concern. In addition to Augustine and his heirs, it was obviously felt by the first readers of 1 Thessalonians. The significance of 1 Thessalonians for our argument would of course be diminished if it could be dismissed as “early Paul,” proclaiming a message quite different from that reflected in the epistles of his maturity. Yet the trip from Thessalonica to Athens to Corinth, at any rate, occasioned no such change. Paul’s stated goal in Corinth—and, he assures us, everywhere else—was to do whatever
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