Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/138

124 fcimilar views, and tad many followers. In tlie Middle Ages the question gradually merged into tlie more philo sophical one of the relation between reason and faith. In modern theology the problem again appears, but its aspect is completely philosophical. Philosophy, indeed, has never ceased to concern itself with this very question. Xeno- phanes mocked the anthropomorphism of his countrymen; Aristotle denied to the gods ethical virtue and the posses sion of emotions or passions; he allowed to them only a life of intellectual speculation. The Epicureans thought the gods lived in complete quiescence, and concerned themselves not at all with the affairs of men (see Lucretius, ii. 646). Philo exhibits very strongly the tendency to reduce the Deity to a lifeless abstraction, whose attributes are only negatively known. In modern philosophy, Descartes attempted to settle the problem, by affirming that any attributes in us which involve limitation or imperfection cannot be ascribed to God, but that attributes which do not imply imperfection can be predicated of Him. Spinoza is one of the strongest opponents of any form of anthro pomorphism, and from him the modern aspect of the question may be said to proceed. He brought clearly to light the fundamental difficulty, the reconciliation of the infinite and absolute nature of God with any attribute whatsoever; for attribute, as such, implies negation, i.e., limitation. Spinoza dismisses as anthropomorphic the idea of God as an intelligence, as free to act, and as ruling the world, and thus destroys the ideas of design in nature and of providence. The consequences of this theory on questions relating to the personality of God, miracles, prayer, &c., have been worked out very fully in the most recent times. Thus the real problem at the root of the question as to the legitimacy of anthropomorphic modes of thought, is the philosophical one of the limits of human intelligence, of the relation between the divine thought in itself and in nature and human intelligence. A long line of philosophic thinkers affirm the impossibility of human intelligence penetrating the nature of the divine, and point out our inability to solve the many contradictions which arise in the attempt to do so. According to them, we can only think of God by analogy; our ideas of Him must be anthro pomorphic, but they are at the same time known to be entirely symbolical. The best known representatives of this mode of thought are Bishop Browne and the late Dean Mansel.  ANTIBES, a seaport town of France, on the Mediter ranean, in the arrondissement of Grasse, which formerly belonged to the department of Yar, but which was trans ferred to the new department of Alpes Maritimes in 1860. The town is situated on the east side of a neck of land called La Garoupe, 10 miles S.E. of Grasse; it is fortified, and possesses a tolerable harbour, which accommodates a considerable fishing industry. The principal exports are dried fruits, salt fish, and oil. The surrounding country is very fertile, producing abundance of fruit and flowers. Antibes, the ancient Antipolis, was founded by colonists from Marseilles about 340 B.C. Population, 6004.  ANTICHRIST. [ Greek ] or [ Greek ]. The word occurs only in the first and second epistles of John. It signifies an opponent or adversary of Christ. The idea expressed by it had its origin in Judaism. According to prophetic anticipations, the Messianic time was to be im mediately preceded by a great conflict, in which Jehovah would fight out of Zion for His own people, and defeat the concentrated opposition of the world. An Almighty leader on the one side seemed to require an antagonist on the other, a head of the army of darkness against the Prince of light. Thus Ezekiel depicts Gog proceeding oxit of Magog, to hazard a decisive battle against the Lord and His saints on the eve of the Messianic age (chapters xxxviii. and xxxix). The idea was subsequently embodied in Antiochus Epiphanes, who tried to eradicate Judaism with savage hatred. When we consider the insane violence he exhibited against the Jews and their temple, his prohibition of Jehovah s worship, the solemnisation of the Sabbath, and circumcision, it was natural to regard him as the represen tative of heathenism in its opposition to the true religion. Accordingly, the worshippers of Jehovah termed the small altar erected by him to Olympian Jove in the holy temple at Jerusalem (168 B.C.), the abomination of desolation (Daniel ix. 27, xi. 31, xii. 11 ; Mat. xxiv. 15). The apocalyptic visions of Daniel exerted an important influence upon the Jews after the time of Antiochus, animating them with hopes of the near approach of a better day, preceded, it is true, by a fearful struggle, in which a powerful prince, the impersonation of heathenism in its fiercest hate, should persecute the chosen people. The future of Israel was brightened by the visions of one whose predictions had been at least partially fulfilled. After this the idea seems to have been in abeyance till the reign of Caligula (40 A. D.), when Greeks in Alexandria and Syria attempted to introduce images of the emperor into the Jewish synagogues. The express command of Caligula addressed to the Jews, to erect his image in the temple at Jerusalem, in the form of Olympian Zeus, excited an intense commotion throughout Palestine, and must havo recalled to the Jews familiar with their Scriptures the similar conduct of Antiochus, as though the prophet Daniel had foretold the blasphemy of the Roman emperor. In the discourse of Christ recorded by Matthew (chapter xxiv.), a personal opponent or antichrist does not appear, but the second advent is preceded by great affliction, the desecra tion of the temple, false Messiahs, and false apostles. This evangelic eschatology, however, appears in its present form to belong to a late redactor, so that it is difficult to separate Christ s own utterances from other elements probably in corporated with them. Various sayings of Jesus relative to his second appearing were evidently misapprehended or confused in the reminiscences of the early disciples. St Paul resumes the idea of antichrist. Whatever Jewish conceptions he laid aside, and he emancipated him self from the grossest of them, he did not abandon the idea of an antichrist or terrible adversary of the true re ligion. The prophecies of Daniel, whether in their sup posed relation to Antiochus or Caligula, and the impious command of the latter in particular to desecrate the Jewish temple, furnished him with traits for the portrait of Christ s great enemy, whose manifestation in the Roman empire the state of the world led him to suspect, especially as the empire was then identified by the Jews, as well as by Paul himself, with the fourth and last kingdom of Daniel s visions. Blending together the notions of an antichrist and false Christ, the picture which St Paul draws is that of the man of sin, &quot; the son of perdition ; who opposeth and exaltcth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped ; so that he as god sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God ; the wicked one whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,&quot; &c. (2 Thess. ii. 3-9). Here the epithet 6 di/o/xos appears to be borrowed from Isaiah xi. 4, the apostle coinciding with the Chaldee interpreter in under standing the passage of antichrist. The hindrance to the manifestation of the terrible enemy, to which Paul obscurely alludes, seems to be the Roman empire in one or other of its aspects ; for AVC cannot adopt the ingenious conjecture that Claudius is meant, though the name fits the apostolic expression 6 Kare ^wv, qui claudit, Claudius. Apart from the fact that the neuter TO Kariyov is used as well as the masculine it is scarcely probable that one whose reign was 