2 Thessalonians 2:6

αυτου, in א*AKP 17 37, and some others: εαυτου, BDGL &c.—The latter seems to be a Western and Syrian emendation: or is αυτου an assimilation to αυτον occurring just above?

6. καὶ νῦν τὸ κατέχον οἴδατε. And for the present, you know the thing that withholds. Καὶ νῦν might be construed with οἶδα, or the like, describing a present knowledge due to past instruction, whether immediate or more distant: cf. John 8:52; John 16:30; Acts 12:11; Acts 20:25; also 1 Thessalonians 3:8. At the same time, νῦν τὸ κατέχον does not stand for τὸ νῦν κατέχον, as some read it (ὁ κατέχων ἄρτι, 2 Thessalonians 2:7, is different); but practically the same sense is arrived at by reading καὶ νῦν as equal to καὶ τὰ νῦν (cf. Acts 3:17 with Acts 4:29; Acts 5:38; Acts 20:22 with Acts 20:32; τὰ νῦν is never found in St Paul), and for the present, in contrast with the future ἀποκάλυψις ἐν τῷ καιρῷ αὐτοῦ of 2 Thessalonians 2:3; 2 Thessalonians 2:6; 2 Thessalonians 2:8. The stress thrown by 2 Thessalonians 2:7 on the actual, contemporary working (ἤδη, ἄρτι; see notes) of τὸ μυστήριον τῆς� points decidedly to this rendering of the emphatically placed temporal adverb (cf. John 4:18); see Lightfoot and Bornemann ad loc.

Τὸ κατέχον οἴδατε,—not “you know what it is that withholds”; but “you know the withholding thing”: the restraint is something within the range of the readers’ experience; they are acquainted with it, apart from their having been told of it by the Apostle; cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:1 f., 2 Thessalonians 3:4; 1 Corinthians 16:15, &c. We have not, therefore, to look far afield for the bar then in the way of the Man of Lawlessness. Further definition is needless, and might have been dangerous on the writers’ part; verbum sapientibus sat. Τὸ κατέχον becomes ὁ κατέχων in 2 Thessalonians 2:7—here a principle or power, there a personal agency, as with τὸ μυστήριον and ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῆς�. For the interpretation of the phrase, see the next verse. For the adverse sense of κατέχω, see note on 1 Thessalonians 5:21 (otherwise applied in that passage); cf. Romans 1:18; Romans 7:6. The classical use of the neuter participle as a substantive is elsewhere confined to St Luke in the N.T.; see Luke 1:35; Luke 2:27; Luke 4:16, &c.

εἰς τὸ�, to the end that he (viz. ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῆς�, 2 Thessalonians 2:3 f.) may be revealed in his season. For εἰς τό with infinitive, blending purpose and result, cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:2, and note on 1 Thessalonians 2:12. For καιρός, see 1 Thessalonians 5:1, and note: “the Lawless One” has “his season,” the time fit and appointed for him in the development of events and in the counsels of God—one of the series of καιροί of which the Thessalonians had vainly desired to have the chronology. Antichrist has his set time, corresponding to that τῆς ἐπιφανείας τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἣν καιροῖς ἰδίοις δείξει ὁ μακάριος καὶ μόνος δυνάστης, 1 Timothy 6:14 f. The restraining power so operates as to hold back and put bounds to human lawlessness, until the hour strikes for its final outbreak in the Man of Lawlessness and the revelation of all its hidden potencies. This order of things belongs to God’s purposes. If He allows moral evil to exist in His creatures (and its possibility is inseparable from moral freedom), yet He knows how to control its activity, till the time when its full manifestation will best subserve its overthrow and judgement. The Jewish Law had also been in the Apostle’s view, and under the same theory of a Divine control and overruling of sin for its final extinction, a κατέχον and yet a δύναμις τῆς ἁμαρτίας for its sphere and age, preparing for and leading up to the καιρὸς τοῦ χριστοῦ: see Galatians 3:19-24; Romans 5:13; Romans 5:20 f.; 1 Corinthians 15:56. The καιρὸς τοῦ� will be the last and worst of many such crises, chief amongst which was that of Luke 22:53 : “This is your hour (ὑμῶν ἡ ὥρα) and the power of darkness”; cf. again 1 Timothy 4:1.