Third, 2 Thessalonians 2:15: “Hold to the traditions.”
Third, 2 Thessalonians 2:15: “Hold to the traditions.”
§ 405. (III) “2 Thess. 2:15: ‘So, then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you received either by word of mouth or by our letter.’ Here the disjunctives [“either,” “or”] clearly indicate that what he had taught and what he had written are different and that the entire Gospel is not contained in that Epistle, though the apostle had preached the whole Gospel to the Thessalonians. Furthermore, the apostle says in this chapter that he had preached to them about when the Antichrist would come, but this was written nowhere.”
We respond. (1) The word “traditions” here is taken generally and is understood as all the teaching in whatever way it is handed down, either in speech or in writing. The apostle admonishes the Thessalonians to persevere constantly in the heavenly doctrine that he had handed down to them orally at that time, as well as that which he had begun to put into writing in this Epistle, as the connection of the apostolic text shows: verse 5: “Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things?” Verse 14: “God called you through our Gospel.” Verse 15: “So, then, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you have learned.”
** Ambrose observes this connection of the text: “God has called you to obtain salvation through our Gospel. Therefore stand firm and hold to the traditions.” It is as if Paul were saying, “Therefore stand firm in the Gospel that I have given you partly in speaking and partly in writing.” Therefore in this way, the “traditions” of Paul are the Gospel that he handed down. But the Gospel is written. Therefore Paul’s “traditions” are written. He mentions what those things are that he handed down to them orally; this is explained in Acts 17:2-3, where Luke writes that when Paul had reached Thessalonica he explained to the Jews from the Scriptures that it was necessary for Christ to suffer and rise from the dead and that this Christ is the Jesus whom he was proclaiming. With these words, Luke discloses both what Paul handed down and from what sources Paul taught the Thessalonians orally. From what source? From the Scriptures. What? That it was necessary for Christ to suffer and rise again. This, then, is “the tradition of the Gospel” (as Ambrose correctly calls it in his commentary on 2 Thessalonians 2) that the apostle says the Thessalonians should hold to. He taught the Thessalonians the Gospel (1 Thess. 1:5; 2:4; 3:2); there is no other Gospel, however, except that which is written (Gal. 1:7). **
(2) Therefore we concede that the Thessalonians ought to keep and hold tightly to all the things they had learned from the apostle either by speech or by his letter because the apostle had handed down to them some matters orally and some he had put down in writing. However, one cannot infer from this that, even after the New Testament canon was finished, some necessary dogmas pertaining to faith and behavior were not written by the apostles. It is evident that this Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians was written early in the time when the New Testament books were being written—before Matthew wrote his Gospel, if we believe Irenaeus, in the eighteenth year after Christ’s ascension, when the apostle was teaching at Athens, because Matthew wrote in the twenty-first year (Irenaeus, Adv. haeres., bk. 3, c. 1). (Nicephorus, however, in Hist., bk. 2, c. 45, claims that Matthew wrote during the fifteenth year after Christ’s ascension.) Accordingly, there is no logical consequence in this argument: “The apostle did not write all things to the Thessalonians in this Epistle, and consequently he sends them back to the oral teaching he had given them earlier; therefore those things were completely unwritten. At the time he was writing this Epistle to the Thessalonians, all things had not yet been written; therefore all things were not written afterward.”
** He sends them back to traditions: (1) Because, concerning the Gospel history, only the synodal epistle (Acts 15) and 1 Thessalonians were extant. (2) Because the Thessalonians still held in recent memory what Paul had handed down to them orally. **
(3) There are some who respond that the particle 
[“either, or”] in 2 Thess. 2:15 is not disjunctive but conjunctive in the way it is used in 1 Cor. 13:8 and just as the particle 
[“or”] is taken in 1 Cor. 11:27. But even if we were to take it disjunctively here, our opinion is not at all weakened thereby.
(4) The apostle had by no means taught the Thessalonians orally anything about a definite and determined time when the Antichrist was to be expected but only about the coming, dominion, and revelation of the Antichrist, as we gather from the text. If he had revealed something to them about the definite time the Antichrist would come, then the Thessalonians certainly would not have awaited Christ’s coming to judge as something close at hand. But let us grant that that apostolic tradition was about the definite time when the Antichrist would come. Let the Papists, then, bring forth this tradition, or let them admit that they are deprived of that apostolic tradition.
(5) Whatever the apostle handed down to the Thessalonians, that has either been written in this Epistle; or it was recorded later in other books of the New Testament; or it belongs to that class (Acts 26:22): “… saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass”; or it is to be referred to rituals and free ceremonies, or to those things that can be unknown without loss of faith and salvation, such as whatever has delayed the coming of the Antichrist.
(6) On the other hand, let Bellarmine prove this logical consequence: “Some things were not written but were handed down orally to the Thessalonians; therefore these things are the traditions of the Papists.” Surely by this logic he proceeds from the undistributed to the distributed, from the general to the specific.
(7) That which the apostle here says was handed down to the Thessalonians “by word of mouth” was handed down to all without distinction and was known to all, because the apostle says in general, “Hold to the traditions.” However, regarding those traditions that the apostles left to the churches only orally, Bellarmine argues in c. 11f. as follows: “They pertain to the wisdom handed down to the perfect but not disclosed to all without distinction.”
(8) Finally, those things that the apostle taught either by word of mouth or in writing were all of the same sort and were in harmony with the books of the Old Testament and with each other. Far be it from us to want to claim that contrary ideas have come from one and the same Spirit of truth! The Papist traditions, however, are opposed to the Scriptures.