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Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians was so clear and encouraging that it sufficed to reassure the community as a whole. However, persecution continued to afflict the new believers. Naturally, then, the thought arose in the minds of some of them: was this the necessary and immediate prelude to the end of time? Indeed, whatever the reason, the expectation of the Lord was passing through a serious crisis. Some, belonging perhaps to the lazy folk to whom Paul has alluded earlier (1 Thes 4:11; 5:14), claimed that the Day of the Lord was imminent. They caused a kind of panic or feverish expectation.
At the same time, they no longer engaged in work but roamed around as beggars and thus became an embarrassment to the community (2 Thes 3:6-15). They even seem to have circulated spurious letters for the purpose of authenticating their ideas, or at least Paul thinks that they did (2 Thes 2:2), and he attaches his genuine signature to the present Letter (2 Thes 3:17).
To counter their teaching and cut short any type of undisciplined straying, Paul dictated this Second Letter to the Thessalonians. He seems to have written it from Corinth in the year A.D. 51. He first had to correct the doctrinal error of those who were convinced of the imminence of the Second Coming (2 Thes 2:1-12), then the practical error to which these same believers were led: they were overly anxious to rid themselves of earthly things and to neglect their duties (2 Thes 2:13—3:15).
The Apostle shows that it is not by abandoning the world but by courageously facing up to it that Christians make their way to the Lord and are a sign to those who do not share their faith. They must put aside every type of bizarre speculation and evasion and instead pitch in to build the future in the journey toward God.
This Letter remains a lesson in realism for Christians at the very moment when the Church found herself buffeted by the crisis of a civilization, and it offers us a dramatic vision of human history.
Some scholars have questioned Paul’s authorship of the Letter because of close similarities in subject matter and phrasing. Yet who but Paul could sound more like himself!
Others see contradictory ecclesiologies (teachings about the end time) in the two Letters. They claim the First Letter speaks of an imminent return of Christ while the Second indicates that before Christ comes there are certain events that must take place.
However, the First Letter does not rule out intervening events but merely mentions the unexpected character of the Second Coming. The intervening events mentioned in Second Thessalonians can fit nicely into the previous teaching, and at the same time they rebut the new misunderstanding at Thessalonica that the Day of the Lord had already come.
The Second Letter to the Thessalonians may be divided as follows:
I: Salutation (1:1-2)
II: Perseverance in Faith (1:3-12)
III: The Day of the Lord (2:1-12)
IV: Never Weary of Doing Good (2:13—3:15)
V: Conclusion (3:16-18)