2 Thessalonians 3:5

την before υπομονην in all uncials; omitted in a few minn.

5. Ὁ δὲ κύριος κατευθύναι ὑμῶν τὰς καρδίας εἰς τὴν�. But may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ. A prayer significantly interjected between 2 Thessalonians 3:4; 2 Thessalonians 3:6 : one might expect the important παραγγελία of 2 Thessalonians 3:6 ff. to follow at once upon the παραγγέλλομεν of the last sentence. But the Apostles’ confidence in their readers’ obedience is grounded “in the Lord.” They know how critical the charge they have to give will be for the temper of this Church. So another word of prayer must be uttered before the admonition is delivered. Under the sense of “God’s love” and in the spirit of “Christ’s patience” matters of Church discipline are fitly undertaken. The Apostles have given directions to their Thessalonian flock,—“but” above both is the Supreme Director of hearts, whose guidance they invoke. For the verb κατευθύνω, and for the transitional δέ, see note on 1 Thessalonians 3:11. The idiom κατευθύνειν τὴν καρδίαν (πρός: Heb. הֵכִין לִבָב אֶל) occurs in the LXX—1 Paral. 29:18; 2 Paral. 12:14, 19:3, 20:33, &c.; Sir 49:3; Sir 51:20 (τὴν ψυχήν)—where the phrase implies an inward movement of the soul drawn to seek and find its Divine object: cf. also Psalms 77:8. (Heb. Psalms 78:8), Psalms 118:5; Proverbs 21:2. “The Lord” is Christ throughout this passage; see note on 2 Thessalonians 3:3.

In the latter of the two parallel clauses of direction (εἰς … καὶ εἰς), the genitive τοῦ χριστοῦ is certainly subjective: ὑπομονή is misrendered “patient waiting for” (A.V., after Beza, “patientem exspectationem”; so Erasmus, Calvin, Estius; although the Vulg. had “patientiam Christi”; Chrysostom is undecided), as though the noun represented ἀναμένω (1 Thessalonians 1:10). Ὑπομονή is used over thirty times in the N.T.—fifteen times by St Paul; in every case it means endurance (of trial, evil), as e.g. in 2 Thessalonians 1:4 : 1 Thessalonians 1:3 (see note); so in classical Greek, with the additional sense of “remaining behind.” “The endurance of Christ,” or “the Christ,” includes more than the patience of Jesus historically viewed (cf. Revelation 1:9; Hebrews 12:2 f.; Galatians 6:17; see note on Ἰησοῦς, 1 Thessalonians 4:14); ὁ χριστός is “the” patient “Christ,” who in enduring the cross and the contradiction of sinners, and the whole burden of His mission, fulfilled the prophetic ideal of Jehovah’s suffering Servant (Isaiah 53): cf. the allusions of Romans 15:3; 1 Peter 2:21-25; Matthew 11:29 f., &c. The previous genitive has the same kind of signification; ἡ� denotes “God’s love (to you),” not “(your) love to God”: so everywhere else in St Paul,—Romans 5:5; Romans 8:39; 2 Corinthians 13:13. It is in the deepened sense of God’s love and in the following of Christ’s patience that the admonitions of the context will be rightly received and carried into effect; so from “God who loved us” comfort and hope were expected in 2 Thessalonians 2:16 f.

5. ANTICHRIST IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The old Rome and its vast dominion in the West were submerged under the tide of barbarian conquest. But the framework of civilized society held together; the rude conquerors had already been touched by the spell of the Græco-Roman civilization, and by the breath of the new Christian life. Amid the wreck and conflagration of the ancient world, precious and vital relics were spared; a “holy seed” survived, in which the elements of faith and culture were preserved, to blossom and fructify in the fresh soil deposited by the deluge of the northern invasions. Out of the chaos of the early Middle Ages there slowly arose the modern polity of the Romanized European nations, with the Papal See for its spiritual centre, and the revived and consecrated Empire of Charlemagne—magni nominis umbra—taking the leadership of the new world (800 A.D.). Meanwhile the ancient Empire maintained a sluggish existence in the altera Roma of Constantine upon the Bosphorus, where it arrested for seven centuries the destructive forces of Muhammadanism, until their energy was comparatively spent. This change in the current of history, following upon the union of Church and State under Constantine, disconcerted the Patristic reading of prophecy. The συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶνος appeared to be indefinitely postponed, and the clock of time put back once more by the Overruling Hand. After the fifth century, moreover, the interpretation of Scripture, along with every kind of human culture, fell into a deep decline. Things present absorbed the energy and thought of religious teachers to the exclusion of things to come. The Western Church was occupied in Christianizing the barbarian hordes; the Eastern Church was torn by schism, and struggling for its very existence against Islam; while the two strove with each other, covertly or openly, for temporal supremacy. Medieval theologians did little more than repeat and systematize the teaching of the Fathers respecting Antichrist, which they supplemented from Jewish sources and embroidered with fancies of their own, often childish or grotesque.

Gradually, however, fresh interpretations came to the front. The Greeks naturally saw ὁ υἱὸς τῆς� and ὁ ἄνομος in Muhammad, and ἡ� in the falling away of so many Eastern Christians to his delusions. In the West, the growing arrogance of the Roman bishops and the traditional association of Antichrist with Rome combined to suggest the idea of a Papal Antichrist, which had been promulgated here and there, and yet oftener whispered secretly, long before the Reformation. This theory has, in fact, high Papal authority in its favour; for Gregory I. (or the Great), about 590 A.D., denouncing the rival assumptions of the contemporary Byzantine Patriarch, wrote as follows: “Ego autem fidenter dico quia quisquis se universalem sacerdotem vocat, vel vocari desiderat, in elatione sua Antichristum præcurrit”; he further stigmatized the title of Universal Priest as “erroris nomen, stultum ac superbum vocabulum … nomen blasphemiæ.” By this just sentence the later Roman Primacy is marked out as another type of Antichrist.

In the 13th century, when Pope Gregory VII. (or Hildebrand, 1073–1085 A.D.) and Innocent III. (1198–1216 A.D.) had raised the power of the Roman See to its climax, this doctrine was openly maintained by the supporters of the Hohenstaufen Emperors. Vindicating the divine right of the civil state, they stoutly resisted the claims to temporal suzerainty then asserted by the Pope in virtue of his spiritual authority over all nations as the sole Vicar of Jesus Christ, who is “the ruler of the kings of the earth.” The German Empire claimed to succeed to the office ascribed by the Fathers to the old Roman State as “the restrainer” of the Man of Sin. Frederic II. of Germany and Pope Gregory IX. bandied the name of “Antichrist” between them. That century witnessed a revival of religious zeal, of which the rise of the Waldenses, the theology of Thomas Aquinas, the founding of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders, the immortal poem of Dante, and the wide-spread revolt against the corruptions of Rome, were manifestations in different directions. This awakening was attended with a renewal of Apocalyptic study. The numbers of Daniel 12:6-13; Revelation 12:6, &c., gave rise to the belief that the year 1260 would usher in the final conflict with Antichrist and the end of the world; while the frightful invasion of the Mongols, and the intestine divisions of Christendom, threatened the latter with destruction. Simultaneously in the East by adding 666, “the number of the Wild Beast” in Revelation 13:18, to 622, the date of the Hejira (the flight from Mecca, which forms the starting-point of Mussalman chronology), it was calculated that Muhammadanism was approaching its fall. This crisis also passed, and the world went on its way. But it remained henceforward a fixed idea, proclaimed by every dissenter from the Roman See, that Antichrist would be found upon the Papal throne. So the Waldenses, so Hus, Savonarola, and our own Wyclif taught[8].

[8] We must distinguish, however, bwtween an Antichrist and the Antichrist. A sincere Roman Catholic might assign to this or that unworthy Pope a place amongst the “many Antichrists.”