II Thess. 1:1-2:2 (Second Essay): Unintended Biblical Humor

The solution given in II Thessalonians to this question (at the end of the previous essay) will be a wild one indeed. It has nothing to do with being caught up in the air or the dead in Christ rising first. If we try to make the answers in I and II Thess. consistent, the most we can say is that II Thess. talks about a time just before the events of I Thess. If so, however, it is a pretty big thing to omit from I Thess. It seems as if the early Christians were making up eschatology as they went along. But, is that really any different from the development of anything else? We might claim that there is "revelatory guidance" and that is certainly true. But when you are fighting it out "on the ground," there is no clarity at all for quite a while as people stake out positions, argue for their special concepts and try to create a "system" which uses their terminology as foundational.

So, the "solution" to our eschatological problem in II Thess introduces us to a lawless one (2:3) who seems to oppose every divinity but nevertheless is able to set himself up in the temple of God and claim divine honors for himself (2:4). He is somehow mysteriously being restrained at the present (2:6) but he will be revealed, only to be destroyed by the Lord Jesus Christ (2:7-8). I suppose that Jesus then will come in destruction and salvation--to whip this man of lawlessness and then to catch up all the saints in the air.

If you sit down calmly and think about what is being proposed here in II Thess and compare it to I Thess you see that this is all part and parcel of the rough and inconsistent development of earliest Christian eschatology. People want to know what is going to happen both because Jesus gave the impression that the Kingdom of God is coming soon and Paul also taught that the eschaton was near. Once you have your "leading lights" committed to that proposition and they are no longer on the scene, you will have loads of people come in to try to figure out the way things will "work out." You take the terminology lying around, either from the OT Scriptures, the intertestamental literature, the emphases of Jesus, Paul or others, and you begin to do two things: (1) You identify terminology that is especially helpful to you to use in devising your own understanding of the end and, (2) You begin to look very closely at events of your time in order to correlate events with terminology.

But it is all groping in the dark. Or, to put it differently, it is groping with lights of various intensities in the dim world of meaning and confusion in which we all must live. The "solution" in II Thess, then, is not technically inconsistent with that in I Thess, but it is so different in emphasis that it comes as it were from another world. It is an effort to start systematizing a chronology of the "last times."

What is instructive for us today is that none of this took place when the inspired writers thought it would. I think we have to be honest enough with ourselves and with the text to say that the earliest Christians, including Paul and the authors of other NT letters generally assumed that the end times were near. But, in fact, the end times weren't near (or else I have really missed something). Thus, I look at the attempt to make an eschatological time-table in I and II Thess. with understanding today, but with a little bit of amusement. It just was an attempt to try to comfort people, to tamp down rumors, to try to keep people in an eschatological frame of mind but adjust one's earlier thinking to new realities which were cropping up all the time.

The "Greeting" in Chapter 1

Even though the text for the morning only emphasized the extended "greeting" in II Thess, I thought it necessary to deal with the bigger issue of the purpose of the letter. Greetings are not to be considered in the abstract. But when you look at the greeting, you are both touched and a bit amazed. I will conclude these essays by going through the "flow" of II Thess 1. In brief, it consists of: (1) an expression of gratitude--1:4-6; (2) a digression on judgment--1:7-10; and (3) a return to thanksgiving--1:11-12.

1. The interesting feature of the expression of gratitude is the use of "expansive" or "enlargement" terminology. The author commends the hearers for a faith that is not simply growing but is "hyper-growing" (hyperauxanei); he also talks about the love that is "poured out" (pleonazei). The second Greek term is significant in the history of philosophy and is actually a negative term in Plato's Republic. Plato doesn't like the democratic form of government; he much prefers aristocracy. What is wrong with democracy? Well, if the people rule, according to Plato, they will just want to indulge in all their desires (sound true?), there will be no "brake" on consumption, and they will simply "gorge" themselves. The word "gorge" translates the Greek verb pleonazein. But once the word is taken from its philosophical context it has a more neutral meaning of "being in abundance" or "overflowing." That is the way the term is used here.

The Thessalonians demonstrate their "hyper" faith and love in the midst of persecutions and tribulations. The latter term (translating the Greek thlipsis) becomes a kind of technical term for the "Great Tribulation" of early Christianity. Their faith is remarkable because it has been tested in the overheated cauldron of tribulation.

2. But mention of tribulation triggers other thoughts in our author's mind. The world almost has a "red flag" character for him, and he launches into a rather vicious attack on those who aren't of the community of faith. Is the flip side of gratitude hostility? That would be problematic for us, especially if we try to inculcate in teaching and living the virtue of gratitude. But it is interesting to me that some of the most vitriolic language in the NT comes after one of the most effusive expressions of gratitude. Lest you miss the words--and the Lectionary designers don't want you to use them in your reading--some of them are the following: God will "repay" them, inflicting "vengeance" on those who don't know God. They, in turn, will suffer "the punishment of eternal destruction" and exclusion from "the glory of his might."

I don't think we ought just to skim the "positive language" from the passage, skipping the words that are difficult for us.

3. The author then returns to gratitude in vv. 11-12, but the words seem much more stereotypical than those in vv. 4-6. One can try to make something out of some of the words, but it is almost as if the author has "caught himself" after the stream of vitriol in vv. 6-10 and then sheepishly tried to end the greeting on an "up note." It is like an email I received from one of my pastor readers, who was really angry at me for my perspective in an essay I wrote. She went "over the top" in assailing me. But, before she quit, she concluded with some little words about "in faith" or "faithfully yours" or something like that. It was as if she couldn't imagine herself being a vicious person; and so the "in faith" was a way to convince herself that the dripping vitriol of her words was actually legitimate vitriol, or wasn't vitriol at all.

Conclusion

Not many will chose to preach or teach on this passage, but I think that is unfortunate. There are many good things to draw out of it--perhaps the best of which is that we need to establish some critical distance from the text, even as we confess that we want to be subject to it. Negotiating that tension will keep us coming back to the text--next week!

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