THESSALONIANS

Although there is a strong case for the view that Galatians is the earliest of Paul’s letters, most scholars think that this position should be assigned to 1 Thessalonians. It is generally understood to have been written from Corinth during Paul’s extended stay there (Acts 18), although some would date it much earlier (*c. AD 41) on the basis of a radical reinterpretation of the evidence (E. J. Richard, First and Second Thessalonians). Certainly the theology of 1 Thessalonians gives an impression of simplicity and lack of development compared with that of the major letters (including Galatians), but this may be due in part to the lack of a polemical situation and the consequent need to develop in depth a theology of the law, the cross and justification by faith. The letter is in fact a mixture of consolation, instruction and encouragement for a young church which has experienced some opposition in the community, felt the pressures of a typical Greco-Roman religious environment with its temptations to immorality, and suffered a loss of confidence in the future owing to the death of some of its members.

2 Thessalonians has traditionally been interpreted as a follow-up letter to 1 Thessalonians, written to help the readers cope with an increase in opposition to the church, but also with a fresh problem in the church caused by some people thinking that the countdown to the end of the world was already far advanced, with consequent effects on their lifestyle. The purpose of the letter is again to comfort and encourage the church but centrally to insist that the end of the world cannot happen before the Satanic opposition to God has reached a climax. There is a contrast between the stress on the imminence of the coming of Christ in 1 Thessalonians and the damping down of expectation in 2 Thessalonians, and there is a curious combination of the repetition of material from the former letter with some subtle differences in theological expression. These points have led many scholars to argue either that 2 Thessalonians is a pseudonymous letter from the end of the first century (R. F. Collins, Studies on the First Letter to the Thessalonians; Richard, Thessalonians), written at a time of strong apocalyptic expectation (*cf. Rev.), or that it is the work of a collaborator using Paul’s authority shortly after 1 Thessalonians (K. P. Donfried [and I. H. Marshall], The Theology of the Shorter Pauline Letters). Although it is questionable whether the evidence is strong enough to warrant a theory of non-Pauline authorship, the two letters will be considered separately in what follows.

The theology of 1 Thessalonians

1 Thessalonians does not contain any explicit citations of the OT, but its thought stands squarely in the early Christian tradition of a theology which is thoroughly Judaic and reflects the OT way of thinking.

The Judeo-Christian understanding of God

The Christian faith embraced by the recipients is summed up as a turning away from pagan gods, represented concretely in the idols worshipped in pagan temples and shrines, to serve the living God, i.e. the God revealed in the OT and worshipped in Judaism, and to wait for the coming of this God’s Son from heaven (1 Thess. 1:9–10). This God is the author of the ‘good news’ (1 Thess. 2:8) preached by his co-workers (1 Thess. 3:2) and messengers, the apostles of Christ (1 Thess. 2:4, 6). He it was who helped them to preach his message in a hostile environment (1 Thess. 2:1–2). Consequently, when the good news is made known, it is not simply a human communication but simultaneously God speaks his word through it (1 Thess. 2:13). Moreover, it is through the power of God that those who believe the gospel are enabled to stand fast despite all the difficulty and opposition (see Suffering) which they face. Paul therefore records his prayers to God for his readers that he will make it possible for Paul and his colleagues to visit them (1 Thess. 3:11), and that the readers themselves will be strengthened in their faith and grow in Christian character (1 Thess. 3:12–13). God has a purpose for the readers, which is that they will be ‘sanctified’ or made holy (1 Thess. 4:3; 5:23): this phraseology refers to the development of a character which honours God by freedom from immorality, especially as regards self-control in sexual desire (1 Thess. 4:4–6), and which grows in the love which God has called his people to show to one another (1 Thess. 4:9–10). They are now God’s people, like Israel in the OT period (1 Thess. 2:14; 5:26), and in contrast to the Gentiles who do not know God (*cf. Jer. 10:25).

Moreover, God holds the future in his hands (see Eschatology). 1 Thessalonians stresses the resurrection of the dead and the coming of Christ as integral parts of the Christian faith and thus reminds its readers of the future dimension of salvation which can easily be forgotten in a materialist environment. This thought is developed especially with regard to the fate of those in the congregation who had died. It appears that the survivors were uncertain about them, since they had not grasped the significance of the fact that God had raised Jesus from the dead and realized that at the coming of Christ God would raise up the dead in Christ and bring them with him (1 Thess. 4:13–18; cf. Is. 26:19; Dan. 7:13; 12:2; Zech. 9:14). The fact is that God has appointed believers to receive salvation instead of wrath at the judgment which will come upon all people and bring destruction for those who live in the darkness of evil deeds and foolishly imagine that they are safe from judgment (1 Thess. 5:3, 5, 9).

We thus have a genuine ‘theo-logy’ in this letter in which the readers are the people of God, called and protected by him, and under obligation to live lives befitting their God. It is not difficult to see how all that has been said about this relationship is a continuation of the way in which the relationship of God and his people is described in the OT.

Jesus Christ and the church

However, we must now observe how all this is expressed in a Christian way through the constant references to Jesus Christ as the co-functionary with God. The readers constitute a ‘congregation’ (ekklēsia—a term that is similar to ‘synagogue’ in referring to a company of God’s people) which is ‘in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Thess. 1:1, NIV). Three points are striking here.

First, there is the qualification of God as ‘Father’, a term which is rarely used of him in the OT but which becomes the preferred way of speaking of him in the NT as a result of the speech-habit of Jesus (*cf. 1 Thess. 1:3; 3:11, 13); it expresses the loving relationship which he has to his people.

Second, the church is said to be ‘in God’, an unusual prepositional phrase which is evidently an extension of the phrase ‘in Christ/the Lord’ which characterizes Paul’s writings and expresses the new relationship that Christians have to Jesus: their existence is determined by him and they are entirely committed to him, to such an extent that they may be said to be incorporated in him (*cf. 1 Thess. 2:14; 3:8; 4:1, 16; 5:12, 18).

Third, Paul places God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ side by side without any suggestion of novelty or tension; by the time that he writes this letter the fact that God and Jesus are ranked alongside each other ‘on the divine side of reality’ has become for him a self-evident truth, and one which he does not need to demonstrate to his readers (*cf. 1 Thess. 3:11). Jesus is the source of spiritual blessings (1 Thess. 5:28) and God’s gifts are granted in association with him (1 Thess. 3:12).

It is characteristic of this letter to refer to Jesus as ‘the Lord’. A number of factors have contributed to the use of this phrase, including Jesus’ own usage and the way in which other people referred to him. But Paul’s use reflects that of the Septuagint, in which the term is the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew ’aḏōnāy, ‘Lord’, used by the Jews as a substitute for God’s name, Yahweh. Thus Paul can refer to ‘the day of the Lord’ (1 Thess. 5:2) for the day when the Lord will come (1 Thess. 4:15–17); in both cases OT language about the future day of God’s judgment when God will ‘come’ is being echoed (*e.g. Joel 3:14; Is. 40:10), with the implication that this function of God has been transferred to Jesus.

Similarly, ‘the word of the Lord’ (1 Thess. 1:8, NRSV) echoes OT phraseology (*e.g. Jer. 1:4). The precise relationship between God and Jesus Christ which justifies the use of such language is expressed by saying that Jesus is God’s Son (1 Thess. 1:10). If in the OT it is God himself who is the Saviour of his people, in the NT this function is also transferred to Jesus who ‘rescues us from the coming wrath’ (1 Thess. 1:10) and through whom God destines us for salvation (1 Thess. 5:9). This destiny is closely tied to the fact that he died for us (1 Thess. 5:10) and that he rose again (1 Thess. 4:14). Although at first sight it might seem that God is the author of wrath and Jesus of salvation, this is a false conclusion. It is true that the juxtaposition indicates that it is because of the death of Jesus for us that we are saved from the wrath, but 5:9 indicates clearly enough that, as elsewhere in Paul, it is God who initiates the process of salvation. If in the OT God himself is the author of the covenant obligations to holiness which are laid upon his people, so here the Lord Jesus becomes the agent of God’s will (1 Thess. 5:18) and the judge of sinners (1 Thess. 4:6).

The reception of salvation is dependent upon acceptance of the message (1 Thess. 1:6), an acceptance expressed in faith (1 Thess. 2:10, 13), and salvation is equally accessible to both Jews and Gentiles (1 Thess. 2:16). Although, therefore, in a context where there was no need to face up to Judaizers who insisted that Gentile converts must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, the language of justification by grace through faith and not by the works of the law is absent, the implicit theology of this letter is clearly in line with that of the later letters.

The role of the Holy Spirit

Alongside Jesus Christ as God’s agent we also find a prominent role assigned to the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is active in the powerful proclamation and joyful reception of the gospel to make the preachers persuasive and the hearers receptive (1 Thess. 1:5–6). In 4:8 it is implied that the Spirit is also active in the sanctification of believers, so that it is God, who gives the Spirit (*cf. Ezek. 36:27; 37:14), who is being resisted when believers persist in sin. Within the congregational meetings the Spirit is powerfully active in moving believers to prophesy and probably also in prayer and praise (1 Thess. 5:17–18).

The theology of 1 Thessalonians can thus be clearly recognized as trinitarian in the sense that God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are all involved in the process of salvation. From this springs the paradox which is inherent in Pauline theology. On the one hand, the conferring of salvation and the sanctifying of believers are ascribed to the agency of God the Father and his co-functionaries; Paul prays to God to act in the lives of the readers (1 Thess. 3:12–13; 5:23–24) and seeks their prayers for him (1 Thess. 5:25), and he gives thanks to God for their safekeeping and growth (1 Thess. 1:2; 3:9). On the other hand, Paul also acts in a human way to help them in their difficulties (1 Thess. 3:1–5), and he can urge them to live in a way that pleases God (1 Thess. 4:1–10; 5:6, 11, 12–22). There is evidently no tension for Paul between these two ways of speaking.