1 Corinthians 15:12-28

Conclusions regarding the passage. 1 Corinthians 15:12-28.

On this passage we find four principal views:

1. Some, like Reuss, think that it applies throughout only to believers, and that it contains absolutely nothing in regard to unbelievers, because in the context Paul deals only with the development of true life.

2. Weiss and R. Schmidt go further. According to them, Paul holds absolutely no resurrection of the unbelieving. The latter, according to Paul, remain, without returning to life, in the gloomy existence of Hades.

3. Grimm holds, on the contrary, a universal resurrection, which will open up to all men, without exception, participation in eternal felicity.

4. Meyer thinks that our passage contains the idea of a universal resurrection, embracing unbelievers as well as believers.

This last viewpoint appears to me the only admissible one. The opinion of Reuss can hardly give an adequate explanation of 1 Corinthians 15:26; for the complete victory over death announced in this verse can only be found in a resurrection which will extend to all the victims of death without exception. This same passage seems to me also incompatible with the opinion of Weiss, notwithstanding the efforts this critic makes to harmonize it with the expressions of the apostle (§ 99, note 4). 1 Corinthians 15:26 has no meaning unless it adds to the idea of 1 Corinthians 15:23 that of universal resurrection. Besides, we have the express words of Paul, Acts 24:15: “Having hope in God, which they (the Jews) also share, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, of the just and of the unjust. ” Luke knew St. Paul sufficiently to avoid attributing to him on this point a declaration which would have been contrary to his view.

As to Grimm's opinion, we have spoken of it already in connection with 1 Corinthians 15:22. We merely add here the words of Reuss regarding this view: “Neither Paul nor any member of the primitive Church dreamed of it.”

It must therefore be admitted with Meyer and the majority of the commentators, that Paul teaches a resurrection to life, and a resurrection to condemnation, agreeably to the Lord's express declaration John 5:28-29, and to the delineation Revelation 20:12-14. Return to the fulness of personal existence by the resurrection of the body is the necessary condition of judgment in the case of both.

Does St. Paul distinguish two epochs of resurrection?

Reuss, Weiss, and many others do not think that Paul distinguishes a first resurrection, that of believers, at the Advent, from a second general, and later, resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15:23 is sufficiently explained, according to Weiss, if it is supposed that Paul meant to anticipate this objection: Why, since Christ is raised, is no dead believer yet raised? The answer, according to Weiss, is: Each in his order; Christ first; the others afterwards, only at the time of His Advent. But is this contrast between Christ and believers sufficient to explain naturally the term ἕκαστος, each, of 1 Corinthians 15:23 ? Besides, it is impossible to find, either in this passage or in any other part of the New Testament, the least trace of an objection like that which Weiss here imagines. In the passage 1Th 4:13 seq., Paul is not answering the objection: Why are our dead not raised? but the question: Why do we, believers, die before the Lord's return?

Reuss and Weiss also allege that the Advent being, according to the whole of the New Testament, the signal of the end of things, there would not be between this event and the giving up of the kingdom to the Father the interval needed for a new act of resurrection. But we have seen, on the contrary, that Paul distinctly separates the Advent from the end (the giving up of the kingdom to the Father). “Then the end,” says he, “when He shall give up the kingdom, when He shall have put down (or after having put down) His enemies...” This putting down is an action which requires some time; now this action is, on the one hand, the consequence of the Advent, and, on the other, the condition of the end. It is therefore posterior to the one, anterior to the other. And if the victory over death is to take place in this period, and to mark its close, if moreover, as we have seen, it can only be found in universal resurrection, the distinction between two resurrections, that of believers and that of human beings in general, in Paul's mind, can no longer be contested. The same conclusion follows clearly from Philippians 3:11, which can only apply to universal resurrection.

Moreover, there is nothing so wonderful in this idea of two resurrections in Paul's writings. There are two sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke which prove that He taught exactly to the same effect, Luke 14:14: “Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just;” this expression has no meaning unless it is contrasted with another resurrection, that of the unjust, Luke 20:35: “They who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection (literally: that) from the dead. ” This expression contrasts the first resurrection (that of the just from the dead) with the resurrection of the dead generally. Finally, we find the same distinction in the Apocalypse, Revelation 20:6: “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection!”

Finally, let us compare the principal parallel passages in the New Testament on the subject treated in this section:

1. In 1 Corinthians 15:51 of our chapter there is described the resurrection of believers of which 1 Corinthians 15:23 speaks. Only an important circumstance is added, of which no mention is made here: the transfiguration of believers who are living at the time of the Advent. The apostle had no occasion to mention this detail in our passage. It is obvious how prudently the argument e silentio must be used in criticism.

2. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17. At the time of the Advent the dead in Christ rise which implies that the rest do not rise, and living believers are carried to meet the returning Lord which implies a bodily transformation effected in them, precisely that which is expressly mentioned 1 Corinthians 15:51. There is therefore entire harmony between our passage and that of Thessalonians. The Advent will be accompanied by the resurrection of believers, and of believers only.

3. Philippians 2:9-11. Mention is made of the supreme elevation of the Messiah terminating in the universal homage rendered to His kingship throughout all the domains of heaven and earth, and places under the earth. This homage corresponds to the universal submission spoken of in 1 Corinthians 15:27 of our passage.

4. Revelation 20-21. Meyer, Grimm, and others hold that this passage is irreconcilable with ours. Let us see. The Advent was described at the end of the preceding chapter, from Revelation 19:11. What takes place after this event?

Satan is cast into prison for a thousand years; then, being set free, he makes a last attempt to overthrow the work of God by destroying the community of the saints; after which he is finally judged and goes into the lake of fire to rejoin the Beast and the False Prophet who had been cast into it at the time of the Advent (Rev 19:20).

Does not this whole representation exactly correspond to what St. Paul called, in 1 Corinthians 15:24, the putting down of hostile powers, which takes place during the reign of Christ inaugurated by the Advent?

At the time of the Advent the saints, the martyrs, and all those in general who refused to take part in the work of the Beast, rise again, and thrones of judgment are given them (Rev 19:20).

This is the resurrection of believers mentioned in our 1 Corinthians 15:23. It is objected that only those martyrs and believers are mentioned who have overcome the test of the kingdom of Antichrist, and not those who have struggled and conquered during the whole course of the history of the Church. It is forgotten that from the New Testament point of view this last crisis is very near to the apostolic times. It is the last hour, says John (1Jn 2:18). The mystery of iniquity doth already work, says Paul, speaking of the work of the Man of Sin. The believers of the eighteen centuries which have followed are therefore implicitly included in those who are mentioned in the Apocalyptic description, as they are in our 1 Corinthians 15:23. Let us add, as an interesting parallel, what Paul said 1 Corinthians 6:2 of the judgment of the world and even of angels by the saints. The reign of Christ and of the Church of the risen is a time of judgment in Paul as well as in the Apocalypse.

At the end of the thousand years the resurrection and the last judgment take place; and death is cast into the lake of fire (ὁ θάνατος καὶ ὁ ᾅδης ἐβλήθησαν εἰς τὴν λίμνην τοῦ πυρός). Here we have the most exact parallel to our 1 Corinthians 15:26, where death is destroyed, and destroyed as the last enemy.

The new heaven and the new earth replace the work of the first creation; “ the tabernacle of God (θεοῦ σκηνή) comes down among men; God dwells with them, their God. ”

Had John meant to give a commentary on the last words of our 1 Corinthians 15:28: And God shall be all in all, could he have done better?

And it is between these two representations that there are said to be insoluble contradictions! There are in each only one or two features which more particularly distinguish it from the other; in that of Paul: the giving up of the kingdom to the Father; in that of the Apocalypse: the indication of the duration of a thousand years as the interval between the Advent and the end, and the setting in relief of a last attempt on the part of Satan, at the end of the Messianic reign of Jesus, which leads to his final perdition. These special features only serve to demonstrate the originality and independence of the two conceptions.

5. If, finally, we consider the sayings of Jesus relative to His future Advent, it is evident that the Master's coming described in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25), in that of the pounds (Luke 19), and in the parable of the virgins, refers to the Advent by which the Messianic kingdom will be inaugurated. The same is true of the prophecies relative to the preliminary division which on His return takes place within His Church, Luke 17:22-37, and in which some are taken, others left. These sayings refer to the Advent, when, according to Paul, those who are in Christ shall alone be raised (1 Corinthians 15:23). It is no less clear that in the great description of the final and universal judgment (Matthew 25:31), we find ourselves face to face with an entirely different scene. Here it is not the members of the Church who are called to give account of the use of the gifts which they have received; it is all nations (πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, all the Gentiles) who appear before the judgment-seat. As Edwards says: “In Matthew 25:31 a transition is unquestionably made from the resurrection of saints which takes place at the coming of Christ to the general judgment which takes place after that event.” The ὅταν δὲ ἔλθῃ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, but when the Son of man shall come, seems therefore to denote a final coming, posterior to the Advent.

This doctrine of the apostle is not to be regarded as an importation into the gospel of his former Pharisaism. I believe it is impossible to cite a passage of Jewish theology really like that of our Epistle or the parallel passage of the Apocalypse (see Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 1886, § 29).

There is a real harmony, therefore, between the different eschatological passages of the New Testament. Ewald himself pronounces on the central point of the question, when he says: “Though Paul does not expressly mention the Millennium of Revelation 20, he yet places, between the preceding period and the end of that which follows, a sufficiently long interval filled with many various and considerable events.” If this harmony is not recognised by Meyer, it is the consequence of his false interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15:23-24. It is, besides, perfectly legitimate to complete, as we have done, the one of these representations by details taken from the other, since we are obliged to do something similar with the various passages of St. Paul himself. Thus in 1 Corinthians 15:50-51 of our chapter he supplies the fact of the transformation of those Christians who shall be alive at the Advent, of which he says nothing in our passage, and in 1Th 4:15-17 he supplies the fact of their being caught up into the air, of which no mention is made in the two passages of our chapter.