1 & 2 Thessalonians by Douglas Farrow

Author:Douglas Farrow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Commentaries-New Testament;Bible (Thessalonians—commentaries);REL006070;REL067000;REL006100
ISBN: 9781493423514
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2020-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

Malherbe (2000: 312f.; see 307ff. and 322ff.) is mistaken to see here, in these early days, only a mentoring community, a church of psychagogy without hint of hierarchy. He is not mistaken to observe that nothing is said explicitly about presbyters or the presbyterial office. He interprets προϊσταμένους (those presiding) quite informally and treats the church in Thessaloniki by analogy with philosophical communities that practiced psychagogy or mentoring relationships that we might call spiritual direction. The analogy is apt, even if some of the arguments for it aren’t, but hierarchy and psychagogy are not incompatible. That Paul only discovered the importance of overseers and deacons sometime later is a hypothesis very difficult to defend, partly because it runs counter to the clear witness of Acts and partly because they are already in place in Philippi by the time he pens that letter. The concerns of Acts 14, it should be noted, run closely parallel to those of 1 Thess. 5. “Strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” is in Acts seen to be preliminary to a process of prayer and fasting that leads to the appointment of “elders for them in every church” (14:22–23). The latter process sometimes took place, as Acts 14 indicates, during a second visit; hence Titus, for example, is elsewhere reminded of his charge to “amend what was defective, and appoint elders in every town” (Titus 1:5). So it is quite possible, given Paul’s aborted stay, that Thessaloniki itself was defective in not yet having had presbyters formally appointed. Was this, perhaps, one of the things he and his colleagues had in view when they prayed that they might return to rectify what was still lacking among them? If so, we must also posit that certain brothers there had been given authority pro tempore.

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