Reflection and Application (2:9–12)
First Thessalonians is packed with the language of family, especially in chapter 2. Paul’s description of being “orphaned” when he was separated from the Thessalonians (2:17) completes the complex web of familial language that includes the Thessalonians as brothers, and the apostles as infants and also as nurses caring for children. The apostles also compare themselves to a father exhorting his children. While writing this commentary, I taught a class on 1–2 Thessalonians to seminarians training to become Catholic priests. The seminarians were impressed with Paul’s obvious affection for the Thessalonians as well as his zeal for their salvation. In particular, they gravitated to the language of fatherhood in 2:11. They aspire to become spiritual fathers and found in Paul a model. At the same time, more than one expressed bemusement at the infantile and maternal metaphors. How could an apostle be like a baby or a nursing mother?
It is undeniable that the familial language in this letter forms a kaleidoscope of quickly shifting images. Yet, each description portrays a different aspect of Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy’s ministry to the Thessalonians that must not be ignored or explained away simply because it seems odd. When we imagine Paul as an infant, we imagine him as humble and guileless. The depiction of Paul as nurse calls to mind a flood of images: the loving chastisement of errant behavior, the teaching of basic skills, constant feeding and cleaning, and so on. By juxtaposing these descriptions with that of a father and a brother, Paul paints a nuanced portrait of apostolic ministry that is consonant with Jesus’s command at the Last Supper that the apostles become like children and servants in imitation of him, who came as a servant (Luke 22:26–27).
Receiving the Word of God (2:13)
13And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe.
OT: Isa 55:10–11
NT: Heb 4:12–13
Catechism: divine revelation, 81–82
[2:13]
Paul’s Letters usually open with a word of thanksgiving to God and a description of how he prays for the addressees (see 1:3). In this letter, however, Paul takes up the thanksgiving a second time so he can continue retelling the story of how the Thessalonian converts received the gospel in the midst of persecution. He gives thanks that they received the apostles’ teaching as the word of God rather than a merely human word. Though they received the message from Paul and his companions, the Thessalonians understood that the message did not originate with them. As Augustine puts it, “It is called the word of God . . . because a divine and not a human doctrine is handed down.”3 Paul’s Letters show that he thought carefully about his responsibilities to the “word” that he proclaimed. As a carrier of God’s word, Paul guarded the message as a precious object that did not belong to him. He saw himself as being entrusted with the word (2:4), as an ambassador from God to humanity (2 Cor 5:19–20) who needed to take care not to falsify the message (2 Cor 4:2) or use it for his own gain (2 Cor 2:17).
The NABRE interprets the relative clause which is now at work in you who believe to refer to God’s word. According to this translation, the gospel message that Paul brought to Thessalonica is “living and effective” (Heb 4:12), continuing to work among the faithful. It is also possible, however, that the pronoun refers to God and should be translated as “who is now at work.”4 The difference between the two translations is not great. When the Thessalonians received the message of the gospel, they received God, who works within them to conform them to the message. In other words, to receive God’s word is to receive God. In his commentary on the Song of Songs, St. Bernard (1090–1153) states this concisely: dando revelat et revelando dat (“He reveals himself by giving himself, and he gives himself by revealing himself”).
LIVING TRADITION
St. Bernard and St. Augustine on God’s Self-Gift through Revelation
St. Bernard turned to Paul to explain that when one receives revelation, one receives God.
Without doubt, the Son reveals the Father through the kiss [see Song 1:2], that is, through the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle testifies: “To us God revealed through his Spirit” [1 Cor 2:10]. In truth, it is by giving the Spirit through whom he reveals that he reveals himself. He reveals himself by giving himself, and he gives himself by revealing himself. Moreover, revelation, which is accomplished through the Holy Spirit, not only gives knowledge but also lights the fire of love, as Paul says: “The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” [Rom 5:5].a
St. Augustine argued that Paul thanks God for the way the Thessalonians received the word of God because God was at work in the Thessalonians to respond in faith.
Why does he give thanks here [in 1 Thess 2:13] to God? Certainly, it would be vain and meaningless if the person to whom he gives thanks for something is not the person who did it. But since this is not vain and meaningless, then certainly God, to whom he gives thanks for this work, is the one who brought it about that the Thessalonians, when they had received from the Apostle the word of the hearing of God, received it not as the word of men, but, as it truly is, the word of God.b
a. Commentary on the Song of Songs 8.5 (my translation).
b. The Predestination of the Saints 19.39, in Four Anti-Pelagian Writings, trans. John A. Mourant and William J. Collinge, FC 86 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press), 266.
Comparison to the Judean Churches (2:14–16)
14For you, brothers, have become imitators of the churches of God that are in Judea in Christ Jesus. For you suffer the same things from your compatriots as they did from the Jews, 15who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and persecuted us; they do not please God, and are opposed to everyone, 16trying to prevent us from speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved, thus constantly filling up the measure of their sins. But the wrath of God has finally begun to come upon them.
NT: Rom 9–11
Catechism: death of Jesus, 595–623
[2:14]
In chapter 1 Paul mentioned hardship endured by the Thessalonians. Here he says a little more, noting that they have suffered at the hands of their compatriots, a word that probably refers to other residents of Thessalonica. Through this suffering they became imitators of the churches of God that are in Judea, which themselves had experienced suffering because of other residents of Judea. The language of imitation recalls Paul’s thanksgiving that the Thessalonians were imitators of the Lord and the apostles (1:6). Here the Jewish Christians of Judea are held out as examples for the young Gentile congregation. Paul does not explain the precise nature of the Thessalonians’ suffering. It is possible that they experienced persecution, or perhaps just the inevitable estrangement from other residents of the city that followed from their refusal to worship idols.5
[2:15–16]
In verses 15–16 Paul makes a lengthy digression in which he criticizes the opponents of the churches in Judea, a group he labels the Jews (hoi Ioudaioi). The criticism seems so harsh and sudden that some scholars argue that some or all of 2:13–16 was added by a later scribe. There are no ancient manuscripts lacking these lines, but it is argued that this condemnation of the Jewish people better fits post–AD 70 anti-Jewish polemics than Paul’s own thought.6 If this argument is correct, we would be forced to imagine a late first-century interpolator who, as Markus Bockmuehl puts it, “successfully duped the entire textual and interpretative tradition—and this despite the fact that he worked at least a quarter-century after Paul, at which point other copies of the letter must have existed.”7 If the text makes sense as it stands—and I suggest in the following commentary that it does—then emendation is unnecessary.8
Paul charges “the Jews” with killing the Lord Jesus and the prophets and hindering the evangelization of the nations. Of course, Paul is not blaming all Jews for the death of Jesus any more than he is
condemning all Gentiles in verse 14.9 After all, Paul and the other apostles were Jews (Gal 2:15), and the churches of Judea would have been predominantly Jewish as well (1 Thess 2:14). Two small corrections of the NABRE will help to clarify this point. First, the word Ioudaioi, which the NABRE translates as “Jews,” can also refer to residents of the region of Judea or “Judeans.” This sense of the word is in the foreground here because Paul is talking about those who have persecuted the churches “in Judea” (2:14). Second, the NABRE adds a comma at the end of verse 14 before the words “who killed . . . the Lord Jesus.” This additional comma makes it sound as if Paul is blaming all Jews for Jesus’s death. The Greek could be more satisfactorily rendered as follows: the churches of Judea suffered from “the Judeans who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and persecuted us.”10 Paul is lambasting the residents of Judea who handed Jesus over for Roman execution, troubled the Judean churches, and opposed his mission. This is not to deny the broad, caricaturing nature of Paul’s description here but rather to specify its necessary limits.
In charging the Judeans with killing the prophets, Paul is following a polemical tradition that goes back to the Old Testament. Prophets often identified their own generation with all who have opposed God’s messengers throughout history and warned that God was about to bring retribution (e.g., 1 Kings 19:10; Jer 2:30). This same tradition appears in the Gospels. In the parable of the tenants, the chief priests and Pharisees are identified with those who killed all the prophets and Jesus (Matt 21:33–46 and parallels). In a passage very similar to 1 Thess 2:14–16, Jesus charges the scribes, Pharisees, and then “Jerusalem” with killing the prophets and warns that judgment is at hand, ironically telling them to “fill up” the measure of their ancestors (Matt 23:29–39). Like Paul’s description of them constantly filling up the measure of their sins, this passage imagines sin building up like a debt until God finally collects what is due (see also Gen 15:13–16; 2 Macc 6:12–17).
Paul also alleges that the Judeans have persecuted us (i.e., the apostles). Paul was familiar with opposition to the apostles from both sides of the conflict, himself having formerly “persecuted the church of God” (Gal 1:13). His other letters attest to ongoing persecution of Christians by non-Christian Jews (Gal 4:29; 6:12). He mentions being whipped by fellow Jews (2 Cor 11:24), and prior to traveling to Judea he asks for others to pray that he would be delivered from “disobedient” Judeans (Rom 15:31). The mention of preventing us from speaking to the Gentiles could suggest that Paul has experienced opposition especially to his mission to the Gentiles (see Gal 6:12).11
The final sentence can be understood in a number of different ways: that the wrath of God has already come upon them (NRSV), or that the wrath of God is near or just beginning to be unleashed (NABRE). There had been a number of crises in recent history that Paul might have interpreted as signs of the beginnings of God’s wrath on the Judeans who opposed his proclamation of the gospel.12 In any case, the final unleashing of God’s wrath would not occur until the day of the Lord (1 Thess 1:10; 5:1–9).
Reflection and Application (2:14–16)
In this passage Paul blames the Judeans for killing Jesus, but a moment’s reflection shows that there is more to the story. For one thing, Jesus was “crucified under Pontius Pilate,” as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed puts it. Crucifixion was a Roman, not a Jewish, method of execution. Though the Gospels say that Jewish authorities handed Jesus over for crucifixion, not all Judeans were complicit, still less all Jews. The Second Vatican Council noted this and pointed out that Christ died freely in order that all people would be saved:
True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. . . . Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone. Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church’s preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God’s all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows. (Nostra Aetate [Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions] 4)
What, then, do we say about 1 Thess 2:14–16? These verses are best read as an outburst of righteous indignation at the opposition that the earliest Christians received from some fellow Jews. But such expressions of judgment do not have the last word in Scripture. The Old Testament prophets, whom Paul imitates here, charge the people with killing the prophets and bringing wrath down on themselves, but they always offer the hope of restoration (e.g., compare Jer 2:30 with 31:1–40). Similarly, Paul did not rest with this word of condemnation. Indeed, again in Nostra Aetate 4, Vatican II turned to another passage of Paul’s for explaining the Church’s relationship to the Jewish people, Rom 9:
The Church keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about his kinsmen: “theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh” (Rom 9:4–5), the Son of the Virgin Mary. She also recalls that the Apostles, the Church’s main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ’s Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people. . . . God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues—such is the witness of the Apostle. In company with the Prophets and the same Apostle, the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and “serve him shoulder to shoulder” (Zeph 3:9).
Thwarted Attempts to Return (2:17–20)
17Brothers, when we were bereft of you for a short time, in person, not in heart, we were all the more eager in our great desire to see you in person. 18We decided to go to you—I, Paul, not only once but more than once—yet Satan thwarted us. 19For what is our hope or joy or crown to boast of in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming if not you yourselves? 20For you are our glory and joy.
Catechism: Satan, 391–95
[2:17]
The striking familial language continues as Paul once again describes himself as a little child longing for the Thessalonians as if they were his parents. The NABRE’s we were bereft of you could be rendered more literally as “we were made orphans from you.” As St. John Chrysostom, a native Greek-speaker, notes, “He does not say, ‘separated from you,’ or ‘torn away from you,’ or ‘set apart from you,’ or ‘left behind from you,’ but rather he says, ‘orphaned from you.’ He seeks language that is sufficient to show the pain of his soul.”13 This may indicate that Paul was forcibly removed from their presence, and it certainly indicates that Paul felt real grief because he could not reestablish contact with them. It also implies that Paul needed them. It is not as if he dispensed wisdom and gained nothing in return. Indeed, one is struck above all by the vulnerability in Paul’s self-description. He is an apostle who exhorts them as a father would his children, but he also is like a child and finds himself feeling like an orphan when he loses contact with them.
It was common for ancient letter writers to say that they remain united even as they are separated by distance, as Paul does when he says he is separated from them only in person, not in heart. Students who were learning to write letters were taught to say things like this. For instance, a handbook on how to write letters from the first century AD instructs students to say, “Even though I have been separated from you for a long time, I suffer this in body only. For I can never forget you.”14 Paul followed this polite convention on several occasions (1 Cor 5:3; Col 2:5; see 2 Cor 10:
1–2), but it is clear these were not merely empty words for Paul. His sincere desire to see the Thessalonians and his concern for them leap off the page.
[2:18]
Since being separated from the Thessalonians, the apostles had tried to return to Thessalonica, but Satan thwarted their attempts. What does this mean? We discover in 3:1–2 that Paul was able to send Timothy to Thessalonica from Athens. We do not know why Timothy was able to return while Paul could not, nor do we know what convinced Paul that it was Satan who prevented him from returning to Thessalonica. What is clear is that Paul understands Satan to be a threat to the Thessalonian church. A few verses later he adds that he was worried that “the tempter” had convinced the Thessalonians to abandon their faith (3:5). Paul does not mention Satan often, but he regarded Satan as an enemy to be taken seriously. He taught that God’s complete victory over Satan was assured (Rom 16:20) and that Satan’s power was held in check by God (2 Cor 12:7). Nevertheless, Paul saw Satan as a real adversary with the power to tempt the faithful to sin (1 Cor 7:5), appearing as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14) and working counterfeit miracles (2 Thess 2:9). Most strikingly, he refers to Satan as “the god of this age” with the power to blind people to the truth of the gospel (2 Cor 4:4).
[2:19–20]
When Jesus returns Paul expects the Thessalonian Christians to be his crown. When reading the word “crown,” most people today will picture a metal hat that indicates the wearer’s royal status, but Paul is most likely referring to leafy wreathes worn by victorious athletes. In 1 Cor 9:25 he compares the “perishable crown” won by runners and other athletes with the “imperishable crown” for which he works in his ministry (my translation). In other words, athletes receive awards that wither away, but Paul competes for a crown that will endure forever. If Jesus returns and finds the Thessalonians standing faithfully (1 Thess 3:8), they will be like a crown of honor for Paul, proving that he had fought the good fight (2:2). Paul says something similar in 1 Cor 3:9–15, but there he uses the image of the wage due a worker instead of the crown of a victorious athlete. He builds up the Corinthian church and will receive a “wage” from God if the building is sound. Paul saw himself as entrusted with the task of calling the nations to serve God (Rom 15:15–21), and at the Lord’s return, he hoped to present his churches blameless and unblemished to the Lord (1 Thess 3:12–13). Three hundred years later St. Basil the Great would cite this passage to encourage preachers in his day: “Those who preach the word should not slack off because of their own successes but should know that the improvement of the faithful is the distinct and special work of the office entrusted to them.”15
First and Second Thessalonians Page 8