IT appears from ver. 5 that the apostle had in no way kept back these solemn truths as to the apostacy and the man of sin during his first visit to Thessalonica. Reserve is the reverse of the truth in Christianity, which if veiled is veiled in those that are lost, in whom the god of this world has blinded the thoughts of the unbelieving, that the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ should not dawn on them. Reserve is the more strikingly false, as the time the apostle spent there was short, and the saints had been only just brought to God: yet did he not withhold either the coming of the Lord or His day when He introduces the kingdom, nor the awful defection from the gospel and the manifestation of the lawless one which His day is to judge.
“ Remember ye not that, being yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know that which restraineth, that he may be revealed in his own season. For the mystery of lawlessness already worketh: only [there is] one that restraineth now until he be out of the way” (ver. 5-7).
Had the Thessalonians only borne in mind the oral testimony, they would have resisted more effectually the inroad of error. But they, as we, should learn even from that failure the incalculable value of the written word. Even a primitive tradition is unreliable, and as it needs, so it receives the correcting hand of the Holy Spirit. The inference from the Lord's word in John 21:2222Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. (John 21:22) seemed to the early brethren inevitable; but the disciple whom Jesus loved lived long enough to prove by inspiration the danger of inferential reasoning from an oral report, and the all-importance of the written word. How easy it is to let slip the words of the Lord, or what the apostle used to say!
There is no real ground of course for such a solecism as taking vi)v with TO K. like Macknight and others. It is simply resumptive with Kai, a particle of transition and not temporal, which is the less necessary as we have subsequently.; apTi. Even if “now” were used temporally as to the Thessalonians, it would not imply that there was a time coming when they would cease to know, which is ridiculous, but a contrast of present knowledge with past ignorance. And the logical force of the adverb here, as determined by the order of the words and the context or coherence, does not suppose, more than the false construction, any undue knowledge of God's ways by His saints.
But the apostle does not say that he when with them had explained the restraint of which he here speaks. They knew, he says, that there is that which restrains the revelation of the man of sin till the fit and destined moment come. That he had told them what it was is more than is intimated; and there is no reason therefore to suppose this an unwritten tradition. All he says is that the Thessalonians knew the fact; and there he leaves it mysteriously for others, as it appears to me with perfectly given wisdom from on high. For the form of the restraining power might change in God's providential government; and that which the Thessalonians knew as then standing in the way of the lawless one's manifestation might give place to another hindrance later. Thus other and better reasons might lead the apostle to be reticent, than the prudent fear which the Fathers imputed to him of offending the Roman Empire, the one barrier in the eyes of most. If the man of sin be not yet revealed, it is clear that the breaking up of the Empire then did not bring an Antichrist, as Tertullian expected. Yet their idea is perhaps rather defective than false. For the powers that be are ordained of God, and do act as a bulwark against that spirit of lawlessness to which the corruption of Christianity gives an immensely increased impetus. It matters not whether we look at the clerical party or at the radical, they both help on self-will, and are each unfriendly to civil government when it opposes either. Outside both, yet in the bosom of Christendom, rise up ever increasing masses of men whom it would be unjust to class with either churchism or dissent; men perhaps baptized, certainly animated with hatred of all restraint, yet notwithstanding their irreligion or infidelity skilful and eager to avail themselves of Scriptural words, facts, and principles in order to overthrow not only all recognition and honor of God, but all reality of human government. This is among the premonitions of the approaching apostasy, and the man of sin. But as yet there is “that which restraineth that he may be revealed in his own season.” God is meanwhile gathering out His children, the members of Christ's body, as He is sending His gospel to the ends of the earth. The empire is gone; divided kingdoms of more or less constitutional character have followed the downfall of feudalism. The energy of the Spirit of God has wrought as yet, during each and all, to hinder the outbreak of the apostacy, and the manifestation of the lawless one before his appointed hour. But the Roman Empire is to rise again, ordained of Satan, not of God; when its active re-existence will operate as the main support, and be the manifest sign, if sign be wanted, of Antichrist in his opposition and self-exaltation against every one called god or object of veneration. The beast, or fourth empire revived, and the false prophet, as they work together in evil, so must they perish together, as Scripture plainly shows. The patristic scheme was therefore defective, to say the least.
It is quite erroneous to confound “the apostacy” with “the mystery of lawlessness.” The apostacy is future, and only just precedes the revelation of the man of sin, both of which must be before the day of the Lord. But here (ver. 7) we are expressly told that “the mystery of lawlessness doth already, work.” The apostacy will be an open abandonment of all revelation, after that the coming and work of the Lord Jesus, and the consequent presence of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, had made divine truth manifest in the richest grace to man on earth. When the unfaithfulness of Christendom has corrupted the testimony and made the church utterly and hopelessly despicable, to the shame of the Lord Jesus, men will rise up in rebellion, not merely against the faithless church, but yet more against the holy revelation itself, spurning God's grace and hating the truth, and resolved on nothing so much as their own will and way. “The mystery of lawlessness” is the hidden energy of Satan meanwhile in mingling error with truth under Christ's name, either swamping grace by legalism or prostituting it to license. Even then this lawlessness was secretly at work in apostolic days soon to rot inwardly and foul contagion spread, as we see in Acts 20:29, 3029For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. 30Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. (Acts 20:29‑30), in these Epistles, and almost all the others especially those called catholic where the evil germinating from the first is no longer a matter of prediction, but of fact and denunciation in the darkest colours and the most solemn notes of sure judgment. It is lawlessness secretly at work, and so called its “mystery,” in contrast with the revelation of the lawless one when the resisting power no longer acts, and his own season is arrived.
It is also a mistake that civolit'a, lawlessness, is never in the New Testament the condition of one living without law, but always the condition or deed of one who acts contrary to law; for this would be rapavoaia (as the verb in Acts 23:33Then said Paul unto him, God shall smite thee, thou whited wall: for sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law? (Acts 23:3) and the noun in 2 Peter 2:1616But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man's voice forbad the madness of the prophet. (2 Peter 2:16)). The usual term for such a violation or transgression of law is vapitfinats (Rom. 2:23; 4:13; 5:14 &c.) The truth is that aveitla is both a wider and a deeper word, as we may learn from 1 John 3:44Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law. (1 John 3:4), where the Revisers have at length vindicated the mind of God from the darkening cloud with which theology had too long veiled the truth. Sin is not transgression of law but lawlessness, and lawlessness is sin. It is a convertible or reciprocating proposition, the subject being identified with the predicate. Hence it is exactly where there is no law, that eivo,uia (properly speaking) is found. For, the apostle declares (Rom. 2), as many as sinned without law shall also perish without law; and as many as sinned under law shall be judged by law. The Gentile was a sinner and lawless, the Jew a transgressor of the law. It is wholly to miss the truth therefore to say that the Gentiles sinning without law might be charged with sin, but could not be charged with avolda. For this is precisely the designation of their state; and besides, as a universal principle 7) afizapria eff7;1,?) AVOILIC I. Had it been said that they could not be truly called “transgressors,” it would have been correct. For where no law is, neither is there transgression; but if there be sin, as there is, there cannot but be lawlessness. Hence, says the apostle in 1 Cor. 9:20, 2120And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; 21To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. (1 Corinthians 9:20‑21), “To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain Jews; to them under law, as under law, not being myself under law, that I might gain those under law; to those without law, as without law, not being without law to God but under law to Christ, that I might gain those without law.” Theology is but a blind guide in the truth of God.
How then comes “lawlessness” to be appropriate in this ease? Just because it is the abuse of grace in Christendom. For every Christian ought to know himself dead with Christ, not to sin only but to law (Rom. 6; 7), but for this very reason sin not having dominion over him as under grace, not law. Flesh (man in his natural state) may profess the name of the Lord, but either would be justified by law and so is fallen away from grace, or avails itself licentiously of the notion of grace to live lawlessly. Thus the flesh, which used to oppose and persecute, learned to corrupt and pervert the truth; as its idea of grace was the utter relaxation of law for self-indulgence or self-will. In those only who are in Christ Jesus, possessed of new life in Him and resting on His sacrifice for sin, is fulfilled the righteous import of the law, for they walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit (Rom. 8:1-41There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 4That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1‑4)). Thus lawlessness had been from early days secretly working within the circle of Christian profession, as it will be developed openly in the lawless one ere long; when as the gospel will be flouted as worse than heathenism, so the law will be discarded as putting an unworthy restraint on the will of man that owns no superior on earth, and looks for heaven and hell as being nowhere. Not “wickedness” or “iniquity,” or “unrighteousness,” still less “transgression of the law,” is the true reflection, but “lawlessness.”
The rendering of ver. 7 in the older English Versions is singularly perplexing. Wiclif simply reproduces the Vulgate's error of “hold” twice, for “withhold” which both the Vulgate and Wiclif gave rightly in ver. 6. The Rhemish follows suite with its usual servility. I confess inability even to conjecture W. Tyndale's meaning, if he meant what is printed; or to correct the misprint if he did not mean it. “For the mistery of that iniquity doeth he all roadie worke which only loketh, untill it be taken out of the way.” (Ed. 1534.) That of Crammer (1539) resembles the rendering of Alford and Ellicott, save that “only” with thew precedes “until:” “tyll he which now only letteth be taken out of the waye.” Geneva led the way in substance for the Authorized Version. The Revisers appear to me justified in their Version, save that “taken” goes too far. “Till he withdraw” is perhaps unobjectionable, or “be out of the way.”
But this last and very important clause has of late been questioned, though happily by few. It might have been thought that the last words of ver. 7 were to plain to be misconstrued. Nor are they in any version at all known, not even in G. Wakefield's, or in Gr. Penn's. The Vulgate takes it, as all the English from Wiclif to the Revised, to indicate the removal of the restrainer, leaving (as the Bishop of Gloucester says) the manner of the removal wholly undefined. So does the Memphitic; so the Pesch. and the Philox. Syriac Versions; so the Arabic and the Aethiopic of Walton's Polygott. Alford and Meyer may be adventurous, but here abide with the unbroken column of translators everywhere. Here then is a bold suggestion: “For the mystery of wickedness is already working (only there is at present one that restraineth) until it becomes developed out of the midst &c. That is, even when abandoning the old “holding fast” for the sense here intended of “restraint,” he dislocates the sentence in order to avoid the truth of its withdrawal, when it will no longer be the secret working of lawlessness as now, but the lawless one displayed, with whom the Lord Jesus will then deal. There is nothing, says he, in the words etc peao0 to signify removal or taking away! which he argues is “derived entirely” from the connected ciprisraf, arpw, erCpx. (Acts 23:1010And when there arose a great dissension, the chief captain, fearing lest Paul should have been pulled in pieces of them, commanded the soldiers to go down, and to take him by force from among them, and to bring him into the castle. (Acts 23:10) Cor. 5:9; 2 Cor. 6:1717Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, (2 Corinthians 6:17)); whereas eyht. has not at all the sense of removal, but rather of origin or of existence. Now, waiving the “half” in Thuc. iv. 133, and “in common” in Aristides ii.120 (Jebb), Herodotus over and over again refutes the statement that it is only the connected verb that gives, though of course it may strengthen, the notion of keeping aloof or neutral, a wholly different idea from development (iii. 83, iv. 118, viii. 22, 73 twice). The most fanciful cannot attribute movement to grcereat or KaKjailat, to sit or sit down; yet Wesseling, a competent scholar, properly interprets the phrase, seceders e medio. The truth is precisely opposed to this objector, for it is,KT. 11,. which lends the force of secession to the verb. Compare Eur. Electra 797, where Paley takes gK. ft. as meaning apart from the company; but it is probably abruptly or in the midst. Wetstein 311) long ago cited Anton. viii. 12,,uttcpciv, Ka; Teevtitca, Kai vaur' etc plesov, I am dead, and all gone. Let me add Dion C who in his H. R. says of Lucullus (ed. Sturz. i. 188) that he kept aloof from both, EK liE070 (1,407y, and similarly of others (i. 686, ii. 48, 768), save that in the last the connected word is 4117(19, which is akin to 71v. In i. 388 Nepos is said to have withdrawn himself 4K T. a. away. Now we need not dwell on passages like that of Demosth. de Cor. (Reiske i. 323) where aveXcivras is connected with etc pecov, “putting away,” or laying aside; or again yet earlier, di'. eK p. in his Fourth Philippians (i. 141) “if we remove or take out of the way.” But two passages of later Hellenistic Greek are the more decisive, as we have the precise phrase contested. Plutarch says of Timoleon (Ed. Bryan 109) tyvm KCIO' ZallTial, 4K /1140'0V 7€1,0110109, he decided to live by himself away from all. Achilles Tatius, ii. 27 (ed. Boden, 186) has 74;9 lOtetok 4K pecrov yevo pew, submotaClione, “if Clio be removed.” Is it not plain then that the scholarship which could deny to 4,c p. 7. the force of removal is as bad as attributing the spurious sense of development to a phrase which never bears it in one single instance, nor I believe could bear it? The ordinary version is unquestionably correct.
Thus far I had written when a third modification from the same source meets me, somewhat more sober, and mainly brought about by a passage in Aeschines' Epist. xii. (Reiske iii. 695), where is another instance, EK pb7011 Iff:1,011411.1,, referring to men dead or exiled. In either case they were “gone away.” H. Stephens need not be summoned to inform us that yev4pfpos cannot be rendered “taken away” (sublatus), though this sense he unhesitatingly gives to the whole phrase. Every scholar knows the wide range of meanings derives from prepositional phrases attached to it as here. It is uncritical to cite texts like.Ex. 24:1616And the glory of the Lord abode upon mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud. (Exodus 24:16), and Deut. 18:1818I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. (Deuteronomy 18:18), in view of a wholly different construction. For in all the Septuagint appears no instance of the phrase used absolutely as here with 7. But even so, calling “out of the midst” of the cloud, or raising up a Prophet “from among” (though here it is probably 6, only) their brethren, is in no way development. Removal, destroying, taking, sending, or going out, are among the frequent associations in the Greek Bible.
Take however Amos 6:44That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall; (Amos 6:4) as one not so common, where it is a question of eating, and 4IC represents “out of” and eIC p. “out of the midst of.” Development is never the connection there. Does it not then seem strange to extract that idea for the latter phrase from Matt. 21:1919And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away. (Matthew 21:19), Mark 1:11; 9:711And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. (Mark 1:11)
7And there was a cloud that overshadowed them: and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him. (Mark 9:7), Luke 3:22; 9:2522And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased. (Luke 3:22)
25For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away? (Luke 9:25), Gal. 4:44But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, (Galatians 4:4), 1 Tim. 6:44He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, (1 Timothy 6:4), Heb. 9:33And after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holiest of all; (Hebrews 9:3); when not one has eic p. 7. but only 7.eK, which last nobody disputes may mean development? And why cite the identification by Hederich of erc p. ry. (at least in Eur. Iph. in Aul. 342) with 41, p.; its regular inverse? It is hard to conceive, if it be not to bring doubt or darkness into the question. Even there is it not meant that A. would secure to himself the object of his ambition “apart from others"? In general the one means “in the way,” &c., the other, “out of the way,” &c., somewhat like the stronger t7piroitZt, and EK.VattIV. That mind must be singularly constituted which could regard a—. or KaeJr. in Herod. as giving the meaning of “secession"! quite as much as ai'pto in Col. 2:1414Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; (Colossians 2:14) gives “removal.” If the author had said “session,” it would be true but irrelevant. But it is true that the idea of secession from party really does come from ex p. and not from the verbs, which mark inaction rather. The passage from Aeschines' supposititious letter must be added to those from Plutarch and Achilles Tatius, clearly proving that the secession implied in the phrase is intrinsic, not contextual, and due to eK ft. rather than to the associated verb, here the very same as in the clause in dispute.
Again, the inspiring Spirit had the best grounds for avoiding eipei here, though Chrysostom, who applied it to the Roman empire, so paraphrases it; and he surely knew his own tongue. Besides, the preceding clause implies only a present constraint, so that its future withdrawal is the natural sequel; whereas the device of enclosing the central clause of verse 7 in parenthesis is not only harsh and uncalled for, but cuts the thread of the truth. And then, what an insignificant parenthesis when you have made it! If the Thessalonians knew that which restrains, did they not know that there is one restraining now? Tautology might be truly said to attach to the desired parenthesis. One would think that the mystery of lawlessness must have been “developed out of the midst,” in order to be already at work. In short the idea is at all points unfounded.