And for this cause God shall send them a strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
We can recount many other events clearly showing that from a hidden judgment of God comes perversity of heart, with the result that refusal to hear the truth leads to commission of sin, and this sin is also punishment for preceding sin. For to believe a lie and not believe the truth is indeed sin, but it comes from the blindness of heart which by a hidden but just judgment of God is also punishment for sin. We see this also in what the apostle says to the Thessalonians, “For they have not received the love of truth, that they might be saved. Therefore God sends them a misleading influence that they may believe falsehood.” .
Not to recognize sins lest penance follow is the wrath of God, as it is written, “And the Lord gave to them the spirit of a deep sleep,” lest they actually return and be cured and healed by their lamentations and just satisfactions after their sins. The apostle Paul in his epistle states and says, “For they have not received the love of truth that they might be saved. Therefore God will send them a misleading influence that they may believe falsehood, that all may be judged who have not believed the truth but have preferred wickedness.” The first degree of happiness is not to sin; the second, to recognize the sins committed.
Nevertheless the profound gloom of the falling darkness has so blinded the hearts of some, that they receive no light from the wholesome precepts, but, once turned away from the direct path of the true way, they are hurried headlong and suddenly by the night and error of their sins.
Sometimes by the hidden and incomprehensible judgment of God, the bad angels are permitted to make certain things to test the good and seduce the evil. Now the bad angels themselves do not create what they produce, but they are permitted to bring forth certain things, because these already exist hidden in the heart of God, things which we cannot see. Similarly, the devil was not able to create serpents or frogs, although with God’s permission he produced them, just as he was not the creator of the fire when, to test Job, he, with fire falling from heaven, consumed his sheep together with the shepherds. Nor was he the creator of the wind, when a wicked wind blowing out of the desert, struck the four corners of the house and crushed all the children of holy Job in one simultaneous ruin. The omnipotent God alone created the various natures, that is, the elements of this world. In secret and hidden places, God places certain seeds of things, hidden to us but visible to the angels. From the...
Speaking of antichrist, too, he says clearly in the Second to the Thessalonians: "And for this cause God shall send them the working of error, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but consented to iniquity."
One should know that the Antichrist must come. Antichrist, to be sure, is everyone who does not confess that the Son of God came in the flesh, is perfect God and became perfect man while at the same time he was God. In a peculiar and special sense, however, he who is to come at the consummation of the world is called Antichrist. So, it is first necessary for the gospel to have been preached to all the Gentiles, as the Lord said, and then God shall proceed to the conviction of the impious Jews…. “Because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to let them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
Note that the Apostle did not hesitate to say that God sends to them the working of error, since then God is said to send it, when He allows to send it with the Devil. For God permits the Devil to do this with a just and hidden judgment, because he acts unjust and uneven intention. But what follows, who have not believed in the truth, is similar to that passage of the same Apostle, "because though they knew God they did not worship him as God or give Him thanks" (Rom 1:21). And right after that, "For that reason God gave them over to a reprobate frame of mind, that they may do those things which are not fitting." (Rom 1:28) Nevertheless, we must note that those who were judged shall be deceived, secretly by the just judgments of God, whom God himself did not cease to judge since the beginning of the sin of the rational creature. Even those who were described and led astray shall be justified at the last and open judgment of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who, having been judged mo...
-that is, the mischief which he is about to do he strives to do secretly; but he is not raised up by his own power, nor by that of his father, but by command of God, of which thing Paul says in the same passage: "For this cause, because they have not received the love of God, He will send upon them a spirit of error, that they all may be persuaded of a lie, who have not been persuaded of the truth."
