“…the eternal validity of the Seven Noahide Laws, a moral code for all of us regardless of religious faith,” President Ronald Reagan, First Education Day USA proclamation, April 4, 1982.[1]
(LifeSiteNews) — In the previous parts (Part I and Part II), we have been considering what Catholic theologians tell us about the Antichrist, whom St. Paul describes as follows:
[T]he son of perdition who opposeth and is lifted up above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself as if he were God. (2 Thess. 2.3-4)
Therefore, when the Antichrist persecutes the Church, it seems that it will be at the expense of a false religion of his own. This religion will be based around the Antichrist himself, who will sit in the temple of God.
Catholic authorities do not agree whether this “temple of God” is a metaphorical expression relating to the Church or Catholic buildings, or to the Temple itself – whether fully or partially rebuilt.
However, many fathers and theologians and some mystics thought that the Antichrist would be received by the Jewish people as their awaited Moshiach (Messiah King). This was based, in part, on the words of Our Lord:
I am come in the name of my Father, and you receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive. (John 5.42).
This idea is also based on the great similarities between what we Catholics expect from the Antichrist, and what some adherents of the Jewish religion expects from the Moshiach.
One crucial shared expectation is that he will rebuild the Jerusalem Temple. According to the enormously influential twelfth-century rabbi Maimonides, if someone does succeed in rebuilding this Temple, it is a sign that he “is definitely the Mashiach.” ((Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Sefer Shoftim, Melachim uMilchamot 11.4
Jesus, certainly, had no notion of setting himself up as a founder of a religious movement to be created in his name […] So behind Christianity and Islam, with their grandeurs as well as their blemishes, behind Jesus and Mohammed, we find Judaism, with its sacred Law, its blueprint for mankind, it hopes for renewal and universal brotherhood. How different the world would have been if, instead of attaching itself almost exclusively to the problematical personage of Jesus, erecting thus a new mythology on the ruins of the old ones, Christianity had seized and adapted the truths of Hebraism (which the Nazarene, a good Jew who did not dream of founding a rival church, undoubtedly wished to propagate) – if instead of rupturing the natural ties which ought to unite it with Israel, it had worked, together with Israel, to create a great human family whose various peoples are equally dear to the Father in Heaven! How much blood would have been spared. How many painful pages could be torn from the book of history. And how right Judaism has been, in the face of so much shame, so much abuse of power, of iniquitous wars which have ravaged our land, to maintain its protest against the unjustified claims of the religions which have issued from it: ‘No, no, you are hardly the messianism which I preach and await. You have not given substance to the ideals of my Prophets.’ The majority opinion is that, while Jews are forbidden to accept the existence of more than a single G That means that a Trinitarian Christian could nevertheless be considered observant of the Noahide laws, even though this is forbidden for Jews. While Christians, of course, firmly deny worshipping three gods, we do insist that the three persons in the one God are equal. Cf. the Athanasian Creed: Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. But there are not three gods, but one God.
↑3 Ibid.
↑4 Ibid., 9.1
↑5 Elijah Benamozegh, Israel and Humanity, p 243. Paulist Press, New York, 1995. https://archive.org/details/israelhumanity0000bena/page/243/
↑6 Ash Noah website, ‘7 Noahide Laws Introduction’
↑7 Cf. Maimonides: The interpretation of the prophecy is as follows: Israel will dwell securely together with the wicked gentiles who are likened to a wolf and a leopard, as in the prophecy Jeremiah 5:6: “A wolf from the wilderness shall spoil them and a leopard will stalk their cities.” They will all return to the true faith and no longer steal or destroy. Maimonides ibid. 12.1
↑8 Maimonides, ibid., 12.5
↑9 For some more “tolerant” views, see Rabbi David Meyer here, Rabbi Tzvi Freeman in the comment discussion here. As shall become clear, Rabbi Elijah Benamozegh believes that Christianity can be “purified”, but by changes so drastic as to constitute apostasy.
↑10 Cf. Rabbi Smary Brownstein here: However the Christian belief in a triune G-d is not compatible with the Torah. You can find details on this and related questions on the AskNoah website in their Q&A forum.
↑11 Maimonides, ibid. 11.4.
↑12 Yosef Eisen, Miraculous Journey: A Complete History of the Jewish People from Creation to the Present, p 197. Targum Press, Southfield Mich., 2004. https://archive.org/details/miraculousjourne0000eise/page/196/
↑13 Ibid., 108-9.
↑14 ‘Recommended Books for Learning and Living the Noahide Code’, Ask Noah site.
↑15 Maimonides Ibid. 9.14
↑16 For instance, consider Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Sefer Nezikin, Rotzeach uShmirat Nefesh, 5.3-4: When a Jew unintentionally kills a servant or a resident alien, he must be exiled. […] When a resident alien kills a Jew unintentionally, he should be executed, even though he acted unintentionally. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Sefer Nezikin, Rotzeach uShmirat Nefesh, 5.3-4
↑17 For example: A Noahide who slays any soul, even a fetus in its mother’s womb, should be executed in retribution for its death. Similarly, if he slew a person who would have otherwise died in the near future, placed a person before a lion, or starved a person to death, he should be executed for through one manner or other, he killed. Similarly, one should be executed if he killed a pursuer when he could have saved the latter’s potential victim by maiming one of the pursuer’s limbs. These laws do not apply with regard to Jews. Ibid., 9.4.
↑18 Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Sefer Hamada, Avodat Kochavim, 7.1.
↑19 Eliyahu Touger, Commentary on Halachah 1 on Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Sefer Hamada, Avodat Kochavim, 7, available here.
↑20 Maimonides Mishneh Torah, Sefer Shoftim, Melachim uMilchamot 9.2
↑21 https://www.timesofisrael.com/head-of-extremist-jewish-group-calls-christians-blood-sucking-vampires/ and https://www.axios.com/2022/11/02/israel-election-extreme-far-right-rise-netanyahu-victory
↑22 For instance, Benamozegh anachronistically asserts that idea of the Triune God is a corruption of concepts from the Kabbalah. (cf. p 104).
↑23 Benamozegh 51
↑24 Cf. Benamozegh 329-30:
↑25 Ibid. 59
↑26 Answering a question, Rabbi Tzvi Freeman wrote:
‑d, the non-Jew is not required to reject belief in smaller deities, as long as there’s one authority at the top. The same goes with the idea of the trinity. This is called ‘shittuf’ in Hebrew, literally ‘partnership.’
In this Trinity, there is nothing greater, nothing less than anything else. But the entire three persons are coeternal and coequal with one another. So that, as we have said, we worship complete unity in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity.
↑27 Cf. N. 28 of St Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis
↑28 Pietro Parente, “Modernism”, 190-1, in Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology, Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee 1951.