Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (43 page)

As is the case with all these other instances, it is the context that is decisive for the meaning in 2 Thess. 2:2. The passage appears to require the verb to refer to something that is yet to happen but is very much imminent. For one thing, it makes little sense to suppose that the audience would be deeply shaken or disturbed by thinking that they were already experiencing the glories of the eschatological day of the Lord. Others who held that view—the Corinthian enthusiasts, for example—seemed rather to have exulted in the idea. If, on the other hand, the destruction of all things was ready to occur at any moment, that could well frighten anyone, even those sure to be on the winning side.

But more than that, the eschatological view under attack can best be discerned in the argument used by the author to oppose it. What the author decidedly does not do is malign their aberrant eschatological notion by arguing that their present existence is anything
but
the glorious life of the kingdom. He does not, that is, correct their view by pointing out that they were still living in a world filled with evil, suffering, pain, and sin, or stress for them that they are living lives of hardship and suffering rather than glory, as, for instance, Paul does, using considerable sarcasm, in 1 Cor. 4:8, against opponents who thought very much this same thing.

Instead, this “Paul” shows the Thessalonians that they are wrong in their eschatological views, stated in 2:2, by giving them the correct apocalyptic scenario, in view of their incorrect one. The Day of the Lord is not come/almost here because first there must be “the rebellion” and then “the man of lawlessness” must arise, who will be slain by the Lord at his parousia. Why does the author explain that the “restraining power” needs to be released and that this anti-Christ figure has to arise before the end can come? It is because he is correcting a view that maintained that the end was almost here and that nothing yet need happen before it could come.

Thus the author is providing his readers with the true apocalyptic scenario in order to rectify the false one they held. That is to say, he does not correct a nonapocalyptic view by insisting on an apocalyptic one. He and his readers both agree that there is to be an apocalyptic sequence of events at the very end of the age, at the coming of the Day of the Lord. But they have come to imagine—on some grounds connected wrongly with him (“a letter as if by us”)—a scenario that needs to be set straight. Their idea is not that there is to be no scenario at all; it is that it involves a scenario that can happen at any moment, imminently.

That is why the author opens his discussion of the issue by appealing to “the parousia of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him” (2:1). He is appealing here not to a new or different teaching that his readers do not accept. He is beginning his plea on a common ground of shared tradition: whatever their differences of eschatological outlook, they agree that the end will involve a return of Jesus and a gathering of the believers to join him. In arguing in this way, the author is indeed following an established Pauline approach, easily available to him from the other Pauline letters. When Paul wanted to argue against the enthusiasts in Corinth that the resurrection was a physical, future event, he did so by establishing common ground, that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead. 1 Corinthians 15 does not provide a demonstration that Jesus’ resurrection was bodily; it is an argument based on the agreed belief that it was bodily. Since Jesus’ resurrection was bodily, so too, by implication, will be the resurrection of those who follow him. But that necessarily means, for Paul, that it is a future event, not a past event already experienced.

So too in 2 Thessalonians. An author claiming to be Paul establishes the common ground he has with the readers, that the end involves the “parousia and gathering together with the Lord.” If that is true, then the Day of the Lord has not yet appeared; it is yet to come. His readers have not worked through this implication carefully. The parousia and ingathering are to come as God’s response to the evil in the world; it is then that he will overthrow all that is opposed to him to establish his kingdom. But the forces of evil have not yet been fully unleashed. Only when they are, with the appearance of the anti-Christ figure, will God respond by bringing Jesus back from heaven for judgment on the earth. The eschatology being opposed is not realized but absolutely imminent.

It should not be objected that Paul himself, in combating the enthusiasts of 1 Corinthians, also provided an apocalyptic scenario in order to show that they
were wrong precisely in adopting a realized eschatology. That is not the function of 1 Cor. 15:50–57. Instead, the scenario there is given only after Paul has shown that his opponents’ eschatological views are wrong, in order to lay out for them what is still to happen, once they are forced (in his opinion) to acknowledge that there is still an eschatology yet to happen. Moreover, the scenario in the Corinthian passage involves what will happen when Christ returns, not what needs to happen before he returns. To this extent, as well, it is incommensurate with the strategy of the author of 2 Thessalonians. And the reason is clear: one passage is opposing a realized and the other an imminent eschatology, as recognized by a range of recent scholars.
¹⁸

There are several payoffs for this brief exegesis. For one thing, it means that the
in 2:2 is indeed to be taken as an equivalent to the
of Mark 1:15, so that the verse should be understood as meaning that the readers should not be disturbed by the notion that “the Day of the Lord is virtually here and soon to be realized.” The Thessalonians can be assured, on the contrary, that the Day is not absolutely imminent.

As a result, the passage does indeed appear to contradict what Paul says in his undisputed letters, such as Rom. 13:12:
or Phil. 4:5,
. Yet more important, the view stands at odds with 1 Thessalonians as well, where the end is to come suddenly and unexpectedly, “like a thief in the night” (5:2). It should not be objected that 1 Thessalonians does not claim that the day will come “like a thief” to the followers of Jesus, but only to the unwary on the outside. It is true that this is the rhetoric that Paul uses (“For you yourselves know full well”; 5:2). But his exhortations belie his rhetoric: if he really thought that his readers needed no reminder, he would scarcely have produced such a strenuous one. The exhortations that follow—to be alert and awake, lest they be caught off guard when the Lord arrives (1 Thess. 5:6–8)—make no sense unless the Thessalonians stood in need of warning. But that they do need to be warned about the imminence of the end stands at odds with what the author of 2 Thessalonians thinks: for this other author, the end will not come suddenly, without advance warning, like a thief in the night. There will in fact be plenty of warning, a whole sequence of events that must transpire. There is still some time to sleep and drink.

It may fairly be objected that the thief image of 1 Thessalonians speaks not of an absolutely imminent appearance of the Lord, but of a sudden appearance. However one stands on that issue, the reality is that the image is at odds with the view set forth by the author of 2 Thessalonians. For him the end is not coming right away, and it is not coming without advanced warning. Moreover, if it is true that this is what he actually taught the Thessalonians while he “was still with” them
(2:5), then it is very difficult indeed to explain the problem of 1 Thessalonians, where members of the congregation are perplexed as to why the end has not happened right away and some have died in the interim (4:13–18). Paul’s teaching would have been that it was
not
to come right away, and they would have known that. They thought otherwise—believing the end was imminent—because that is what Paul taught them. Conversely, if Paul is right in what he says in 1 Thess. 5:2, that they themselves “know well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night,” then it is well nigh impossible to understand how he can then tell them in 2 Thessalonians that the coming will not be sudden and unexpected, like a thief. It won’t be like that at all, but will be anticipated by clear signs to all who can see. For 2 Thessalonians the coming of the Lord will not be like a burglar after dark; it will be like the much anticipated and broadcast arrival of a king.

It might be added that in view of the parallels to 1 Thessalonians advocates for the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians typically claim that it was written on the heels of the other letter. But how would Paul change his eschatological views so suddenly and decisively? Coupled with the problems posed by the parallels themselves, and the differences of style, the case for inauthenticity is very strong.

Nor does it resolve the tensions between the letters by following the suggestion occasionally made since Grotius in 1640, to reverse the chronological sequence of the two letters.
¹⁹
In that case the problems are simply compounded, as Krenz and others have noted. Under some such scenario, Paul first indicated that the Day of the Lord would not come except until some easily recognized signs had appeared (an anti-Christ entering into the Temple declaring himself divine), and then shortly after changed his mind and declared that the Thessalonians need to be constantly vigilant because the day would come like a thief, without advanced warning. Nor does it help to think, with Harnack, Dibelius, Goguel, and Schweizer—each of them with different scenarios—that the two letters are addressed by Paul to two different audiences in the Thessalonian church; there is in fact no indication of different audiences (quite the contrary), and the eschatological messages are in tension regardless of whom he addressed.
²⁰

Scholars who hold on to the authenticity of the letter occasionally mount arguments against the plausibility of it being a forgery, but in no instance can these parries carry conviction. Jewett, for example, claims that “there is scarcely enough time between Paul’s death and
C.E
100 for a forgery to gain credence.”
²¹
Here, however, unreflective “common sense” must give way to a wider knowledge of ancient practices of forgery. For as we have already seen, numerous ancient authors complained about forgeries—quite successful ones—circulating in their own names, even within their own lifetimes (not just forty years later). One naturally thinks of Martial, living in the same century as the Thessalonian correspondence
(poems allegedly by him, circulating while he was still living and writing, and even in his home city); or of Galen some decades later (the whole point of
De libriis propriis
); or of Apuleius (a letter produced at his trial); or for later periods, thinking of written correspondence, letters in the names of such prominent figures as Jerome and Augustine, circulating in their own literary environs. The irony is that scholars who claim that 2 Thessalonians is authentic more or less have to admit that Paul himself envisaged the possibility of a Pauline forgery in his own lifetime, on the grounds of 2 Thessalonians itself (2:2).