THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS

“Δεῖ γὰρ ταῦτα γενέσθαι πρῶτον, ἀλλʼ οὐκ εὐθέως τὸ τέλος.”—Luke 21:9.

MANY months could not have elapsed before the Apostle heard that the Thessalonians, with all their merits and virtues, were still, and even more than previously, hindered in moral growth by eschatological enthusiasms. When he wrote to them before, they were tempted to despond about the death of friends, whom they supposed likely to be thus deprived of part at least of the precious hopes which were their main, almost their sole, support in the fiery furnace of affliction. The Apostle’s clear assurance seems to have removed all anxiety on this topic, but now they regarded the immediate coming of Christ as a thing so certain that some of them were tempted to neglect his exhortations, and to spend their lives in aimless religious excitement.1 St. Paul felt how fatal would be such a temperament to all Christian progress, and the main object of his second letter was to control into calm, and shame into diligence, the gossiping enthusiasm which fatally tended towards irregularity and sloth. They were not to desert the hard road of the present for the mirage which seemed to bring so close to them the green Edens of the future; they were not to sacrifice the sacredness of immediate duty for the dreamy sweetness of unrealised expectations. The Advent of Christ might be near at hand; but it was not so instant as they had been led to imagine from an erroneous view of what he had said, and by mistaken reports—possibly even by written forgeries—which ascribed to him words which he had never used, and opinions which he had never held.

The expression on which the Apocalyptic fanaticism of the less sensible Thessalonians seems to have fastened was that which occurs in 1 Thess. 4:15—“WE, which are alive and remain to the presence of the Lord, shall certainly not anticipate those that have fallen asleep.” It was not unnatural that they should interpret this to mean that their teacher himself expected to survive until the Epiphany of their Lord’s presence.2 If so, it must be very close at hand; and again, if so, of what use were the petty details of daily routine, the petty energies of daily effort? Was it not enough to keep themselves alive anyhowuntil the dawn of that near day, or the shadows of that rapidly approaching night, which might be any day or any night, on which all earthly interests should be dissipated for ever as soon as the voice of God and the trumpet of the dead should sound?

Now, we ask, had this been the real meaning of the words of St. Paul? The question has been voluminously and angrily debated. It has been made, in fact (and very needlessly), the battle–ground as to the question of verbal inspiration. Some have tried to maintain the desperate and scarcely honest position that neither St. Paul nor the Apostles generally had any expectation of the near visible advent of Christ; others that they were absolutely convinced that it would take place in their own generation, and even in their own lifetime.

Not in the interests of controversy, but in those of truth, I will endeavour to prove that neither of these extreme theses can be maintained. If the view of the Thessalonians had been absolutely groundless, it would have been easy for St. Paul to say to them, as modern commentators have said for him, “You mistook my general expression for a specific and individual one. When I said ‘wewhich are alive and remain’ at the presence of Christ, I did not mean either myself, or you, in particular, but merely ‘the living’—the class to which we at present belong—as opposed to the dead, about whose case I was speaking to you.3 You are mistaken in supposing that I meant to imply a conviction that before my own death the Lord would reappear.” Now, he does not say this at all;4 he only tells them not to be drifted from their moorings, not, as he expresses it, to be tossed from their sound sense5 by the supposition that he had spoken of the actual instancy6 of the day of the Lord. He tells them plainly that certain events must occur before that day came; and these as certainly are events which precluded all possibility of the Second Advent taking place for them to–morrow or the next day. But, on the other hand, he does nottell them that the day of the Lord was not near (ἐγγύς). If he had done so he would have robbed of their meaning the exhortations which had formed the staple of his preaching at Thessalonica, as they constituted the only prominent doctrinal statement of his First Epistle.7 If we are to judge of St. Paul’s views by his own language, and not by the preconceptions of scholasticism, we can divine what would have been his answer to the plain question, “Do you personally expect to live till the return of Christ?” At this period of his life his answer would have been, “I cannot speak positively on the matter. I see clearly that, before His return, certain things must take place; but, on the whole, I do expect it. But at a later period of his life he would have said in substance, “It may be so; I cannot tell. On the whole, however, I no longer hope to survive till that day; nor does it seem to me of any importance whether I do or not. At that day the quick will have no advantage over the dead. What I now look forward to, what I sometimes even yearn for, is my own death. I know that when I die I shall be with Christ, and it is for that pathway into His presence that I am now watching. In the earlier years of my conversion we all anticipated a speedier development of Antichrist, a speedier removal of the restraining power, a speedier brightening of the clouds about the flaming feet of our Saviour. That for which I now look is far more the spiritual union with my Lord than His visible manifestation. It may be, too, that He cometh in many ways. If we ever mistook the nearer for the farther horizons of His prophecy, it is but a part of that ignorance which, as He Himself warned us, should, as regards the details of this subject, be absolute and final. For said He not when He was yet with us, ‘Of that day and that hour knowethnoman;no,nottheangelswhichareinheaven, neithertheSon,buttheFather’?But whether He come so soon as we have expected, or not, yet in one form or another assuredly now and ever ‘the Lord is at hand;’ and the lesson of His coming is that which He also taught us, and which we have taught from Him—‘Take ye heed, watch and pray, for yeknownotwhenthe time is.’”

That these were the views of St. Paul and of other Apostles on “the crises and the periods” respecting which, if they ventured to hold any definite opinion at all, they could not but, according to their Lord’s own warning, be liable to be mistaken, will, I think, be evident to all who will candidly weigh and compare with themselves the passages to which I here refer.8

Now so far as the fall of Jerusalem and the passing of doom upon the Jewish race was “a day of the Lord,” so far even the most literal acceptation of their words is in close accordance with the actual results. Nor should this remarkable coincidence be overlooked. On December l9th, A.D. 69, the Capitoline Temple was burnt down in the war between Vitellius and Vespasian, which Tacitus calls the saddest and most shameful blow, and a sign of the anger of the gods. On August 10, A.D. 70, a Roman soldier flung a brand within the Temple of Jerusalem. “Thus,” says Döllinger,9 “within a few months the national sanctuary of Rome and the Temple of God, the two most important places of worship in the old world, owed their destruction to Roman soldiers—thoughtless instruments of the decrees and judgment of a higher power. Ground was to be cleared for the worship of God in spirit and in truth. The heirs of the two temples, the Capitoline and the Jewish—a handful of artisans, beggars, slaves, and women—were dwelling at the time in some of the obscure lanes and alleys of Rome; and only two years before, when they had first drawn public attention to themselves, a number of them were sentenced to be burnt alive in the imperial gardens, and others to be torn in pieces by wild beasts.”

We may, then, say briefly that the object of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians was partly to assure them that, though St. Paul believed the day of the Lord to be near— though he did not at all exclude the possibility of their living to witness it—yet it was not so instantaneous as in the least to justify a disruption of the ordinary duties of life.10 He had as little meant positively to assert that he would survive to the Advent when he said “wethat are alive,” than he meant positively to assert that he should die before it occurred, when, years afterwards, he wrote, “He which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up usalso by Jesus.”11 That the “we” in these instances was generic is obvious from the fact that he uses it of the dead and of the living in the same Epistle, saying in one place, “Weshall not all sleep,”12 and in another, “God will also raise up usby His own power.”13

On the nearness of the final Messianic Advent, the Jewish and the Christian world were at one; and even the Heathen were in a state of restless anticipation. The trials of the Apostle had naturally led him to dwell on this topic both in his preaching at Thessalonica, and in his earlier Epistle. His Second Epistle follows the general outlines of the First, which indeed formed a model for all the others. Nothing is more remarkable than the way in which the Epistles combine a singular uniformity of method with a rich exuberance of detail.14 In this respect they are the reflex of a life infinitely varied in its adventures, yet swayed by one simple and supremely dominant idea. Except when special circumstances, as in the Epistles to the Corinthians, modify his ordinary plan, his letters consist, as a rule, of six parts, viz.:—i. a solemn salutation; ii. an expression of thankfulness to God for His work among those to whom he is writing; iii. a section devoted to religious doctrine; iv. a section devoted to practical exhortation; v. a section composed of personal details and greetings; and, vi. the final autograph benediction which served to mark the authenticity of the Epistle. We have already noticed that this is the general structure of the First Epistle, and it will be observed no less in the subjoined outline of the Second.15

After the greeting, in which, as in the last Epistle, he associates Silas and Timothy with himself,16 he thanks God once more for the exceeding increase17 of their faith, and the abounding love which united them with one another, which enabled him as well as others18 to hold them up in the Churches of God19 as a model of faith and patience, and that, too, under special tribulations. Those tribulations, he tells them, are an evidence that the present state of things cannot be final; that a time is coming when their persecutors will be punished, and themselves have relaxation from endurance20—which time will be at the Epiphany, in Sinaitic splendour,21 of the Lord Jesus with his mighty angels, to inflict retribution on the Gentile ignorance which will not know God, and the disobedient obstinacy which rejects the Gospel. That retribution shall be eternal cutting off from the presence and glorious power of Christ22 when He shall come to be glorified in His saints and to be wondered at in all that believed in Him.23 And that they may attain to this glory, he prayed that God may count them worthy of their calling, and bring to fulfilment the goodness in which they delight,24 and the activity of their faith, both to the glory of their Lord and to their own glory, as granted by His grace.25

Then follows the most remarkable section of the letter, and the one for the sake of which it was evidently written. He had, in his first letter, urged them to calmness and diligence, but the eagerness of expectation, unwittingly increased by his own words, had prevailed over his exhortations, and it was now his wish to give them further and more definite instruction on this great subject. This was rendered more necessary by the fact that their hopes had been fanned into vivid glow, partly by prophecies which claimed to be inspired, and partly by words or letters which professed to be stamped with his authority. He writes, therefore, in language of which I have attempted to preserve something of the obvious mystery and reticence.26

“Now we beseech you, brethren, touching27 the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering28 to meet Him, that ye be not quickly tossed from your state of mind,29 nor even be troubled either by spirit,30 or by word, or by letter purporting to come from us,31 as though the day of the Lord is here.32 Let no one deceive you in any way. because33— unless the apostasy34 come first, and the man of sin be revealed,35 the son of destruction,36 who opposeth,37 and exaheth himself above and against every one who is called God,38 or is an object of worship, so that he enters and seats himself in the shrine of God,39 displaying himself that he is God. Do you not recall that, while I was still with you, I used to tell you this? And now the restraining power—you know what it is—which prevents his appearing—that he may appear in his own due time [and not before]. For the mystery of the lawlessness is already working, only he who restrains now—until he be got out of the way.40 And then shall be revealed the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall destroy with the breath of His mouth, and shall annihilate with the Epiphany of His presence;41 whose presence is in accordance with the energy of Satan in all power, and signs, and prodigies of falsehood, and in all deceitfulness of iniquity for the ruin of those who are perishing,42 because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And, because of this, God is sending43 them an energy of error, so that they should believe the lie44 that all may be judged who believed not the truth, but took pleasure in unrighteousness.”45

Of this strange but unquestionably genuine passage, which is nevertheless so unlike anything else in St. Paul’s Epistles, I shall speak immediately. He proceeds to tell them that their case, thank God, was very different from that of these doomed dupes of Antichrist, seeing that God had chosen and called them from the beginning46 to sanctification and salvation and glory.47 He exhorts them therefore, to stand fast, and hold the teaching which they had received from his words and his genuine letter, and prays that our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father may comfort them and stablish them in all goodness.48

Beginning the practical section of the Epistle, he asks their prayers that the Gospel may have free course among others as among them, and that he may be delivered from perverse and wicked men;49 and expressing his trust in God, and his confidence in them, prays that the Lord may guide their hearts into the love of God and the patience of Christ.50 That patience was lacking to some of them who, he had been told, were walking disorderly, not following the precepts he had given, or the example he had set. The rule he had given was that a man who would not work had no right to eat, and the example he had set, as they well knew, had been one of order, manly self–dependence, strenuous diligence, in that he had voluntarily abandoned even the plain right of maintenance at their hands.51

He therefore commands and exhorts52 in the name of Christ those who were irregular, and whose sole business was to be busybodies,53 to be quiet and diligent, and earn their own living; and if, after the receipt of this letter, any one refused obedience to his advice, they were to mark that man by avoiding his company that he might be ashamed; not, however, considering him as an enemy, but admonishing him as a brother. As for the rest, let them not be weary in fair–doing;54 and he again concludes with a prayer that the Lord of Peace Himself may give them peace perpetually, and in every way. The Lord be with them all!55

And having dictated so far—probably to his faithful Timothy—the Apostle himself takes the pen, for the use of which his weak sight so little fitted him, and bending over the papyrus, writes:—

“The salutation of me Paul with my own hand, which autograph salutation is the proof of genuineness in every Epistle.56 This is how I write. The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.”57

Valuable to us, and to all time, as are the practical exhortations of this brief Epistle, the distinctive cause for its being written was the desire to dispel delusions about the instantaneous appearance of Christ, which prevented the weak and excitable from a due performance of their duties, and so tended to diminish that respect for them among the heathen which the blamelessness of the early Christians was well calculated to inspire. To the Thessalonians the paragraph on this subject would have had the profoundest interest. To us it is less immediately profitable, because no one has yet discovered, or ever will discover, what was St. Paul’s precise meaning; or, in other words, because neither in his time, nor since, have any events as yet occurred which Christians have unanimously been able to regard as fulfilling the conditions which he lays down. We need not, however, be distressed if this passage must be ranked with the very few others in the New Testament which must remain to us in the condition of insoluble enigmas. It was most important for the Thessalonians to know that they did not need to get up every morning with the awe–inspiring expectation that the sun might be darkened before it set, and the air shattered by the archangelic trumpet, and all earthly interests smitten into indistinguishable ruin. So far St. Paul’s assurance was perfectly distinct. Nor, indeed, is there any want of clearness in his language. The difficulties of the passage arise exclusively from our inability to explain it by subsequent events. But these one or two obscure passages in no wise affect the value of St. Paul’s writings.58 Since his one object is always edification, we may be sure that subjects which are with him purely incidental, which are obscurely hinted at, or only partially worked out, and to which he scarcely ever afterwards recurs, are non–essential parts of the central truths, to the dissemination of which he devoted his life. To the Messianic surroundings of a Second personal Advent he barely again alludes. He dwells more and more on the mystic oneness with Christ, less and less on His personal return. He speaks repeatedly of the indwelling presence of Christ, and the believer’s incorporation with Him, and hardly at all of that visible meeting in the air which at this epoch was most prominent in his thoughts.59

We may assume it as a canon of ordinary criticism that a writer intends to be understood,60 and, as a rule, so writes as to be actually understood by those whom he addresses. We have no difficulty in seeing that what St. Paul here says to the Thessalonians is that Christ’s return, however near, was not so instantaneous as they thought, because, before it could occur, there must come “the apostasy,” which will find its personal and final development in the apocalypse of “the man of sin”—a human Satan who thrust himself into the temple of God and into rivalry with Him. Then, with an air of mystery and secrecy which reminds us of the Book of Daniel and the Revelation of St. John,61 and with a certain involved embarrassment of language, he reminds them of his repeated oral teachings about something, and some person,62 whose power must first be removed before this mystery of iniquity could achieve its personal and final development. They knew, he says, what was “the check” to the full development of this opposing iniquity, which was already working, and would work, until the removal of “the checker.” After that removal, with power and lying portents winning the adherence of those who were doomed to penal delusion, the Lawless One should be manifested in a power which the breath and brightness of Christ’s Presence should utterly annihilate. Between the saved, therefore, and the Second Advent there lay two events—“the removal of the restrainer,” and the appearance of the Lawless One. The destruction of the latter would be simultaneous with the event which they had so often been bidden to await with longing expectation.

This is what St. Paul plainly says; but how is it to be explained? and why is it so enigmatically expressed?

The second question is easily answered. It is enigmatically expressed for two reasons—first, because all that is enigmatical in it for us had been orally explained to the Thessalonians, who would therefore clearly understand it; and secondly, because there was some obvious danger in committing it to writing. This is in itself a sufficient proof that he is referring to the Roman Empire and Emperor. The tone of St. Paul is exactly the same as that of Josephus, when he explains the prophecy of Daniel. All Jews regarded the Fourth Empire as the Roman; but when Josephus comes to the stone which is to dash the image to pieces, he stops short, and says that “he does not think proper to explain it,”63—for the obvious reason that it would have been politically dangerous for him to do so.

Now this reason for reticence at once does away with the conjecture that “the check,” or “the checker,” was some distant power or person which did not for centuries come on the horizon, even if we could otherwise adopt the notion that St. Paul was uttering some far–off vaticination of events which, though they might find their fulfilment in distant centuries, could have no meaning for the Thessalonians to whom he wrote. When a few Roman Catholic commentators say that the Reformation was the Apostasy, and Luther the Man of Sin, and the German Empire “the check;” or when a mass of Protestant writers unhesitatingly identify the Pope with the Man of Sin one can only ask whether, apart from traditional exegesis, they have really brought themselves to hold such a view? If, as we have seen, St. Paul undoubtedly held that the day of the Lord was athand, though not immediate, do they really suppose, on the one hand, that St. Paul had any conception of Luther? or, on the other, that the main development of lawlessness, the main human representative of the power of Satan, is the succession of the Popes? Can any sane man of competent education seriously argue that it is the Papacy which pre–eminently arrays itself in superiority to, and antagonism against, every one who is called God, or every object of worship?64 that its essential characteristic marks are lawlessness, lying wonders, and blasphemous self–exaltation? or that the annihilation of the Papacy—which has long been so physically and politically weak—“by the breath of His mouth and the brightness of His coming,” is to be one main result of Christ’s return? Again, do they suppose that St. Paul had, during his first visit, repeatedly revealed anything analogous to the development of the Papacy—an event which, in their sense of the word, can only be regarded as having taken place many centuries afterwards—to the Thessalonians who believed that the coming of Christ might take place on any day, and who required two epistles to undeceive them in the notion? If these suppositions do not sink under the weight of their own intrinsic unreasonableness let them in the name of calm sense and Christian charity be consigned henceforth to the vast limbo of hypotheses which time, by accumulated proofs, has shown to be utterly untenable.65

To that vast limbo of exploded exegesis—the vastest and the dreariest that human imagination has conceived—I have no intention of adding a fresh conjecture. That “the check” was the Roman Empire, and “the checker” the Roman Emperor, may be regarded as reasonably certain; beyond this, all is uncertain conjecture. In the Excursus I shall merely mention, in the briefest possible manner, as altogether doubtful, and most of them as utterly valueless, the attempts hitherto made to furnish a definite explanation of the expressions used; and shall then content myself with pointing out, no less briefly, the regions in which we must look for illustrations to throw such light as is possible on the meaning of St. Paul.66 As to the precise details, considering the utter want of unanimity among Christian interpreters, I am content to say, with St. Augustine, “I confess that I am entirely ignorant what the Apostle meant.”