Roman Catholics, loyal to the Pope, returned the favor and had their own list of Protestant Anti-christs, beginning with Luther. In modernity, political figures from Napoleon to Saddam Hussein have been tagged with the infamous title. By the time he is done, he has covered everything from the rise of Jewish apocalypticism to Roman Polanski's 1968 film Rosemary's Baby and the Omen trilogy from the 1970s. While it is possible to reappropriate symbols like Antichrist from the past, it is, says McGinn, a tricky business. He goes about it gingerly by first calling upon Jung's reflections on the shadow side of reality.
Evil is part of the archetypal forms present to the individual and collective self.
McGinn next reminds the reader of the persistence of the apocalyptic mentality in the late twentieth century. Antichrist is important insofar as he is a window on to the apocalyptic worldview. In Antichrist , McGinn practices historical criticism in the classic mode of the Enlightenment. Rational, scientific investigation of texts is employed to establish the meaning of the topic at hand. The interpreter acts as an objective outsider who, while assiduously practicing disinterested awareness, uncovers the facts and pronounces final judgment.