2 Thessalonians

A future individual, revealed at a set moment before the day of the Lord

held by Irenaeus (Against Heresies 5.25.1), Hippolytus (On Christ and Antichrist, c. AD 200), and the dispensational tradition including Lewis Sperry Chafer, John F. Walvoord and Chuck Missler; this is this site's own tradition

The strongest support is that Paul uses singular personal language throughout, gives the figure a career with a beginning (revealed) and an end (destroyed), and ties the end to the appearing of Christ, which has not happened.

Nero or another first-century Roman figure

held by the preterist reading, argued in modern form by Kenneth L. Gentry (Before Jerusalem Fell, 1989) and in a partial form by R. C. Sproul (The Last Days According to Jesus, 1998)

The strongest support is the imperial cult and the events of AD 66 to 70. The cost of the reading is 2:8, where the figure is destroyed by the appearing of the Lord Jesus, which requires that appearing to be read as something other than the return.

The papacy, as the Reformers identified it

held by a historical reading of the Reformation era; Luther and a broad line of Protestant exposition after him applied 2:3-4 to the papal office, and the identification passed into a number of seventeenth-century Protestant confessions

It is recorded here as part of the history of interpretation. The men who held it were reading their own century into a first-century text under the pressures of their own conflict, and the passage's own marks, a single person revealed at a moment and destroyed at the appearing of Christ, fit an office held for centuries poorly. This site names the reading and does not carry it, and says nothing against any church or anyone in it.

A recurring pattern rather than one person

held by the idealist reading, common in the Reformed and Augustinian stream, which takes 2:3-4 as a description of self-deifying power wherever it appears

The strongest support is 2:7, which says the lawlessness is at work already. The cost is that 2:8 gives the figure a single, datable end.

The Holy Spirit, working through the church in the world

held by the reading of much of the dispensational tradition, including Lewis Sperry Chafer, John F. Walvoord and Chuck Missler

The strongest support is that the restraint is strong enough to hold back a satanic movement, which suits God rather than an institution, and that the Spirit is spoken of in both neuter and personal terms in Greek, which fits the two participles.

The Roman state and the rule of law

held by Tertullian, who wrote that the Roman empire was what stood in the way (On the Resurrection of the Flesh 24), and a long line of patristic and later commentary after him

The strongest support is that Paul writes under a government he elsewhere calls God's servant for good (Romans 13:4), and that lawlessness is restrained by law. The reading also explains why he would say it in speech and leave it out of a letter.

The preaching of the gospel to the nations, which must run its course first

held by John Calvin took the delay this way in his commentary on the Thessalonian letters, and Oscar Cullmann argued a version of it in the twentieth century in which the Gentile mission, and Paul himself in it, is the restraining factor

The strongest support is Matthew 24:14, where the gospel is preached in the whole world and then the end comes. The masculine participle then points to the preacher.

Michael the archangel

held by commentators who read 2:6-7 against Daniel, where 'at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince who standeth for the children of thy people' (Daniel 12:1) marks the start of unequalled trouble

The strongest support is that Daniel 10 and 12 give angelic powers a real role in holding back events, and that Michael standing up begins the time of trouble, which matches a restrainer stepping aside.

The claim was that the day of the Lord had already arrived

held by the great majority of modern commentary and translation, resting on the ordinary force of the perfect of that verb and on Paul's answer, which is a list of things that must happen first

On this reading the Thessalonians were told they had been passed over, which accounts for the alarm and for the false comfort a forged letter would have needed to correct.

The claim was that the day was imminent

held by the older English renderings including the King James Version and the ASV, and commentators who read the verb as pressing nearness

The reading has the weight of the older versions behind it and less support in the ordinary use of the verb.

A religious falling away that precedes the man of sin

held by the reading of the great majority of commentary in every tradition, ancient and modern, resting on the word's use at Acts 21:21 and in the Greek Old Testament and Second Temple literature

A physical departure, taken as the catching up of the church

held by E. Schuyler English (Re-Thinking the Rapture, 1954) and Kenneth S. Wuest, both appealing to the departing of Tyndale and the Geneva Bible and to the root sense of the verb

The weight of the evidence sits with the first reading, since the noun's attested uses in Jewish and Christian Greek are about defection. The pre-tribulational position does not depend on this verse, and most of its own teachers read 2:3 as a religious falling away.

A rebuilt temple in Jerusalem at a future time

held by the tradition that reads 2:4 with Daniel 9:27 and Matthew 24:15 and expects a functioning sanctuary at the time in view; this is the reading this site's tradition holds

The temple standing in Paul's own day, destroyed in AD 70

held by the preterist reading, which points to the events of the Jewish war and to Caligula's order in AD 40 that his statue be set up in the sanctuary, an order Josephus and Philo both report and which was never carried out

The church, called God's temple elsewhere in Paul

held by readers who point to 1 Corinthians 3:16 and Ephesians 2:21, where the word is used of the people of God, and read the enthronement as a claim made inside the church

The cost of this reading is that Paul uses the sanctuary word here, and that the picture of sitting and being displayed suits a building.

The idleness came out of excitement about the day of the Lord

held by the reading that links 3:11 to the false message of 2:2, and takes some of the congregation as having quit work because they believed the end had arrived

The idleness was a social habit the gospel had yet to reform

held by commentators who note that Paul gave the same rule on his first visit (3:10), before any false message, and set the behavior against the client relationships of a Greek city where a dependent lived at a patron's expense

Both, with an existing habit given a religious excuse

held by commentators who take the two causes together, since 3:6 speaks of a tradition already delivered and 3:11 reports the problem as current news