EPISTLES I-II TO THE THESSALONIANS. - The first two letters written by St. Paul, in 50-51 A.D., from Corinth, a few months apart from each other.
THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS
1. Occasion
At the beginning of the 2nd apostolic journey, in the first months of 50, St. Paul, after evangelizing Philippi (Acts 16), encountering, as usual, opposition from the Jews who procured for him "sufferings and outrages" (I Thess. 2, 2), set out with Silas (Acts 16, 25-17, 4) toward Thessaly.
He touched Amphipolis (v.), Apollonia (v.) and stopped at Thessalonica (150 km. from Philippi), where there was a synagogue of Jews. To these, for three sabbaths, he expounded the Holy Scriptures, demonstrating the messiahship of Jesus; some of them believed and joined Paul and Silas; there also joined "a great number of proselytes and Greeks and not a few women of the first families" (Acts 17, 4). This enraged the Jews, who stirred up the rabble, hired the parasites of the market and the squares, and threw the city into an uproar; to rid themselves quickly of Paul and Silas, they surrounded the house that hosted him, but these had fled by night to Berea, a nearby town, so as to be able to oversee closely the development of the new community of the T.; but the Jews also at Berea incited the mob against Paul, who, leaving his collaborators, had to depart for Athens (Acts 17, 1-15). The I Thess. alludes to external trials, to sufferings, outrages that Paul and the converts suffered at Thessalonica, persecutions that continued relentlessly (2, 2-20); and Paul, anxious, unable to return, sends his beloved Timothy to confirm and encourage the Christians in the faith (3, 2-8; cf. again II Thess. 1, 4-6).
Having succeeded in driving out the Apostle after barely three weeks, without having allowed him to complete the teaching on the truths of Christianity (I Thess. 3, 10), the Jews now hope to erase every trace of his work; they resort to violence and calumny; they portray Paul as a charlatan, vain, cowardly, who has abandoned those who believed in him. St. Paul learns this from Timothy, who however brings consoling news about the steadfastness of the converts. This report was the proximate occasion of the I Thess.
2. Content
After the greeting, which is a wish and a blessing (1, 1), St. Paul proudly defends the honor of his ministry, as in Gal. and II Cor. The faithful of Thessalonica remain attached (3, 6 ff.) to Paul, who interweaves the greatest praises for them with the most resolute affirmations in his own defense. Against those who would paint him as a charlatan he recalls (1, 3) the miracles, the manifest signs of the Holy Spirit that accompanied his preaching (cf. 2, 2) and the great result obtained (1, 6-9). Paul has always acted with the sole aim of fulfilling the divine will amid continuous sufferings and humiliations (2, 1-6); his disinterestedness is such that, although having the right to maintenance from the faithful, he has always wanted to procure it for himself and his collaborators, with his manual labor (2, 7), driven to this by a supernatural motive (cf. I Cor. 9, 7-18), not by distrust toward his faithful, whom he loves as a nurse, a father (2, 8-11). It is not true that he fled thinking of himself and abandoning the others to their fate (2, 13; 3, 1-13); he attempted twice to return among them, but Satan prevented him; he sent Timothy for this reason, who on his return gives him the most beautiful news, the Apostle feels revived and thanks God, whose graces he invokes upon the faithful (3, 8-13). Here ends the principal and unitary part of the letter (chaps. 1-3). Chaps. 4-5 contain various practical recommendations, brief and very brief, which follow one another, without constituting an organic whole. Let them keep themselves pure (4, 1-8); let them progress in charity (4, 9-12); let them temper the external manifestations of mourning, giving to the gentiles, who have no hope, the demonstration of their faith in the future resurrection with the reunion in Christ of those whom death had separated (4, 13-18); let them await with fervor the fulfillment of the divine promise concerning the triumph of the Kingdom of God, preparing for it with prayer and holiness of life (5, 1-12); let them respect and love the leaders of the community, correct the idle and those who need reproof, always joyful in the Lord and grateful to God, persevere in prayer, welcome the lights and charisms of the Holy Spirit and flee every evil (5, 16-22). Paul closes by invoking for the faithful every grace of the Lord and sending them his greeting (5, 23-28).
3. The "consolation" concerning the dead
The text of the third exhortation (4, 13-18) is as follows: "We do not want you to be in ignorance, brothers, concerning those who die ('fall asleep'), so that you may not abandon yourselves to sorrow like the others (the pagans) who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we must also believe that God will lead with Jesus those who die in Him. This indeed we tell you by the word of the Lord: We, the living, the survivors, will not be separated from our dead, at the coming of the Lord (we will move to meet the Lord when He comes, all together, we and those whom today we mourn as dead). For the Lord Himself, at the command, at the cry of an archangel, at the sound of the divine trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ (all) will first rise; then we the living survivors together with them (the dear dead whom we mourn) will be caught up on the clouds to meet the Lord in heaven, and thus united we will always be with the Lord. Console one another therefore with these words." This translation, especially for the phrase "We the living survivors will be reunited with our dead when the Lord comes," which excludes in Paul as in his faithful the error of any fanciful expectation of the imminent return of Christ and the end of the world, and therefore of the exemption from death of supposed survivors to the parousia (v.) of the Lord (in clear contrast with what St. Paul explicitly and repeatedly teaches on the universality of death and on the certainty and the desire he has to die in order to be with Christ), has been established on solid lexicographic and syntactic bases by A. Romeo (Nos qui vivimus, qui residui sumus, in Verbum Domini, 9 [1929], pp. 307-12; 339-47; 360-64) and accepted by K. Staab in his recent commentary (1950) as the only one corresponding to the text, the context and the whole Pauline teaching. To explain as many still do "we left for the parousia of the Lord," and to hold that "the principal purpose (of St. Paul in this letter) is manifestly to correct the error of the neophytes about the disadvantages of the dead at the moment of the parousia" considered imminent and to connect to this error the idleness of some (D. Buzy and commonly), is to base a fanciful reconstruction on an erroneous foundation. In reality the verb περὶ λείπωσαι ("to be a survivor") is never constructed with εἰς and the accusative; it never refers to the future; instead the verb φθάνω (Grimme, Zorell: "nequaquam ante illos aut sine illis ad gloriam perveniemus") in the more recent Greek authors is always constructed with εἰς and the accusative; and this is the usage of St. Paul in the other two times he employs it (Rom. 9, 31; Phil. 3, 16), always placing εἰς and the accusative before the verb φθάνω. The two participles ("living, survivors"), with the article, are equivalent to two relative clauses; and they must be detached from the verb in the future, otherwise one would have to translate: "We will not be the first to live" (cf. Plato, Euthydemus, II, beginning; Curtius, § 391 e), which would be nonsense.
Nor can it be asserted that 6 verses (4:13-18), relegated among the other recommendations, constitute the principal purpose of the epistle, which here speaks of an excessive display of mourning; the Apostle explicitly states that he writes to the faithful "so that they may not grieve as the pagans do, who are without the consoling Christian hope," and to "console them" (vv. 13, 18): it is a secondary theme concerning practical life, and not an "error" or new doctrine (Vosté, Buzy, Amiot, etc.). Of supposed "advantages" or "disadvantages" with regard to the final coming of Christ there is no trace either in St. Paul or in the rest of the New Testament; of the supposed "error" one cannot understand the motives or the nature. Finally, it is an arbitrary assumption to connect the most natural recommendation against the idle (which returns, for example, in Eph. 4:28; 1 Tim. 5:13) "We beseech you, brethren, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, etc." (1 Thess. 5:14; cf. 4:11 ff.) to the alleged expectation of the imminent end. St. Paul will repeat it with energy in 2 Thess. 3:6-12: "If anyone refuses to work, let him not eat." In Thessalonica idlers must have abounded (cf. Acts 17:5), and some had insinuated themselves among the faithful, perhaps exploiting the generous charity of the good converts, praised by Paul (2 Thess. 1:3). Not a single word, in the two letters, can arouse the suspicion that anyone abstained from work because of a theoretical error, and precisely because of the expectation of the parousia.
4. The fourth recommendation (5:1-11)
After mentioning the final Resurrection and the physical coming of Jesus as judge, another theme begins (περί δέ, as in 4:9), concerning the determination of the time of the "day of the Lord." All exegetes (Plummer, Orchard, in Biblica, 19 [1938], pp. 24-31; Buzy, Amiot, Rinaldi, etc.) recognize that here St. Paul literally takes up (as in 2 Thess. 2:1) the theme of Jesus (Mt. 24; Lk. 17:22-18:8; 21), with the same exhortations to be vigilant, since death can surprise each one suddenly, especially on the occasion of collective calamities. Jesus spoke directly and solely of the end of Jerusalem, as is now increasingly recognized (A. Feuillet, F. Spadafora, A. Romeo, P. Benoit, in Revue biblique, 59 [1952], p. 119 ff.; P. Benoit, comm. on Mt. [La Bible de Jérusalem], Paris 1950, p. 135 ff.; C. Spicq, in Rev. des sciences philos. et théol., 36 [1952], p. 166, n. 53). "Day of the Lord," as in the Prophets of the Old Testament, and as in Lk. 17:22 ff., is the intervention of the Lord with his justice to punish the wicked and to protect his own; a spectacular manifestation of the power of the Messiah, a prophecy of hope for the nascent Church, persecuted by the Synagogue, is precisely the destruction of Jerusalem (Mt. 10:23; 16:27 ff.; 26:69 ff.; and parallel passages; besides Mt. 24 and Lk. 17; v. ESCATOLOGIA). St. Paul repeats the exhortation of the Redeemer. Instead of investigating the time and the circumstances (Mt. 24:36, 42; Acts 1:6 ff.: identical terms), which are God's secret, the disciples should take care to be always well disposed; because the judgment of God, for each of them, can come suddenly (Mt. 24:43; Lk. 21:34, 36 etc.). In the punishment that will fall upon the Jewish people (as generally in the scourges that fall upon humanity), just and sinners will perish together: the one for reward, the others for eternal punishment. Among the disciples themselves, as many as allow themselves to be surprised in sin will perish forever. On this warning Jesus dwells in Lk. 17:26-30, 33 ff. (cf. Mt. 24:36-44); St. Paul repeats it, and concludes: "therefore console one another and build one another up, as indeed you do" (5:11); it is therefore a question of the same prophecy of Jesus about the end of the persecuting synagogue (Lk. 17:20-18:8; Mt. 24; Lk. 21; Mk. 13), of comfort for the nascent Church. At Thessalonica, the same situation had come about as in Palestine (St. Paul says so expressly in 1 Thess. 2:14 ff. with a perfect parallelism). The Apostle therefore strengthens the neophytes persecuted by the Jews, expounding to them the famous prophecy of Jesus; alluded to moreover ibid. 2:15 ff.: "The Jews, by persecuting the Church, fill up ever more the measure of their sins; already the wrath of God is falling upon them, in all its force"; here too the approximation with Mt. 23:32, 34, 38; 24:2 leaves no doubt: "the wrath threatened by Paul to the Jews as near and definitive or complete is the imminent total destruction of Jerusalem foretold by Jesus" (G. Rinaldi [v. bibl.], p. 56).
THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS
A prolongation and integration of I, it was written some months later.
After the initial greeting (1:1 ff.) and the most lively thanksgiving to God for the perseverance of the T. in the faith and in the practice of charity, even amid the harassments of the Jews.
St. Paul encourages the faithful with the promise of the triumph of the kingdom of God and of their liberation from the hateful persecution (events for which they must worthily prepare themselves, v. 11 ff.) and with the threat for the Jews of the deserved punishment (1:3-10).
This is the theme treated in I Thess. 5:1-11, now re-examined: it suffices to compare II Thess. 1:7, 10; Mt. 24:30 f.; Lk. 21:28, 31 (F. Spadafora, La fine di Gerusalemme, Rovigo 1951, pp. 93-108). There follows then the correction concerning a particular of the aforesaid theme: let one continue to note the literal parallelism between II Thess. 2:1 ff. and Mt. 24:31, 6, 4 etc. (Rinaldi [v. bibl.], p. 141). "We beseech you, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (= Mt. 24:3; Mk. 13:4; Lk. 21:7; the 'day of the Lord' of I Thess. 5:1-11 = the destruction of Jerusalem) and our assembling with Him (= Mt. 24:31; cf. Lk. 21:28, 31; it is the 'triumphal expansion of the Gospel, of the messianic kingdom, starting from the ruin of Jerusalem': M.-J. Lagrange; F. Spadafora, op. cit., p. 97 ff.), that you be not so disturbed (= Mt. 24:6), as though the day of the Lord were imminent." "Let no one deceive you" (= Mt. 24:4 ff.); let them not be misled; the Apostle has given them unmistakable signs that will manifest it as near: let them call them to mind (II Thess. 2:1-17). There follow then a generic admonition, which is also a wish of Paul (3:1-5); an energetic rebuke for those faithful who continue to live at the expense of others (3:6-15) and the final wish and greeting (3:16-19).
The signs: "That day will not come before the apostasy has occurred (Mt. 24:6-13; cf. 23:16, 19; Mk. 13:11 ff.; especially Lk. 18:8, it is a question of the defections that occurred in the Church of Palestine: Hebr. 6:4 ff.; 10:26-28; cf. Mt. 24:13; Lk. 21:19; Hebr. 10:36) and the lawless one, the damned one, the adversary has been manifested (or 'the antichrist': cf. I Jn. 2:18-22: it is the synagogue in the collective sense, the Zealots, their leaders, or in particular one of these), he who opposes God and exalts himself (phrases taken from Dan. 11:36; cf. 8:10 f., spoken of the persecutor Antiochus IV Epiphanes, profaner of the Temple 'who shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god...'), to the point of taking his seat in the Temple of God and proclaiming himself God." In reality, the Zealots and their leaders took their seat in the Temple which they would profane (Flavius Josephus, Bell. Iud., V. 1, 3, 13). It is the sign par excellence, the last, given by Jesus for the beginning of the tribulation (the siege) and the destruction of Jerusalem (Mt. 24:15; Mk. 13:14: "when you see the abominable desolation [*Dan. 9:17; 12:11] standing in the holy place"). The abomination of desolation will be there where it should not be (Mk.); more precisely in the holy place (Mt.), that is, in the Temple (Dan.). It will be the profanation of the Temple, which occurred in 68 A.D., two years before the ruin of Jerusalem (Fl. Josephus, Bell. Iud., IV, 5, 1; 5, 3); the profanation of the Temple carried out by Antiochus Epiphanes and which must be reproduced on the eve of the desolation foretold by Daniel. In 68, when John of Gischala took possession of the sanctuary to make it his fortress, human blood ran in streams in the holy place; two high priests and a crowd of noble victims fell under the dagger of the Zealots. This profanation was the presage of the imminent ruin. St. Luke placed in the stead of this sign an equivalent one more intelligible to his readers: "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies...". In 69 A.D. the Roman legions occupied Hebron, Emmaus, Bethel and Jericho; the iron ring was closing around the capital (F. Prat, Jesus-Christ, II, Paris 1933, p. 247; S. Van Dodeward, in Studia catholica*, 20 [1944], pp. 125-35). "Do you not remember how, when I was among you, I told you these things? And you well know the impediment (τὸ κατέχων 'that which restrains') so that he (the adversary) may be manifested only at the moment assigned to him (in his time); this mystery of iniquity is indeed already at work, only there is one who at present restrains it (ὁ κατέχων) until he is taken out of the way. Then the lawless one will be manifested; but Jesus will destroy him with the breath of his mouth and annihilate him with the brightness of his coming (parousia); and the 'parousia' of the impious one, through the action of Satan, will be brought about with every kind of seduction of which iniquity is capable, to the ruin of those who are lost because they have not accepted and loved the truth that would have saved them."
"It must be admitted with certainty that Jesus (Mt. 24; Mk. 13:22) and Paul (II Thess. 2:1-12) speak of the same event, and that the source of Paul's doctrine is to be seen in Jesus' prophecy (R. Staab [v. bibl.], p. 41). The 'mystery of iniquity,' already at work, is the violent persecution of the Jews, of which the Apostle speaks in both letters. The keystone for the exegesis of the pericope and of the theme treated is the identification of the power (τὸ κατέχων, neuter) and of the person (ὁ κατέχων, masculine participle) that hinders the full manifestation of this iniquitous fury. 'The neuter of v. 6 expresses an impersonal function of the obstacle, the masculine of v. 7 the personal agent of this same function... It must be recognized that the only explanation that takes account of the shift from the neuter to the masculine is the oldest, and the most common, from the Church Fathers to the moderns, albeit in the different ways in which it is understood: the neuter indicates the Roman Empire, Roman authority; the masculine its representative in Palestine (others: the emperor, with disagreement as to the identification). Hugo Grotius proposed, with probability, the name of the governor, Vitellius' (O. Cullmann [v. bibl.], p. 212 ff.). Father Vosté called this explanation 'traditional' and almost 'apostolic.' The objection, repeatedly formulated (Cullmann, Buzs., etc.) against it — but the Roman Empire has fallen and the Antichrist has not come with the end of the world — vanishes when, instead of unduly projecting this pericope onto the end of the world, one explains the terms in their true meaning and in the light of Mt. 24 and Lk. 21, from which they are taken; and when one looks realistically at the fulfillment of this prophecy. The Jews are restrained in their hatred against the nascent Church by the authority of Rome. They feign a popular uprising in order to kill St. Stephen without authorization (Acts 7:57-60); only the providential intervention of a tribune snatches Paul from their hands, as they drag him out of the sacred place to kill him (ibid. 21:27-34); and the tribune must send him under escort to Caesarea, to thwart the conspiracy formed to do away with him (ibid. 23:12-35). Under Herod Agrippa (ibid. 12) James is killed, and Peter would have had to suffer the same fate. Instead, once Judea had returned under the Roman procurators (42-62: from Agrippa's persecution to the death of James 'the brother of the Lord'), the Church lived in peace. 'This twenty-year truce was undoubtedly brought about by the Roman administration, which had resumed the government of Judea...' (G. Lebreton, in Fliche-Martin-Frutz, I [1937], p. 209). 'In 61 and 62 the high priest Ananus (Hanan) the younger, taking advantage of the occasion that Festus was dead and that Albinus, his successor, had not yet arrived, assembled the Sanhedrin and brought before it the brother of Jesus, called James, and certain others, as guilty of having violated the law, and had them stoned' (Flavius Josephus, Antiq. Iud., XX, 9, 1). Hatred will explode violently when this authority, in its representative, is set aside with the rebellion of the Zealots, who rose up against the Romans; they drove out (in the middle of A.D. 66) Gessius Florus and defeated the legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus (at the beginning of Nov. 66), who had intervened with an army. For the prodigies, signs, etc., on the part of the impious one, cf. Mt. 24:23 ff.; Mk. 13:21 f. (Fl. Josephus, Bell. Iud., VI, 3). Jesus had told the Jews that they, in rejecting his word, would welcome any other false messiah (Jn. 5:43); this was coming to pass, and the Jews (II Thess. 2:12), 'who do not know God, who do not obey the gospel of our Lord,' will suffer the terrible punishment (ibid. 1:7-9). To Christians, on the other hand, is foretold the marvelous expansion of the Church in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem (Lk. 21:28-31; II Thess. 2:17: cf. A. Harnack, Missione e propagazione del cristianesimo nei primi tre secoli, Ital. trans., Turin 1906, p. 41 ff.). St. Paul at Thessalonica, in the face of violent Jewish persecution, had communicated this prophecy, imitating the example of Jesus, who after foretelling sufferings and persecutions to his followers had added the promise of the Church's triumph. St. Paul knew from the apostolic catechesis that the destruction of Jerusalem would occur before the generation contemporary with the Redeemer had passed away (Mt. 24:34 and parallels), but he did not know its precise date, which the Lord had left unspoken (Mt. 24:36; Mk. 13:32). About 20 years had passed (from A.D. 30 to about 51), and Paul already considered it near (I Thess. 1:10; 2:16; cf. 5:1-11). There is no wonder and no error (no new doctrine) if the faithful, still more under the lash of persecutions, believed it imminent. But St. Paul had also communicated to them the warning signs, and among these the immediate and unmistakable sign of rebellion against Rome and of the profanation of the Temple. They were not to, and could not, therefore give themselves over to useless expectations or create illusions that could be dangerous. In this way it is explained why St. Paul never returns to this subject in his other letters (Gal., Cor., Rom., etc.); it is a question of circumstance and setting. He will return to it, however, with fairly clear allusions, in Hebr. The literal-historical exegesis, which excludes any reference to the end of the world, is the only plausible one, and it accounts for the text and the context (cf. L. Tondelli, Gesù Cristo, Turin 1936, pp. 388-399). It suffices to consider the futility of the attempts made to explain II Thess. 2 in the perspective of the end of the world (Buzy [v. bibl.], p. 182 ff.), so that many moderns (B. Rigaux [v. bibl.], p. 306 ff.; G. Ricciotti; etc.), echoing St. Augustine (De civ. Dei, XX, 19), affirm that it is impossible to determine the nature of the obstacle and therefore the precise meaning of the pericope.
Among the recent exegetical attempts, the one currently enjoying favor among Catholics (Allo, Buzy, Amiot) is that which, bringing II Thess. 2:1-11 close to Rev. 11, sees in the beast's struggle against the two witnesses the clarifying analogy for our pericope: the witnesses (who fight the forces of evil and are killed by the beast) would correspond exactly to the obstacle that prevents the manifestation of the adversary, who will have free rein only when the obstacle has been set aside; but Amiot himself must acknowledge ([v. bibl.] pp. 277 ff.) that "the momentary disappearance of the preachers of the gospel remains a mystery," that Jesus has assured his protection until the end of the earthly phase of the Kingdom of God (Mt. 28:20). But what matters more is that it is erroneous to adduce Revelation here, a later writing and of a quite different literary genre; the seer of Patmos foreshadows the continuous struggle of Satan against the Kingdom of God throughout the whole course of its development, from the incarnation of the Word until the earthly phase of the Kingdom of God is finished; and the pericope of the two witnesses is currently understood, quite rightly, as the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome under Nero. Satan triumphs, in his satellites; but the true victors are the martyrs; the persecution has passed, Nero has been killed, but the Church endures, develops by purifying itself, triumphs (Rev. 11:3-13; cf. J. Munck, Petrus und Paulus in der Offenbarung Johannis, Copenhagen 1950, review in Revue biblique, 58 [1951], p. 627 ff.; P. Boismard, L'apocalypse ou les apocalypses de St Jean, ibid., 56 [1949], pp. 533 ff., 540; and already J. Mariana, 1619). Nor is there any need to stress how the signs offered by St. Paul had to be clear, unmistakable things, which would be fulfilled then. In the other explanations, on the other hand, one remains in the greatest indeterminacy: the signs would be generic and therefore useless. To admit, moreover, in Paul an erroneous opinion regarding the proximity of the end contradicts the historical-circumstantial setting and the entire context of the two Thessalonian epistles. With the explanation of Jesus' discourse on the end of Jerusalem (Lk. 17:20-18:8; Mt. 24; Mk. 13; Lk. 21), which excludes any reference to the end of the world, the way has finally been opened to the correct understanding of II Thess. 1-2, in close connection with I Thess. (especially 5:1-11); in the two Thessalonian epistles echoes the solemn prophecy of Jesus.
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