1 Corinthians 15:36

“Fool! That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.”

The vocative ἄφρον, fool, is evidently a correction, and ἄφρων to be read as a nominative; comp. Luke 12:20. This nominative is used by apposition: “Fool that thou art, thou that thinkest thyself so wise!”

The pronoun σύ, thou, by its position, is strongly emphatic; according to some, as opposed to θεός, God, in the sense: “As for thee, thou sowest what dies, whereas God sows what is to live;” but this antithesis is foreign to the context. This σύ, thou, put first, is logically connected with the epithet fool: “ Thy own daily experience might instruct thee, if thou hadst eyes to see! Every time thou sowest a grain, thou thyself dost overturn the objection thou art raising.”

The term ζωοποιεῖται, is quickened, does not strictly apply to a grain of corn; it is chosen in view of the application made of it to the raised body.

The death of the seed, the condition of its return to life, consists in the dissolution of its material wrappings under the action of the earth's moisture and heat. It is by this process of destruction that the impalpable germ of life which dwells in it, and which no anatomist's scalpel can reach, is set free. In proportion as the putrefaction of all the material elements takes place, this force awakes and shows itself by the simultaneous appearance, in opposite directions, of the two vital shoots, the stem and the root, the first vestiges of the new organism which is preparing to appear. Such is the answer given by nature to the first question raised: How is the resurrection effected? Through death itself! Through dissolution to true life: such is the way! What appears to be the obstacle is the means. This is the law which nature illustrates, and which satisfies common sense as solving the point in question. The apostle, by answering thus, avoids two rocks, against which those who treat this question lightly are very apt to make shipwreck. The one consists in identifying the raised body with the present body, as if the first must be formed by the reunion of all the material molecules of which the second was composed. Who could regard a magnificent oak, or an apple-tree laden with its vernal beauty, as the material reconstruction of the acorn or of the pip from which they sprang! The other, on the contrary, consists in destroying all connection between the two bodies, as if the latter were a new creation, without organic relation to the former. In this case we could no longer speak of resurrection. In reality, death would not be vanquished; it would keep its prey. God would simply do something new by its side.

In John 12:24 the Lord uses this same figure of the grain of corn, applying it, however, to spiritual death and resurrection.

The apostle answers the second question, 1 Corinthians 15:37-40. And first summarily, 1 Corinthians 15:37-38.