July 23, 2007

Thessalonian Nuggets - 1Th 4:13a
What Was the Cause of Their Ignorant Grieving?

We continue our Thessalonian Nuggets series.

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.” (1Th 4:13)

In the previous article we first examined the second part of the verse dealing with what Paul means by "hope." I have noted that this verse is arguably the most important verse in this first epistle for two reasons: (1) it informs us of the purpose why Paul writes to the Thessalonians which is their ignorance or a defective eschatology (2) and it introduces Paul's teaching or corrective of the relationship between the resurrection and the Parousia (Coming) of Christ.

In this article we investigate the possible reasons why the Thessalonians were ignorant (uninformed), which led to unwarranted grieving. Did they believe that their loved ones would be at a disadvantage at the Parousia, or possibly not participate at all? Or were they uninformed about something else?

The contrast that Paul makes between pagan sorrow and Christian sorrow is antithetical. In the previous article we noted that most Greeks believed that death was the complete end, not even a continued existence of a soul. And since the Christian hope of the after-life is much more than mere continued existence, but rather fellowship with Christ the Lord of the universe, it is then unwarranted to grieve as the pagans who do not have this hope.

Indeed, Paul does not admonish them for grieving. There is nothing wrong for a Christian to grieve for their lost loved ones. We are not called to have some stoic disposition in the event of death. It is necessary and natural to grieve in those situations. But grieving for lost loved ones is not the issue that Paul is addressing in this passage. It is grieving as if those who die in Christ have no future hope in Christ in light of the Parousia.

It bears repeating in a previous article of what I have said about Biblical hope in light of this grief. If your believing loved ones die before the Parousia, be hopeful and cling tightly to our promised hope--in which the pagans can only despair. It is not mere worldly hope with no promise of fulfillment. It is not simply a word of encouragement. Nor is it a temporal hope that only repeats itself. It is promise-fulfillment hope; it is the true Word; and it is eternal hope.

We must live daily with eschaton-love, eschaton-faith, and eschaton-hope.

Incidentally, Marshall notes that we should distinguish between two kinds of grief,

[B]etween mourning which laments the sad fate of a person who has been cut off from the enjoyment of life and the mourning which is due to the rupture caused in one's own life by the loss of a loved one. The former is overcome by the Christian belief that to be with Jesus is 'far better' (Phil. 1:23). The latter is a natural psychological reaction to the gap created in one's own life, although this too can be overcome not only by the lapse of time and adjustment to a new way of life but also by the reality of spiritual comfort from God and other Christians (Mt. 5:4; Rom. 12:15; 1 Pet. 5:10). (1 and 2 Thessalonians, p. 120)

Concerning our verse, Paul uses the term hina (“so that”)," which introduces a purpose clause. In other words, he is saying that if the Thessalonians were in fact informed properly concerning the fate of the dead in Christ, they would not have been grieving in the manner of those who have no hope.

But what then was the cause of their being uninformed? Why were they not prepared theologically to deal with the reality of the death of members in the church? Marshall outlines five different theories that have been offered to explain the cause of their ignorance that led to their grief. The following is an abridged outline of reasons provided by Marshall followed by a summary of responses to each one.

1. It has been argued that because of the nearness of the parousia and its prominence in his thinking and his message Paul had given no instruction about the resurrection of the dead at Thessalonica (even though he must have spoken about the resurrection of Jesus). In the early days for the church the problem of death before the parousia had simply not arisen [Marxsen and Becker propose this suggestion].

This view says Marshall is simply not plausible since by the time of the Thessalonica mission the question of the destiny of dead Christians would have certainly been reflected on by the apostle Paul, and therefore not some new phenomena in the church. The only way to overcome this objection says Marshall is to give an idiosyncratic dating of the mission unreasonably early to about nine to fourteen years from the death of Jesus (so Ludemann).

In addition, since Paul in vv. 16ff gives an existing "saying" about the resurrection of the dead only demonstrates that it is not plausible that Paul had not yet formulated his teaching of the resurrection of the dead.

[Further Ernest Best also notes that the reference "the dead will rise" in v. 16 is "surely insufficient as a first introduction (to the resurrection)...The conclusion that Paul was not now introducing the resurrection for the first time is confirmed by his reference to the 'hope' of believers (v. 13); if not of the resurrection what is this hope?" p. 181, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians.]

2. It remains possible, however, that the Thessalonian Christians had not yet fully understood this doctrine. In view of his belief that the parousia was imminent [not in the pretrib sense of the term, but in the historical sense] and as a result of the brevity of his visit to Thessalonica it is possible that Paul had not mentioned, or at least had said little about, the resurrection of the dead. What he did say may not have been fully understood by the Thessalonian Christians, and it is quite possible that their emotional response to the death of some of their number had blunted their apprehension of the doctrine of the resurrection. It is, after all, one thing to have a theoretical belief in resurrection and quite another to maintain that belief in the actual presence of death and physical decay.

This view, or a form of it, says Marshall, is the most satisfactory that the resurrection of the dead has simply not become part of the thinking of the church. And only until some members of the church died, would lead them to grief, thinking that the dead would not participate in the Parousia.

3. Another possibility is that, instead of the dead being absolutely at a disadvantage compared with the living in that they had no hope at all of the future salvation (view 2.), the Thessalonians regarded them as being only relatively at a disadvantage. This view is generally expressed in the form that the Thessalonians believe in the resurrection but held that it would not take place until after the parousia, with the result that the dead would be excluded from the joyful reunion with the Lord at his return.

Marshall responds to this theory by noting that the obvious objection is that if the dead were ultimately going to be raised, then that is incongruent with the high level of grief that the Thessalonians were experiencing that was understandable for pagans "who have no hope."

4. [It is argued] that something had happened to disturb the Thessalonians' belief in the resurrection. The church has been infected by Gnostic teachers who insisted that the resurrection was a spiritual experience which had already taken place in the lives of the Gnostic... Paul's concern is to point out polemically the implications of such a view: if it is correct that there is no future resurrection, then the readers' departed relatives and friends are obviously excluded from salvation.

The weakness of this argument is that Paul would have certainly reacted much more strongly if there were false teachers present which the epistle does not suggest. Not to mention there is no evidence of Gnosticism in Thessalonica at this time.

5. [The last common explanation that is proposed by commentators is] that the problem which Paul was dealing with in 1 Th. 4:13-18 was not primarily concerned with the resurrection of the dead. Rather the Thessalonian Christians' hope that Christ would come and take them while still alive to be with him had been shattered by the deaths of some of their members; from these deaths they concluded that the hope of the parousia was a delusion. Paul responded to this loss of hope by showing that at the parousia the dead would be in no way disadvantaged but would participate alone with the living; consequently, there was no need to abandon hope in the parousia.

On the surface, Marshall argues, this explanation may make sense of the grief. However, he says, there is nowhere in the epistle that Paul believes that the Thessalonians have lost hope in the Parousia itself or is doubting its future reality. Paul is not defending the doctrine of the Parousia itself.

(1 and 2 Thessalonians: A Commentary, I. Howard Marshall, pp. 120-22).

All of these explanations do not fully explain the cause of ignorance that brought about this grief. But I do think that a form of the second view is very plausible. I agree with Gene Green when he says,

The reconstruction of greatest merit argues that at the moment of confronting the reality of death, the Thessalonians did not allow their confession to inform their reaction to this human tragedy. Alternately, they may simply have not understood fully the reality of the resurrection from the dead, especially in light of the general Gentile consensus that such things simply do not happen (The Letters to the Thessalonians, p. 215).

So as been discussed above, it is implied in vv. 13-18 that Paul did teach them the resurrection of the dead in Christ at least minimally given his brief visit, but not necessarily a precise connection or sequence to the Parousia. So either they did not fully understand Paul's teaching, or they did understand how the theology translated into a consistent application when the reality of death occurred in their church. And is that not the case with many of us? We must experience something first before we really begin to learn the theology behind it.

It could be objected that if Paul did teach them about the resurrection of the dead during his first visit, why did he not characteristically say in this passage that they should know this already and he is reminding them again? This is a good point, but if Paul did not spend substantial amount of time teaching about the resurrection of the dead when he was with them, then there is no need to admonish their memory. Further, given the sensitive and reassuring tone and context of the situation, Paul easily would have seen no need to explicitly say he taught this before when he was with them.

Paul's primary purpose was to be pastoral, "Therefore comfort one another with these words" (v.18). It was not intended for end-time speculation by appealing to our imagination. It was to reassure believers in one of the most grieving situations that humans encounter: death.