THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
believing Jews having fled into the wilderness would be pursued by him, and then he would be slain by the true Messiah with the breath of his mouth. This tradition is in part followed and in part contradicted by the Apocalypse and by Paul. In its background is the Book of Daniel with its fierce foreign oppressor; the Apocalyptic Belial, a supernatural spirit who will antagonize God at the end of time (Sybillines, bk. iii.); the doctrine of Satan (Rev. xx. 2); the Babylonian dragonmyth (Gunkel, Schopfung und Chaos); and a man filled with satanic might. The doctrine of Antichrist contains one of the solutions which the early Church had to offer for two problems of the religious consciousness — the origin and overthrow of evil, and theodicy. C. A. B.
Bibliography: McClintoek and Strong, Cyclopaedia, i. 254- 261 (able historical review, but omits survey of the Pseudepigrapha, a lack supplied in R. F. Charles, Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, London, 1899); J. G. Walch, Bibliotheca theologica, ii. 217 sqq.. 4 vols., Jena, 1757-66 (gives bibliography of controversy between Protestants and Catholics); T. Malvenda, De Antichristo, Rome, 1604; J. H. Newman, The Protestant Idea of Anti-Christ, in his Critical and Historical Essays, ii. 112-185, London, 1871; DCB, i. 120-122; S. Huntingford, The Apocalypse and the Antichrist of St.
Paul and St. John, London, 1881; Computation of 666 . the Coming of Anti-Christ, ib. 1891; W. Bousset, Der Antichrist in der Ueberlieferung des Judenthums, des Neuen Testaments und der alien Kirche, Gottingen, 1895, Eng. transl., London, 1896; H. Gunkel, Schopfung und Chaos, Gottingen, 1895', E. Wadstein, Antichrist, in ZWT, xxxviii.-xxxix. (new series, iii.-iv., 1895-96), 79-157, 251- 293; M. Friedlander, Der Antichrist in den vorchristlichen jiidischen Quellen, Gottingen, 1901.
ANTIDICOMARIANITES, an"ti-dic"o-me'ri-anaits: A name applied by Epiphanius (Hcer., Ixxviii.) to opponents of the belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary, the mother of Christ. The New Testament speaks of the " brethren " of Jesus; and in Tertullian's time the opinion was still prevalent that Mary's marriage with Joseph was a true marriage. Thus he writes (De monogamia, viii.): " Truly it was a virgin who bore Christ, but after doing so she married, in order that the last title of sanctity might be checked off in the inventory of Christ; a mother who was both a virgin and a once married woman." But by the fourth century it was considered as established that there had not been a real marriage. The older belief had not, however, altogether disappeared. Epiphanius found the opinion current in Arabia that Mary, after the birth of Christ, had lived with Joseph as his wife and had children by him. He classed the adherents of this view as a sect, bestowed upon them a name of his own composition, meaning " opponents of Mary," and controverted their belief in a lengthy treatise, which he gives in the passage cited above. (A. Hauck.)
ANTILEGOMENA. See Canon of Scripture.
ANTIMENSIUM, an"ti-men'si-um : A name applied in the Greek Church to a linen cloth spread upon the altar before the beginning of the eucharistic service, and considered as making it an altar ready for the sacrifice. Since the Greek Church, like the Roman Catholic, holds that the eucharistic sacrifice may be offered only on a consecrated altar, and since this consecration can be performed only by the bishop (taking place usually at the
time of the consecration of the church), the mass could not be celebrated in churches not yet consecrated, if the use of this consecrated cloth — in the Roman Catholic Church, of a portable altar-stone (see Altar) — were not held to supply the deficiency. Georg Rietschel.)
ANTINOMIANISM AND ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSIES.
I. Antinomianism in General.
New Testament Antinomianism (§ 1).
Gnostic Antinomianism (§ 2).
Antinomianism of the Middle Ages (§ 3).
Of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (§ 4).
In England (§ 5).
The Ranters (§ 6).
Later Phases of Antinomianism (§ 7).
II. Antinomian Controversies.
1. Of the German Reformation.
Luther's Earlier Teachings About the Law (§1). Agricola's Controversy with Melanchthon, 1527 (§ 2). Agricola's Controversy with Luther, 1537 sqq. (§ 3). Jakob Schenk (§ 4). Later Controversies (§ 5). Settlement of the Controversy (§ 6).
2. The Antinomian Controversy in New England.
I. Antinomianism in General: The name antinomianism is a comparatively modern designation of several types of ethical thought in which hostility to the Mosaic law (including the decalogue) and to the principles therein embodied has led to immoral teaching and practise. Traces of such thought are evident in the New Testament. The spiritualization of the law into the one precept of love to God taught and exemplified by Jesus encouraged some overenthusiastic devotees to believe that they had been exalted to such a height of spirituality and such an overmastering love to God that they needed to have no regard to moral precepts or to outward conduct; i. New Tes- while Paul's insistence on the goodness, tament holiness, and spirituality of the law
Antino- did not suffice to convince all of those
mianism. who considered themselves his disciples that, as being utterly ineffectual for human salvation and as occasioning and inciting to sin, it was not itself sin and worthy to be treated with abhorrence. Paul's sharp conflict with Judaizers in regard to the observance of Jewish ceremonies could hardly fail to convince his more radical anti-Judaistic followers that the effort to keep the law perfectly was not only vain but involved the setting at naught of the gospel of free grace in Christ Jesus. Some such perversion of Paul's teaching was probably in the mind of the writer of II Pet. iii. 16. The members of the Corinthian Church who were puffed up and did not mourn over the incestuous person, as well as the parties guilty of the abominable union (I Cor. v. 1-6), were probably antinomian, and of like tendency were doubtless the Nicolaitans (Rev. ii. 2, 15; see Nicolaitans), those that held the teaching of Balaam (Rev. ii. 14), and those that suffered the woman Jezebel (Rev. ii. 20).
Many Gnostics objected to the Mosaic law as being too formal and not sufficiently spiritual, on the one hand, and as giving too much place to carnal indulgence, on the other (see Gnosticism)- Holding the flesh in contempt as an evil product of the