Books of the Bible: 1 Thessalonians

Regarding Romans, I noted how in the Bible Paul's letters are generally printed in descending order of length, which does not correspond in any way to date of composition.  Thus the earnest reader determined to rip through the whole thing, front cover to back, meets Paul first in the longest and fullest expression of his mature thought--the letter to the Romans--before experiencing a series of diminishing returns.  We've arrived now at 1 Thessalonians and things are getting fairly skimpy.  Five chapters, probably about four pages in any Bible you might own, so it comes in toward the back despite being widely regarded as the earliest of Paul's extant writings.  Putting together secular history with the description of Paul's career set out in the Book of Acts, the likely date of composition is the year 50 or 51.

Paul's mission to Thessalonica is described in Acts 17.  After preaching and teaching there for three weeks, he was run out of town by "wicked fellows of the rabble" organized by some ignoble Jews who were offended by his teaching (17:1-10).  It's understandable, then, that Paul should feel some anxiety about the fate of the converts left behind there.  Probably expecting the worst, he sent Timothy back to reconnoiter, and was obviously pleased and relieved when, upon returning, Timothy reported that the church there persisted in "faith and love."  This is all described in chapter 3 of 1 Thessalonians.  The letter might be brief but it takes a while to get going. 

We may surmise, from the content of chapters 4 and 5, what other news Timothy bore about the Thessalonians.  To put it bluntly, while the church might have survived, individual members had not--people continued to die.  This was perplexing because the expectation had been that the apocalypse was imminent and that Christian believers would then be rewarded for their faith.  But now some were dying before the reward could be claimed.  What's their status?  And, thinking about ourselves, the living, how long till we can collect?  When's it going to happen?

It wasn't only Thessalonian Christians who believed they were living in the end times.  The imminent Second Coming is a pervasive theme in early Christian literature, including in Paul's own epistles.  So it seems the rhetorical task was to tamp down an expectation that his  own preaching and teaching may have helped to create.  That the deaths of individuals should suddenly and unexpectedly create a new class of Christian souls shows just how keen the expectation was.  It's now a little hard to enter into this way of thinking, the grip and slog of twenty centuries having pretty much removed the need to tamp down the expectation.  But it was what the Thessalonians were thinking.

Paul's response to the first issue, concerning those who die before the Second Coming, is found at the end of the fourth chapter:

But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep.  For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.

 

What to make of this?  The scholar who wrote the section on Thessalonians for Peake's Commentary on the Bible sounds sheepish.  "Paul's intention is to comfort the Thessalonians, " he writes, "not to supply a literal description of the end of the world."  So it seems the scholar isn't buying it but for some reason the Thessalonians should.  Forgive me, but there is something unintentionally comical about the whole situation.  The Thessalonians were concerned about the fate of those who do not live till the Second Coming, and Paul says: No, no, don't worry, it's totally fair--in fact, the sleepers will be raised before the living, no need to be concerned. 

 

It's not like the fundamentalists, sunk in their left-behind fantasies, have necessarily strayed from Scripture.

 

The fourth chapter of 1 Thessalonians is also of interest, at least to me, on account of the light it sheds on something I've occasionally puzzled over, though not during baseball season.  On the one hand, I was told that grandma and mom's uncle were now "in heaven."  On the other hand, I was, or became, dimly aware of depictions of the Second Coming, in Christian art, that highlighted the bright sky, the trumpeter, and the people popping out of their popped caskets.  It didn't seem they both could be true and I wondered which was the sanctioned version.  On the authority of 1 Thessalonians, I think now I probably worried too much about being monitored by grandma on Friday and Saturday nights. 

 

Paul's answer to the Thessalonians' other question, about the timing of the Second Coming, is possibly canny.  It will come "like a thief in the night," when least expected.  One may detect in this formulation a whispered answer to a related and possibly embarrassing question concerning why we're still waiting:  it can't happen when you're expecting it, and you've always been expecting it, so naturally it hasn't  happened--and won't, so long as you keep looking for it (which, however, is what you're supposed to do).  The question weighs heavily on nascent Christian ethics, because obviously the way to live in the world depends somewhat on how long the world is going to last: you act one way if it's a month or a year, quite another if it's a few or twenty millennia.  Here is Paul's specific advice, from the conclusion of the letter:

 

And we exhort you, brethren, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.  See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.  Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.  Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test everything; hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil.

 

It seems to me that the way of being in the world that is here recommended presupposes that the world might go on for awhile--else, why admonish the idle, or be patient with everyone?  The last sentence is consistent with Paul's barely suppressed skepticism about spiritual gifts that becomes  more pronounced in letters not yet composed.  Don't reject them outright, but test everything (the scientific spirit!), with the implicit teaching that some of it will turn out to be b.s.  It's this side of Paul, I think, that has made him a favorite of Scandinavian Lutherans, who at least in the stories of Garrison Keillor have adopted a similarly jaundiced view of all statements requiring an exclamation point.  The world is about to end?  Ya, shoor, but I t'ink I'll still plant da corn.  ("Admonish the idle.")