Introduction to the Thessalonian Correspondences

Abstract

IntroductionThe New Testament is thoroughly eschatological. The single most significant perspective of New Testament people was the consistent belief that they were people of the new age who were living between the coming of Christ and the coming of Christ, the second of which they referred to as his parousia. They seemed to have acquired this perspective from Jesus himself, having been convinced that in his life, ministry, and supremely in his impending death and resurrection, the kingdom of God had broken through into this world, pressing its claim upon persons, and establishing in its behalf a new society of people who had caught sight of "another world" in which God is king and human beings are God's loyal subjects. 1That Paul believed in the imminent dawning of the new age of the kingdom is clear from the character of the missionary preaching he did in the churches he established on his three so-called missionary journeys. 2 Much of his ethical instruction to the churches is incomprehensible apart from the context of his belief in the imminent return of Christ and the dawning of a new age in which contemporary social structures and conventions were to be abrogated in favor of the messianic age of the kingdom of God.3 For example, in 1 Corinthians 7:25ff., Paul gives instructions to the Corinthians regarding marriage in the newlyestablished Christian community there. Apparently, a problem had arisen among the Corinthians when some of their number, having converted to Christianity from paganism, either found themselves married to pagans who embraced practices repugnant to the new Christians, or were contemplating marriage to pagans which would run the risk of placing them in the daily companionship of ones whose ethical practices were abhorrent to Christians. Some in the community, it seems, were even contemplating divorce in order to extricate themselves from these marital associations which compromised their Christian values. Paul's advice in these matters is instructive: * R. Wayne Stacy is Dean of the M. Christopher White School of Divinity at GardnerWebb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. 175I think that in view of the present distress (Greek: anagken, technical language for the messianic woes that would precede the advent of the messianic age), it is well for one to remain as one is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage. But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a virgin marries she does not sin. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown very short; from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the essence of this world is passing away, and I want you to be free from anxieties (1 Cor 7:26-...