2.1The two candidates in patristic exegesis
In 2 Thessalonians 2:6–7, the text withholds the identity of the restraining power, alternating between a neuter participle (τὸ κατέχον) in verse 6 and a masculine participle (ὁ κατέχων) in verse 7. Verse 5 explains that oral instruction preceded the letter: "Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?" The text thus names the function of restraint while leaving its historical referent unstated.
Standard commentaries set out the identifications proposed over the centuries: the Roman empire or emperor, gospel preaching, God's plan, an angel, a hostile power (Best 1972; Bruce 1982; Wanamaker 1990; Malherbe 2000; Fee 2009). Each commentary stresses that the first recipients possessed knowledge later readers lack. Against the weighing of multiple possibilities stands a series of single identifications: Oscar Cullmann reads the restrainer as Paul and the withholding as gospel preaching (Cullmann 1936); Roger D. Aus reads God's plan and power against Isaiah 66 (Aus 1977); Colin R. Nicholl argues for the archangel Michael (Nicholl 2000); August Strobel situates the passage within Jewish and early Christian reflection on the delay of the end (Strobel 1961); Paul Metzger places it within ancient apocalyptic thought (Metzger 2005).
Preaching in Antioch in the late fourth century, John Chrysostom structured his inquiry in Homily 4 around two established candidates: "Some indeed say, the grace of the Spirit, but others the Roman empire, to whom I most of all accede." Chrysostom justified his preference on explicit textual and pastoral grounds: if the apostle had meant the Holy Spirit, he would have spoken plainly; extraordinary charisms had already diminished in the fourth century without unleashing the lawless one; and openly predicting the collapse of the Roman empire would have exposed the early church to charges of imperial treason. Earlier authors reached a similar identification with Rome: Tertullian argued in Apology (chapter 32) that the empire delayed the end, while in The City of God (XX.19), Augustine reviewed competing identifications and confessed ignorance. Where Augustine withheld judgment, Chrysostom organized his reading as a deliberate choice between two candidates: the charismatic gift and the imperial office.
The authorship of the epistle is disputed. Wolfgang Trilling argues that it was composed later in Paul's name (Trilling 1972); Abraham J. Malherbe and Gordon D. Fee defend its authenticity (Malherbe 2000; Fee 2009). These pages follow scholarly tradition in referring to Paul, noting that authorship remains contested.
2.2Schmitt's katechon and its readers
In The Nomos of the Earth (1950), Carl Schmitt traced the continuity of the Christian empire of the Middle Ages to the katechon: the historical power able to restrain the coming of the Antichrist and the end of the present age. In that account the restraining power is an empire, as these pages read it, adopting the Roman identification that early readers gave; the connection between the two is drawn here by these pages.
Carl Schmitt served the Nazi regime from 1933, and critics read his theory of the exception in that light. The katechon reading of The Nomos of the Earth is a separate matter from that sentence, and these pages does not give one as the cause of the other.
Two readings of Schmitt's katechon stand at the centre of the debate. Felix Grossheutschi (1996) traces how Schmitt uses the katechon across his works, examining its patristic background. Julia Hell (2009) reads Schmitt's katechon as an imperial theology bound up with the Third Reich's imitation of Rome. Around them stand other readers: Heinrich Meier (1994) reads Schmitt as a political theologian guided by faith in revelation; Jacob Taubes (1993) sets Paul's messianic apocalypticism against Schmitt's counter-revolutionary state preservation; Massimo Cacciari (2013) treats the katechon as ambiguous, holding back redemption while absorbing lawlessness. These commentators disagree about whether the katechon is a figure to defend, to fear, or to dismantle. What none of them does is examine the structural dilemma between Chrysostom's two candidates—the charismatic gift and the imperial office—when an authority holder is absent in an operational setting.
2.3Administrative restraint: Zone of acceptance and bricolage
To examine how Chrysostom's two candidates illuminate modern administrative restraint, the study turns to organization studies. The justification for this heuristic translation lies in the contrasting governance mechanisms Chrysostom describes in Homily 4. Chrysostom characterizes the spiritual gifts as unwritten, horizontal charisms shared among the faithful without bureaucratic coercion. In contrast, he treats the Roman empire as an external legal order where restraint operates through codified jurisdiction and imperial power.
In organization studies, Herbert A. Simon analyzed coordination through formal decision premises (Administrative Behavior, 1947). Hierarchy and standard operating procedures establish predictable action. Subordinates operate within a zone of acceptance: the radius within which an employee accepts a superior's decision without independent evaluation. In this structural account, authority resides in codified office. When leadership lapses, the lack of mandates to establish new value premises induces institutional delay.
In contrast, Karl E. Weick investigated informal coordination when formal structures disintegrate (1993). In the Mann Gulch disaster, group survival depended on bricolage and virtual role systems: participants drew upon shared communal habits, mutual trust, and emergent sensemaking without formal authority. This informal coordination mirrors Chrysostom's spiritual gifts: peer capacities circulating horizontally through internalized norms. Chester I. Barnard similarly observed that formal organization rests upon informal cooperation (The Functions of the Executive, 1938). These pages does not assert an equivalence between fourth-century pneumatology and modern behavioral routines. Rather, the heuristic value of setting them side by side lies in isolating their respective mechanisms: formal codified office (Simon's hierarchy / Chrysostom's empire) versus horizontal communal habit (Weick's bricolage / Chrysostom's gift).
2.4The debates side by side
Placed side by side, the two debates illuminate a common administrative tension:
| Patristic exegesis and political theology | Organisation studies | |
|---|---|---|
| The two candidates | The spiritual gift (communal charisms) versus the Roman empire (imperial office) | Karl Weick's virtual role systems and bricolage versus Herbert Simon's administrative hierarchy |
| Locus of restraint | Internalized communal norms, mutual trust, unwritten consensus | External institutional jurisdiction, codified mandates, formal office |
| Failure mode | Breakdown when consensus fractures; unratified initiative creates approval debt | Paralysis when the authority holder is absent; bureaucratic rigidity under novel contingencies |
| When an authority holder is absent | Complete deferral enforces waiting; unratified improvisation commits external dependencies without mandate | Simon's hierarchy lacks mandates for new value premises; Weick's bricolage lacks formal legitimacy |
A skeptical counter-argument contends that standard delegation matrices eliminate vacancies by codifying proxies for every operational absence.
This objection misconstrues the limits of delegation under bounded rationality (Simon 1947). Organizations cannot anticipate every contingency in advance. When an unprogrammed vacancy occurs, delegation instruments specify nominal proxies, but cannot authorize subordinates to formulate discretionary value commitments outside the established envelope. Subordinates cannot expand their own zone of acceptance; self-authorization is an institutional contradiction (Simon 1947; Barnard 1938). If subordinates act without an explicit mandate, their conduct is not delegation but unratified initiative, accumulating approval debt if external commitments are created. Conversely, if subordinates strictly observe formal boundaries and refuse to act, the organization absorbs waiting costs while external deadlines advance. Delegation matrices cannot eliminate this dilemma because they cannot foresee every operational contingency, leaving personnel to navigate between the delay of formal office and the liability of unratified action.