Restrainer

And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.

— 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7

The Restrainer names the person or power currently holding back “the mystery of lawlessness” so that “the man of sin,” Antichrist, cannot yet be revealed (2 Thess. 2:3-8). The Thessalonians are told they already know what restrains him, though the text itself never names it, leaving later readers to infer the restrainer’s identity from the passage and its history of interpretation. Reformed historicist writers have chiefly identified the restrainer as the Roman Empire, whose civil order stood in the way of any single power claiming universal dominion over the church, though that reading is not the only one argued.

Confessional Contrast

No Reformed confession addresses 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7 by name, and the 1689 London Baptist Confession is no exception. Its own identification of the papacy as Antichrist, though, presupposes the same institutional reading of 2 Thessalonians 2 that Reformed writers used to identify the restrainer:

“The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church, in whom by the appointment of the Father, all power for the calling, institution, order, or Government of the Church, is invested in a supream and soveraigne manner; neither can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof, but is that Antichrist, that Man of sin, and Son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God.”¹

Gill, writing a generation after the confession, and Hodge, two centuries later, both read the Antichrist this confession chapter names as having been held back until the restraining power of verses 6 and 7 was removed.²³ The confession states the Antichrist identification directly; the restrainer’s own identity is a separate question its own text leaves untouched.

Arguments

The Roman Empire restrained an ecclesiastical usurper

Hodge argues that Paul’s own wording shows the Thessalonians already knew what he meant: “Now ye know what withholdeth, that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.”⁴ Since Paul gives no further explanation, that knowledge must have come from his own prior teaching, and was not likely to be forgotten. This, Hodge argues, gives weight to “the almost unanimous judgment of the early fathers that the obstacle to the development of Antichrist was the Roman empire. While that continued in its vigour it was impossible that an ecclesiastic should become the virtual sovereign of the world.”³ He points to the centuries- long conflict between emperors and popes as historical confirmation: “as the power of the former decreased that of the latter increased.”³

The restrainer’s identity is uncertain

Berkhof, writing from an amillennial position, declines to commit to any one reading. He states plainly that Paul “assures his readers that the man of sin cannot come forth until that which (or, ‘he that’) restraineth is taken out of the way,” but adds that “this obstacle, whatever it may be, is variously interpreted.”⁵ On this account, the text itself underdetermines the answer, and confidence beyond what Paul actually says is unwarranted.

The Holy Spirit’s presence in the church

Dispensational premillennialism, on Berkhof’s own account of the position, ties the restrainer to the church’s presence on earth. Its version of coming events holds that “after the Church has been removed from this earthly scene, and with it the indwelling Holy Spirit has gone… Old Testament conditions have been restored,” clearing the way for the man of sin to be revealed.⁶ On this reading, the restrainer is not a political power but the Holy Spirit himself, indwelling the church, withdrawn from the earth along with it before Antichrist appears.

Historical Development

Patristic reception

Hodge reports that the identification of the restrainer as the Roman Empire was “the almost unanimous judgment of the early fathers,” a reading he treats as authoritative in part because it traces back to instruction the Thessalonians had already received directly from Paul.³

Gill’s historical trigger, 1769

Writing in the generation just after the 1689 confession itself, Gill states the same identification and adds a specific historical trigger for the papacy’s rise. Antichrist, he writes, “lay greatly hid for a while, and was let and hindered from a more open appearance by the Roman emperor; yet, upon his removal from Rome to Constantinople, way was made for him to take his seat, and show his power.”²

Pictet’s staged account of the empire’s decline

The Genevan Reformed theologian Benedict Pictet gives the fullest staged account of how the Roman Empire’s restraining power was actually removed, reading “the thing which hindereth” (τὸ κατέχον) of 2 Thessalonians 2:7 as the Roman Empire and tracing “the chief steps by which the removal of this hindrance was effected”: first, “when the seat of empire was transferred from ancient Rome to Constantinople”; second, “when, by the division of the empire into Eastern and Western, the emperors of the West, having left Rome, placed their seat at Ravenna, or Milan, or were compelled to abdicate, A.D. 475, when Augustulus was conquered by Odoacer”; and third, “when the Greek emperors lost, through the acts of the popes, whatever power they had in Italy.”⁷ On this account, the restraint was removed by stages over several centuries, not all at once.

Hodge’s systematic defense, 1873

Hodge, writing over a century after Gill, gives the fullest single case for reading the passage this way, arguing that the conflict between emperors and popes for supremacy in the church was a matter of historical record, not speculation, and that the papacy’s rise tracked the empire’s own decline.³

Objections and Responses

Paul shifts from an impersonal “what restrains” (v. 6) to a personal “he who now restrains” (v. 7), which some take to mean the restrainer must be an individual, not an institution or empire. Hodge answers that this follows ordinary prophetic usage, in which Scripture regularly personifies kingdoms and powers under a single figure; Daniel’s beasts represent nations, not individual men. Even those who insist Antichrist himself is a single man must concede that the restrainer of these verses is a power rather than a person, since no candidate for an individual restrainer has ever been identified as removed to make way for an individual Antichrist’s rise.⁸

The Roman Empire cannot be the restrainer, since its eastern half survived for another thousand years after Rome fell in the fifth century. Pictet’s own account answers this by locating the relevant removal more precisely than the empire’s total extinction: the obstacle to the papacy’s rise was imperial authority over Rome and Italy specifically, removed in stages, from the transfer of the imperial seat to Constantinople, through the loss of a resident western emperor in 475, to the Greek emperors’ eventual loss of power in Italy itself to the popes.⁷ The empire’s survival elsewhere did not restore the authority over Rome that the historicist reading says had to be removed.

The Holy Spirit, not the Roman Empire, is the true restrainer, since the Spirit indwells the church that will one day be removed from the earth. Berkhof, reporting this dispensational premillennial argument in order to reject it, answers that it is “absolutely contrary to the history of revelation, that a reversal to Old Testament conditions, including the absence of the Church and of the indwelling Holy Spirit, should be more effective than the preaching of the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit.”⁶

Related Doctrines

References

The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 4. ↩
John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book V, chap. 14, “Of the Spiritual Reign of Christ.” ↩ ↩²
Charles Hodge, “Second Advent,” in Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 787-834, at 817-818. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Hodge, 817. ↩
Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 687-688. ↩
Berkhof, 683-684. ↩ ↩²
Benedict Pictet, Christian Theology, trans. Frederick Reyroux (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1845), 377-378. ↩ ↩²
Hodge, 811-812. ↩