now you know what withholdeth, that he may be revealed in his time." - 2 Thessalonians 2:6

The political preparation for Antichrist begins in the prophecy of Daniel. Before Sacred Scripture shows the final tyrant, it shows a succession of kingdoms, a Roman order of unusual strength, and the eventual weakening and division of that order. St. Paul then speaks of a power that restrains the revelation of the wicked one until it is taken out of the way.

These passages must be read together. They do not reduce salvation history to politics. They teach that divine Providence governs political history and may use even an imperfect temporal order to restrain a worse rebellion.

In Daniel 2, King Nabuchodonosor sees a great statue: a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, and feet mixed of iron and clay. A stone cut without hands strikes the feet, destroys the statue, and becomes a mountain filling the earth.[1]

Daniel 7 presents the same succession under another image. Four beasts rise from the sea. The fourth is terrible, armed with iron teeth, and unlike the beasts before it. It bears ten horns.[2]

The traditional Christian interpretation identifies the kingdoms as the Assyrian or Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Macedonian or Greek, and the Roman. St. Cyril of Jerusalem calls the identification of the fourth kingdom with Rome the received tradition of the Church's interpreters. St. Jerome rejects the attempt to exhaust the prophecy in Antiochus Epiphanes. Antiochus may prefigure the last enemy, but the little horn reaches forward to Antichrist.[3]

The Roman kingdom is iron because it breaks and subdues. Yet the statue does not end in undivided iron. Its feet and toes are partly iron and partly clay: partly strong, partly broken, joined in appearance but unable to cleave firmly together.

The image teaches continuity without stable unity. The final divided kingdoms proceed from the Roman order, as toes proceed from feet and horns from the fourth beast. Something of Rome's juridical and political iron remains, but it is mixed with weakness, rivalry, and failed attempts at consolidation.

This guards against a shallow reading of history. Rome's prophetic significance cannot be reduced to possession of the city of Rome, one dynasty, or one uninterrupted territorial boundary. A political inheritance may persist through law, title, civilization, and providential function even after great territorial losses.

St. Paul teaches that the mystery of iniquity is already at work, yet the wicked one cannot be revealed until the restraining power is removed.[4] Many Fathers identify this restraint with the Roman imperial order. St. John Chrysostom says that when the Roman Empire is removed, Antichrist will come. St. Cyril places Antichrist after the fulfillment of the Roman times. Tertullian explains why Christians prayed for the endurance of the Empire: its fall was associated with the final calamity.[5]

The restraint is not holy merely because it restrains. Pagan Rome persecuted the Church. Yet Providence can use one temporal structure to check a more universal tyranny, just as God can make rival ambitions prevent a single persecutor from possessing the whole earth.

St. Robert Bellarmine therefore distinguishes the decay of Roman power from its complete desolation. Loss of provinces is not enough. He observes that the Roman Empire can continue without possession of the city itself, provided the imperial dignity and succession remain.[6]

This distinction prevents premature declarations. The sack of Rome, the fall of the western imperial line, the end of the Byzantine Empire, the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the loss of the Papal States, and the Lateran settlement are all momentous. Each may belong to the long dismantling of the old Roman and Christian order. None, considered alone, proves that the prophetic restraint has been completely removed.

The Lateran Treaty of 1929 did not make Rome a city-state. It recognized Rome as the capital of Italy and established Vatican City State as a distinct sovereign territory. The event may be considered in the long contraction of Roman temporal order, but Scripture does not identify it as the beginning of the ten kings.[7]

Political restraint is not the whole question. A civilization becomes ready for Antichrist when its peoples reject the law of Christ, its rulers refuse the kingship of Christ, and its religious institutions teach men to live peacefully beside contradiction.

External order can endure for a time after the soul of a civilization has been wounded. But when law is separated from truth, authority from God, and peace from the reign of Christ, the remaining structure becomes easier to seize. The iron remains; the clay spreads through it.

The long apostasy of nations may therefore prepare the political desolation foretold by the Fathers. Men first remove Christ's yoke because they call it oppressive. They then discover that no common truth remains strong enough to restrain universal coercion.

Daniel reveals a Roman kingdom that is strong as iron, later divided, and finally represented by ten rulers. St. Paul reveals a restraint that delays the wicked one. The Fathers join these lines and teach the faithful to watch the desolation of Roman order without treating every political change as final fulfillment.

The lesson is sober. Antichrist does not arise in a vacuum. He appears when an inherited restraint has been removed, when division has ripened, and when mankind is ready to exchange fractured order for a counterfeit unity.