Antichrist, man of sin, lawless one: one figure or several terms?

Background

• [DOCUMENTED FACT]The word 'antichrist' appears only in 1 John and 2 John. It does not appear in Revelation, in Daniel, or in 2 Thessalonians.
• [HISTORICAL]The composite figure familiar today was assembled over centuries by combining the beast of Revelation 13, the little horn of Daniel 7, the man of sin of 2 Thessalonians 2, and John's antichrist. That assembly is a tradition of reading, and it may be correct; it is not itself a text.

What stands out

• [OBSERVATION]1 John uses the term both singularly ('antichrist shall come') and plurally ('many antichrists'), and applies it to a doctrinal position rather than to a political office.
• [OBSERVATION]2 Thessalonians describes a single figure revealed at a specific time, restrained until then by something or someone unnamed.
• [OBSERVATION]Daniel 7's little horn and Revelation 13's beast share the speaking of great words and a set duration, which is the strongest textual basis for connecting them.
• [OPEN QUESTION]Do the texts require these to be one figure? A shared trait is not an identity claim, and the texts nowhere state the equation.
• [INFERENCE]If they are one figure, the merged portrait is coherent. If they are not, several arguments about 'the Antichrist' are arguments about a composite the texts did not build.

Why some people connect these

• [OBSERVATION]The first question to ask of any candidate is which text it is actually working from, and whether it has quietly merged several into one figure.
• [OPEN QUESTION]What is 'he who now letteth' (the restrainer)? Proposals include the Roman state, civil order, the Holy Spirit, the church, and an angelic figure. The text does not name it.
• —INTERPRETIVE CONNECTION — Individual candidates have been named in every century, including by prominent figures within major traditions. That history is documented; it also demonstrates how easily the criteria stretch.

Another way this is read

• [COMPETING INTERPRETATION]Many futurist readers hold the terms describe one future person.
• [COMPETING INTERPRETATION]Many historicist readers hold they describe an institution or succession of officeholders rather than one person.
• [COMPETING INTERPRETATION]Preterist readers apply the man of sin to a first-century figure and John's antichrists to contemporary teachers.
• [COMPETING INTERPRETATION]Idealist readers hold antichrist is any power or teaching that denies Christ, present in every age, possibly intensifying at the end.

Where the information comes from

• [HISTORICAL]The list of confident identifications that did not survive their own century is long and well documented. That is a reason for caution, though it does not settle whether the texts describe a figure at all.

What we don't know

• [UNKNOWN]Whether these passages describe one figure or several is genuinely unsettled, and it has been argued both ways for centuries.
• [UNKNOWN]Whether the four bodies of text describe one figure remains unresolved.