whose possession (eis peripoiêsin sôtêrias) they have been divinely destined
“through our kyriosJesus Christ” (cf. also 1 Thess. 1:3).
Koester thinks that the reference in 1 Thessalonians 5:8 to faith, hope,
and love somehow transforms the “traditional apocalyptic language with
which [Paul] had started the passage” into an affirmation of the Thessa-
lonians as “the architects of the new eschatological community in which
the future is becoming a present reality” (1997, 163). Whatever may be
true in this statement vis-à-vis the early Christian experience of time, it is
difficult to discern what is new about the eschatological community. Since
in Koester’s own description of this community it is constituted through the
conventional conviction that its destiny will be established by the timely
intervention—past and future—of a heavenly warlord, “our kyriosJesus
Christ,” whose eventual appearance on the nimbused outskirts of the city
the Thessalonians are urged to anticipate as the next imperial visitation.
Karl P. Donfried rehearses the same data, noting also the reference in
1Thessalonians 2:12 to God’s call “into his own kingdom” plus the use of
kyriosin the eastern Mediterranean from the time of Augustus to refer to
the Roman emperors, “although the first verifiable inscription of the Kyrios-
title in Greece dates to the time of Nero” (1997, 217; cf. Deissmann 1927,
351–58). Donfried takes these correspondences or connotations to explain
how Paul’s preaching “could be understood or misunderstood in a dis-
tinctly political sense” (1997, 216). In fact, Paul’s preaching in 1 Thessalo-
nians is plainly political, whether this was the case naively—due to its use
of apocalyptic traditions—or deliberately.
The triad of faith, love, and hope in 1 Thessalonians 5:8 merely regis-
ters the early Christian name for its form of ideal oikodomê,which the
Romans called pax et securitas(cf. Koester 1997, 165). The ideological oppo-
sition between 1 Thessalonians 5:3 and 5:8f. is therefore essentially the
contrast between them and us. Like Koester, Donfried also endeavours to
discover a greater significance for the formula “faith, love, and hope.” On
the basis of the dual reference to “faith and love” in 1 Thessalonians 3:6 and
the strong emphasis on hope elsewhere in the letter (1 Thess. 1:10; 2:19;
3:13), Donfried concludes that “it is likely that what is lacking in the faith
of the Thessalonians is the dimension of hope” (1997, 220). Donfried thinks
that the Thessalonians had suffered some sort of civic persecution, mainly
on the basis of the references to affliction, struggle, and suffering in the let-
ter (1 Thess. 1:6; 2:2, 14; 3:3, 4; cf. Phil. 1:30). None of this makes any dif-
ference politically. The Christian community in Thessalonica may have
been, in Koester’s words, “a utopian alternative to the prevailing eschato-
logical ideology of Rome.” But, again, it was alternative in form, not sub-
nora
(Nora)
#1