The Katechōn, the Man of Lawlessness, and the Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes

This paper proposes to look in a perhaps unexpected place for insight into the 2024 election: the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, which introduces a strange apocalyptic narrative in which the katechōn or “restrainer” holds back the depredations of the “man of lawlessness.” Applying this framework to the two-party system in the US, this paper shows that each party casts itself in the role of katechōn and its opponent in the role of “man of lawlessness,” turning every election into an apocalyptic showdown in which the forces of evil may triumph once and for all. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s attempted secularization of Second Thessalonians’ apocalyptic myth in The Mystery of Evil, the paper argues that the very urgency of always staving off “the worst” is in fact the true force of chaos and destruction, actively preventing us from constructing a livable political and economic order.