Occasion for Writing and Contents of the Epistle

It is not known how much time elapsed after the dispatch of the first epistle to the Thessalonians, though it was very probably not long, before the Apostle Paul received fresh tidings concerning the state of the Thessalonian Church—tidings worthy of attention and requiring his involvement. Someone among the believing Thessalonians had come, either on his own affairs or as a deliberate envoy of the local overseers of the Christians, and reported what was taking place there. Although this was hearsay, for he writes: “we have heard” (2 Thess. 3:11), it was accompanied by such assurances that the holy Paul had no grounds to doubt its truthfulness and therefore could not but concern himself with the condition of the Christians there.

What precisely this report touched upon can be surmised from the content of the epistle, as all commentators do. It was said that the Thessalonian Christians comported themselves admirably in the Christian rules of life, that their faith was firm, their love burning and expanding, and that they, despite persecutions and afflictions, remained unshakeably devoted to the Gospel of Christ; but that among them false thoughts were circulating regarding the Second Coming of Christ, which were troubling and disturbing them. Previously they had been anxious about the departed, not understanding what would happen to them at the coming of the Lord. The epistle of the holy Apostle had dispelled those anxieties. Yet they found for themselves another source of disquiet. There arose the opinion that the Lord’s coming was already imminent—that the day, even the hour, was at hand. This, in some, probably struck them with fear, from the thought of those awesome events that were to accompany that coming, while in others it perhaps inflamed an intense desire to behold the glory of Christ’s kingdom as quickly as possible; and it put them all in such a state of mind that of them it could be said: they were “shaken in mind” (2 Thess. 2:2). This opinion gained all the more hold and was all the more disturbing in that people appeared who assured others that they had received a revelation of this kind; some claimed they had heard this from the mouth of the Apostle himself; while others even produced a letter, purportedly written by the Apostle Paul himself. It is no wonder that even the first epistle had made this idea at least plausible, where the Apostle speaks of the unexpectedness of the Lord’s appearing. At the same time, it was also said that the old failing of the Thessalonians—the passion for a careless, idle, and restless way of life, which had been noted by the Apostle during his personal residence in Thessalonica and whose correction he had then pressed for and also written about in the first epistle—remained among the Christians. Some were giving themselves over to it as before, with no thought of reforming their conduct.

Receiving such tidings, the holy Paul could not but concern himself with bringing order to the prevailing disposition there, calming minds, dispelling false thoughts, and correcting a bad habit of life. This is why he writes a second epistle to them. What moved him to do so was apostolic zeal and fatherly love for those he was converting. He could not bear for any blemish to be visible on Christians, and he was zealous to present every Church to the Lord as pure, without any stain or defect.

Such is the occasion for writing the epistle. But since we infer it from the content of the epistle itself, there is no need to note that the content corresponds to what this occasion presupposes. In it, the holy Paul: 1) giving thanks to God for the Thessalonians’ progress in Christian virtues, encourages them toward further growth, especially toward patience in persecutions and tribulations through the hope of future blessings (chapter 1); 2) dispels the false thoughts that the Day of Christ is already at hand, foretelling that the Day of the Lord will not come until the enemy of truth—Antichrist—appears (chapter 2); and 3) urges the correction of those who walk in a disorderly manner both by persuasion and by the strictness of apostolic authority (chapter 3). Yet it is not difficult to observe that the principal theme of this epistle is the establishment of precise concepts concerning the signs of the Second Coming of Christ. The commendation of the Thessalonians’ good qualities and the encouragement of them toward patience serves as something of an introduction to the exposition of these concepts, while the instruction on correcting the disorderly is a particular addition—edifying for all, yet not affecting everyone, since only certain individuals were at fault. Blessed Theodoret assigns no preponderance to any one of the topics mentioned, but St John of Damascus, and after him Oecumenius and Theophylact, regard the teaching on the signs of the Second Coming of the Lord as the principal subject and chief aim of the epistle. By this arrangement the other subjects and aims naturally fall into the order described.