NOTES for Th2 3:13

What is Christian life? The answer to this question depends on how we understand Christianity itself. What does it mean at all to be a Christian? To profess some Christian religion? But there is no such religion. Jesus left the world no religion. He left only a small community of His disciples, whom He Himself had made participants in the life of the Kingdom. And He commanded them to continue what had been begun.

With His help and direct participation. All religions that have grown on Christian soil are the work of human hands, and Paul understands this perfectly well. Therefore he calls those to whom he addresses his letter not to despair while abiding in good. Judging by the word the apostle uses, the issue is not only good works, help to one's neighbor, or something similar. The issue is precisely abiding in good, in the good. The corresponding Hebrew expression in the gospel age meant following the Torah and abiding on the way of righteousness.

This state Paul contrasts with what he calls vanity, which leads to nothing useful. Of course, vanity is harmful in every matter. But it is especially harmful on the Christian path, whatever this path may look like outwardly. For Christianity is not the ability to do or not do something. Christianity is the ability to be. To be in union with Christ. To live one life with Him, the life of that Kingdom which He brought into the world. And to be the door through which the breath of the Kingdom enters this world, transfiguring it. Vanity, however, is activity first of all.

Quite often, downright unrestrained activism. And the matter is not even that this activity is often quite meaningless. The matter is emphasis. An emphasis on doing something rather than on being. An attempt to replace one's true being and authentic existence with activity. This is always destructive, but especially in religious life: the spiritual component in religious life is always far more clearly expressed than in any other form of life. And Christianity is not even religion, but simply spiritual life itself in its purest, unmixed form. An attempt here to replace being with outward activity is the end of the path.

Although outwardly this path may appear to continue, sometimes even for quite a long time. Activity is always noticeable; it catches the eye, and the more of it there is, the deeper the Christian life of such an activist seems to some from the outside. Those seeking spiritual depth may find themselves at a disadvantage: in terms of outward religious effectiveness they cannot compare with activists from Christianity. But the apostle calls such Christians, outwardly inconspicuous in terms of their activity, not to despair and not to lose heart, for they are occupied with the most important work of a Christian. They are learning to live in the Kingdom. The thing without which there is no Christianity.

Continuing his discussion of Tradition (‘traditions’), Paul evidently connects it not so much with particular texts, teachings and concepts as with a way of life and relationships between people. We could say that, for the apostle, Tradition is a practiced way of living the Church's life. Paul is not, of course, being original here; he is continuing a much older Tradition. In Yahwism, and later in Judaism, the very concept of wisdom and its associated Tradition was practical rather than theoretical.

It concerned the experience of righteousness, the practice of righteous living—not in a monastery or a hermit's cave, but in a town or village, in one's own home and among one's family. And, of course, within the community too: the synagogue had become an integral part of everyday Jewish life by the Second Temple period, perhaps even earlier, during the Babylonian captivity. It is this experience of righteousness that Paul applies to the realities of Church life in his day. His letter might seem to deal with matters of little importance: some sort of fuss and the disorder, the ‘unruliness’, it introduces into the community's life.

He is clearly not speaking of a violation of established rules or hierarchy, but of disorderly behaviour that in itself makes any meaningful, purposeful activity impossible. Such feverish and senseless outward activity is usually linked to the absence of a spiritual centre, without which normal communion with God is impossible, as is any reasonably consistent activity.

It is no accident that in such cases Paul recommends what we might now call work therapy. The need to work systematically, even simply to earn a living, forces a person at least to try to put their life in order, whether they wish to or not. The impossibility of doing so, which soon becomes apparent, may open their eyes to their own spiritual condition as it really is, rather than as they had imagined it until then.

If someone cannot concentrate on regular daily work that is clear to them and always before their eyes, still less will they be able to concentrate enough, for example, to work consciously with their own intentions. Without that, neither focused prayer nor the practice of the inward Torah nor a full spiritual life at all is possible. These are the things Paul speaks about in his letter to the Christians of Thessalonica: clear enough to him, but perhaps not clear to its recipients.

Some words lose all meaning when we repeat them thoughtlessly day after day. Who remembers that the Russian greeting "zdravstvuyte" is literally a wish for good health? Even people who are not particularly religious may wish someone, "Well, God help you!" without thinking of God at all. Does that mean all of this is nonsense and that it would be better not to mention the Lord's name? Yet the Apostle Paul considers it very important to write a blessing to everyone he addresses. Is Paul taking God's name in vain? No. He understands very well what he is writing; moreover, he tries to formulate his blessings differently so that those who read his letter will not merely skim its ending ("Ah, these are just formulas of politeness"), but will read the text attentively. It is probably important to God as well that we speak of Him, but not mechanically—consciously; that we do not exclude His name from our speech, but that every time we name Him, we truly address Him.

Speaking of the need for everyone to work and earn his bread by his own labor, Paul, as one can see, connects following the "tradition" that he and his co-workers left to the Thessalonian church precisely with such a way of life (vv. 6-10). Mentioning certain brothers who do nothing but, in Paul's own definition, "busy themselves," he advises keeping away from them, not in order to treat them as enemies, but, as one can see, in order not to take part in the fuss that brings no benefit to anyone (vv. 11-15). The context of the letter as a whole allows us to suppose that the brothers mentioned by the apostle were busying themselves not only because of the disorderliness of their own character, but also, perhaps, because they were waiting too tensely for the day of the Savior's return.

Such tense, perhaps even feverish expectation could not fail to produce in the church community a distinctive "eschatological" excitement, so familiar to many churches in many different ages. Apparently Paul was a resolute opponent of the spread of this kind of attitude in the churches. And the point here, clearly, is not only that they did not help normal and full spiritual life at all, but on the contrary only hindered it, as all fuss hinders it. The point is above all that they distracted Christians from the main task: sanctification and witness, without which the spread of the Kingdom is impossible. Indeed, the whole meaning of Paul's letter to the Thessalonian church comes down to the fact that the Savior's return is inseparable from the becoming and revealing of the Kingdom in the world, that this return itself is possible only as the completion of the process of the transformation of creation, a process determined above all by the activity of the witnesses of the Kingdom. Meanwhile, feverish expectation of the Second Coming in the apostle's time, as in all other times, as one can see, was accompanied by anything except witness to the Kingdom. There is nothing surprising in this: after all, such an overly emotional expectation means first of all that for those waiting, the Kingdom is still ahead. For them, the history of the Kingdom has not yet begun; it will begin only on the day of the Second Coming, which in essence will turn out for them not to be the second but the first, because the first, to which the evangelists testify, changed nothing for them and had no effect on their lives.

For Christians living a normal, full spiritual life, the Kingdom is already a reality, although it has not yet revealed itself in all its fullness. For those feverishly awaiting the Second Coming, it is only an exciting premonition that stirs the mind and heart, which of course has very little in common with the life of the Kingdom. And Paul advises the faithful to keep away from the busy brothers not because he hates or despises them, but because the faithful taking part in such fuss will benefit neither those who are busy nor the faithful themselves. It will not bring the former closer to the Kingdom, and it can only move the latter farther from it. One can be joined to the Kingdom only by ceasing to fuss and beginning to live, which is what Paul calls all his Thessalonian brothers to do.