Third Rome’s the Charm?

Peter Thiel, who is delivering four lectures on the Antichrist in Nashville this autumn as a guest of The Pamphleteer, will turn to the inheritance of Rome in his concluding lecture on October 19, titled “New Rome.” Thiel frames history via the concept of the katechon—the restrainer that, according to Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, holds back the lawless one “until he be taken out of the way.”

Though Paul does not specify the restrainer's identity, generations of Christian thinkers have equated it with the Roman Empire, anointing Rome with both eschatological and political significance. The successors to the Roman Empire were thought to inherit Rome’s obligation to preserve order against the forces that would bring about the Antichrist and the end times. Across centuries, various states have claimed the title of the “New Rome,” grounding their legitimacy in the belief that they held a providential role in history.

Russia developed a particularly distinctive interpretation of Rome and its role as the katechon. Around 1510, the monk Philotheus of Pskov declared to Grand Prince Vasily III that “two Romes have fallen, the third stands, and a fourth there shall not be.”

On the surface, this looks as though it is merely flattery, placing Moscow as the rightful heir to Rome and Byzantium. However, by insisting that no fourth Rome would follow, Philotheus also marked Moscow as the culmination of the succession, investing its survival with a theological significance not present in earlier claimants. The prophecy that elevated Moscow also imposed a burden on it: if the third Rome were to fall, there would be no one to take its place.

Muscovite churchmen developed their own account of how a would-be Rome can lose its status. They attributed the fall of Constantinople (the Second Rome) to events in 1439, when its emperor and bishops, seeking Western aid against the Turks, accepted union with the Latin Church. For them, the Ottoman conquest of 1453 was the outcome of an earlier compromise.

The interpretation corresponds with the language of Paul. The Greek text states only that the restrainer will “come to be out of the way” (ek mesou genētai), without identifying a specific external force or actor. The phrase permits the restrainer to vanish by losing its essential character, not simply by external conquest.

From this, Moscow learned that a Rome is lost from within before it is lost from without, and therefore Moscow would be the restrainer only so long as it remained faithful. And yet, Philotheus had denied the possibility of another successor, leaving the critical question of what would restrain the lawless one if the last Rome fell.

The claim that no fourth Rome would follow also set the Russian concept apart from its Western counterpart. Latin Christendom developed the doctrine of translatio imperii, or the transfer of empire, which allowed Roman authority to pass from one people to another.

This notion predates Christianity; in the Aeneid, Virgil portrays Rome as the heir of Troy, with Aeneas escaping the burning city and his descendants eventually going on to found Rome. In medieval times, the inheritance moved west toward Charlemagne and his successors, while allowing for future claimants.

Under translatio imperii, the fall of one Rome meant the transfer of its authority to another. For the Third Rome, as Philotheus had stated, no successor could follow, making failure singularly perilous. The Muscovite interpretation of Constantinople’s fall only intensified this anxiety: if a Rome could perish by losing its fundamental character, then striving for permanence became the surest defense against decline.

This reasoning gives rise to two contrasting tendencies. The first confines responsibility to fidelity, preserving the faith unchanged and accepting that divine judgment, rather than the restrainer, determines the outcome. The second extends this sense of responsibility beyond doctrine, encompassing the state, society, and even the course of history, as though maintaining stasis might avert decline. The distinction between these approaches lies in where they assign responsibility: the first entrusts the outcome to divine authority, while the second seeks to postpone it through human action.

Konstantin Leontiev adopted the latter approach. Writing in the 1880s, he argued that Russia needed to be “frozen” to stop decay, advocating insulation from the egalitarian progress that, in his view, was making European nations increasingly alike. He interpreted this homogenization as preparing the way for the Antichrist and hoped that Russia’s traditional hierarchies could serve as a bulwark against it.

Thiel’s framework, however, uncovers a tension in this position. According to Thiel, the Antichrist rises by promising “peace and safety” (1 Thess. 5:3) to a world fearful of catastrophe, and his rule is defined by the suppression of change. A restrainer that preserves order by resisting change may end up reproducing the logic it opposes. Leontiev seemed to recognize this danger later in life, when he speculated that the Antichrist might arise from Russia itself.

Vladimir Solovyov, a friend of Leontiev but also one of his critics, saw the issue differently. In the “Short Tale of the Antichrist,” which concludes his Three Conversations of 1900, the Antichrist appears first as president of a United States of Europe, and then as ruler of the world. The imperial form that Philotheus saw as the restrainer is thus transformed into the instrument of the lawless one.

The Antichrist gathers the churches, offering each what it values most in return for recognition as their benefactor. Only a small remnant refuses, and the Antichrist’s rule eventually collapses amid a Jewish uprising shortly before Christ’s return. In Solovyov’s account, resistance appears only after the restrainer has disappeared, raising the question of what, within the narrative, fulfilled that role. The story suggests an answer: the emperor gains control over the Church by subsuming it under his authority, erasing its independence. Once the empire absorbs the faith it was supposed to serve, the distinction between restrainer and ruler vanishes, leaving nothing outside the state to provide a check.

The entire concept of the katechon rests upon a limitation of imperial power, permitting the ruler to defend the Church without becoming its source of authority. Philotheus warns of rulers who fall away from the faith. Solovyov’s emperor never falls away; he simply takes the Church over. In both scenarios, the boundary that restrains political power is lost. Leontiev’s vision of a frozen state faces a similar risk by assigning political order the responsibility of preserving what is meant to transcend politics.

At Florence, Constantinople gave up the faith to save itself. If Philotheus’s final clause is read as a call to fidelity, it turns Moscow’s claim to inheritance into an obligation. A state that makes itself the ultimate authority over the faith it claims to defend ceases to function as a restrainer. Thiel’s New Rome faces a strikingly similar dilemma: how can a state hold back the end without allowing the instinct for self-preservation to eclipse its obedience to a higher authority?