1 Corinthians 15:47

“The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is from heaven.”

Here is the sovereign application of the general law enunciated in the previous verse. To the psychical state, which must come first, there corresponds the earthly body of the first man; as to the spiritual state, which comes second, there corresponds the heavenly body of the second Adam. This double correlation is natural; for the organ, the body, should be adapted to the mode of life of which it is the agent. And each of the two periods consecrated to these two modes of living was inaugurated by a typical individual who represented it in its entirety.

The epithet second is here intentionally substituted for last (1 Corinthians 15:45), because the point in question is no longer the final destination of man, but the relation of succession to the preceding phase. The δεύτερος, second, answers, as Meyer says, to the ἔπειτα, afterwards, of 1 Corinthians 15:46. The qualifications: of the earth and earthy, belong both to the predicate: “The first man is of the earth, earthy.” The second term, χοϊκός, is added to show that it is in respect of the body that Paul thus speaks. The word ὁ or ἡ χοῦς denotes the fine dust which lends itself most easily to become organic matter. This term, which is found nowhere else in the New Testament except in Mark 6:11 and Revelation 18:19, is borrowed from the LXX.; Genesis 2:7: “God formed man of the dust of the earth” (χοῦν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς). Because of the contrast, the second man will also be characterized in respect of the body.

The term ὁ κύριος, the Lord, which is added by the T. R. with some documents, after ὁ δεύτερος ἄνθρωπος, has nothing corresponding in the former member; and in this context it naturally excites surprise. As it is wanting in the majority of the documents, it should be rejected from the text. The qualifying phrase from heaven corresponds at once to the two predicates of the foregoing sentence. In our ignorance as to what a heavenly body is, Paul could add no precise qualification regarding its nature to contrast with the expression: earthy.

The important question is to what time we should refer the regimen: from heaven. Does it refer to the fact of the incarnation, the coming of the heavenly Christ to the earth to complete the work of redemption? So Athanasius, Baur, Beyschlag, Edwards. Or should we apply this ἐξ οὐρανοῦ, from heaven, to the Advent, when the Lord will descend again in His glorified body to glorify the faithful? It is from the first interpretation that the Tübingen school have deduced their theory, according to which the pre-existing Christ was, in Paul's view, a celestial man, the prototype of terrestrial humanity, possessing a luminous (spiritual) body. And thus this school has succeeded in finding an intermediate being between the purely human Christ of the synoptics and the wholly Divine Christ of St. John. But if such was Paul's view, he must have changed his conception between our Epistles to the Corinthians and those of the Roman captivity (Colossians, Philippians), for in these he distinctly affirms the Divine state of the pre-existing Christ; he must even have changed it between our Epistle and the very near date when he composed the Epistle to the Romans, in which he ascribes to Jesus a body entirely similar to our sinful body (1 Corinthians 8:3), and therefore by no means celestial and luminous, but made of dust like ours. He must even have changed his view in the course of our Epistle, for in chap. 1 Corinthians 8:6 he ascribes to the pre-existing Christ the work of creation, and in 1 Corinthians 10:4 he identifies Him with the Lord guiding Israel in the cloud; declarations which it is impossible to harmonize with the conception of a Christ pre-existing as a celestial man. But above all, to refer these words to the fact of the incarnation, is to wrench them absolutely from the context. Gess rightly reminds us that everything here tends to the solution of the question: “With what body do they come?” a question which must of course be solved by the relation of the resurrection body, not to the body of the pre-existing, but to that of the risen Christ. As to the ἐξ οὐρανοῦ, from heaven, Gess justly quotes as parallels: 1 Thessalonians 4:16 (καταβήσεται ἐξ οὐρανοῦ) and 2 Thessalonians 1:7 (ἐν τῇ ἀποκαλύψει τοῦ κ. ᾿Ι. ἀπ᾿ οὐρανοῦ), two passages which point to the Advent. But the parallel Philippians 3:20-21, is that which above all appears to me decisive in favour of this application in our passage. There, as here, the apostle is comparing our Lord's glorified body as well as that of risen believers made like His, with our present body, which he calls the body of our humiliation; then he says expressly: “Our citizenship is in heaven, whence we look for the Saviour, the Lord” (ἐξ οὗ ἀπεκδεχόμεθα...); exactly our ἐξ οὐρανοῦ. Similarly the ὁ ἐπουράνιος, the heavenly, 1 Corinthians 15:48, can only be Christ risen and glorified. For it is to Him we shall be made like, and not to the pre-existing Christ. The title ἐπουράνιοι, given in the same verse to glorified believers, would be enough to prove this. Finally, would it not be strange if Paul, after laying down the principle: first the inferior, then the better, should cite as an illustration of the rule an example which would prove exactly the contrary? For, according to this Christological theory, the heavenly Christ would be first and the earthly Christ second. Thus falls the one solitary ground which the Tübingen school has attempted to find in the whole of the New Testament in favour of the alleged Pauline conception of Christ as a pre-existing celestial man. A similar idea has been put forth as developed by Philo. In commenting on the double account of man's creation, in Genesis, this philosopher lays down a distinction between man celestial and man terrestrial. Only, according to him the celestial is first and the terrestrial second, and that very naturally, because the former is a pure ideal belonging to the world of conceptions. It is thus obvious how far we are from the idea ascribed to Paul. As to the Rabbinical passages, which present similar expressions, they are probably much later than the first age of Christianity. Besides, did not the Old Testament lead men to compare the Messiah with Adam by way of contrast, even as with Moses by analogy?

After showing the law of 1 Corinthians 15:46 realized in the two heads, Paul applies it to the two humanities which proceed from them, and he thus reaches the conclusion relative to the resurrection-body of believers.