Hi all! As someone studying New Testament eschatology, including Pauline eschatology, I thought I would take it upon myself to review and respond to some of the arguments that Simon Gathercole has put forward in a recent article with the title above. I've added screenshots of the article in the post, but it can also be found here.

I should first state that this is a fantastic article, and actually very balanced. For context, as most here may know, 1 Thess 4:15-17 is usually cited as strong evidence of Paul's imminent expectation, indeed, even as proof that he himself would live to see the return of Jesus. This is based on the phrase that most would think is unambiguous: "we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord" (ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες οἱ περιλειπόμενοι εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν τοῦ κυρίου). As Gathercole notes, this interpretation is the overwhelming one in scholarship today (p. 232. For more on this position, see Gaventa 1998; Malherbe 2000; Boring 2015). It should be said that the stated aim of Gathercole's article is not to show that this interpretation is wrong. He notes several times that the consensus interpretation remains perfectly plausible (p. 233, 241, 255-6). Rather, Gathercole attempts to show that reading Naherwartung (German for “imminent expectation”) here is only one possible interpretation of the Greek syntax, but there are other interpretations that don’t necessarily imply this. In Gathercole’s words:

>The conventional interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:15, 17 is not simply a default, natural reading, but depends on two particular assessments of the syntax—of εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν τοῦ κυρίου, on the one hand, and of οἱ περιλειπόμενοι ... on the other. The standard assumptions may be correct, but also may not be. This article seeks therefore not to propose a solution to a hitherto unsolved problem, but to raise problems with a position hitherto assumed to be correct. The conclusion is not a negative one, but aims to raise a plurality of possibilities (p. 233)

In the following post, I will examine some of these other possibilities that Gathercole marshals. I should be clear that it is not my intention to “refute” or deny any of them. To the contrary, as I stated above, I think this is a very informative and balanced article, and I don’t take issue with many of the other Greek syntactical interpretations that Gathercole brings up. So too, Gathercole himself does not think every argument advanced in history and by some recent scholars is equally plausible, and has some critiques. What I do want to push back on, however (and this is basically the “thesis” of my post), is Gathercole’s various claims that these alternative interpretations show “imminent expectation” (Naherwartung) is thus not required in 1 Thess 4:15-17. This is Gathercole’s main claim, but I disagree. That it is possible to interpret the Greek in such a way that Paul is not absolutely claiming he will personally survive to the Parousia does not necessarily mean there is no Naherwartung in this text. Indeed, as I would like to show, the Greek still strongly suggests that Paul thinks the Parousia will occur while at least some of the Thessalonian contemporaries are still alive, whether he himself will see it or not. This is still Naherwartung. If I’m correct, and I mean this respectfully, Gathercole’s argument here is a bit of a red herring.

Obviously, with an article this long and technical, I will not be able to get to every detail or section by Gathercole. I would just like to look at what I take to be the key points.

Undisputed Points

In Gathercole’s words:

>A first point of consensus is that Paul refers to himself and his audience as “the living” (οἱ ζῶντες) in order to draw a contrast between them and the dead Thessalonian Christians, “those who have fallen asleep” (4:13, 14, 15) or “the dead in Christ” (4:16). Secondly, it is generally assumed that this former participial phrase οἱ ζῶντες (“the living”) functions as a virtual substantive. It is commonly paired with οἱ νεκροί (“the dead”) elsewhere. The οἱ ζῶντες stands in simple apposition to ἡμεῖς. This ἡμεῖς is therefore not a general Christian “we” but has the same scope as “the living,” i.e. Paul (with his co-authors) and the Thessalonians… These points will not be questioned. (pp. 233-4).

This is an important point that Gathercole agrees to here. It is beyond dispute that Paul includes himself in the “we the living”, and this cannot be interpreted as a general Christian “we” as some have attempted. As Gathercole explains here, the phrase “we the living” (ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες) is a group of people distinguished from the prior “those who have fallen asleep,” i.e., the deceased Thessalonians (4:14).

Plausible Understandings For Gathercole

For this, I am basically jumping straight to his concluding analysis, where he synthesizes three main lines of interpretation that could plausibly be taken as non-imminent understandings. Note that this is a long and technical article, and Gathercole examines several kinds of arguments, from patristic interpretations to those of modern scholars. He does not find all of them persuasive, and in the screenshots above, you can see where I have highlighted some of his criticisms, particularly of Heinz Geisen, Sebastian Schneider, and Marlene Crüsemann. However, drawing on ideas from these scholars as well as from patristic sources, Gathercole does salvage what he thinks are good arguments. For each argument, I will then provide my own response.

Argument 1

>From the foregoing arguments, then, we have identified several legitimate approaches to ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες οἱ περιλειπόμενοι (εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν τοῦ κυρίου) in 1 Thess 4:15, 17. We can present these as three pairs of contrasting views (a/b; 1/2; i/ii). First, then, the question of what “the coming of the Lord” (discussed in §3 above) is attached to: (a) 1 Thess 4:15 speaks of a group “who are left until the coming of the Lord” who also “will not precede those who have fallen asleep,” as in the conventional interpretation. vs. (b) 1 Thess 4:15 does not speak of such a group, because those “who are left” are not defined as left until the parousia. The words εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν ... belong with the main verb (“precede”), not with “who are left.”

>The difference here is that, on the standard interpretation (a), Paul assumes that “we” will survive until the parousia. On the other view (b), there is not the assumption that we are necessarily left until Christ’s return: the impression is perhaps rather that, as things stand for those who are left, “we” will not meet the returning Christ before those who have died. Both (a) and (b) are grammatically possible.

My issue here is not really his syntactical claim about 4:15 taken by itself. It is true that in the Greek εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν τοῦ κυρίου can be taken with φθάσωμεν rather than with οἱ περιλειπόμενοι. Even if that is correct, however, it does not remove Naherwartung from the passage as a whole, because 4:17 immediately reintroduces the issue in a form much harder to evade. There, Paul no longer speaks merely of “we” not preceding the dead; he speaks of ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες οἱ περιλειπόμενοι as the group who will actively undergo the parousia event: ἔπειτα … ἁρπαγησόμεθα. The sequence is crucial. In 4:16, Paul describes the return of Jesus and the dead in Christ rise πρῶτον ("first"); "then" (ἔπειτα), “we who are alive, who remain” will be snatched up (ἁρπαγησόμεθα) together with them. This is a first-person plural future verb. As Abraham Malherbe writes

>The next event in the sequence is the uniting of all Christians with the Lord and is the culmination of Paul’s consolation. He now reverts to the first person, describing what will happen at the Parousia to those who are alive, who are left (cf. v 15).

Malhberbe, Thessalonians, 275.

So, to reiterate, 4:17 is doing something different than 4:15. Unlike 4:15, 4:17 describes this "we" group as actively experiencing the miraculous parousia itself. This is one larger meta-criticism I have with Gathercole's article, in that it focuses exclusively on the syntax and exegesis of 4:15. Nowhere does he treat what is going on in 4:17. Now, Gathercole does state at the beginning of p. 234 that the meaning of ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες οἱ περιλειπόμενοι in 4:15 is the same as in 4:17, as is widely agreed. And that is true. So I am assuming Gathercole thinks that if it takes care of the issue in 4:15, that will also solve what is going on in 4:17. But, as I hope I just showed, 4:17 and 4:15 are doing and saying different things, even if the group in referent is the same.

Argument 2

>Secondly, on the relation between ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες and οἱ περιλειπόμενοι, we essentially ruled out the specifying interpretation (§4), patristic interpretations (§5), and the conditional understanding of the participle (§8), leaving, in terms of grammatical solutions:

>(1) The non-restrictive, or appositive view, that οἱ περιλειπόμενοι εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν τοῦ κυρίου is merely providing additional information, and that therefore “we” and “survivors to the Lord’s parousia” are simply equivalent. This is the conventional interpretation. vs.
(2) The restrictive view, that οἱ περιλειπόμενοι (εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν τοῦ κυρίου) “serves to delimit the potential referents” of ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες. Hence, 1 Thess 4:15b would read: “we the living that survive until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep” (2a), or “we the living that survive will not precede those who have fallen asleep at the coming of the Lord” (2b).

To explain this grammatical argument a bit more, let me quote more extensively from Gathercole's analysis in the article:

>Identifying οἱ περιλειπόμενοι (εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν τοῦ κυρίου) as a participial relative should not be confused with the aforementioned specifying interpretation of Giesen. In the understanding of the attributive participial clause as having a relative function, the question becomes whether the clause functions as a restrictive or a non-restrictive relative clause. Relative clauses across different languages are often subdivided into restrictive and non-restrictive (or appositive) relatives. This is a widely used distinction, even if some scholars prefer different vocabulary and suggest additional categories. The immediately understandable categories of restrictive and non-restrictive are employed here for the sake of accessibility. The distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive relatives can easily be illustrated in English: (1a) The flowers, which are blue, are beautiful. (1b1) The flowers which are blue are beautiful. (1b2) The flowers that are blue are beautiful.

>In example 1a, all the flowers in view are blue. This is a non-restrictive relative clause, because there is no distinction made or implied between blue flowers and other flowers. The author is therefore simply providing some additional information. As Fauconnier puts it, “a non-restrictive relative clause merely adds a ‘loose’ comment” about its antecedent. By contrast, in both versions of 1b, there are implicitly flowers of several colours in view. The author is singling out those which are blue. In 1b we have a restrictive relative clause, which “delimits or narrows down the domain of reference” or “serves to delimit the potential referents.”

Again, my objection here is not the grammatical argument itself, which, of course, is a real possibility. But does this interpretation eliminate Naherwartung from the passage? No. Indeed, it cannot, according to what Gathercole states here. Even if one grants the restrictive reading, it only narrows its scope. On Gathercole’s own account, a restrictive relative clause “serves to delimit the potential referents” (quoting Fauconnier) of ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες. But a restrictive clause does not introduce a referent from outside the antecedent; it selects a subset within it. That is exactly what his own flower illustration implies: “the flowers that are blue” are still flowers, just a delimited subset of them.

Applied to 1 Thess 4:15, 17, that means: if οἱ περιλειπόμενοι is restrictive, it can only delimit the referents already contained in ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες. But Gathercole himself had earlier said that “the living” refers to Paul and his audience in contrast to the dead Thessalonian Christians, and that ἡμεῖς is therefore not a general Christian “we” but has the same scope as “the living,” namely Paul (with his co-authors) and the Thessalonian contemporaries. Remember what Gathercole stated at the beginning:

>The οἱ ζῶντες stands in simple apposition to ἡμεῖς. This ἡμεῖς is therefore not a general Christian “we” but has the same scope as “the living,” i.e. Paul (with his co-authors) and the Thessalonians.

Again, pulling from his flowers analogy:

>By contrast, in both versions of 1b, there are implicitly flowers of several colours in view. The author is singling out those which are blue.

So, summarizing this critique: A restrictive clause identifies a subset within the antecedent, not a different class altogether. Since Gathercole himself grants that ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες refers to Paul and his Thessalonian contemporaries, the restrictive reading would still imply that some subset of that contemporary “we” will remain to experience the parousia. At most, then, the restrictive reading weakens the claim that Paul necessarily included himself personally among the survivors (which, admittedly, is Gathercole's aim); it does not remove the expectation that at least some of his contemporaries will live to the end. This is still Naherwartung.

Argument 3

>Thirdly, on top of these syntactic options lie the rhetorical options, which are not competitors with the grammatical solutions above but can be combined with them. Having eliminated (in §6.1) Paul’s employment of enallage, (ana)koinosis or communicatio, we were left (in §6.2) with the following: (i) The rhetoric of identification (e.g., Morris), according to which Paul identifies himself with his readers and therefore naturally places himself in the category of the living. This is an ad hoc move on Paul’s part, however: when he comes to express his actual view of the timing of the parousia, as he does in the following paragraph (1 Thess 5:1–11), he declares his agnosticism. vs. (ii) The rhetorical soundbite (Doole). On this view, Paul is more strongly required to express himself in 1 Thess 4:15 and 17 in the first-person plural, because he is providing the Thessalonians with a script to use for encouraging each other. Since he is envisaging them saying to one another “we will not precede those who fall asleep,” he could not avoid using the first-person plural since he could not exhort them to speak in any other way.

Of the three arguments, this was the one I was least convinced by. There is no real way to falsify the idea that Paul was merely being "rhetorical" by writing "we" and identifying himself with those who will live to the end. Gathercole draws on a recent article by J.A. Doole, “Did Paul Really Think He Wasn’t Going to Die? Paul, the Parousia, and the First Person Plural in 1 Thess 4:13–18,” NT 62 (2020) 44–59, who thinks it's possible Paul is using a "soundbite" for encouragement and identification, but he doesn't really think he will live to the end, or at least doesn't know. Tucker Ferda writes of Doole's argument:

>Doole argues that the first-person plural is a soundbite for the Thessalonians to use and encourage each other with—so the “we,” then, does not include Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy. Doole’s ancient and modern examples of such soundbites, however, do not function to distinguish the speaker from the addressees but rather the opposite: they often express solidarity. It seems to me that Doole’s suggestion about a soundbite actually reinforces the traditional interpretation. More convincing is Giesen, “Naherwartung des Paulus in 1 Thess 4, 13–18?” SNTU 10 (1985): 123–50; Bruce, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 103–5; Earl J. Richard, First and Second Thessalonians, SP 11 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 241–42; Vena, Parousia and Its Rereadings, 119; Sanders, Paul: Life, Letters, and Thought, 211–12.

Ferda, Tucker. Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins (2024).

For more explanation, Gathercole earlier drew on Leon Morris and A.C. Thiselton as well:

>Morris and others see this as a feature of Paul’s usual style: “We should bear in mind that Paul has a habit of classing himself with those to whom he is writing at a given time.” In support, he cites 1 Cor 6:14 and 2 Cor 4:14—not preferring the eschatological view there, but highlighting how Paul can casually alternate his rhetorical stance. Morris later adds 1 Cor 6:15 (“Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?”) and 10:22 (“Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?”), as instances of first-person rhetoric. On 1 Cor 8:1 (“we know that we also possess knowledge”), Thiselton takes it that “Paul adopts a common starting point,” only to undermine it later, or as he puts it elsewhere, “Paul is here using ‘participant logic,’ according to which he speaks ‘in solidarity with the readers,’ hoping thereby that they will ‘take the possibility at issue seriously.’” Indeed, in 1 Cor 6:12; 8:1 and 10:23 Paul employs the first person to identify temporarily with positions of which he does not entirely approve. In the case of 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul’s qualifications come in chapter 5, where he explicitly addresses the theme of “the times and the seasons” (5:1), and the unknown dating of the end. Amiot also notes 1 Thess 5:6, 8 and Gal 5:25–26 (“Let us ...”) as examples of Paul including himself in exhortations and rebukes. In sum, there is plenty of evidence that Paul can naturally identify with his audience for various rhetorical ends.

The problem with the appeal to “Paul often identifies himself with his audience” is not that it is false in general. I agree that Paul can use a first-person plural loosely, paraenetically, or rhetorically. The problem is that 1 Thess 4:15-17 is not the same kind of discourse as the examples Gathercole adduces. In 1 Cor 6:15 and 10:22, for example, Paul is using rhetorical questions. In 1 Cor 8:1 and similar passages, he is adopting a shared or general Christian standpoint. Those are much looser uses of the first person. By contrast, 1 Thess 4:15-17 is presented as a solemn eschatological declaration: Τοῦτο γὰρ ὑμῖν λέγομεν ἐν λόγῳ κυρίου. What follows is a direct statement about what will happen in a definite sequence.

The language in 1 Thess 4:15, 17 is unusually specific. Paul does not merely say “we”; he immediately glosses the “we” as οἱ ζῶντες, and Gathercole himself agrees that this means Paul and the Thessalonian contemporaries in contrast to the dead believers. Then Paul adds οἱ περιλειπόμενοι, whether taken appositively or restrictively. Either way, the phrase becomes more, not less, sharply defined. And in 4:17 this same group is the subject of ἁρπαγησόμεθα in a temporal sequence following the resurrection of the dead in Christ.

So too with 1 Thess 5:1-11, what he says is that the day of the Lord comes unexpectedly, like a thief in the night, and therefore the believers (again, the scope here is the Thessalonian contemporaries) must remain vigilant. Unexpectedness and imminence are not opposites. Similarly, in Mark 13, Jesus declares that “this generation will not pass away until all these things take place”(13:30) while also saying that no one knows the day or hour. The ignorance concerns the precise moment of the parousia, not the broader generational horizon (for this, see Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16, 918; Dale Allison, Interpreting Jesus, 78)

Conclusion

In brief, as I stated above, I think this is a fantastic and balanced article. I don't dispute many of Gathercole's grammatical and syntactical points here. However, as I hope I've shown, I don't think that, even granting them, they imply there is no imminent expectation in 1 Thess 4:15-17. Even if one combines arguments 1 and 2, as Gathercole says one could, one would still be left with a delimited group of people within "we the living" who experience the parousia in v. 17. In short, this is still Paul claiming the end will come during the lifetimes of at least some of his contemporaries. What Gathercole successfully does here is show that it need not be assumed that Paul explicitly thinks he will live to the parousia. If my reading of the article is correct, that seems to be the focus. But if that's the case, to be a bit facetious, a more accurate title would be "Did Paul expect to Live to the Parousia in 1 Thess 4:13-18?" rather than "Is There Imminent Expectation in 1 Thess 4:13–18?"

Another recent study to consider is Sydney Tooth's Suddenness and Signs: The Eschatologies of 1 and 2 Thessalonians (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2024). Tooth agrees that 1 Thess 4:15 contains an imminent expectation (p. 41).

u/Dositheos

The Dilemma of Paul’s Physics by Stanley Stowers