1 and 2 Thessalonians

Andy Johnson

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780802825520
• eBook ISBN: 9781467445733
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

A distinctively theological interpretation of the Thessalonian letters In this commentary Andy Johnson engages with the developing interpretive framework of missional hermeneutics to present a theological interpretation of 1 & 2 Thessalonians that aims to help the church more fully participate in the life and mission of the triune God. After a verse by-verse commentary, Johnson closely examines the theology of the two epistles, focusing especially on the topics of eschatology, holiness, and election in light of his missional reading of 1 and 2 Thessalonians. In his exegetical and theological analyses, Johnson considers canonical concerns, doctrinal commitments, ecclesial practices, proposals from contemporary systematic theology, and insights gleaned from the field of neuroscience regarding personal and community formation, all of which help to clarify and enrich readers' understanding of various passages.

Commentary on 1 Thessalonians

1:1The Letter’s Prescript

Paul, Silas, and Timothy: to the church of the Thessalonians assembled by/in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to you all and peace.

Both 1 and 2 Thessalonians begin with a standard, albeit modified,¹ epistolary prescript including the sender(s), addressees, and a greeting. Both letters come from Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, with no further description of who they are. Throughout the commentary, I will assume that Paul is primarily responsible for the content of both letters as their actual author and speaks for the latter two, who are best described as cosenders.²

Silvanus is the Latinized form of Silas, to whom we are introduced in Acts (15:27, 40), closely followed there by the introduction of Timothy (16:1). There Paul, Silas, and Timothy are depicted as being present at the founding of the church in Thessalonica (17:1–9),³ which takes place on a journey in which they set out to deliver the admonitions of the so-called apostolic decree to the Gentiles “who are turning [ἐπιστρέφουσιν, epistrephousin] to God” (Acts 15:19), that is, the churches formed in the account in Acts 13–14 (16:4). Although not explicitly narrated in Acts, the implication is that they deliver these same commands to churches they form on that journey, like the ones in Philippi and Thessalonica. While the exact content and purpose of these admonitions remain debated, the general tenor of two of the commands remains consistent throughout (Acts 15:20; cf. 15:29; 21:25)—in particular, “to abstain [ἀπέχεσθαι, apechesthai] from pollutions of idols [εἰδώλων, eidōlōn]/food sacrificed to idols [εἰδωλόθυτον, eidōlothyton] and sexual immorality [πορνείας, porneias].”⁴ Such language resonates with Paul’s description of the Thessalonians, who “turned [ἐπεστρέψατε, epestrepsate] from idols [εἰδώλων, eidōlōn]” in 1:9, and his command in 4:3 “to abstain [ἀπέχεσθαι, apechesthai] from sexual immorality [πορνείας, porneias].” Hence, in both Acts and 1 Thessalonians, Paul, Silas, and Timothy are associated with Gentile churches who have turned from idols to God, are commanded to avoid being polluted with the realm of idolatry, and are commanded to avoid sexual immorality. The avoidance of idolatry and sexual immorality, which is constituent of Israel’s response to their call to be a holy people, is also assumed of the (Gentile) church in both Acts and in 1 Thessalonians. In both places the church is to engage in “public practices that demonstrate purity, thereby bearing witness to the church’s faithfulness to Israel’s God.”⁵

This public engagement in practices demonstrating purity is consistent with the letter’s being addressed to the ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia, “church”) of the Thessalonians. The word ekklēsia is often used in the LXX in reference to the called and gathered people of Israel whom Yahweh had redeemed and from whom he demanded loyalty,⁶ to be expressed in actions that bore witness to his character.⁷ Hence, together with the language of “beloved by God” (v. 4), “election” (v. 4), and “calling” (2:12; 4:7; 5:24), the term ekklēsia connects this Gentile audience to the story of God’s dealings with Israel, marking them out as a redeemed, visible people whose public practices are to make clear the character of Israel’s God. In the larger Greco-Roman world, ekklēsia commonly referred to both informal (e.g., Acts 19:32) and formal public gatherings, e.g., the regular assembly of free males in a body gathered to conduct the political affairs of a Greco-Roman city (e.g., Acts 19:39).⁸ The term therefore evokes theological and political imagery from the Jewish and the Greco-Roman milieu, effectively describing the audience as a public body whose ultimate loyalty was due, not to the empire and its gods, but to one particular god, namely, the God of Israel. Such exclusive loyalty distinguishes this ekklēsia from any others in Thessalonica and calls attention to the audience’s vocation as public witness.⁹

This point is underscored by the way Paul modifies the standard epistolary prescript by adding a description of his audience as being ἐν (en, “in, by”) God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. There are two main possibilities for understanding the force of the en in this phrase: (1) “in” or (2) “by.” Is Paul depicting the audience as in some way located in God and the Lord, Jesus Christ, or is he thinking of it as being established by God and Christ? It may not be necessary to make an either/or choice in this case. Given his further description of the audience as loved, elected (1:4), and called by God (2:12; 4:7; 5:24), Paul certainly understands this audience both here and in 2 Thess 1:1 as existing by means of the actions of God and Christ.¹⁰ Taking into account that ekklēsia might have retained its verbal connotations of “being assembled,” one might, then, translate the en as “assembled by God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”¹¹ On this understanding of en at the very beginning of the letter, Paul would be highlighting the divine action that brought this community into existence, distinguishing this ekklēsia from any others in Thessalonica¹² and thereby making everything that follows dependent on this priority of divine grace.

But translating en as “in” would be no less an affirmation that everything that follows in these letters would be dependent on the priority of divine grace. While Paul often speaks of believers as being “in Christ,” other than here and in 2 Thess 1:1, he does not use the language of persons being “in God” in a parallel way. However, he does use similar terminology in Col 3:3 to refer to his audience’s life being “hidden with Christ in God [ἐν τῷ θεῷ, en tō theō].” Moreover, since the one en (in) is used in reference to both God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in Paul’s initial characterization of his audience, the fact that he uses the language of “in Christ” to initially characterize the audience of some of his other letters (e.g., 1 Cor 1:2; Phil 1:1; Col 1:2) makes it probable that this whole phrase in 1 Thess 1:1 is a variation of “in Christ.” Michael Gorman thus rightly argues that here in 1 Thess 1:1 Paul does not sharply distinguish between being “in Christ” and being “in God.”¹³ In his words, “To be in Christ is to be in God and to be the ongoing recipient of God’s Holy Spirit (4:8); this is, in Paul’s earliest letter, an indication of his experience of a trinitarian participatory holiness. Paul’s concern is inhabiting God—inhabiting the cruciform God.”¹⁴ This is the language of theosis, and as we will argue at various points in the commentary, it is appropriate for characterizing the soteriological process into which God has incorporated this ecclesial community.¹⁵

Paul’s phraseology, then, underscores the priority of divine grace, by which the community is brought into existence in order to share in the life of the Triune God. But it is important to note at the outset that this God is “the God/Lord of peace” (1 Thess 5:23; 2 Thess 3:16), and so Paul extends not only grace to his audience but peace as well. Here he does not explicitly designate the source of either of these qualities as he does in 2 Thess 1:2 and elsewhere (e.g., Rom 1:7 et al.) as being “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” but there can be no real question as to their origin. If everything in the letter presumes the priority of divine grace, it also assumes the presence and availability of divine peace, or shalom. For Paul, the divinely promised messianic peace has decisively begun with the death and resurrection of Jesus, although even a cursory read through Paul’s letters will reveal that it has not yet arrived in its fullness. Such peace is not simply “inner peace of mind,” as in some popular understandings. Rather, the shalom that has been divinely provided flows from God’s provision of saving justice (dikaiosynē),¹⁶ which restores and reconciles relationships between God and humans, as well as relationships between people who had been at odds with each other. This divine shalom, then, is a concrete social reality whose arrival is good news indeed. As we will see, a community that has been granted it will also be called upon, as a Spirit-inhabited community, to act as God’s channel of granting that shalom to others in Thessalonica.¹⁷

At the outset, these comments need more clarification with regard to the relationship between God (i.e., the Father, in Paul’s terminology) and the Lord Jesus Christ. The community owes its existence to the actions of both and inhabits both. At times in these letters, their actions can be clearly distinguished (e.g., 1:10), and at other times they are quite difficult to distinguish (e.g., 3:11; 2 Thess 2:16–17). There is, then, a kind of blurring of the lines between the actions on behalf of the audience of God the Father and those of the Lord Jesus Christ. On the one hand, this situation bears some analogy—albeit with significant differences—to the way that the current emperor, even if not always conceived of as divine, was called lord (κύριος, kyrios) and was perceived to act on behalf of the gods as their special agent because the gods had shown favor to him,¹⁸ and through him to Rome. Hence, there could be a blurring of the lines between the actions of the emperor and the actions of the gods, between human action and divine action. Such a theological legitimation of the political situation had deep roots in the ancient world, and the resulting conceptual framework funded the demand for loyalty to the emperor, the various gods of Rome, and the polity over which the emperor was the head.

This framework was less problematic in a polytheistic Greco-Roman context than in the context of Judaism, with its concern for the unique identity of Israel’s God Yahweh, a context that Paul never abandoned. It is therefore significant that, in the opening of both epistles, Paul makes a close connection between God the Father and the Lord (κύριος, kyrios), Jesus Christ, whom 1:10 identifies as “his [God’s] son.” In most cases the LXX uses kyrios as a reverential circumlocution for Yahweh, a common practice among religious Greek-speaking Jews.¹⁹ The use of kyrios to refer to Jesus permeates not only Paul’s letters but also the entirety of the New Testament. While in some contexts it carries no divine connotations (e.g., Matt 15:27), other contexts use language from OT texts that originally refer to Yahweh and apply it directly to Jesus as kyrios (e.g., Rom 10:13; 1 Cor 1:8; 2 Cor 3:15–18; Acts...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Bibliography
• Commentary on 1 Thessalonians
• Commentary on 2 Thessalonians
• Theological Horizons
• Index of Authors
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Writings