3. Difference in tone
5. The authenticity of 2 Thessalonians
The authenticity of this epistle is supported by considerations such as the following:
1. This letter is, if anything, better attested than the first. Polycarp, Ignatius and Justin all seem to have known it; it is included in the Marcionite canon and the Muratorian Fragment; Irenaeus quotes it by name. Thereafter it is universally accepted.
2. The vocabulary, style and basic theology are as Pauline as those of 1 Thessalonians.
3. The general situation presupposed and the contents are in agreement with what we might expect if Paul were the author.
4. There seems no suitable alternative. If Paul did not write the letter we must suppose that a forger did. We cannot regard it as a well-intentioned writing under the general coverage of the apostle’s name, for it claims to have Paul’s authentic signature (2 Thess. 3:17). But what possible motive could a forger have? Unless the letter is written to meet the genuine need of the Thessalonian church there seems no point in it. Nor can we understand why the forger should make it so like 1 Thessalonians, or for that matter how he did it. He must have entered very fully into the apostle’s mind.
5. Finally, there is the point (made by von Dobschütz and others) that the only reason for doubting the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians is that we possess 1 Thessalonians. It is strange to reject an epistle that contains nothing un-Pauline and bears all the marks of a Pauline writing, simply because another Pauline writing is markedly similar.
Such considerations convince many, but by no means all. Masson, Marxsen and others20 deny that the letter is Pauline. They adduce arguments such as the following:
1. Eschatology
The eschatology is said to be inconsistent with that of 1 Thessalonians. There, it is urged, Christ’s return is imminent and will occur suddenly; in 2 Thessalonians it is to be preceded by signs, notably the appearance of the Man of Lawlessness. But it is difficult to take this argument seriously; it demands a logical consistency that is foreign to the very nature of apocalyptic. Most apocalypses manage to hold to the two ideas of suddenness and of the appearance of preparatory signs. Again, the fact that Paul exhorts his readers not to let Christ’s return catch them unprepared (1 Thess. 5:1–11) points to some knowledge of signs preceding it, which is in agreement with 2 Thessalonians.
Some urge that 2 Thessalonians contains a view of the anti-Christ without parallel in the New Testament and therefore we cannot ascribe it to Paul. But this is a palpable non sequitur. If it is unique, that is no reason for denying it to Paul. He is just the kind of thinker to come up with an idea that nobody else in the early church could have produced. The suggestion that the teaching on the last things (2 Thess. 2:1–11) is different from that in other Pauline letters is no more convincing. The point is that the problem being dealt with (the assertion that the parousia is past, not imminent) is different from the problem faced elsewhere, so it is not surprising that the solution is different.
Another objection might be put this way. People who needed instruction in elementary matters (like those dealt with in 1 Thess. 4:13–18) could not possibly have known what 2 Thessalonians presupposes its readers knew about the anti-Christ. But it is fairly retorted that Paul did not have sufficient time while in Thessalonica to give all the teaching on this subject that he would have liked. It is quite possible that some of his converts received enthusiastically his general teaching on the parousia (and thus on the anti-Christ) without getting to grips with the problem of those who had died before the parousia. Indeed, this is a problem that might well have suggested itself only when some of the Thessalonian believers died.
Not many these days argue that the section on the anti-Christ refers to the Nero redivivus myth, the expectation that in due course Nero would come back to life again and lead a force opposed to all that is good. The myth did not arise until years after Nero’s death in AD 68, so that if this is in mind Paul cannot have been the author. But it is now clear that the idea of the anti-Christ is far older than the concept of Nero redivivus and that it goes back to a time before that of Paul. There is no problem here.21
The difference in eschatology between the two letters is one of emphasis, not principle. As Clogg puts it: ‘It is reasonable to suppose that the Apostle is correcting a misapprehension, or possibly a wilful misapprehension, of the eschatology of the first letter, rather than that he is correcting the eschatology itself.’22
2. The combination of likeness and difference
The main argument against the authenticity of this letter is the problem of accounting for the combination of likeness to and difference from 1 Thessalonians. On the one hand there is the fact that large sections of the two epistles are very similar, and that not only in ideas, but in the actual phraseology used.23 Would a writer of the calibre of Paul repeat himself in this way after such a short interval when writing to the same people? Deliberate imitation by another, rather than a second letter from the same pen, is said to be the explanation. On the other hand there are differences such as those noticed in the previous section. It is difficult to imagine circumstances which would explain this combination of likeness and difference, and thus some feel that it is better to think of 2 Thessalonians as written by someone other than Paul who tried to gain acceptance for it by passing it off as the product of the great apostle.
Of this we might say, in the first place, that some of the resemblances are such that it is very difficult to think of the author being other than Paul. As we have seen already, the style, vocabulary and ideas are all Pauline, and a forger would have to be imbued with the very mind of Paul to have produced such a work. Deliberate imitation is not the only explanation of the linguistic coincidences. A writer often uses much the same language over a period. T. Zahn held that Paul may have refreshed his memory by looking over a copy of 1 Thessalonians, a possibility Neil accepts, as does A. D. McGiffert, though Milligan scouts the idea.24
Another explanation arises from the fact that false teachers made their appearance (2 Thess. 2:2). When Paul heard this, what would be more natural than that he should write to confute them, and, writing soon after the first letter, in much the same words?
Again, the extent of the resemblances should not be exaggerated. If we exclude the framework of the epistles (opening, closing, etc.), the resemblances do not occur in more than about one-third. Moreover, passages with similar wording are used differently in the two letters. For example, the reference to Paul’s working with his hands comes early in the first letter and shows his love for his converts (1 Thess. 2:9); in the second it is late and is the basis of an exhortation to imitate the apostle (2 Thess. 3:7–9).25
We may use the verdict of Lake to sum up this section: ‘The main argument against the Epistle is the difficulty of imagining circumstances to account for its curious combination of likeness to and difference from the First Epistle—and such an argument is too negative to be ever quite decisive.’26
3. Difference in tone
The general tone of 2 Thessalonians is said to be colder and more formal than that of the first epistle. To which, in the first place, we may well ask why a second letter should precisely reproduce the tone of the first,27 especially when the first was evidently written in a time of exaltation, for Paul was reacting from extreme discouragement. Indeed, since it is clear that some of the rebukes given in the first epistle have to be repeated in the second, it should not surprise us if a tone of asperity were to creep in. This is all the more important in that Paul’s circumstances seem not to have been happy at the time he wrote the second letter (2 Thess. 3:2).
But we may well doubt whether the difference in tone is as pronounced as is alleged. It depends on a few expressions such as ‘We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so’ (2 Thess. 1:3, and cf. 2:13), ‘we command you’ (2 Thess. 3:6, 12). There is, however, little that is formal or cold in the way Paul deals with the offenders. Moreover, most of the colour in the first epistle comes in the section where Paul is defending himself against the slanderers (2:1–13); for the rest, there is not much difference in tone between the two. As Frame says, ‘Omit the self-defence from I and the difference in tone between I and II would not be perceptible.’28
Thus none of the considerations urged against the authenticity of the epistle can be held to be decisive. In view of this we should go along with the positive evidence and conclude that this is a genuine epistle of Paul.29