I THESSALONIANS 5:22 "ABSTAIN FROM EVERY APPEARANCE OF EVIL"

This is a verse that both my wife and I had hammered into us as kids in church and at home by our parents. It often took the form of “What will others think when they see you doing that?” I couldn't even escape this mentality years later when I was a research chemist and my first supervisor was paranoid about his chemists being seen in the halls outside of their laboratory. “If anyone sees you, he will think you are not working hard enough. Many years after that and soon before I retired as a research manager, I found that I had to fight to get good ratings for one of my best chemists because the Human Resources manager complained that he had often seen that chemist walking the halls.

Much of the problem stems from the translation “appearance” in the old King James Version. It is a word that is ambiguous in English. So the first step in determining if it is an apt translation today is to consult some experts in the Greek language. One of the standard books that many people rely on is Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words. It says that the phrase should read “every sort or kind of evil,” which is quite different from avoiding even the appearance of evil. “This meaning was common in the papyri, the Greek writings of the closing centuries B.C. And the New Testament era.” This change in understanding since the KJV was brought about in part by more in-depth studies into the Greek language than were available to the translators in 1611.

A much more detailed resource into Greek word meanings is the three-volume New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. The entry below by Braumann breaks down the meaning of the original Greek word eidos in different time periods:

    Classical Greek: “It occurs from Homer onward and denotes appearance, visible form, stressing the link between the visible appearance and reality.” “The modern distinction between the external and internal, the visible and the invisible, the husk and the kernel, and between outward form and essential content is inappropriate and foreign to this aspect of Gk. Thought.”

    Old Testament Septuagint: “Here to the outward appearance of the whole being is meant (cf. Gen. 29:17; Isa. 53:2f.), and not merely the outer shell behind which something quite different might be supposed.”

Malherbe says, “Eidos could mean 'appearance,' which would render the meaning that everything that even appears to be evil should be avoided...It is more likely, however, that eidos means 'form' or 'kind'...Paul thus enjoins his readers to abstain from everything that is actually evil.”

Leon Morris summarizes this majority opinion concisely: “The meaning will be 'evil which can be seen,' and not 'that which appears to be evil.'”

Besides the linguistic argument, there are three additional lines of reasoning that should cause us to reject the KJV translation:

First is the opinion offered by Braumann (NIDNTT) that this passage in I Thessalonians is actually a quotation of or strong allusion to Job 1:1,8. In those verses, God calls Job a man who is “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” If Baumann is correct in his assertion, then again the reference is to avoiding actual evil, not just the appearance of it.

Next is a point given by F.F. Bruce which seems rather obvious in retrospect but had never even crossed my mind before. He notes that 5:21b-22 should “be taken together as a pair of complementary injunctions. Form of evil is lit. 'species' (Gk. eidos) of evil.” Thus, Paul is directly contrasting “what is good” with “every form of evil.” If this were two lines of Hebrew poetry (and Paul's writing often straddles the divide between prose and poetry), it would be called antithetic parallelism.

The final point is also one that becomes obvious once one breaks out of the habit of looking for individual verses as proof texts, especially in this case where verses 21-22 constitute one sentence in the Greek (and English). The whole immediate context to consider in this case is I Thessalonians 5:19-22, as several modern commentators note.

Hendricksen: “In the given context it simply means that, instead of despising each and every prophetical utterance, one should test whatever presents itself as such. The good should be accepted; every kind of evil (without any exception; hence, whether it be evil advice – given by a false prophet – or any other form of evil) must be avoided.”

Elias: “...Paul, Silvanus and Timothy admonish the Thessalonians to permit prophesying (I Thess. 5:20) but also to engage in a careful process of testing the results (5:21-22)...”

Malherbe: “In vv 16-22 he concludes the paraenesis in his letter by giving directions on how his readers should respond to prophecies.”

Cousins: “The Christian must not uncritically accept – or reject – spiritual teaching but must be careful in all matters to distinguish the good and hold on to it. He will thus avoid 'evil in any form.'”

Constable: “Not only should pseudo-prophecies be discarded but also...every kind and form of evil should be avoided.” Of all the commentaries I consulted, Constable's was the only one to mention that this verse might also apply to the mere appearance of evil. However, he quickly follows that opinion with a quote from Heibert – “...while believers should abstain from actions which will knowingly offend others, it is not always possible to abstain from everything which may appear evil to a narrow and foolish judgment.”

The above brings up a final point that had always confused me as a youth. I wondered who it was that might be led astray by an unknowing action of mine that appeared to be evil to them. For example, my mother was taught in the woman's Bible class by the pastor's wife that it was alright to play cards as long as one used a deck that had no face cards in it. The unspoken reasoning apparently was that regular decks were used to play poker (or even, heaven forbid, strip poker). Thus, if any unbeliever saw you playing with such a deck (assuming that he was somehow looking over your shoulder at the time), he might mistakenly think you were gambling and be led astray by your actions. But what kind of unbeliever would have thought that gambling was bad in the first place, and how would that apply to a private game of cards with Christian friends?

My wife experienced the same thing in her similarly fundamentalist church while growing up. The cardinal sin for them was going to the movies. (We had no such problem in our church since it was located about three blocks from MGM Studios and some of our elders worked there.) The problem expressed by such an action was that there were multi-screen theaters and even if you went to a G-rated movie, someone might see you exiting the theater and think that you had attended a PG- rated film or worse. My wife took this to heart until she was in high school and she was walking down the street. She was passing in front of the local theater when a friend saw her and asked, “How was the movie?” My wife then realized that to avoid disobeying I Thessalonians 5:22, she would not only have to avoid going to the movies but also stop walking anywhere near the theater itself.

It turned out that the only ones offended by these innocent actions were those who Paul calls “weak in the faith” elsewhere in his writings. If our pastors and Sunday school teachers at the time had been told that they were being “weak” by their scrupulosity, they would have been appalled.