Paul as a loving teacher

My goodness. The way knowledge comes to us when we start on a path! I am currently reading a novel about the young princess who was to become Queen Elizabeth 1. At thirteen she has travelled (in the author's imagination) to Constantinople to be present at a Chess Tournament which was to decide the Chess Champion of the world – sponsored by Suleiman, the Sultan of the Ottoman (Moslem) empire. She travelled with her beloved teacher and the English chess champion. Her father and her tutor thought it was a good idea and she learned a lot about being a good queen, which is the author's purpose of writing the story.

The book sometimes calls Constantinople, Byzantium! When I wrote my last blog and mentioned Byzantium, it didn't occur to me that this was Constantinople. I had forgotten that Istanbul had been called Byzantium before it was called Constantinople. My geography is having a good brush up. I actually thought the city was more on the eastern side of the Bosphorus. I love all this. The Via Egnatia trade route which seems to end in Byzantium must have crossed the Bosphorus into Asia and joined other trade routes leading to the Middle East and Africa, even the Silk Road to China, gathering other names as it changed countries. Likewise from the Adriatic westward.

Perhaps you are saying, Why doesn't she get back to I Thessalonians? OK. I will.

The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) points out that the praise which Paul accords the Thessalonicans (see I Thessalonians1:6-8) is unequalled in any of Paul's other letters. This is a Greek society, so Paul's purpose is very specific. He must take a different angle, addressing problems which are different from those confronting the Jewish community (which was rather in opposition to Paul's teaching). Paul's themes are marriage, community life and engagement in civil life: rather general, but important, for then and now.

Paul includes Silvanus and Timothy in his initial greeting and a quick scan tells me that he usually uses we and us rather than I. 

Is this the royal “we”? Yes, I think so. However, in chapter 2, verse 18, Paul reverts to I; and note that his salutations conclude with "I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you” (4:27, 28) - no mention of Silvanus and Timothy. (NRSV uses “solemnly command” rather than “charge” in that first sentence.) 

Paul speaks with authority, the authority he knew he had through Christ. How important that everyone in the community got the message! As I read the book I know I would wish to have had my own copy of the letter. Was this done in that age? Was that a scribe's job?

Surely it is a recommendation to all Christians that they should be as the Thessalonians in their work of faith, their labour of love, and their patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ (1:3). We are told by Bible scholars that this is the first time these qualities were banded together in Paul's writings. Later references occur in Rom. 5:1-5, I Cor. 13:13 and Gal. 5:5, 6. The most famous, of course, is I Cor. 13:13, the climax of his wonderful teaching on love/charity: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”

The beloved disciple, John, has been mightily extolled for his teaching on love, but to read I Thessalonians is to realise that Paul also had a mighty ability to love and teach love. Hear this: “...though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us” (I Thess. 2:7, 8 NRSV).

I find myself wondering what Paul learned from the Thessalonians. Surely every teacher learns much from their students.

Joyce Voysey