TRINJ 20NS (1999) 215-232

SEXUAL GRATIFICATION IN 1THESS 4:1-8

ROBERT W. YARBROUGH·
The goal of this article is to see what light study of biblical
language and backgrounds might shed on several perennial puzzles
found in 1 Thess 4:1-8. The gist of current scholarship on the
Thessalonian correspondence implies that NT rhetoric and
archaeology would be among the most likely and fruitful sources of
knowledge. It is therefore necessary to touch these bases before
passing on to considerations that probably carry more weight in the
end.
Recent developments in rhetorical criticism have raised
questions about the kind of communication we are dealing with in 1
Thessalonians overall. Understanding of individual parts, like 4:1-8,
depends somewhat on the outcome of this discussion. Steve Walton
recently brought current research up to date, citing major players
like George Kennedy, Abraham Malherbe, Robert Jewett, Bruce
Johanson, Thomas Ulbricht, F. W. Hughes, Bruce Winter, Karl
Donfried, Charles Wanamaker, and others.1 Three suggestions that
Walton isolates are worth noting.
First is the observation by I. Howard Marshall that 1
Thessalonians is most of all a measured piece of pastoral
encouragement.2 To the extent this is true, and to the extent that
Paul's aims in writing might have caused him to break with the
normal bounds of classical rhetoric (assuming for now that he even
knew or observed them in any formal way), we should work
cautiously and inductively toward building cases for the influence of
rhetorical categories on what Paul says. To do otherwise—to
interpret individual sections of this letter in the light of external
categories not clearly documented in the actual content of Paul's
epistle—would risk letting the tail of presumed method wag the dog
of stated message.
Second, we should note Helmut Koester's suggestion that 1
Thessalonians does not fit classical categories very well and is in any
case a pioneering instance of a genre—Christian letter—that at its
time of composition had few if any established rhetorical

*Robert W. Yarbrough is Associate Professor of New Testament and Chair of the

New Testament Department at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.
1/y
What Has Aristotle to Do with Paul? Rhetorical Criticism and 1
Thessalonians," TynBul 46 (1995) 229-50.
2
Ibid.,237.
216 TRINITY JOURNAL
conventions to follow.3 Again, to the extent he is correct, we are
justified in tempering our exuberance over the value of novel
rhetorical critical findings for interpreting any given portion of a
Pauline letter.
Third, Walton's own conclusion that 1 Thessalonians is
epideictic4 (dedicated to praise and blame "with the aim of
persuading the readers to reaffirm or maintain a point of view"5),
while probably true, seems only minimally illuminating in any
specific way for gauging Paul's message in 1 Thess 4:1-8. Even if
Walton's case could be pressed, it would conflict with what I think
are the more conclusive findings of Bruce Winter that precisely in 1
Thessalonians Paul explicitly disavows any affiliation with the
established and often not very savory methods of that day's
professional orators and sophists.6 It seems justified, then, to take a
wait-and-see approach to the value of rhetorical critical insights as
such for the text before us, as its promise in this case may be more
ephemeral and formal than substantive and material.
Turning to archaeology, we find that, like rhetorical criticism, it
is of less direct help than we might like, as ancient Thessalonica is
for the most part buried beneath successive layers of continuous
urban life, represented currently by the city of Salonika, second
largest city in Greece. Archaeology does confirm buildings from the
Roman period, including pagan temples honoring Serapis7 and
various other deities. Coins confirm the prominence of a civic deity
Cabiros, to which we will return later, while iconographie evidence
attests the worship of Cybele and Mithras as well as veneration of
Asklepios Soter, the god of healing.8 It also confirms that Luke was
not spinning yarns when he spoke of city officials called "politarchs"
at Thessalonica, a term once sparsely attested in literature but now
documented nearly three dozen times in inscriptions. Beyond this,
archaeology tells us frustratingly little about the religious or cultural
world of Thessalonica proper during Paul's time.9
And yet our verses beg for clarification. They contain well-
known critical conundrums, a few broached below. And as Holy
Scripture they are looked to worldwide by hundreds of millions of
people for life guidance. But what they find here is puzzling if not
disturbing at two particular points. First, what did Paul mean by
3
Ibid.,238.
4
Ibid.,250.
5
Ibid.,234.
6//
The Entries and Ethics of Orators and Paul (1 Thessalonians 2:1-12)/' TynBul
44(1993)55-74.
7
Serapis was an Egyptian god combining attributes of Osiris and Apis. Serapis
attracted a large following in ancient Greece and Rome.
8
Holland Hendrix, "Thessalonica," in ABD 6.525. Hendrix relies heavily on
inscriptions compiled in C. Edson, Inscriptiones graecae Epiri, hAacedoniae, Thraciae,
Scythiae, Part 2: Inscriptiones Macedoniae, Fascicle V.lnscrìptiones Thessalonicaeet viciniae
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1972).
9
Cf. John McRay, Archaeology and the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991)
293-5.
YARBROUGH: 1THESS 4:1-8 217

"each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is
holy and honorable"? There is confusion here because many
translations speak not of controlling the body but of acquiring or
maintaining a woman or wife. Second, what is this talk of sexual
expression that is somehow free of "passionate lust"? While some
passages of the Christian Scriptures do warn against inappropriate
sexual relations, others appear to mandate and even extol the glories
of heterosexual marital intimacy. Should we conceive of some sort of
Christian sexual activity that is free from feelings of sexual desire or
pleasure, if this is what Paul is calling "passionate lust"? If so, how
can we? More than one reader has stared at this passage in
bewilderment, then walked away in despair, as it seemed to be
calling for a quality of sexual experience—one free from passionate
longing and enjoyment—that appeared neither attainable nor
desirable. Granted that there are aspects of sex loftier than sensual
gratification alone; who would want sex to be without it? Most
honest people would concede that our human fascination with sex, a
powerful anthropological constant across cultures and millennia, has
everything to do with the pleasure often associated with it.
Let us approach these two questions in turn: what controlling
the body (or acquiring a wife) means, and what "not in passion of
lust" refers to. Thereafter we will take up a third matter, centering
on Paul's words θέλημα του θεού—the will of God. It is actually this
expression, on which the surrounding ancient culture sheds a good
bit of light, that could prove to be decisive in coming to a measured
and responsible grasp of the text before us.

I.WEIBORLEIB?

Considerable divergence characterizes translations of v. 4, which

the NIV renders "that each of you should learn to control his own
body in a way that is holy and honorable." The NIV study Bible
hints at the ambiguity here: it offers as an alternate translation "Or
learn to live with his own wife; or learn to acquire a wife." The CEV
takes this tack up-front: "Respect and honor your wife," a drastic
shortening to five words of what the NIV takes nineteen to say (in
Greek there are eleven words). The RSV combines the NIV's length
with the CEV's perspective: "that each one of you know how to take
a wife for himself in holiness and honor." Yet the RSV has "how to
control his own body" in the margin. The NRSV translation reverses
this, with the text reading "that each one of you know how to
control your own body in holiness and honor" and the margin
offering the alternate words, know "how to take a wife for himself."
But TEV casts its vote with the RSV, with no marginal note at all:
"Each of you men should know how to take a wife in a holy and
honorable way."10
10
For a fuller review of modern English translation choices see R. R. Rickards, "1
Thessalonians 4:4-6," The Bible Translator 29 (1978) 245-7. See also Jay Smith, "The
218 TRINITY JOURNAL

Numerous German commentators, among them Albrecht

Oepke, Alphons Steinmann, and Heinz Schürmann, like the British
commentator Ernest Best11 and the American William Hendriksen,12
also translate wife.13 A Luther-Bibel published in 1967 likewise
speaks of a wife, using the antiquated, quaint, and now vaguely
demeaning term "Weib": ''Und ein jeglicher unter euch sein eigen
Weib zu gewinnen suche in Heiligung und Ehrbarkeit" ("And each
of you seek to acquire his own wife in sanctification and
honorableness"). Luther's original September-Bibel of 1522,
however, reads "Faß," "vessel, container," rather than "Weib,"
"wife."14 Oscillation between "wife" and "body" in successive
editions of the Luther-Bibel, like the flip-flop between RSV and
NRSV, alerts us to an intriguing crux interpretum.15 What did Paul
actually mean to say?
What is happening here is not the result of translators'
perversity but the polyvalence of Paul's word σκεύος, which means
thing, object, vessel. The fledgling Christians at Thessalonica (and
perhaps especially the adult men as representatives responsible
before God for their marriages and covenant community) are each to
procure, acquire, gain control of (κτασθαι) their own σκεύος. But
σκεύος can mean lots of things, even if we confine our gaze to the
NT—goods, merchandise, jar, vessel, tool, appliance, article, or
object, for example.16

Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 and Its Contribution to Paul's Sexual Ethics"

(Ph.D. diss.. Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1996) 210f. Smith's excursus "το
έαυτοΰ σκευο? κτάσθαι in 1 Thess 4:4" (ibid., 209-53) is among the most comprehensive
exegetical discussions on this phrase yet to appear.
11
Ernest Best, A Commentary on the First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians
(New York: Harper & Row, 1972) 158.
12
William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of I and II
Thessalonians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1955) 100.
13
Albrecht Oepke, "Die Briefe an die Thessalonicher," Die kleineren Briefe des
Apostels Paulus (NTD; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972) 169-70; Alphons
Steinmann, Die Briefe an die Thessalonicher und Galater (Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1935) 42-
3; Heinz Schürmann, The First Epistle to the Thessalonians (New York: Crossroad, 1981)
50-1.
u
Das Newe Testament Delitzsch, Vuittemberg (reprint; Berlin: Furche, ca. 1918). A
19th century Luther-Bibel reads "Faß (seinen Leib)" to make Luther's sense
unmistakable (Die Bibel, oder die Heilige Schrift des alten und neuen Testaments nach der
deutschen Uebersetzung D. Martin Luthers [London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, n.d.]).
But Norbert Baumert claims that Luther understood "wife" here: "Brautwerbung—
das einheitliche Theme von 1 Thess 4, 3-8," in The Thessalonian Correspondence (ed.
Raymond F. Collins; Leuven: University Press, 1990) 317 η. 6.
15
Cf. the German-language translation "Hoffnung für alle," which definitely sees
Paul talking about the husband acquiring or cohabiting with the wife in v. 4: "Jeder
soll mit seiner Ehefrau zusammenleben und rücksichtsvoll mit ihr umgehen" ("Each
[man] should live together with his wife and treat her considerately"). In the margin it
gives a literal rendering: "Jeder von euch soll sein eigenes Gefäß in Heiligkeit und in
Ehren halten" ("Each of you should keep his own vessel with holiness and in high
esteem").
16
It is the generic term for possessions used by Matthew and Mark for the goods
of the strong man's house (Matt 12:29; Mark 3:27). It is the merchandise that Jesus
would not allow carried through the temple courts (Matt 12:29). The "jar" that no one
YARBROUGH: 1THESS 4:1-8 219

None of these translations sounds very much like woman or

wife, so how does that translation arise? One verse and usage
answers that question. 1 Pet 3:7 uses σκεύος when Peter, or his
amanuensis Silas, writes, "Husbands, in the same way be
considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect
as the weaker partner [σκεύος] and as heirs with you of the gracious
gift of life/' James Everett Frame pointed out long ago that σκεύος
here cannot really be used as a parallel to 1 Thessalonians 4, since in
1 Peter "both the man and woman are vessels/'17 and he is followed
here by, e.g., Leon Morris and Charles Wanamaker,18 but his
wisdom commonly goes unheeded.19 Nor do alleged rabbinic uses of
"vessel" for "wife" settle the issue. Paul did not share the rabbis' low
view of women and sometimes coarse characterizations of marital
intercourse.20 Nor is it likely that he, the master contextualizer,
would have assumed that new Gentile converts in a Macedonian city
could have made a connection between the common word σκεύος
and the relatively obscure figurative meaning assigned by
Palestinian rabbis to the word ^D.
Of course it is Paul's use of σκεύος from which we would hope
to get definitive help. But he uses the term only sparingly,21 and

places a lighted lamp under (Luke 8:16) is a σκεύος, as are the goods that no one
should seek to retrieve on that fateful day spoken of in Luke 17:31. Α σκεύος· held the
wine vinegar that was offered to Jesus on the cross, and Paul is called a chosen σκεύος
by God as he speaks to Ananias (Acts 9:15). The sheet (όθόι^η) that Peter saw lowered
containing detestable things that he did not wish to eat was a aiceOoç (Acts 10:11,16;
11:5), and so was the sea anchor lowered from Pauls ship in Acts 27:21. aiceOos in the
singular or plural refers to the tabernacle articles sprinkled with blood in Heb 9:21,
the pottery that Christ dashes to pieces with an iron scepter in Rev 2:27, and the
precious goods that wicked Babylon's merchants will not be able to sell in their hour
of doom in Rev 18:13.
17
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians
(Edinburgh: Τ & Τ Clark, 1953 [= 1912]) 149.
18
Leon Morris, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1959) 123-4; Charles Wanamaker, The Epistles to the Thessalonians (Grand
Rapids/Exeter: Eerdmans/Paternoster, 1990) 152. So also Smith, "The Interpretation
of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20."
19
See, e.g., G. J. Polkinghorne, "1 Peter," The International Bible Commentary (ed.
F. F. Bruce; London/Grand Rapids: Marshall Pickering/Zondervan, 1986) 1557;
Oepke, "Die Briefe an die Thessalonicher," 170. Cf. much earlier Scholia Hellenistica in
Novum Testamentum (London: Gulielmus Pickering, 1848) 562.
20
On Jewish women in rabbinic sources see Ross Shepard Kraemer, Her Share of
the Blessings: Women's Religions Among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman
World (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) 93-105.
21
As in Rom 9:21-23, where he speaks variously of vessels of honor, dishonor,
wrath, and mercy. This certainly does not refer to wives per se, but neither does it
refer to the human body as such. 2 Cor 4:7 may offer a bit more assistance, as Paul
speaks of gospel treasure filling our "earthenware vessels," but here vessel is a
metaphor for the regenerate-but-not-yet-bodily-resurrected person, not a reference to
the human body apart from personhood in its fuller sense. The last remaining
possible Pauline references are in 2 Tim 2:20-21, where the writer talks of "articles" in
a large house, "not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay," and goes on to
say that the person who cleanses himself "will be an instrument [aiceOos] for noble
purposes." This is hardly a clear reference to the body in particular.
220 TRINITY JOURNAL

Ernest Best seems justified in concluding, "Paul's usage elsewhere is

not of much assistance"22 in figuring out how to translate 1 Thess
4:4.
It is at this point that ancient cultural background, often
indispensable for unraveling the NT's meaning, comes to the fore,
and I suspect to the rescue. Buried in one sentence of Kittel's famed
(and defamed) dictionary, in which Christian Mauer expends many
hundreds of words defending the "wife" rendering of 1 Thess 4:4, is
terse mention that σκεύος refers to the male organ in two ancient
Greek sources, one dating from Paul's century and the other from
the early third century AD.23 Research in the last fifteen years lends
credence to the possibility that it is the male sexual member, and
neither "body" nor "wife" per se, that Paul had in mind.
J. Whitton argued for this briefly in a 1982 NTS article,24 ably
countering the arguments by Mauer in Kittel's that placed so much
stock in a few dubious25 rabbinic passages to argue that ŒKÉOOÇ
could mean wife here. This was followed in 1985 by Karl Donfried's
article in the same journal entitled "The Cults of Thessalonica and
the Thessalonian Correspondence." After thorough examination of
the cultic history of Thessalonica, Donfried concludes that "given the
strong phallic symbolism in the cults of Dionysus, Cabirus, and
Samothrace," all part of the cultural context at Thessalonica, "such a
reference is hardly surprising."261. Howard Marshall had already
adopted, though on different grounds, a similar interpretation in a
1983 commentary,27 and in 1990 George Carras built on the lexical
and comparative religions work of Whitton and Donfried to argue
convincingly for the "body" interpretation on the basis of σκεύος
being a euphemism for the male genitalia.28 Jay Smith's 1996
dissertation "The Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 and Its
Contribution to Paul's Sexual Ethics"29 points to 1 Sam 21:4 LXX as
an OT Greek example of σκεύος being used euphemistically in this
way; Smith also locates Greek and Latin examples of similar usages
not mentioned by Mauer in Kittel's.30 Bart Ehrman's recently
22
Best, A Commentary on the First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians, 161.
^Christian Mauer, "σκεύος," TDNT 7.359.
24
"A Neglected Meaning for SKEUOS in 1 Thessalonians 4.4/' NTS 28 (1982) 142-
3.
25
See George P. Carras, "Jewish Ethics and Gentile Converts. Remarks on 1 Thes
4,3-8/' in The Thessalonian Correspondence, 306-15, esp. 309-10. Baumert's article in the
same volume ("Brautwerbung," 316-39) is impressively learned and argues the
contrary. But the exhausting complexity of his discussion is beside the point if the
"neglected meaning" of aicevos is correct—a possibility he does not seriously
entertain.
2e
NTS 31 (1985) 342. For additional studies of the religio-historical matrix of
ancient Thessalonica see Smith, "The Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20," 252 n.
108.
27
1 and 2 Thessalonians (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott) 108.
^"Jewish Ethics and Gentile Converts," 310-1.
29
240-l; see n. 10 above.
^mith, "The Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20," 241-2. The Latin
equivalent is vas. Smith's examples: Aelianus NA 17.11; Plautus Poenulus 863 (Act 4
YARBROUGH: 1 THESS 4:1-8 221
published NT introduction informally offers "genitals" as a possible
rendering of the verse, showing at least that this understanding is
now out of the closet of periodical debate and into more mainstream
discussion.31
This translation seems to be justified, notwithstanding Michael
McGehee's 1989 comment in CBQ that it had theretofore "not been
persuasive."32 On the contrary, the rendering of aiceOos as wife lacks
lexical persuasiveness, and "body" alone seems to fall short of Paul's
meaning given the cultural context. For, as Donfried points out,
dominance of the male organ and presumably its sexual function
had a long history in Thessalonica already by NT times. Phallic
representations appeared in festival trappings and on tombs under
the aegis of several successive cults. It is disputed whether this
symbolized fertility or life-giving power. Either way, this dominant
religious and anatomical icon would still have been highly visible in
Paul's time, during which the cult of Cabirus, in which the human
phallus was central, played a leading role.33 "From the Flavian
period at the latest," writes C. Edson, "Cabirus was the chief, the
tutelary [patron or guardian] deity of Thessalonica."34 The sexual
symbols of this cult were, confirms Donfried, "sensually
provocative"; he sees a direct tie between the wine and immoral
revelry of Thessalonian religion and Paul's attention-getting, albeit
veiled, allusion to the penis (and by implication female genitalia too)
in the moral exhortation of our passage.
Yet this sense, accepting it for now as a defensible possibility,
does not so much resolve the overarching issue of what this passage
means as drive us to a cluster of follow-up questions. What is meant,
in the next verse, by a mode of physical sexual experience that is free
from what the NIV calls "passionate lust"? Does Paul have in mind
perhaps some non-passionate lust? Or does there exist passionate
something else, lust-like but not falling under Paul's condemnation?
Or is this, as some have concluded, simply a counsel of despair, the
only proper response to which is either celibacy or a sexually active
life of unresolved guilt, as one realizes that one of life's seeming
attractions is at the same time one of Scripture's categorical evils?

scene 2) and possibly 847; Petronius The Satyricon 24.7; Priapea 68.24; Augustine, De
nuptiis et concupiscente book 2 chap. 14 (PL 44.444) and De civ. D. 14.23.
31
Bart Ehrman, The New Testament (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1997) 267. Cf. Donfried in Karl P. Donfried and I. Howard Marshall, The Theology of the
Shorter Pauline Epistles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 49; Jeffrey A.
D. Weima, '"How You Must Walk to Please God': Holiness and Discipleship in 1
Thessalonians," in Patterns of Discipleship in the New Testament (ed. Richard N.
Longenecker; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996) 108.
32
Michael McGehee, "A Rejoinder to Two Recent Studies Dealing with 1 Thess
4:4," CBQ 51 (1989) 82 n. 2.
^Donfried, "The Cults of Thessalonica," 337-41.
^C. Edson, "Cults of Thessalonica," HTR 41 (1948) 153-204.
222 TRINITY JOURNAL

IL "NOT IN PASSIONATE LUST"

What, then, does Paul mean when he says, as we could now

translate: "This is God's will: your holiness—that you avoid sexual
immorality, each of you attaining and exercising sexual self-mastery
in a holy and honorable fashion, not falling prey to passionate lust
like the heathen do"? As McGehee points out, it is possible to see
Paul as here denigrating "sexual desire, even within marriage," or as
"arguing for celibacy (or sexual relations without passion)."35
Against this, however, I wish now to suggest that among the most
important words in this context are these: "not... like the heathen."
What was sex among the heathen like?
Of course unfair or sensationalist generalizations are to be
avoided. Long ago J. B. Lightfoot stated, "The moral and religious
condition of Thessalonica was probably not worse than that of any
ordinary Greek town." Yet Lightfoot also noted "one element of
immorality in Thessalonica which must not be passed over—of
immorality which shielded itself under the protection of
religion—the worship of the Cabiri," to which he adds the additional
epithets of "gross immorality . . . promoted under the name of
religion" and "foul orgies."36 Donfried's more recent evidence seems
to justify his conclusion that "Paul is very deliberately dealing with a
situation of grave immorality, not too dissimilar to the cult
temptations of Corinth."37 What kind of heathen excess are we
talking about? Three observations bear mention about sexual
practice in those environs.

A. Sex Outside of Marriage

Sex was commonly indulged in outside of marriage. This is not

to say that marriage was not highly valued in the rhetoric of
contemporary moralists, as Larry Yarbrough has shown.38 But
rhetoric can be quite wide of reality, as politicians prove to their
electorates every election year. And Yarbrough also notes that even
among moralists "many did not value marriage very highly."39 This
is an understatement. Albert A. Bell Jr. has recently summarized
Greco-Roman morality and personal relations.40 Even with the
objectivity and restraint of his treatment, the result is lurid. He

35
McGehee, "A Rejoinder," 89,88.
36
J. B. Lightfoot, "The Church of Thessalonica," in Biblical Essays (London:
Macmillan, 1893) 257-8.
37
Donfried, "The Cults of Thessalonica," 342-3.
^Larry Yarbrough, Not Like the Gentiles: Marriage Rules in the Letters of Paul
(Atlanta: Scholars, 1984) esp. 31-63.
39
Ibid.,63.
40
Albert A. Bell Jr., A Guide to the New Testament World (Scottdale, PA: Herald,
1994) esp. 218-49; cf., id.. Exploring the New Testament World (Nashville: Thomas
Nelson, 1998) 221-49.
YARBROUGH: 1 THESS 4:1-8 223

writes, "This is one area in which there is more than a modicum of

truth to the popular perception, spread through paperback novels
and gladiator movies, of Rome as a cruel, lascivious society."41
Immorality, while not universal, was rampant by the first century.
Marriage was anything but holy. And "since a marriage was little
more than an agreement to cohabit, divorce was easy."42 Bell allows
that family life may have been marginally more stable for the lower
classes than for the jet-set like the Caesars which our literature (e.g.,
Suetonius) more amply documents. And even the upper class was
not bereft of love; Plutarch records that in Pompey's time Lepidus
died of despair because he learned that his wife had been
unfaithful.43 But did he mourn her love or his tarnished macho
honor? And more typical is Plutarch's characterization of Sulla, one
of the more restrained Roman leaders: "he seems to have been
almost pathologically prone to sexual indulgence, being quite
without restraint in his passion for pleasure."44 In any case, Bell
concludes that "even among the lower classes, the frequency of
marriage was declining in the first century AD, and divorce was
becoming more common." He thinks that finally "extramarital
affairs may have been almost as common among the masses as
among the aristocracy."45

Nothing in their ethical system forbade extramarital affairs; the

only prohibition that applied was that against violating another
person's property—or at least getting caught at it.46

There may have been more legally respectable grounds for sex
outside of marriage to the extent that Roman custom held sway.
Matrons—the legitimate wives of Roman citizens—were required
to produce three children; after that they were free to leave it to
slaves and concubines to . . . minister to their husbands' sexual
needs.47

It is said, with what truth may be questioned, that "[u]pper-class

women in Rome had no problem with their husbands7 having sexual
relations with slaves and concubines."48 Likewise, Roman men

41
Bell, A Guide to the New Testament World, 218.
42
Ibid.,231.
^Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Republic (trans. Rex Warner; New York: Penguin,
1972) 176.
"Ibid., 67.
45
Bell, A Guide to the New Testament World, 232-3.
46
Ibid.,233.
47
Pauline Schmitt Pantel, A History of Women in the West I. From Ancient Goddesses
to Christian Saints (ed. Pauline Schmitt Pantel; Cambridge, MA/London: Belknap,
1992)295.
^Aline Rouselle, "Body Politics in Ancient Rome," in A History of Women in the
West, 320. For insights on the meaning of veils for women (cf. 1 Corinthians 11) see p.
315.
224 TRINITY JOURNAL
were not brought up to believe that it was virtuous to refrain from
sexual intercourse. Boys learned to lust after the household's
female slaves, always available for their pleasure. For variety
youths also visited prostitutes. Society so arranged things that
citizens could draw upon the services of a whole population of
men and women whose purpose was to satisfy their every
desire—and physicians counseled that such desires ought not to be
repressed.49

Paul's command, then, would make immediate sense as a

directive regarding the proper sphere for believers to expend sexual
energies,50 not whether it is right or optimal to express them at all.
Until a scant few months previous some, at least among the
Thessalonians, had been heathen in the strict sense, ethnic non-Jews
not profoundly observant of Jewish or Christian moral teaching.
Now they were Jesus' followers, and that meant hallowing sexual
intimacy by confining it to the marriage bed. One thinks of the
proverb: "Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams
of water in the public squares? Let them be yours alone, never to be
shared with strangers. May your fountain be blessed, and may you
rejoice in the wife of your youth" (Prov 5:16-18). This was Paul's
Jewish heritage, the lawful and even exuberant covenant expression
of sexuality, and neither its unrestrained indulgence nor ascetic
rejection. And this attitude that sex is a part of creation's boon,
though to be exercised within God-ordained parameters, is most
likely what lies behind his words "not... like the heathen." If so, the
reason for the gap between native Thessalonian or Roman practice
and Paul's paraenesis is easily understandable.

B. Unnatural Sex
Among the heathen sex was often not only extramarital but
unnatural, from a Christian point of view. Homosexuality,
apparently somewhat common among the Greeks for centuries,51
infiltrated Roman culture on a larger scale by the second century
BC.52 Thessalonica, with both Greek history53 and Roman presence,
would have been no stranger to this practice in Paul's time. Plutarch
speaks of it being a factor in the Roman army already under Gaius

49
Ibid.,319.
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford/New York: Oxford,
1997) 125, puts it only slightly differently in saying that "Paul's intention . . . is to
draw attention to the difference between the life-style of believers and that of non-
believers."
51
Will Durant, The Life of Greece (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939) 301-2.
Paul was not reacting only against pederasty, as Robin Scroggs, The New Testament
and Homosexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) argues; see Mark D. Smith, "Ancient
Bisexuality and the Interpretation of Romans 1:26-27," JAAR 64 (1996) 223-56.
52
Bell, A Guide to the New Testament World, 243.
^Macedonia's earlier non-Greek status ended with Philip of Macedón and his
son Alexander; see H. D. F. Kitto, The Greeks (Baltimore: Penguin, 1975) 154ff.
YARBROUGH: 1 THESS 4:1-8 225

Marius (157-86 BC).54 Homosexual excess is a subplot of the lives of

several of the Caesars Suetonius writes about from Julius onward
and including Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero,55 the last-
named of whom had a slave castrated and dressed him like a
woman so he could stage a marriage with him. Claudius stands out
as an exception, about whom Suetonius writes, "Boys and men left
56
him cold/' While homosexual practice is said to have been rare in
first-century Jewish society, Josephus points out that as civil strife
escalated during the Jewish War, Galilean zealots "looted the homes
of the wealthy, murdered men, violated women, and assumed the
dress as well as the passions of women, devising illegal pleasures
and polluting the entire city/'57 What Paul says in Romans 1 about
homosexuality's prevalence in pagan areas is quite in keeping with
non-biblical literature's testimony of the time.58 There is no need to
belabor the point. But neither need we follow ABD's lead in
supposing that Paul's views in Romans 1 are primarily a function of
his cultural narrowness, that homosexuality is not perceived by Paul
as a distinctly Gentile sin, and that finally it is the person who
adjudges homosexual practice to be wrong who is the real culprit,
not the homosexual.59 It is rather the case that Paul's aversion to
pagan sexual behavior in Gentile regions was conditioned by his
awareness of a wide range of both heterosexual and homosexual
transgression and his conviction that such actions were demeaning
of persons and offensive to God. All of this forms part of his grounds
for warning the Thessalonian believers of heathen sexual practices.

C. Defrauding of Others

A third dimension of typical heathen sexual excess repugnant to

Paul was that it resulted in the defrauding of others. And this is a
violation of one of the two great commandments: namely, to love
60
one's neighbor. In our text Paul warns of God's eschatological
judgment on sexual sin (4:6), not only because of the sin itself but
also because such actsflagrantlydisregard the sanctity of others.
In his cultural setting Paul might have been understood in terms
of men's de jure ownership of women; under Roman law the
husband had far-reaching discretion over his wife, who was his

^Fall of the Roman Republic, 26.

55
The Twelve Caesars (New York: Penguin, 1976). On Julius Caesar see pp. 30-1;
on rumors about Augustus see p. 88; on Tiberius see pp. 130-1; on Caligula see p. 167,
on Nero see pp. 222-4.
56
Ibid.,201.
57
Josephus: The Essential Writings (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1988) 326, drawing on
Book IV, 550ff. of Jewish War. It is possible that Josephus overstates the debauchery of
the Zealots in his own zeal to make them the cause of the Jewish revolt.
^Underscored forcefully by Smith, "Ancient Bisexuality," 223-56.
59
Charles D. Myers Jr., "Romans, Epistle to the," ABD 5.827-8.
ω
α. Lev 19:18, cited explicitly by Paul in Rom 12:19; 13:9; Gal 5:14.
226 TRINITY JOURNAL
61
property, so much so, e.g., that Caligula is said to have paraded his
62
wife Caesonia naked before his friends. It is unlikely that she
consented to this, but it is certain that she had no say in the matter.
After all, this same Caligula is said never to have kissed her or even
a mistress without the words, "And this beautiful throat will be cut
63
when I please." Women were chattel, and to have sex with
someone else's wife was literally to defraud him, to devalue goods
he owned.
But Paul's words more likely have quite another sense. He did
not view either marriage or women in Greco-Roman fashion, as
Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 11 indicate; both marriage partners
have total and exclusive claims on each other, and the Lord owns
them both along with their very marriage, which is a microcosm and
metaphor of God's relationship with his people. The grand theme of
God's fierce covenant love and his high expectations for their
response to him may be said to have animated Paul precisely in the
Thessalonian correspondence, where God, Christ, Lord, or some
similar formulation is more prominent statistically than in any other
Pauline epistle,64 and where the noun for love, whether for God or
for one another, occurs with more relative frequency than in any
Pauline letter except Ephesians and Philemon.65 Paul does not want
his readers to practice sex like the heathens do because he does not
want to see the error of πορνεία (immorality) mushroom to the
scandal of πλεονεκτεί ν (depriving others of God-given status and
dignity), which is clearly transgression (υπερβαίνει^).
What, then, does "not in passionate lust" mean? Quite simply,
heathen sexuality was often unrestrained, inappropriately
expressed, or both. It was hopelessly out of sync with God's
intention for it in creation, let alone redemption. As Weima puts it,
"it can be confidently stated that there existed in the Greco-Roman
world of Paul's day a very tolerant attitude toward sexual conduct,
particularly sexual activity outside of marriage."66 Paul wants his
readers to live out their sexual lives, "not like the Gentiles who

61
This may have been less strictly true by the NT period; see Kraemer, Her Share
of the Blessings, 64. For an advanced discussion see Yan Thomas, "The Division of the
Sexes in Roman Law," in A History of Women in the West, 82-137.
62
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, 162. For marriage under Greek law, but well
prior to the NT era, see Roger Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life (London and New
York: Routledge, 1989) 40-75.
^Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, 166.
^An Accordance 2.0 search of the words Qeós, Χριστό^,'Ιησούς, and κύριος
yielded a frequency of 50.15 per 1,000 words for 1 Thessalonians and 66.75 for 2
Thessalonians. By comparison, the average frequency of these words in the four-
epistle Hauptbriefe is about 33 per 1,000.
^An Accordance 2.0 search of the word αγάπη yielded a frequency of 2.92 per
1,000 words for 1 Thessalonians and 3.18 for 2 Thessalonians. Philemon's rate was
7.77 (despite only three occurrences) and Ephesians 3.60 (ten occurrences). 1 and 2
Thessalonians had 5 and 3 occurrences, respectively, with the verb αγαπάω occurring
an additional two times in each letter.
66
Weima, "'How You Must Walk to Please God,'" 104.
YARBROUGH: 1 THESS 4:1-8 227
know not God/' i.e., not in unrestrained lust, but in Christ. This does
not mean that it must not involve pleasure. It does imply that it is to
be reserved for marriage and that it must be imbued with love,
peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, and other spin­
offs of Christ's Spirit and the life regulated by it that may not always
characterize sex acts in marriages, including Christian ones. This is
not the place to explore these issues further. The good news is that
sexual pleasure is definitely not always wrong, while the sobering
reminder is that even in marriage it may be if it amounts to no more
than self-gratification rather than signaling the reality and
celebration of a mutually dignifying interpersonal trust and
communion—αγάπη. Such communion comes about, for Paul,
through the knowledge of God in Christ.
He indicates this by noting that in his moral exhortation he is, by
the Lord Jesus' authority, conveying God's will to them (v. 3). God's
will, which Paul elsewhere characterizes as good and pleasing and
perfect, is a rubric standing over all that he says in this text and
therefore all that we have looked at so far. And it is this will, I
believe, that holds the key to understanding more completely what
sexual gratification is for Paul, now that we have seen in some detail
what it is not. Accordingly, we turn to consider how for Paul in this
text God's will and sexual gratification relate.

Ill "...IN ORDER TO PLEASE GOD"

We have argued that Paul does not tell the Thessalonians to

abstain from sexual relations but from πορνεία (immoral sexual
relations) typical in Gentile surroundings. Positively, he is at the
same time urging them to sanctify those relations, to live holy lives,
by expression that will please God, as we will now observe.
Prominent in our text are repeated allusions to God or God's son: "in
order to please God," "urge you in the Lord Jesus" (v. 1);
"instructions . . . by the authority of the Lord Jesus" (v. 2); "It is
God's will" (v. 3); "not... like the heathen who do not know God"
(v. 5); God calls believers "to live a holy life" (v. 7); God "gives you
his Holy Spirit" (v. 8). Such words, time-worn perhaps upon casual
perusal, are striking when considered in their cultural setting for
two reasons.
First, these words imply that there is just one God and that
morals matter to him. It is common knowledge that the Roman
world was polytheistic. This is not to say that non-Christian
inhabitants of the Roman world exhibited no religious integrity or
moral probity, at least to the extent that their religions and inner
moral compass permitted. But that is precisely the problem: there
were many different gods and goddesses and therefore many
permutations of religiously-sanctioned visions. This could hardly
fail to produce at least confusion: when gods are varied and often
morally corrupt, as the Greco-Roman deities were, their various
228 TRINITY JOURNAL
powers can be seized on as sanction for illicit purposes. C. M. Bowra
points out that this is precisely what took place.67
The gods' motley multiplicity also spawned a certain cynicism
toward them. When Augustus lost ships in the Sicilian war, he cried
out in defiance of the divinity presumably responsible , "I will win
this war, whatever Neptune may do!" and removed that god's
image from public ceremonies in Rome.68 Julius Caesar never let
religious scruples deter him for a moment, it is said; when a sacrifice
wriggled off the altar and escaped before his attack on Scipio and
King Juba he simply shrugged it off and marched on to battle.69 Fear
of God in the healthy and positive biblical sense could hardly
flourish, in part because there was no one god to be feared, and few
if any worthy of much respect. Paul's contrary outlook, because of
which he can warn (v. 6), "The Lord will punish men for all such
sins," stands in stark contrast to reigning cultural assumptions.
The same is true about Paul's view that morals matter in
religion. Addressing English Victorians, J. B. Lightfoot could write
that Paul's deprecations of any connection between his gospel and
uncleanness (1 Thess 2:3) were a disclaimer "which happily would
sound strange from the lips of a minister of any religious
denomination now."70 But they would have packed a potent
message for the Thessalonians, at least those untouched by
synagogal influence. For by both OT and gospel standards, pagan
religion countenanced and even encouraged what Moses, the
prophets, and Jesus roundly denounced, beginning with idolatry
and extending to what they saw as attendant moral sins.71 It was,
then, somewhat novel for Paul to write that in the name of religion,
immorality is to be abandoned. For local religion and an imperial
Zeitgeist stretching back for generations employed immorality in
sacred rites and thereby at least indirectly sanctioned it. In a pagan
outlook, by cultic sensual experience, including the very moment of
sexual ecstasy, experience of god or goddess might be attained.
Paul's view was that such activity forfeits any claim to divine
sanction. God is not accessed via such cultic mechanisms, for he
retains a holy distance from women and men indulging in practices
that are repugnant to the order he has ordained and the pure love
Christ imparts to those who follow him. Paul was swimming against
a mighty tide indeed in calling for sexual uprightness in the name of
religion.
But just what was religion in Thessalonica? For Paul it was a
personal relationship with the one true, living, and righteous God
67
C. M. Bowra, The Greek Experience (New York: The New American Library,
1957) 74.
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, 58.
69
Ibid.,35.
70
Lightfoot, "The Church of Thessalonica," 258.
71
The connection between idols and immorality was a commonplace in Judaism;
note Wis 14:12: "For the making of idols was the beginning of fornication, and the
invention of them was the corruption of life "
YARBROUGH: 1 THESS 4:1-8 229

whom Jesus had revealed definitively by his coming. The

assumption that this God (or any other for that matter) is known
personally and intimately, cares for each of his worshipers, unites
72
them to a larger redemptive community, and is able to redeem
them in this age and the next, was virtually unknown in Greco-
Roman religion and too sparsely apprehended, in Paul's view,
among the various sects of Judaism. Bell comments that the
Egyptian goddess Isis "is virtually the only ancient divinity who
displays any love or concern for her devotees/'73 But in her
mythological past Isis had been not only a wife and mother but also
a whore.74 While there was fervent loyalty to divinities for the sake
of their presumed benefits in outwitting malevolent cosmic forces or
adverse earthly circumstances like sickness or a fickle lover, the
structure of this loyalty differed profoundly from Christian love of,
and being loved by, God in Christ. Moreover, the reigning Greco-
Roman view of God in Paul's day, that of Stoicism, understood God
as λόγος, the creative force of the physical world. He is not "holy" in
the biblical sense of "separate from" the world, and one certainly
does not enjoy a personal relation with him. In any case the Stoic
god is unmoved by the world as we know it; Seneca quips that by
defying life's evils we "may outstrip God; he is exempt from
enduring evil," while we show ourselves superior to it either by
enduring it stolidly or committing suicide if worse comes to worse.75
Very different was Paul's gospel of a God who in his own person
shared our bittersweet lot and then laid down his life for our sake.
A prayer written by Scottish theologian John Baillie captures
Paul's idea of communion with God:
Thou art . . . incomprehensible in Thy greatness, mysterious in
Thine almighty power; yet here I speak with Thee familiarly as
child to parent, as friend to friend. If I could not speak thus to Thee,
then were I indeed without hope in the world.76

In this sense pagans had marginal hope in their religions.

As far as Judaism was concerned, Paul saw contrasts between it
and gospel religion. Obviously he found in Christ something that he
did not find in Pharisaism. He would have agreed, I believe, with
gospel representations of Jesus excoriating key errors of that
influential and in some ways exemplary sect. We should never fail to
underestimate how close to Paul's gospel many in Judaism were, for

^For both covenant/salvation-historical and eschatological dimensions to Paul's

outlook as reflected in 1 Thessalonians, see Weima, "'How You Must Walk to Please
God,'" 98-119.
^Bell, A Guide to the New Testament World, 149.
74
Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves (New York: Schocken,
1975) 219. On Isis worship among women see Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings, 71-9.
75
On Providence 6.6.
76
John Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949)
41.
230 TRINITY JOURNAL

they received the gospel in significant numbers from the Day of

Pentecost onward. But neither should we fail to note how unlike
Paul's living God the God of Jewish expression in many quarters
was.77 For Paul religion entailed not just orthopraxy but also a
doxological orthodoxy, all permeated with a warm sense of personal
devotion; it is doubtful whether this same quality of religion can be
easily documented from rabbinic sources. For a non-rabbinic
example, Philo's God "hates pleasure and the body",78 accordingly
"the perfect man is always endeavoring to attain to a complete
emancipation from the power of the passions/779 We have already
seen that Paul calls for redemption of sexual expression, not its
repression or elimination. Philo affirms the transmigration of the
soul rather than the resurrection of the body.80 Paul's gospel offered
a very different hope, a hope that included the whole person,
including the body, and that was key to his rallying words to the
Thessalonians. For Philo the key to blessedness is not personal
relationship with God; it is reason.81 For Paul (as later for Luther)
reason alone is not to be trusted; it is rather to be illumined by the
light of heaven and thereby transformed. In many respects, then,
Paul's personalistic representation of religion diverged sharply from
other understandings of his time, even among his own Jewish
compatriots. As for Josephus, his writings are markedly different
from Philo's, but they probably yield a picture of a God that is little
less impersonal. And compared to Paul's portrait, Josephus's picture
of God is not only markedly less personal but also far more profane.

IV. CONCLUSION

While there are other challenging issues presented by our text,

we have chosen to focus on three questions: the meaning of σκεύος,
the significance of the words "not in passionate lust," and the effect
of looking at sexuality from the angle of what it means that God is
one God, knowable, loving and lovable, and solicitous for each
believer's well-being in the light of his will. Paul held out to the
Thessalonians a challenging and discriminating but also ennobling
vision of physical intimacy. Far from being questioned or attacked,
sexual gratification in the context of knowing God in Christ, by the
gift of the Holy Spirit (1 Thess 4:8), is calmly upheld by Paul, who
condemns only the unlawful pursuit of sexual pleasure so common
in his day. Examination of these matters holds considerable interest
even from a sheerly antiquarian point of view.

^Strong on Paul's Jewish loyalties but oblivious to differences between Paul and
his contemporaries who rejected Jesus' messiahship is Brad H. Young, Paul the Jewish
Theologian (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997).
™The Works of Philo (Peabody, MA: Hendrikson, 1995) 58b.
79
Void.,65di.
s0
Tbid.,37b.
81
Ibid.,84a.
YARBROUGH: 1 THESS 4:1-8 231

For those whose interests are not sheerly antiquarian, what

meaning might Paul's words continue to hold? Many perhaps were
jolted by a U.S. News & World Report cover story on plastic surgery.
It seems that phalloplasty is an increasingly sought-after surgical
procedure for American men. For $6,000 one might add one or one
and one half inches in length. "'They want to look larger in the
locker room/" says a professor of urology at the University of
California-San Francisco. "'It's a macho thing.'" The professor has
seen over a dozen patients in the last year and a half with post
surgical problems. None of them had abnormalities before surgery,
he notes, but all took the surgical risk, and most are now paying the
consequences of complications. "'Their real problem was between
their ears, not between their legs,'" he concludes.82 It seems that
modern men, like ancient ones, are still trying to come to terms with
the σκβυος. In this sense Paul's paraenesis conveys unexpectedly
pertinent advice.
The sorts of personal insecurities and misplaced priorities that
lead to phalloplasty are lamentable. But the much larger problems
caused by unrestrained and irresponsible sexual activity are gravely
alarming. Children are born without nurturing two-parent homes,
and violence against them seems to spiral steadily; men and women
alike live out their lives in serial polygamist fashion; clergy sexual
indiscretion seems to be at an all time high.83 STD's take high tolls
on health and life itself, not only in the West but especially in Africa
and increasingly in Asia. As a society and as a world village, it
seems that everywhere today we are living like Gentiles who know
not God.
We may well long for, then, the revolution in sexual fidelity,
respect for others, and devotion to a God of personal love, goodness,
and purity that Paul calls for. Paul and a handful of others touched
off such a revolution in a world at least as seamy as our own. It came
about through true and transforming knowledge of God. I conclude
with words from Adolf Schlatter's commentary on this passage that
I find stirring and that sum up key aspects of what Paul might well
have readers, ancient or modern, take to heart:

The ability to use the body rightly comes through knowing God. In
contrast to this, the heathen are defenseless before their lusts
because they have no personal relation to God; the dam that
restrains their drives collapses. Moreover, the positive goal is
likewise absent, the goal that comes to us along with God's love:
what we are to use our bodies for and how we are to fill our lives.
That is why these excesses occupy and extend lordship over them.
But with the knowledge of God his people are graced with
sanctification and thereby redemption from that which
82//
The Price of Vanity," li. S. News & World Report (14 Oct 1996) 72-8.
^Cf. as represenative of a growing literature, John H. Armstrong, Can Fallen
Pastors Be Restored? The Church's Response to Sexual Misconduct (Chicago: Moody,
1995).
232 TRINITY JOURNAL

characterizes the heathen life. And so it is that every disturbance of

another's marriage is sin for us. The brother is to remain free from
humiliation, affirmed in the prerogatives that belong to him
through his marriage. And the more intimate and convivial the
relations in a congregation become, the more important becomes
this rule.84

M
Die Briefe an die Thessalonicher, Philipper, Timotheus und Titus (Erläuterungen
zum Neuen Testament; Stuttgart: Calwer, 1950) 8.20-1.
 ^ s
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