A. Salutation (1:1-2)
A. SALUTATION (1:1-2)
This salutation is very much like that of the first letter, a fairly good indication that it was written within a short time frame thereafter. At the same time, its two basic differences — the addition of “our” in verse 1 and the addition of the source of “grace and peace” — point the way toward the future regarding the Pauline salutations, but not the whole way. The wording of this salutation, therefore, represents an intermediate position between that in 1 Thessalonians and those in the rest of the corpus that follows.
1 For comments on the three writers see on 1 Thessalonians 1:1. The fact that the three of them are still together and thus are intended corporately to be responsible for the letter — even though Paul is the actual “author” while Silas is perhaps the scribe — is a certain indication that this letter was written soon after the first one. One may also assume that they are in the same place geographically as before, and that Timothy, after delivering the first letter, had now returned to Paul and Silas732 with the information that led to the immediate writing of this one.
The first difference from the salutation in 1 Thessalonians is the addition of the “our” with “Father.” It is also the first point of critique by those who think Paul did not write this letter. But that is a quite unnecessary conclusion to draw from this slight difference. Paul has here repeated the unique feature, found elsewhere only in 1 Thessalonians, of designating the church as existing simultaneously in God the Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ. The addition of “our” is the natural outflow of the habit already well established in the first letter, where, on the three occasions this designation is used for God after the salutation (1:3; 3:11, 13), Paul has already begun his lifelong habit of referring to God as “our Father.”733
2 The second difference from the salutation in the first letter is the “addition” to the “grace” of its ultimate source: “from God the Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ.” Here is the kind of redundancy that becomes typical of Paul in his later letters.734 Just as the church is affirmed to exist “in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” so Paul now adds what will be found in all of his subsequent preserved letters, namely the source of this “grace and peace,” “God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”735
All of this is especially explicable as from Paul himself. For example, the letter throughout shows concern for Paul’s authority, yet here Paul keeps the “Paul and Silas and Timothy” in the salutation, with no appositional “apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ” as in his later letters, even though the content of the present letter might easily have called for such. Moreover, Paul
here keeps the first person plural throughout the letter, except for 2:5 and the signature at the end. Together these various items argue strongly in favor of the authenticity of the letter.