That view is very much an outlier in NT scholarship these days, for a whole host of compelling reasons. 1 Thessalonians is probably the oldest writing in the whole NT, and thus the earliest written indication of what at least some (or many, perhaps most?) early Christians believed. Paul’s words are clear and there is no reason to believe he didn’t mean what he wrote. (Were it not for the fact that a religion has been based on them, no one reading his letters even today could have any serious doubt what he meant.) The bulk of the NT outside the Gospels consists of occasional letters, not dialogues, poetry, or legal or philosophical treatises. The best way to read a letter is according to its plain meaning. Paul said he expected to be among those still living at the Lord’s return. It appears this was a common and perhaps even a defining view among early Christians (it shows up in the Synoptic Gospels as well). This didn’t happen, and there are even some hints in the latest parts of the NT that this was a cause of some discomfort as early as the late 1st/early 2nd cent. The historical aftermath of the 1st cent. compels us to broaden the scope of possible normative use of the NT letters, considered not as isolated works but as mere parts of one cohesive canon. Paul may have thought that the gifts of prophecy, ‘tongues’, and knowledge would last until the parousia, but he did not believe the time until the parousia would be measured in millennia. In the 21st century, both things can’t be true. This contradiction forces interpreters who see these texts as normative to make a choice: either Paul was mistaken about the duration of the “gifts” or he was mistaken about the duration of the time until the parousia (or both). Historically, the Church has largely ignored the historical context and interpreted these texts according to the needs of its own time, thereby denying both disjuncts above. That option isn’t open to a responsible exegete today.
I declare to you today, being alive and able to tell you this, that those of us, (the Christian believers in the human race), left alive when Christ returns, will by no means precede those who have died. I'm NOT telling you that I or you will be alive when Christ returns. What I have written simply says that all those alive at the parousia, whenever that might happen, will be no better off than all those who have previously died and are not alive at the time of the parousia. THAT is the thrust of what Paul is saying to the church. NOT, I, Paul will be alive at the parousia. The fact that most of Paul's converts to Christianity and perhaps even St Paul himself may have believed in an immanent parousia is not corroborated by what is written in this sentence that he wrote. The sentence does NOT declare that Paul believes, at the time he dictated it, that he most definitely believed, that he would be alive when Christ returns. Only that some would be alive when Christ returns, and that THEY, if still alive, would not be advantaged by the fact of being alive, over those who had already died. To say that Paul is claiming that he would himself be still alive at the return of Christ is reading too much into the words of Paul's actual sentence. More than is actually there. Read it more carefully and see for yourself. Interpreting this particular sentence in such a way as to suggest that Paul believed he would not die before Christ's return to earth, is making a huge and unwarranted assumption. Exegetically, that conclusion cannot be legitimately 'wrung out' of this particular text. The whole passage of text is not about Paul making a prediction concerning the time of his own demise. It is about the effect of the parousia upon the living and the dead in answer to those who were concerned about it. We don't actually know whether he did not believe the time until the parousia would be measured in millennia or in decades or mere days, and these sentences, written by Paul, used to try to establish what he thought, as a fact, do not actually do so. .
I’m not sure what else I can say about it. I think his meaning was perfectly clear, and that’s not just my opinion. There are plenty of NT scholars out there who favor an apocalyptic reading of Paul, based on the intrinsic probability of that scenario and the preponderance of evidence. I think the text states plainly that he expected an imminent parousia, within his lifetime, and that this entails no unwarranted assumptions at all. It’s simply what the text says. It is you that is making assumptions when you assert (without evidence) that when Paul used the word “we” in the passage quoted above, that he was not including himself in his own first person plural. That is eisegesis. We can either interpret the text according to proper grammar and syntax, or we can just make up whatever meaning we want the text to have. Those are the choices.
On the contrary. I think the 'we' that Paul used meant "We Christians" or 'we believers' - 'we who are alive' can just as easily be referring to his and their present condition including himself, i.e. alive, (as a group or set), rather than and as differentiated from the dead that had so obviously gone before the parousia, with which he was making the comparison, regarding how the parousia would affect the two different groups. You surely cannot be thinking that Paul expected no one in that 'LIVING' group mentioned, including himself, to be in danger of dying BEFORE the parousia would eventually take place. That's not at all what he's saying. That would be a really funny way to interpret what the text says. My way at least makes sense. The "WE" is only intended to delineate between the two categories of living and dead at the parousia, not as a prediction that none of the living, including himself, could possibly die in the meantime because it would happen so soon. The whole of the passage is not about the timing of the parousia, but about the affects of it upon the living, at the time, and the dead at the time, of its happening, whenever that was to be. If anyone can be accused of eisegesis it should be those who are trying to make out that Paul was implying by what he said that neither himself or any others of the WE he mentioned would face any possibility of death before the return of Christ at the parousia, he admittedly believed to be immanent, but we don't really know exactly how immanent he estimated it to be. Certainly not so immanent that no one, including himself, would be going to die until it came upon them all. .
This is special pleading. Again, grammar and syntax matter. He does not say “we who will be alive” but “we who are alive,” implying that there would be a core group among his followers at that time who would be alive at the parousia. This is the plainest reading of the text, and is hardly the only place in the NT where such a sentiment is expressed (see Matt. 16, for example). There is also the revealing statement of John 21:22-23, which seems to indicate that a certain revisionism had taken place at some point late in the 1st century, and which may also be reflected in 2 Thess. 2:1-2. That there was apparently a certain amount of frustration over this problem at least by the late 1st/early 2nd century is also evidenced by the author of 2 Peter (3:1-7ff). I personally am convinced by the evidence presented by those modern scholars who argue (1) that the earliest Christians consisted of a variety of more or less isolated communities - some composed primarily or exclusively of Torah-observant Jews, some primarily of Gentile God-fearers, and some mixed communities - who (2) had in common the expectation that Jesus would return imminently (i.e., within their lifetimes) to inaugurate the rule of God on earth, and (3) that when this didn’t happen, these communities were forced (4) to modify their understanding of the teachings they had received, and (5) to begin to setup more permanent systems of organized leadership that up to that point had simply not been necessary. I suspect we’re simply not going to agree on this, and that’s ok. I only raise the issue in order to highlight some of the broader hermeneutical problems at play when one attempts to translate 1st century statements about the use of “spiritual gifts” into a modern setting that the NT authors did not and could not have anticipated.
I don't quite agree with Invictus here. Paul probably knew the Parousia would be at least about 30 years away due to among other things Matt 24 :2+14 (temple destruction and the gospel spread to all nations), so he could well be dead by this time. What I think he (Paul) was saying that all those alive now will by no means proceed to die before the Parousia occures ie. some now living will see the Parousia. This is of course still problematical. If Paul had meant to say what I believe Tiffy thinks he meant he would have said "For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that those who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.
Except Matthew hadn’t been written yet - that was decades away - and Paul displayed no awareness of its characteristic contents in his own writings. (It’s also really amazing just how little the earliest Christian sources actually tell us about Jesus the man.) As the 1st century progresses, you start to see growing lists of things that ‘need to happen’ prior to the parousia, and this was probably because it hadn’t happened when they thought it would/should, and they needed to try to explain why. So they came up with elaborate scenarios of conditions that had to be satisfied first, that would have the effect of indefinitely pushing expectation of the event out further into the future. The earliest generation of Christians, from what we can tell, didn’t seem to think about it this way.
Yes I realise Matthew wrote 20ish years after Paul, but he still seems to have all the intel on Jesus and what he said. He was an Apostle and don't forget he said he had seen the lord (1 Cor 9:1) and he knew some of what Jesus had said including " It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35). Incidentally sometimes written in red in Bibles although Jesus didn't directly say it. Do you agree with my theory that; what I think he (Paul) was saying that all those alive now will by no means proceed to die before the Parousia occures ie. some now living will see the Parousia?
I have not been contending the notion that the early Apostolic church had a very proximate anticipation of the parousia. I agree there is ample evidence in scripture that their expectation was within years, not millennia. My contention is that, that fact alone cannot lead one to the conclusion that St Paul expected or taught that spiritual gifts would necessarily die out IF the parousia was delayed. The evidence in scripture that it only slowly dawned upon the church that the current age of grace was not going to be swiftly curtailed by a prompt parousia, does not also indicate that the church relinquished any expectation that the gifts of the Spirit would continue during the intervening period. It is only your apparent assumption that the church seems to have legitimately decided it didn't need spiritual gifts after all, in a fox and grapes fabulous manner, so God must have stopped offering them, just because so many within the churches of today, because they are ignorant of the nature of those gifts, have no experience of receiving any of them periodically themselves. Ironically, such an attitude and justification are driven rather more by a simple lack of faith, itself being one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Which would amply explain the cessationists conclusions on the matter. Incidentally, I do not believe that the phenomenon in some churches which is being been called 'tongues' is necessarily any evidence whatever of the use of a spiritual gift or even an understanding of the nature of spiritual gifts generally. Even IF it is an example of the gift referred to in scripture, that one was also referred to as the least important, (but for some today, and back then, it wrongly seems the most obvious), even IF it is not evidence that a spitual gift is being exercised, THAT in itself is not evidence that the other gifts mentioned in the scripture are no longer available to the church whever it needs them. .
Paul might even have worded it that way himself, but his scribe wrote it down in the words we now have. When a scribe takes dictation he does not write sentences word for word. He often wrote the meaning and thrust of the dictated sentence in his own inimitable style. The sentence that Paul dictated was specifically dealing with the question of whether the dead would be left behind and fail to participate in the blessings of the parousia WHEN and IF it should take place. It was not by any means about either the fact of its ever happening or even its immanence or temporal remoteness. The people Paul was addressing his advice to believed in a parousia. Their concern was not about its existence or even its actual timing, (except in as much as some had died and had apparently perhaps, missed it). Paul's sentence was dealing only with it's effects upon the living and the dead. He was simply pointing out in his sentence, 'nobody has missed it, nobody will miss it'. .
What an excellent post. I've exercised the gift of tongues for around 40 years now. It's a blessing that has enriched my life in Christ and my personal ministry with Him.
Do cessationists doubt the following scriptural statement to now be outdated and dubious, on the grounds that such verbal 'gifts' from the Holy Spirit seem no longer available to the church? “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men; for they will deliver you up to councils, and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you up, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you." Matt. 10:16-20. I cannot imagine any age previous to the parousia when such spiritual provision for Christ's church may no longer be necessary or provided for at least some of Christ's disciples. Christians have faced the situation described in every generation so far since the inception of the church of Christ. So wouldn't a hard line stance of cessationism be scripturally unsound since it would call into question the truth of a prediction of Jesus Christ. .
There is a distinction between the activity and the sign of the activity, no? It is a specific set of signs that cessationists hold was limited to a particular time; not the divine activity itself. We have to be careful in today’s world how we present such things. The ancient world - with a few exceptions - did not suspect that the universe is governed by physical laws that apply everywhere at all times, and whatever interacts with beings in space and time is subject to those laws as well and is thus part of the universe. People do not spontaneously speak languages they never learned, or acquire knowledge in an instant of what they never experienced. The passage you cited above is at its core an exhortation to be brave in the face of injustice, and that those addressed would have the strength to face threats to their lives and livelihoods when the time came. It’s a credible statement of encouragement, from one who had experienced just such situations. It surely brings to mind recent heroes such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela, who were inspired by the very example of nonviolent disobedience the Gospels describe. Can there be any doubt which approach to “living in the Spirit” has had the greater impact?
I think Paul thought he would live to see the parousia, and that this was a defining belief among early Christians. I can’t put it any more simply than that. The apostle Matthew didn’t write the gospel attributed to him. The author of the gospel is anonymous. There may very well have been an apostle named Matthew, but if he left behind any writings (which seems unlikely in any event), they have long since vanished from this earth. That’s a pity, too. Our earliest source for Christian beliefs and practices, Paul, did not know Jesus, and yet he repeatedly came into conflict with those who had known Jesus quite well, e.g., James (his own brother), Peter (his preeminent disciple), etc. Regarding the statement “he knew some of what Jesus had said,” hopefully you realize that some of what Paul attributes to Jesus was based not on what eyewitnesses had told Paul, but rather on what Paul claimed to have received directly from the heavenly Jesus in mystical experience. A prime example is the Last Supper. Our source for the Words of Institution is Paul’s mystical experience, not a disciple who was present to hear Jesus utter the words. “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread…” (1 Cor. 11:23ff). Paul is our earliest source for Jesus, and we don’t have an independent tradition that tells a different story regarding the Last Supper than the one provided by Paul, except the Gospel of John, which is rather sparse in its details on the Supper itself and seems to have had a completely different point of emphasis. Once it’s realized that at least some of the sayings attributed to Jesus had their origin in mystical experiences of early Christians, it opens up a number of possibilities. (Another possible instance of this phenomenon is Acts 20:35.) One can imagine the Protestant Reformers might have had a field day with such discoveries in their conflict with the Roman Church, e.g., over the Sacrifice of the Mass. And yet Rome’s insistence on the ‘real presence’ on the basis of the Words of Institution has at times had very real, and often very ugly, consequences for those suspected of doubting the official Church’s interpretation. Not even in the final version of the Christian canon is Paul presented as a ‘super-apostle’ who had the last word on all doctrinal and practical questions. There were many Christian communities scattered throughout the eastern Mediterranean by the end of the 1st century, and they by no means all toed a Pauline line.
I realise that Paul probably got his information from these two sources. This isn't a biggy issue for me. I just think Paul had reason to suspect he mightn't see the Parousia. Let me just tease you a little- you say (My underlines) What would you put Paul and Peter's relative ages at?
Exegetes putting it too 'simply' is the problem I am trying to deal with here though. Paul was well aquainted with the daily possibility that his death might well precede the parousia. To imply from the use and tense of a single word in just one of his sentences, that he EXPECTED to not die before the return of Christ, is a gross exaggeration of what may have actually been in Paul's mind at the time he dictated his letters to fellow believers in a FUTURE parousia. "Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death". 2 Cor.11:23 These are not the words of someone convinced and confident that their life will be safely preserved by divine intervention, at least until the return of Christ. "I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphrodi′tus my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need, for he has been longing for you all, and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious. So receive him in the Lord with all joy; and honor such men, for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete your service to me." Phil. 2:25-30 Like Epaphrodi′tus his brother and fellow worker, Paul actually suspected pretty well every day that he might not live to see the parousia. What he actually probably expected was that the parousia would take place sometime in his own generation, rather than actually in his own lifetime. As it eventually turned out for him, even that expectation was only partially realised. He did not consider himself immortal until the parousia. He considered himself to be inevitably in at least one of the two sets he idenified AT the parousia, either among the living or among the dead. In either case, his faith told him, (in fact he says it was a 'word from the Lord'), that everyone in either of the two sets of humanity, living or dead, would obtain all the benfits of Christ's parousia. THAT, in my opinion is a true exegesis of the text. The way you have been treating the single word 'WE' in a single sentence of Paul's has 'simply' been implying that Paul considered himself immortal until the expected immanent return of Christ to Earth and that Paul therefore expected gifts of the Holy Spirit to ceace within his own lifetime. I would suggest that 'putting it any more simply' than the way you already have would be already putting it far too simply to claim accurate exegesis of the text. .
There’s no data, so there’s just no way to know. If I had to guess, I would say Paul was maybe 10 years older, but there a number of unprovable assumptions that go into that figure. The same goes for the age of Jesus at the time of his crucifixion: the Synoptics depict Jesus as being around 30 with his ministry lasting less than a year, while John depicts a 3 year ministry with Jesus being closer to 50. If one then wants to use an estimate for the age of Jesus to guess the ages of the disciples or Paul, those guesses will vary widely depending on whether one follows the Synoptics or John. There’s just no way to know for sure. Interesting question, though.
Ultimately I think asking whether the gifts “ceased” is asking the wrong question. What I suspect happened in some isolated communities like Corinth is that Gentile converts were attempting to understand Paul’s presentation of Hebrew prophecy through their own cultural lens. They ‘knew’ certain signs were ‘necessary in order for the end to come’, and with sincere effort, they tried to bring that end about by fulfilling such signs themselves in the only way they knew how. For whatever reason, by the time Clement of Rome addressed this congregation, these practices had either died out or were no longer considered important. Paul’s advice, if followed consistently, should have led to gradual curtailment of those practices without destroying the Corinthians’ enthusiasm in the process, which is precisely the kind of advice we would expect an experienced and competent missionary to give. Anybody can manufacture spirituality; the real work is the acquisition of mental and moral discipline and the attainment of virtue.
That's the ball park figure I would have guessed at as well. Now you tell us that Paul and Peter came repeatedly into conflict, they knew each other well. On one occasion Paul spent a fortnight with Peter. Presumable they didn't just talk about Trump and the Nasdaq index. Peter may well have mentioned to him what Jesus said to him in John 21:18. Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.' So Peter knew he would grow old and the Parousia would be at least 30ish years hence. Paul probably being older than Peter would have guessed he may well not live to see Peter get old let alone see the Parousia some time after that.
What does Paul's age have to do with the truth that there is not a scripture in the Bible that states that the gift of tongues has ceased and is not available to Christians today?