This post contains an Original Post at BSA/General Discussion titled Who holds back the Man of Lawlessness? by Michael Waddell. Credit for this work is wholly Michael’s.
If you want to start a spirited debate at a New Testament academic conference, ask what the katechon [is. Literally meaning something like “That which restrains” or “He who holds something back”, it’s used in 2 Thessalonians 2 to describe an entity of some sort that restrains the Man of Lawlessness (whoever that is), delaying the End Times. It’s vague, it’s dramatic, it’s memorable… and people have been debating what it means for a very long time. And according to one theory, it could be Paul himself! But to explain that, I have to start with Paul’s previous letter.
Pronunciation – Katechon, Phonetic Spelling: kay-tekuhn. My phonetic spelling: kahh’-tee-con
1 Thessalonians: The dead gathered together with Christ
Scholars are in broad agreement that Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians early, maybe 49 CE, and it’s a charming letter. He isn’t worried about Judaizing opponents or disorderly church services; he doesn’t talk about works of the law or justification by faith or circumcision or any of the other topics he obsesses over in later works. He’s interested in addressing a specific problem that has come up in Thessalonica. Apparently these Pauline converts expected Jesus to return any day now, and then they would all get to live in a new, perfect kingdom without sin or death. But some of the congregants had died. Did they miss their chance to be in the kingdom?
Paul assures them that “those who have fallen asleep” (meaning “died”) will get to be in the kingdom after all.
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven… and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be brought up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
This is fascinating for a number of reasons. First, it’s kind of amazing that the Thessalonians already didn’t know this! Paul managed to convert an entire community of Christians without once mentioning that they would experience life after death. (I suppose it wasn’t that important, if everyone thought Jesus was returning very soon.) And second, it’s noteworthy that Paul predicted he would be one of those “who are alive, who are left” when Jesus returns. Paul did not expect to die before the end. It was coming too soon for that.
And then came the second letter.
2 Thessalonians: Your order has been delayed
Most critical scholars today regard 2 Thessalonians as pseudonymous, written by a follower of Paul in his name. If so, it would have to be fairly early, probably before the end of the 1st century, but the evidence is pretty convincing.
First, the letter is strikingly similar to 1 Thessalonians — not in the way a follow-up letter from the same author would be, but in the way an imitator working from a model would write. Scholars like Wolfgang Trilling and Hugo Mendez argue that the structural parallels are too systematic and slavish to be coincidental. 2 Thessalonians reads like someone who had 1 Thessalonians open on the desk while writing. None of Paul’s authentic letters work this way.
Second, there’s the content. Between the introduction and conclusion (which follow 1 Thessalonians closely), there’s really only one point the author wants to make besides some vague pleasantries, and that’s to contradict the imminent eschatology of 1 Thessalonians. The urgency of the former letter is deliberately deflated: don’t be alarmed, certain events must happen first: the apostasy, the revelation of the Man of Lawlessness, and the removal of the “restrainer”. The end is coming, but not yet. As Bart notes in his most intimidating tome Forgery and Counterforgery, this is not a contradiction a single author would produce in rapid succession; it is the signature of a later writer trying to correct a problem that the first letter created.
Third, 2 Thessalonians 2:2 warns readers not to be taken in by a “letter seeming to be from us” claiming the Day of the Lord is at hand. It really sounds like it’s referring to 1 Thessalonians. Many scholars have pointed out the irony: one of the most explicit anti-forgery passaged in the New Testament functions as an attempt to preemptively delegitimize 1 Thessalonians (or at least its effects) while claiming Pauline authority for the correction.
Enter the katechon
So if Paul didn’t write 2 Thessalonians, why was it written? One can imagine that, as time went on, it became more and more embarrassing to rely on a letter that clearly indicated the end was just around the corner. But we know that 2 Thessalonians was included in all the earliest Pauline letter collections, so it can’t be too late. It’s a decent guess that it it was Paul’s death itself that made the letter necessary; when the end did not come in Paul’s lifetime, his followers had to deal with the letter that claimed it would. Some events had to come first. Here’s how 2 Thessalonians words it.
Now regarding the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together with him…
(Note how this seems to directly refer to the passage in 1 Thessalonians above.)
…we ask you, brothers, not to be easily shaken or alarmed by any kind of spirit or message or letter seeming to be from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one in any way deceive you. For that day will not come unless the apostacy comes first, and the Man of Lawlessness is revealed, the Son of Destruction.
So who is this “Man of Lawlessness”? The author gives a hint by describing his actions once he is revealed.
He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God.
This is specifically a prophecy about a sacrilege in the temple, which was destroyed in 70 CE. Keep that in mind for later. The then author brings up a new character, the “restrainer” (katechon), hinting that the reader already knows who he means.
You know what is the katechon is now [or, “You know what is restraining him now”], so that he may be revealed when the time comes. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. The katechon alone will restrain him until he is removed. And then the lawless one will be revealed.
Exciting stuff! As if this mysterious restraining force weren’t intriguing enough on its own, the grammar is odd as well. In verse 6, the restrainer is neuter: to katechon, “that which is restraining.” In verse 7 it shifts to masculine: ho katechon, “he who restrains.” This grammatical ambiguity has generated proposals ranging from the Roman Empire being the restraining force, to the Holy Spirit, to the archangel Michael, to the preaching of the gospel, to just about anything you can come up with. The debate has been going on since at least the 4th century when John Chrysostom noted its difficulty, and the difficulty has not let up.
But there is one reading of the katechon that makes particular sense to me. In brief: the katechon is Paul himself, and the letter was written after Paul’s death by a follower who understood that death as a theologically significant event.
Cullmann, and everything after
In the mid-20th century, Oscar Cullmann (Swiss theologian and scholar) first proposed a reading of the katechon passage that treated the grammatical shift between neuter and masculine as meaningful rather than accidental. The neuter to katechon (“what is restraining”) refers to the missionary proclamation of the gospel. The masculine ho katechon (“he who restrains”) refers to Paul himself, the apostle entrusted with that proclamation. In Cullmann’s reading, Paul believed that the end could not come until the gospel had been preached to the Gentiles, and that he himself was the linchpin of that process. Once his work was complete (made evident by his “removal”) then the final events could unfold.
Cullmann was working under the assumption that 2 Thessalonians was genuinely Pauline. But if we reject that assumption, a coherent scenario emerges. The proposal, developed by various scholars in the wake of Cullmann’s work, runs something like this:
Paul was abruptly and unceremoniously executed in the mid-60s CE. For communities formed around Paul’s preaching, this was a theological crisis. His death threatened to destabilize everything, just at the moment when a great war seemed to be breaking out between the Romans and people of God. Surely this was when the end should come! After all Paul had assured the Thessalonians in his first letter that he would be alive at the parousia. Did Paul’s death mean that salvation was not coming after all? It must have looked like that to many.
In that context, a pseudonymous author wrote in Paul’s name shortly after Paul’s death, but before the temple had been destroyed. The letter serves three functions simultaneously. [List formatting is mine]
- First, it damps down the more dangerous eschatological expectations. (After all, 2 Thess 3:6-12 indicates that some who had read 1 Thessalonians had stopped working to await the end.)
- Second, it predicts that a self-declared divine emperor would desecrate the temple (which by this time was clearly Rome’s plan), and it assures its audience that Paul had foreseen it all.
- And thirdly, it provides a spiritual meaning for Paul’s death. Paul was the katechon, the one whose mission was holding back the final events. His removal from the scene was not a refutation of his gospel; it was a part of its logic. Now that the restrainer has been taken out of the way, the sequence can proceed.
I find the solution elegant. It explains the reason for the letter, the mention of the temple, the grammatical shift, and the eschatological deceleration. But it remains a minority position and is, at bottom, a hypothesis about vague apocalyptic predictions by an author trying to obscure his identity. There are many other possibilities. For his part, Wolfgang Trilling (the scholar who first identified 2 Thessalonians as pseudepigraphical) concluded that the passage was deliberately obscure; that it was addressed to a community that understood it perfectly, but we simply do not have access to that knowledge. That’s certainly possible. But I’d like to apply the tongue-in-cheek principle of lectio festivior potior [Latin: “the difficult reading is stronger”]: the interpretation that’s the most fun should be preferred. And for me, that’s Paul being made the katechon after his death, against his will, in an unintentional homage to his savior.
End Michael’s OP
