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Early Eschatological Development in Paul: the evidence of I and II Thess.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

C. L. Mearns
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Extract

Amongst scholars who say that Paul's letters provide evidence of change and development in Paul's thinking,1 the major emphasis has been seeing this change taking place towards the later stages of Paul's writings, rather than in the earliest stages.2 However, the most significant change in Paul's thinking probably took place shortly before he wrote what are generally regarded as his earliest letters, the letters to the Thessalonians. An exegesis of these letters, together with established research revealing the stages behind the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians3 (though with modifications to certain conclusions about Paul's earliest eschatology), gives support to this suggestion. Whilst changing emphases appear in Paul's later letters, attention should be directed to the probability that the biggest change in his Christian eschatology took place with the surviving correspondence.

Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , January 1981 , pp. 137 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

1 See Hurd, J. C., The Origin of I Corinthians (London, 1965), pp. 8–11Google Scholar, a series of footnotes reviewing the literature on development within Paulinism.

2 E.g. Dodd, C. H., ‘The Mind of Paul I and II’, New Testament Studies (Manchester, 1953).Google Scholar He sees a decline of interest in apocalyptic schemes in later Paul, and a more ‘Hellenized’ version of the future resurrection body in II Cor. 5. 1–6, and increased valuing of the world, as over family life in Col. 3. 18–19 and 5..

3 J. C. Hurd, op. cit. For table of conclusions in summarized form, see pp. 290–3.

4 Module, C. F. D., ‘The Influence of Circumstances on the use of Eschatological Terms’, J. T. S. N. S. 15, I (04 1964), 1–15.Google Scholar See especially his remarks on Paul' eschatological language in Rom. 2. 1 ff., 8 and 13. 11 ff.

5 Baird, W., ‘Pauline Eschatology in Hermeneutical Perspective’, N. T.S. 17, 314 ff.Google Scholar

6 Best, E., The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians (London, 1972), pp. 12 ff., 222.Google Scholar

7 E. Best, op. cit. p. 359, in section vi: ‘The Return of Christ’.

8 E.g. Schweitzer, A., The Kingdom of God and Primitive Christianity (London, 1968), p. 134Google Scholar: ‘For the earliest Christian believers, Jesus' appearance in glory as the Messiah, expected in the immediate future, was so much in the foreground of their faith that they used for it the term Parousia’. E.g. Knox, W. L., St Paul and the Church of the Gentiles (Cambridge, 1939).Google Scholar The first chapter is headed ‘The failure of Eschatology’.

9 Bartsch, H.-W., ‘Early Christian Eschatology in the Synoptic Gospels’, N. T. S. 11, 387–97.Google Scholar

10 For a preview of the stages of eschatological development in Paul's dialogue with the Thessalonians, see the table on pp. 150–151, items 1, 6 and 7 especially.

11 The present writer has finished a study which justifies modifying Hurd's eschatological conclusions. See: ‘Early Eschatological Development in Paul: The Evidence of I Corinthians’.

12 For Paul's dialogue on this point with the Thessalonians, see table on p. 151, item 6.

13 Schmithals, W., Paul and the Gnostics (N.Y., 1972), pp. 160 ff.Google Scholar

14 E. Best (op. cit. pp. 119–20) prefers to take ἓφφαοευ бέ έ αύΤούς πλο here as ‘anger hangs over them and is just about to fall upon them’, in which case there is no reference to any recent historical event.

15 Buck, C. and Taylor, G., St Paul: A Study in the Development of His Thought (N.Y., 1969).Google Scholar

16 The present writer has completed a study of key passages in the New Testament which provide evidence for this mistaken first-generation belief in the primitive Church.

17 Wilckens, U. in Dogma und Denkstrukturen, ed. Joest, W. W. and Pannenberg, W. (1963), pp. 58–9.Google Scholar

18 E. Best, op. cit. pp. 172–3.

19 For the scheme of Paul's development here, see table on pp. 150–1, items 1 and 7.

20 Conzelmann, H., I Corinthians E.T. by Leitch, J. W. (Philadelphia, 1975), p. 15.Google Scholar Similar conclusions have been reached by W. Lütgert in 1907, and Jewett, R., ‘Enthusiastic Radicalism and the Thessalonian Correspondence’, S.B.L. Proceedings, 1972.Google Scholar

21 Cf. E. Best, op. cit., p. 221.

22 E. Best, op. cit., p. 86.

23 The note of probably intentional ambiguity runs on into the last words of this phrase, since it can be equally well translated: ‘with all his saints’ as: ‘with all his holy ones’, meaning good angels.

24 Cf. Hurd, J. C., The Origin of I Corinthians (London, 1965), p. 283.Google Scholar

25 Hurd, op. cit. p. 295. But the present writer does not share Hurd's conclusions that ‘it is clear that Paul in his early preaching was enthusiastically apocalyptic’ (p. 284) nor does the present writer agree with Hurd's suggestion ‘that II Thessalonians stood in somewhat the same relationship to I Thessalonians as the previous letter did to I Corinthians’ (p. 295). The present writer has been completing work which justifies modifying Hurd's conclusions about Paul's earliest eschatology from the evidence of I Corinthians.

26 See W. Schmithals, op. cit. p. 158, footnote 136. (Schmithals quotes with approval A. Hilgenfeld who in his work of 1875 observed: ‘The idlers at Thessalonica do give altogether the impression of being more than ordinary vagabonds, rather agents of a heresy’.)

27 So E. Best, op. cit. p. 223, referring to Faw, C. E., ‘On the writing of I Thessalonians’, J.B.L. 71 (1952), 217 ff.Google Scholar

28 W. Schmithals, op. cit. p. 203.

29 Frame, J. E., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians (I.C.C.) (Edinburgh, 1912), p. 160.Google Scholar

30 E. Best, op. cit. p. 227.

31 E. Best (op. cit. p. 279) says that ‘If however we do not attach “as purporting to come from us” to “spirit’ and “oral statement”, then it is quite easy to imagine that some of the Thessalonians themselves believed that they had been inspired to give the information about “the day of the Lord”… probably in the course of a gathering of the community for worship where addresses and prophetic utterances were normal.‘ But Best adds (rather ingenuously), ‘Paul himself does not know where the Thessalonians received their misleading information, and so he lists three possibilities’ (p. 279). But Paul knew fairly well, and comes close to admitting it here.

32 ‘On the Meaning of έυέбТŋκευųέπα Тο⋯ κυπλου in II Thessalonians 22’, Studia Evangelica IV (Berlin, 1968), pp. 442–51.Google Scholar

33 It seems contrary to the obvious meaning of Paul for A. L. Moore and C. H. Giblin to maintain that Paul was not interested in the chronological sequence of events to herald the Parousia, but in the conditions required for the Parousia (so Giblin, op. cit. n. 37 below), or that the imminent Parousia was not near in a temporal sense (so Moore, A. L., The Parousia in the New Testament (Leiden, 1966), pp. 175 ff.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and I and II Thessalonians (New Century Bible) (London, 1969)Google Scholarpassim.

34 So Best, op. cit. p. 290.

35 Cullmann, O., Christ and Time (E.T. London, 1951), pp. 164–6.Google Scholar

36 Munck, J., Paul and the Salvation of Mankind (London, 1959)Google Scholar, E.T. of Paulus und die Heilsgeschichte (1954).

37 Giblin, C. H., The Threat to Faith: An Exegetical and Theological Re-Examination of II Thessalonians (Analecta Biblica 31, Rome, 1967), pp. 167 ff.Google Scholar

38 See E. Best, op. cit. p. 299, for a list of six objections to Giblin's argument.

39 Glasson, T. F., The Second Advent, pp. 161 ff. of 3rd edition (1963) (1st editionEpworth, 1944).Google Scholar

40 E. Best, op. cit. p. 350.

41 Robinson, J. A. T., Re-dating the New Testament (London, 1976), p. 353Google Scholar: ‘The really creative period of the primitive church, its “Elizabethan era” from the point of view of literary output, was undoubtedly the 50s. These saw the full flowering of the preaching and teaching traditions in the gospels and the Didache and the creation of the Pauline corpus. The 60s mark the beginning of the silver age (already foreshadowed by the Pastorals)….’