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Jay Carlson

1 Thess. 4:13-5:11Dr. Byron McCane

1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11 presents the reader with perhaps the earliest extant

juxtaposition of early Christian apocalyptic eschatology and phenomena surrounding human

death. Paul is addressing his fellow converts in Thessalonica who are struggling to make

sense of their community in light of the deaths of some of their members. In this passage Paul

exhorts them to live in the future hope that God, through the death of Christ, will overcome

the fragmenting power that death currently maintains over the world.

What specific problem is Paul addressing here? While he is ostensibly dealing with

the common issue of the death of a loved one, for the Thessalonians it appears the problem

went deeper than common grief. In the first chapter of the letter, Paul gives what several

commentators think is a brief concentration (Malherbe 1987, 30) of the message the

Thessalonians embraced from Pauls preaching: they had rejected their former gods to serve

a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead

Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming (1 Thess. 1:9-10). In this short

description Paul illustrates that apocalyptic expectation was a mainstay of the Thessalonian

faith (Jewett 1986, 168). If we know that Paul himself was firmly convinced that the parousia

was so imminent that he himself would be alive to witness it (1 Thess. 4:15), then it is quite

reasonable to think that some of his converts would have adopted a similar expectation of an

imminent parousia.

Robert Jewett even goes a step further in suggesting that there are many clues in 1

Thessalonians that indicate some degree of millenarianism was operative among the

Thessalonians, that they expected a total transformation of this world to occur in connection

with a cataclism [sic] in the near future (Jewett 1986, 161). They would have expected an

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imminent parousia that would usher in an age free from the effects of the present age, namely

death in this case. A members death would indicate all too sharply that the present age of

death was still presiding and the Thessalonians were not immune to it. Such a realization

would seriously deflate millenarian overconfidence, giving way to grieving and feelings of

despair (Jewett 1986, 171).

It bears noting, however, that the text does not address the issue of the certainty

regarding the parousia as such, which would chiefly concern a disappointed millenarian. In

this passage, the issue concerning the dead is not the certainty of the parousia in light of the

members still dying. The question is whether the dead will be disadvantaged at the parousia (1

Thess 4:15). The future reality of the parousia is not questioned: it is assumed. And given the

strength with which Paul negatively answers this question, it is textually warranted to think

that it is the Thessalonians assumption that the dead are disadvantaged that causes them to

grieve (Malherbe 2000, 272-3).1

Nevertheless, the disappointment of the Thessalonians cannot be wholly discarded,

though such disappointment may not be in ways that fully square with the disappointment of a

millenarian movement. In accepting the message of Paul they have formed a new

community, the fictive social arrangement of the family of God Paul had preached. The

death of members of the community questions the integrity of the bonds of intimate new

community which were supposed to bind the members together (Meeks 1980, 692). Their

1 Speculations as to what would bring about the belief that the dead are disadvantaged arelegion (Best 1972, 181-3; Malherbe 2000, 283-4). One recent article by Ascough suggests

that the ceasing of antecedent burial practices that affirmed the deads status as a community

member may explain their grieving (Ascough 2004, 524-5). However this speculation islargely based on Ascoughs assertion that the Thessalonians church had social construction

and practices similar a voluntary association. Such an assertion does not square with the most

probable scenario of the social construction of the Thessalonian church.

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question conveys a sense of social disjointedness: how do they remain a community when the

group encompasses both dead and living members? In what way are the dead members still a

part of the group?

How then does Paul address this concern about the integrity of the community? It is

no small detail that when Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to encourage each, he is specific that

they are to do so with these words, (1 Thess. 4:18) referring to the apocalyptic images he

has just presented in the preceding pericope. In what ways did Paul think that this apocalyptic

presentation was consolatory towards the anxiety the Thessalonians were feeling? The most

prominent way Paul consoles the grief of his audience is his continual assurance that their

separation from those who have died will not be permanent. Paul emphasizes that even though

the dead are separated from the living community of believers, God will gather (Malherbe

2000, 266) them all together (1 Thess. 4:14) without regard to whether they were dead or

alive at the time (1 Thess. 4:l5). At the parousia all of those who are in Christ will be reunited

to be with the Lord forever (1 Thess. 4:17).

Paul frames this consolation in the vernacular of Jewish apocalyptic literature. The

descent of a divine figure, the ascent of righteous individuals, the resurrection of the righteous

who are dead to be with the divine figure, may lead one to think that Pauls presentation is

thoroughly and unambiguously Jewish (Furnish 2007, 102-3). Nevertheless, the internal

evidence of the entire letter is quite clear that the primary constituency of Pauls intended

audience in Thessalonica were Gentiles whom Paul describes as having turned from their

pagan idols (1 Thess. 1:9) to follow Christ (Furnish 2007, 29).

It might, therefore, seem out of place that Paul is using apocalyptic language to

address a Gentile crowd. Yet closer examination reveals that Paul is actually using this

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apocalyptic content for a purpose well known in the Greco-Roman world: moral exhortation.

Pauls exhortations resemble quite closely the examples of consolatory literature used by

Greco-Roman writers around the same time. Like Paul, writers of consolatory epistles

exhorted their audience for grief to cease. They would exhort their audiences to take comfort

in the knowledge that the dead persons were enjoying the company of the gods and the

virtuous, that their state was more like sleep, and that arriving early at the state to which

everyone is heading afforded them no disadvantage (Malherbe 1983, 255). In some cases,

Paul even turns the usual rhetoric of consolatory literature on its head for the purpose of

consolation: where typical consolation letters would use the verb harpazein to denote the

violent act by which death tears a person from their loved ones, Paul uses it to describe the act

in which, through Christ, they are reunited with their loved ones (Malherbe 2000, 276).

Nevertheless, though Malherbe is correct to point out these previously unnoticed

parallels, it would be a mistake to think that these parallels exhaust the consolation Paul

wishes to achieve in this passage. In particular, Malherbes analysis of Greco-Roman

parallels largely ignores the specific ways in which apocalyptic literature is designed to

console the kind of relative deprivation, disconnects between what is expected and what is

received, that the Thessalonians are experiencing. Apocalyptic literature reinforces the

uniqueness and solidarity of the group (Meeks 1989, 694) in offering a transformed set of

images to make sense of the world, apocalyptic literature (Meeks 1983, 173). What

previously threatened the integrity of the group is now viewed more benignly. In the present

case death, though the painful separation it effects in human relationships remains real, it is

not final or permanent. This temporary separation is bridged because Jesus himself bridged

the separation of life and death in his resurrection from the dead (1 Thess. 4:14), which the

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Thessalonians certainly accepted as true given what Paul says of their belief (1 Thess. 1:9-10).

The consequence of Jesus resurrection is that deaths impact on the community is relativized,

allowing Paul to close this passage by saying that whether we are awake or asleep we may

live with him (1 Thess. 5:10). And while this does not eliminate grief over death altogether,

it maintains that grief is to be outflanked by the overarching hope that the community is still

united, even though for the time being members occupy both sides of the life/death boundary.

[MORE HERE]

Pauls command to cease disconsolate grieving is a species of the more generic

command to live in anticipation of the parousia. To Paul, the parousia demands a particular

behavioral and dispositional response: those who are aware of the coming parousia should act

like it. Pauls call to live in light of the parousia highlights a theme of the parousia that was at

most implicit in 4:13-18: judgment. Furthermore, Paul is explicit that this judgment is both

The certainty with which the parousia will happen does not contradict the unexpectedness

with which it will come. Paul uses the thief in the night image, common in the apocalyptic

parlance, to illustrate the suddenness and unexpectedness of the parousia (Frame 1960, 181).

Paul characterizes the ones who will fall under judgment as those who declare, There

is peace and security (1 Thess. 5:3). Many commentators, noting the Gentile quality of this

letters audience, have wished to emphasize the political dimensions of this entire passage and

in particular this prediction of destruction upon those who declare peace and security.

Numerous commentators have pointed out that the Latin equivalent Pax et securitas was the

slogan used by the Roman empire to describe the peaceful security that the Roman empire had

guaranteed for its citizens during the Pax Romana (Harrison 2002, 86). Harrison also points

out that the notions of parousia and meeting that were used in 4:13-18 also had political

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undertones, thus setting up the arrival of Jesus as a competitor to the arrival of Caesar

(Harrison 2002, 82). In presenting a counter claim to the lordship of Caesar, Paul is

presenting a dualism in which the Pax Romana is part and parcel of the present age which

Christ will judge on the day of his coming (Malherbe 2000, 303).

Yet there are severe limitations to a primarily political understanding of this passage.

First, as we noted earlier, the central concern of the apocalyptic presentation of 4:13-18 is that

the fragmentation of the group by death is not permanent. The internal cohesiveness of the

community beyond the grave is the central concern in this passage, not the vindication of the

Christians over its oppressors.2 It would be a stretch to suggest that a theme that is altogether

absent in 4:13-18 suddenly comes rushing to the forefront in 5:1-11. Second, the dualism

illustrated in 5:5-7 is between those who are aware of the parousia and those whom the

parousia will catch by surprise. This is decidedly not the kind of dualism that would be

evoked if Paul was consciously responding to those undergoing oppression. Certainly, Pauls

exclusive claim of the lordship of Christ inevitably would run afoul of the equally exclusive

claim of the lordship of Caesar, and this is not to say that Paul was on good terms with Rome

or that Pauls theology had no political ramifications. Pauls main concern, however, in this

passage does not seem to be ideological. The ideological allusions in this passage noted by

Harrison and others had serious political currency at the time (Malherbe 2000, 303), but based

on the internal evidence of this passage, they remain at best in the background of Pauls frame

2 That Paul clearly emphasizes the integrity of the community as the point of consolation

renders the further speculation that these dead were martyrs (Donfried 1985, 349) asunwarranted. If they were martyrs, Paul would almost certainly have used the vindication of

the oppressed as a mainstay of his consolation (cf. Dan. 7). Such a theme is conspicuously

absent in this passage. In the same way, the corollary theme of the judgment receives only apassing mention in 5:3; even there the judgment is clearly on oppressors as such, but on those

who would dull the Thessalonians imminent expectation of the parousia (Malherbe 2000,

292).

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of view.3

Yet Paul raises the specter of sudden, unexpected judgment upon those who only to

reassure the Thessalonians that it will not apply to them: he

Given that Paul ends both halves of this passage with an exhortation to encourage one

another, it seems best to understand the overarching framework of this passage to be hortatory

rather than ideological or political. Paul is concerned with a kind of livingexemplified in

behavior like grieving without hope for the deadthat does not fully anticipate the

eschatological framework Paul wished to inculcate in the Thessalonians. Malherbe identifies

the way of being in the world that Paul opposes as typical of the Epicureans. The Epicureans

sought security in the withdrawal from the wider world to a group of friends pursuing the

quiet, peaceful existence. Such security, however, applied only to this worldly existence,

providing no guarantee for postmortem existence (Malherbe 2000, 304). Indeed, Epicureans

were known to grieve over the death of their friends, often provoking the criticism of

outsiders for such immoderate behavior (Malherbe 2000, 282). In the same way that Plutarch

criticized Epicureans for grieving as though they had no hope for postmortem existence, Paul

is admonishing the Thessalonians for acting towards death as though its community-

fragmenting quality was permanent.

This is not the first place in the letter that opposition to Epicurean ideas and practices

arises. Earlier on in chapter 4 Paul encourages to work with your hands and mind to your

own affairs, (1 Thess 4:12). Paul is concerned that in accepting his message his followers

3 Equally, this is not to say that Pauls audience would not have heard these political allusions

in Pauls letter. Such a misunderstanding on the Thessalonians part could lend credence tothe thesis that Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians to correct a myriad of misunderstandings (Jewett

1986, 186-91). However, this is not a thesis I wish to defend in this paper, nor does the

present thesis hang on it.

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had given up their jobs of manual laborers in the way Epicurean converts, among others, were

wont to do (Malherbe 1987, 19). Such was a mark of social irresponsibility with which Paul

did not want the Thessalonians Christians to be identified. Second, Pauls identification of

those who have no hope in v. 13 would most readily recall the beliefs of Epicureans, who

were skeptical of the very possibility of any postmortem existence. Though it is quite

probable that Paul would also include in these others not only those who denied any hope of

an afterlife whatsoever, but any who did not have hope in Christ (Frame 1960, 167),

nevertheless the Epicureans lack of hope beyond the grave would constitute the starkest

contrast to the Christian hope Paul wished for the Thessalonians to have. Epicurean beliefs

and lifestyle practices thus functioned as a foil for the kind of beliefs and life Paul envisioned

for the Thessalonians.

Though both 4:13-18 and 5:1-11 clearly demonstrate many indicators of apocalyptic

ideas, but the relationship between these juxtaposed passages is not explicitly spelled out.

Where in 4:13-18, Paul is concerned with where the dead stood in relation to the parousia,

5:1-11 shifts to the issue of how

Jay: this is off to a good start, and Ill look forward to reading the rest of the paper. In

the meantime, Id suggest condensing the stuff about peace and security. Whatever it refers

to, it is not prominent enough to justify leaving the rest of the text out of the discussion.

B (for now)

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Works Cited

Asough, Richard. A Question of Death: Pauls Community-Building Language in 1

Thessalonians 4:13-18. Journal of Biblical Literature. 123.3 (2004): 509-530.

Best, Ernest.A Commentary on the First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians. New

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York: Harper and Row, 1972.

Donfried, Karl "The Cults of Thessalonica And The Thessalonian Correspondence," NewTestament Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3 (July 1985): 336-56.

Frame, James Everett.A Critical And Exegetical Commentary On The Epistles Of St. Paul ToThe Thessalonians. International Critical Commentaries. Edinburgh: T&T Clark,

1960.

Furnish, Victor Paul.First and Second Thessalonians. Abingdon New TestamentCommentaries. Ed. Victor P. Furnish. Nashville: Abingdon, 2007.

Harrison, J.R. Paul and the Imperial Gospel at Thessaloniki. Journal for the Study of theNew Testament. 25.1 (2002): 71-96.

Jewett, Robert. The Thessalonian Correspondence: Pauline Rhetoric and Millenarian Piety.

Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986.

Malherbe, Abraham. Moral Exhortation in 1 Thessalonians. Novum Testamentum. 25.3(1983): 238-56.

---. Paul and the Thessalonians: The Philosophical Tradition of Pastoral Care.

Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987.

---. Letters to the Thessalonians. Anchor Bible Commentaries. Ed. David Freedman. New

York: Doubleday, 2000.

Meeks, Wayne. First Urban Christians. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

---.Social Functions of Apocalyptic Language. Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World

and the Near East : Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Apocalypticism.

Ed. David Hellholm. Tbingen: Mohr, 1989. 687-705.