Puzzle the Anti-Christ...er, Anti-Aslan

Interesting meditation on the AntiChrist:

For those who see good versus evil in an ever-battling dualism, the foremost lesson about the Antichrist comes as a shocking relief: He is not the opposite of Christ. The concept of “pure evil” has no place in the Catholic faith, for, even in their self-created hell of permanent separation from God, demons retain the good mark of having been created by God. Instead, the Antichrist comes in disguise, offering seductive lies that seem to satisfy humanity’s deepest yearnings at the deadly price of the full truth.

Drawing on the letters of Sts. Paul and John, the Catechism speaks of this time as “the Church’s ultimate trial ... a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh” (No. 675).

Our faith teaches, then, that God has already and definitively defeated evil for us. The Antichrist has no chance of winning, for he remains subject to God’s reign despite his rejection of it. What the Antichrist represents is not some final standoff between good and evil, with angelic swords blazing and the outcome uncertain. He comes, rather, in a last-ditch effort to be idolized, to bring down mankind in a vile bacchanal of creaturely worship.

Perhaps no other writer in modern times has fleshed out the nature of the Antichrist as artfully as C.S. Lewis...