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Translation
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What the Fathers say
Eastern Fathers
Theophylact of Ohrid
So the apostle calls Nero, who was a prototype of the antichrist. He was also a lawless man and wanted to be called god. He well said: "mystery." For, he says, Nero did not so openly and shamelessly rise up against every god as that one will rise up. What the apostle says has this meaning: before the time of the antichrist comes, another man was found, little inferior to him. What is so surprising, then, if there is already an antichrist? …
Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius
Therefore, as the end of this world approaches, the condition of human affairs must undergo a change, and through the prevalence of wickedness become worse; so that now these times of ours, in which iniquity and impiety have increased even to the highest degree, may be judged happy and almost golden in comparison of that incurable evil. …
Western Saints
Augustine of Hippo
But others think that the words, "Ye know what withholdeth," and "The mystery of iniquity worketh," refer only to the wicked and the hypocrites who are in the Church, until they reach a number so great as to furnish Antichrist with a great people, and that this is the mystery of iniquity, because it seems hidden; also that the apostle is exhorting the faithful tenaciously to hold the faith they hold when he says, "Only he who now holdeth, let him hold until he be taken out of the way," that is, until the mystery of iniquity which now …
Thomas Aquinas
Then when he says, "for the mystery", he sets out the reason for the delay. And this text has been explained in many ways, because the word "mystery" can be either in the nominative case or in the accusative case. If it is nominative, the meaning is this: I say that he will be revealed in his own time, because already the mystery, i.e., a thing hidden after the manner of a figure, is at work in false men who seem good and yet are evil. And these play the role of the Antichrist. …
Victorinus of Pettau
"And the beast which ascendeth from the abyss." After many plagues completed in the world, in the end he says that a beast ascended from the abyss. Bat that he shall ascend from the abyss is proved by many testimonies; for he says in the thirty-first chapter of Ezekiel: "Behold, Assur was a cypress in Mount Lebanon." Assur, deeply rooted, was a lofty and branching cypress-that is, a numerous people-in Mount Lebanon, in the kingdom of kingdoms, that is, of the Romans. …
Victorinus Commentary on the Apocalypse of the Blessed John ↗
Translation