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Joseph Plevnik, «1 Thessalonians 4,17: The Bringing in of the Lord or the Bringing in of the Faithful?», Vol. 80 (1999) 537-546
The image of bringing in, which, in dependence on Hellenistic parousia depictions, denotes the bringing in of the Lord at his coming, does not fit the imagery and the theology of Paul in 1 Thess 4,13-18. Hellenistic parousias depict the citizens making the royal visitor welcome in their city, whereas 1 Thess 4,13-18 depicts the effect of the Lord’s coming on them. The faithful are raised; the faithful are taken up. 1 Thess 4,13-18 really depicts the bringing in of the faithful, not of the Lord. The implication is that they do not return to the earth, but stay with the Lord forever.
focus is on the Lord himself, on the power and the glory of his coming, and on the effect of his coming on the dead and the living faithful. Here the Lord is active, while the people are passive: the dead believers are raised, and then all the faithful are taken up by a cloud. A. von Dobschütz has appropriately described this as the Abholung of the faithful44: the faithful are taken away.
In addition, Peterson’s explanation does not agree with 4,14, which states that God will bring the faithful with Jesus, o( qeo_j tou_j koimhqe/ntaj dia_ tou= 'Ihsou= a!cei su_n au)tw|=. No matter how we interpret the phrase dia_ tou= 'Ihsou=, whether agreeing with koimhqe/ntaj or with a!cei, this sentence states that God will employ Christ to bring in the deceased. The destination, of course, is not explicitly stated by the text, but the best guess would be that the faithful are taken into God’s presence; 2 Cor 4,14, which offers the best parallel to this text, suggests this. In this passage Paul, defending his own share in the ultimate fulfilment, asserts to the Corinthians: "We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you (into his presence, parasth/sei su_n u(mi=n)". Here everybody is brought near to God.
4. The Taking Up
The imagery of Hellenistic parousias does not explain why in 1 Thess 4,16-17 Paul insists that the deceased faithful will be first raised, then taken up. I have argued previously that Paul is here thinking in terms of an assumption-exaltation. An indication of this is the function of the cloud in 1 Thess 4,16-17, the verb a(rpaghso/meqa45, and the destination implied in v. 14 and in 2 Cor 4,14.
The cloud here is not the vehicle for the Lord’s descent from heaven, as in the synoptic portrayals of the parousia, nor is it the shroud of God, as in theophanies. It serves, rather, as a transport for the human beings that are taken up from their place on earth to a place in the beyond, as is the case in the portrayals of assumptions in both Jewish and pagan sources. The cloud motif is employed when a living human being is taken up46. For that person, life on earth has thereby come to an end, and a new and higher life has begun47. This is precisely the difficulty that the Thessalonians had: how can the dead be taken up48? Therefore Paul states in 1 Thess 4,16-17 that the dead are first brought to life, then they are
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