13
These same qualifications explain Paul's equally direct challenge to Peter in 2:11-
14 when he temporarily sides with the Judaizers. The package of legalism, nomism and
ethnocentrism that made key Pharisaic leaders so inimical has intensified and triggers
Paul's sternest warnings as well. But Galatians also proscribes antinomianism (chaps. 5-
6), whether because of an opposite faction in the Galatian church or simply because Paul
recognized the pendulum could easily swing from one extreme to the other.
34
And Paul's
strong rebuke of Peter must be balanced by his counsel for correcting apparent
adiaphora--"you who are spiritual should restore that person gently" (6:1).
35
Unfortunately Christians have too often vilified one another on morally neutral or
doctrinally minor issues rather than just addressing the really serious ones.
1 and 2 Thessalonians
There is little of explicit false teaching addressed in 1 Thessalonians. The major
doctrinal question on which these Christians need further instruction is eschatology, but
Paul's correction is entirely in the spirit of encouragement and edification (5:11). 2
Thessalonians discloses a more serious problem--some think the Day of the Lord has
already come (2:2). This could have resulted from false teachers, but it is at least as
likely that it merely reflected a misunderstanding of Paul's first epistle.
36
An ethical
problem has developed as well, increasingly explained today along sociological rather
than theological lines: some are not working, probably trying to perpetuate the parasitic
patron-client relationships they had prior to conversion.
37
One issue, therefore, worthy of
34
For both possibilities, see F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982),
240.
35
On which, see esp. G. Walter Hansen, Galatians (Downers Grove: IVP, 1994), 185-86.
36
So esp. I. Howard Marshall, 1 and 2 Thessalonians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 187. Despite the
NIV, the Greek in 2:2 literally reads, "a spirit, word or letter, as though us, as if the Day of the Lord had
come."
37
See the survey of recent approaches in Abraham J. Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians (New
York: Doubleday, 2000), 454-57.