7. The occasion and purpose of 2 Thessalonians
7. The occasion and purpose of 2 Thessalonians
The position, then, would seem to be that Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians, but that it did not achieve all that he desired. Further reports reaching him showed that his defence of his own conduct had proved adequate (he apparently had no need to speak further about this), but apparently other parts of his letter were not so effective. Idleness on the part of some continued, and there were misunderstandings about the parousia which caused others to be troubled in mind. Accordingly, without losing time (by common consent there cannot have been more than a matter of weeks between the two epistles), Paul set himself the task of putting things in order, and 2 Thessalonians was the result. It must have been written soon after 1 Thessalonians, because it must have been sent before Paul’s second visit to Thessalonica (see Acts 20:1–2), and Corinth is the only place known to us where Paul, Silas and Timothy were together during the intervening period.
In this letter he carries on the work he began in the first, encouraging the faint-hearted, rebuking the slackers, dealing again with the return of the Lord. ‘It is simply a second prescription for the same case, made after discovering that some certain stubborn symptoms had not yielded to the first treatment.’44