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‘Pastoral Care’ in the Thessalonian Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

A. J. Malherbe
Affiliation:
New Haven, Connecticut, USA

Extract

This paper seeks to shed some light on 1 Thess 5.14–15, Paul's command to the Thessalonians to ‘admonish the disorderly, comfort the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with all’, and not to retaliate. In an earlier study, I focused primarily on Paul's role in nurturing the Thessalonian church. Here, I wish to develop what I discussed only very briefly in that study about the Thessalonians' own care for each other.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 Malherbe, A. J., Paul and the Thessalonians: The Philosophic Tradition of Pastoral Care (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987).Google ScholarThe technical studies on which the book is based are collected in idem, Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989).Google Scholar

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53 ‘“Gentle as a Nurse”: The Cynic Background to 1 Thess ii’, NovT 12 (1970) 203–17;Google Scholar‘Exhortation in First Thessalonians’, 248–9 (= Paul and the Popular Philosophers, 35–48; 58–60).Google Scholar

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62 Both conventions are used in the Pastoral Epistles, but polemically rather than positively. See Malherbe, , ‘“In Season and Out of Season”’;idem, ‘Medical Imagery in the Pastoral Epistles’, Texts and Testaments (ed. March, W. E.: San Antonio: Trinity Univ., 1980) 1935 (= Paul and the Popular Philosophers, 121–36).Google Scholar

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64 See Malherbe, , Paul and the Thessalonians, 92, 95107.Google Scholar

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66 This rare word occurs only here in the NT, and its basic meaning, that of religious despondency, was probably informed by the LXX (see Bertram, G., ‘òλιγóΨυχος’, TDNT 9 [1974] 666).Google ScholarNevertheless, Bruce's, F. F. comparison (1 & 2 Thessalonians [WBC 45; Waco: Word, 1982] 123) with Aristotle's μικρóΨυχος(.Eth Nic 4.3.3, 7) has real merit. While for Aristotle, the mean-souled individual is one who does not insist on what is due him, among the later moralists he is avaricious (Philo, De virt 92) or allows himself to be angered (Musonius Rufus, Fr. 10 [78,9–10 Lutz]). For the association with weakness, see also Plutarch, De cohibenda ira 456E-457A; De tranq animi 468D. See esp. 1 Clem 59. 4, in a prayer, έξανάστνσον τοùς άσθενοûντας παρακκάλεσον όλιγοΨυχοûντας (cf. Isa 57. 15, όλιγοΨùχοις διδοùς μακροθυμíαν).Google Scholar

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