7 - 2 Thessalonians and the New Testament

Summary

It will be beneficial to have a clear understanding of the term ‘apocalyptic’ before comparing the thought of 2 Thessalonians to other parts of the New Testament. Paul Hanson urges that one must distinguish this concept in three ways: as a distinctive literary genre that can be referred to as an ‘apocalypse’, as a religious perspective known as ‘apocalyptic eschatology’, and as a social movement identified as ‘apocalypticism’ whose identity and interpretation of reality is codified by a symbolic universe of apocalyptic. These distinctions allow for some clarity in comparing 2 Thessalonians with other New Testament writings. First, its genre is that of a letter, not an apocalypse. Second, within the genre of letter, the eschatology of 2 Thessalonians can be described, as can that of 1 Thessalonians, as apocalyptic eschatology. The second letter is more comprehensively apocalyptic in the sense that it uses more consistently language and descriptive elements drawn from the symbolic universe of apocalyptic, as in the case of the salvationjudgment oracle found in 2 Thess. 2:3–12. Third, one may identify the author of 2 Thessalonians with ‘apocalypticism’ in so far as he ‘develops a protest of the apocalyptic community against the dominant society’ and is less concerned ‘with systematic consistency than with the demands of the immediate crisis, especially those of defining identity within a hostile world, and of sustaining hope for deliverance’. Using Hanson's categories, one finds several remarkable similarities between 2 Thessalonians and the book of Revelation.