One of the great challenges of discussing matters that relate to spiritual warfare is how to describe it; how do you do that? Most of the people who read these posts are writers, so I think I’m posing the question to a good group, right? How do you describe something that you cannot see or touch or smell or taste or feel in human vocabulary that contains no precise words for the thing you are trying to describe?

Well…?

So, just for fun, pretend for a moment that you are the Apostle Paul, and the Holy Spirit has given you insight into what is going on in the church at Thessalonica. You are led to write to them, to encourage them in their time of severe persecution. You know because of the insight given you by the Spirit that this is a matter of their being on the front lines of spiritual warfare. How are you going to describe this to them? How are you going to tell them to hang in there, if you can’t tell them that God is going to swoop down and slay their oppressors any minute now, because God is letting the situation play out so that He can advance His eternal purpose?

Don’t be too quick to answer; that’s a really tough question. If you aren’t clear on that yet, start by asking yourself if they had the term “spiritual warfare” yet… because they didn’t.

The same challenge was faced by the prophets who were shown visions of heavenly things; even of heaven itself. How can they describe it to people who haven’t seen it, and who have no words to describe it?

Here we are in our study of 2 Thessalonians, right in between chapter 1 and chapter 2, with Paul trying to relate to the Thessalonians their situation in a spiritual battle between God and Satan. He’s shown us quite a bit of how this whole scene looks from an eternal point of view, and now he is about to show even more in the next chapter. The next chapter is a “Big Boy” chapter for sure, in fact I think it is probably the most difficult chapter in the New Testament for us to understand in our time. The result of this difficulty is that we tend to place it out of the first century and plop it right into the 21st. The problem with that is Paul wasn’t writing to encourage us, he was writing to encourage the Thessalonians; why would he stick this where he did, if he was actually writing to us? If that is what he did, it would surely have confused the Thessalonians when they really needed his help. Remember, Paul wrote quite a lot; he could have written a volume on eschatology any time he wanted to, but he didn’t, for that was left to John.

In the last post, I set out a little theory. It you missed it, it might help if you check it out now. (Last 2 paragraphs) In it, I used some military terms (“frontal assault” “Strategy” “tactics” etc.) as frames of reference in which earthly concepts or ideas that are familiar are used to illustrate a spiritual concept that we cannot see. Paul himself used military and sports metaphors often in his writings; Jesus used agricultural ones as well. My little theory was an poor attempt to understand God’s heavenly thinking to this issue by using human terms and references which are inadequate at best, but all we have to work with. A theory such as this has one main purpose, to serve as a catalyst for further investigation. A secondary purpose of such a theory is to provide a loose framework within which to understand something that may not be entirely comprehensible to most people. My little theory is NOT a systematic theology, thus it is not a dogma. If it is helpful, use it, if not discard it.

Before you discard it, however, I would beg to offer one final thought. My little theory keeps the text in the context Paul has set up in the letter. If that seems important, then please reconsider. If that doesn’t seem important, then by all means, discard it.

One last thing: I’ve written this post to illustrate one of the ways that theologians study difficult passages of Scripture. It is by no means an essay on exegesis, but does illustrate one of the techniques used. Usually it is used to test some aspect of an existing systematic theology, but using the doctrine already existing as a working theory to test in further study. Thus, we will be testing here my working theory. If it works, I’ll keep it, if it crashes and burns, I’ll toss it.

We’ll forage ahead tomorrow morning, see you then!