4.1The two candidates in Homily 4
In the opening section of his fourth homily on Second Thessalonians, John Chrysostom addresses the reticence of the epistle. The text names the function of restraint while veiling the identity of the withholdeth behind alternating neuter and masculine participles.
Chrysostom begins his exposition by articulating the reader's natural perplexity, inquiring what it is that withholdeth and why Paul expressed it so obscurely. In response, he notes that earlier readers divided into two main camps: "Some indeed say, the grace of the Spirit, but others the Roman empire, to whom I most of all accede."
By framing the problem as a choice between two primary candidates, Chrysostom narrows the interpretive field. The first candidate—the grace of the Spirit—represents the internalized gifts of the Holy Spirit (the charismata) that animated the apostolic church: prophecies, healings, tongues, and moral discernment. The second candidate—the Roman empire—represents the external political sovereignty of the Roman state, with its legal magistrates, administrative apparatus, and public authority.
Chrysostom does not present these two options as complementary facets of a single reality. He treats them as mutually exclusive alternatives, explicitly declaring his allegiance to the imperial interpretation: "to whom I most of all accede." To justify this choice, Chrysostom constructs a twofold argument, challenging the spiritual hypothesis on communicative and historical grounds.
4.2Why the gifts were rejected
Chrysostom's rejection of the charismatic gifts rests upon two distinct evidentiary arguments: 1. The Communicative Argument: Chrysostom reasons that attributing the delay to divine agency would carry no dangerous political consequences requiring coded speech, since proclaiming that the Spirit of God governs the timing of the end would have provoked no political hostility from Roman provincial authorities. However, as modern commentators observe, the letter reminds its first readers that they already knew the withholdeth from oral instruction (2:5–6), so the obscurity can also be explained by shared knowledge within the founding circle rather than political caution alone. 2. The Historical Argument: Chrysostom confronts the chronological reality of his own era. Chrysostom observes that the spiritual gifts had long since ceased in the life of the church. If the arrival of the lawless one had been conditional upon the cessation of the gifts, that figure ought to have appeared already, since the gifts had already departed.
Through this historical comparison, Chrysostom argues that spiritual gifts represent an unstable foundation for lasting social order. In his view, internal charisms fluctuate across generations, decline as institutions routinize, and leave no enduring physical machinery to repel lawlessness.
4.3The political logic of imperial restraint
Having eliminated the spiritual candidate, Chrysostom turns to the political logic that justifies identifying the Roman empire as the true katechon. The Roman hypothesis, Chrysostom argues, accounts for why Paul chose covert language. In Chrysostom's reading, Paul spoke in veiled terms because declaring openly that the Roman empire was destined for dissolution would have brought unnecessary hostilities and useless dangers upon the early church.
In Chrysostom's view, Christian communities had to survive under an overarching imperial state. Had the letter explicitly declared that imperial rule was a temporary obstacle marked for imminent destruction, Roman rulers would have viewed the Christian mission as politically subversive, bringing state power against the congregations. By speaking allusively of "what withholdeth" and "he who now letteth", the letter communicated the prophetic timetable to believers while protecting the community from needless confrontation with imperial magistrates.
4.4Fear, deterrence, and the vulnerability of office
The core of Chrysostom's institutional analysis lies in deterrence. Chrysostom locates the capacity of an imperial office to restrain lawlessness in the coercive deterrence of sovereign power. He argues that as long as the fear of the empire lasts, individuals are restrained from exalting themselves, but when imperial authority is removed, lawlessness attacks the resulting anarchy to seize power.
For Chrysostom, social order is perpetually threatened by lawless ambitions. What keeps this destructive impulse contained is not moral persuasion or internal fraternal affection, but the visible authority of the imperial office. The presence of imperial courts, magistrates, and administrative sanctions creates a deterrent that holds disorder in check.
In advancing this view, Chrysostom articulates a structural theory of administrative restraint. Restraint, on his reading, cannot rely solely upon voluntary goodwill or informal ethical habits. It requires a formal structural apparatus endowed with recognized jurisdiction. Yet, as the subsequent chapters explore, relying exclusively on formal office introduces its own structural vulnerability: when the designated office-holder is absent, the organization is left without either formal command or cultivated informal initiative.