1 Corinthians 15 - Introduction

X. The Resurrection of the Body. Chap. 15.

From ecclesiastical, moral, and liturgical questions, the apostle passes to one of a dogmatic nature. He has reserved it for the last, no doubt, because of its importance. Doctrine is the vital element in the existence of the Church. The Church itself is in a manner only doctrine assimilated. Any grave corruption in teaching immediately vitiates the body of Christ. The apostle opened his letter by laying down as the foundation of his work, Christ crucified; he concludes it by presenting as the crown of his work, Christ risen. In these two facts, applied to the conscience and appropriated by faith, there is concentrated indeed the whole of the Christian salvation.

The subject of the resurrection of the body does not appear to have been treated in the letter which the Corinthians had addressed to Paul. 1 Corinthians 15:12 of our chapter rather leads us to think that he had accidentally learned, perhaps from the delegates of the Church who were now with him, what was being said at Corinth by some individuals (τινές) who posed as adversaries of the resurrection.

Did they deny the resurrection of Christ Himself? It does not seem so at the first glance, for the apostle starts from this fact as admitted, to infer therefrom our own resurrection. But he takes such pains to lay this foundation of his argument, that it seems to me impossible not to hold, in opposition to the opinion of most modern commentators, that the conviction of those people, and even of many members of the Church, was shaken on the point. One of the two negations could not in the long run fail to lead to the other; for in virtue of the close union between Christ and believers, salvation cannot otherwise be realized in the latter than in the person of their Head.

Who were these certain? It has been supposed that they were former Sadducees who, while going over to Christianity, had imported into it some remnants of their former opinions. But there is no proof of the propagation of Sadduceism outside of Palestine; and a Sadducee converted to Christianity would have experienced too radical a change to admit easily of such a mixture of heterogeneous opinions. All the religious and moral deviations which we have hitherto observed at Corinth proceeded from the Greek character; it is probable that it was so also in this case. From the Greek point of view, especially since the time of Plato, it was customary to regard matter, ὕλη, as the source of evil, physical and moral, and consequently the body as the principle of sin in human nature. It is obvious, therefore, that the resurrection of the body which, from the Jewish Messianic viewpoint, was looked upon as the consummation of the expected salvation, and as an essential element of future glory, must have appeared to the Greek mind as a thing very little to be desired, as the restoration of the principle of evil. This view had even gained the Jewish thinkers of Alexandria who came under the influence of Greek philosophy, such as the author of Wisdom and the philosopher Philo, to whom we may add the Essenian monks. They all agree in regarding death as setting man free from the bonds of the body, and in making the immortality of the soul, of the soul alone, the object of their hope. Heinrici thought he found in Josephus evidence of a change of opinion on this point even among the Pharisees, as if they had come to hold metempsychosis, instead of the resurrection of the body. But the passage quoted by this critic (Bell. Jude 1:2; Jude 1:2.8, Jude 1:14) proves nothing of the kind: “Every soul is immortal; either it passes into another body, which is the abode of good, or it is punished through the eternal chastisement of evil actions.” The meaning of these words is, that resurrection of the body is a privilege granted to righteous souls only.

There is nothing, I think, to prevent us from connecting with the denial of the resurrection by certain of the Corinthians what Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:18 of two heretics: “That, according to them, the resurrection of the dead was past already.” Evidently these teachers would not see in the resurrection anything else than spiritual regeneration; the restoration of the body was relegated by them to the domain of fable. It must be remembered that there was not yet in the Church any positively formulated system of doctrine, and that the teaching was being gradually formed by the labours of prophets and teachers under the direction of the apostolate.

One or two passages of this chapter, particularly 1 Corinthians 15:32-34, have led some to suppose that those whom the apostle combats, denied not only the resurrection of the body, but even the immortality of the soul and the judgment; and it has been thought that they belonged to the materialistic sect of the Epicureans. But it seems to us impossible that men of that stamp could have have adhered to Christianity; see besides on this question at the passage indicated.

Should we identify the opponents of the resurrection with one of the four parties mentioned 1 Corinthians 1:12 ? Those of Paul and Peter are evidently at once beyond suspicion. Meyer, Heinrici, and others think of the disciples of Apollos as men who cultivated human wisdom. But we think we have refuted the prejudice relative to the disciples of Apollos. There would remain only οἱ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, those of Christ. Perhaps, indeed, it might be concluded from some parallels (2 Corinthians 11:3-4, for example) that it was in this camp those τινές were found; but, on the other hand, the Second Epistle shows that the party of those of Christ had at its head men who had come from Jerusalem and were ultra-Judaizing. Now, as we have seen, antipathy to the resurrection cannot well have come from the Jewish side. All idea must therefore be given up of connecting the subject in question with the dissensions treated chaps. 1-4.

In the following discussion the apostle begins by showing that with the resurrection of the body the entire system of Christian salvation rises or falls: 1 Corinthians 15:1-34; then he resolves the difficulties which the fact presents, and concludes by raising the triumphant song of life over death: 1 Corinthians 15:35-58.

On Chapter 15.

Reuss and Heinrici think that the notion of a spiritual body is incompatible with the gospel narratives which describe the appearances of Jesus after His resurrection; for Jesus seems still to have had during that period His earthly and psychical body. A journal (l'Alliance libérale) has gone further, and concluded that the accounts of the appearances of Jesus in the Gospels are only later legends, due to the ever grosser and more materialistic ideas which were formed of the resurrection.

To remove the difficulty raised by the two writers just named, we need not have recourse to the expedient of B. Weiss, who thinks that every time Jesus wished to appear, He clothed Himself in a sensible and corporal exterior. It needs simply to be remembered that, according to our Gospel narratives, the body of Jesus was not immediately transformed into a spiritual body by His resurrection. It was still in His former body restored that He showed Himself, though this body was already subject to other conditions of existence and activity than our earthly body. It was not till the ascension that the substitution of the spiritual for the earthly body was fully consummated. Jesus Himself indicated the gradual process which was taking place in Him when He said to Mary Magdalene, on the very day of His resurrection, John 20:17: “I am not yet ascended unto My Father..., but I ascend...”

As to the opinion which, because of this alleged contradiction, would convert the Gospel narratives into later legends, it meets with an insurmountable obstacle in the fact that these narratives are the redaction of the apostolical tradition daily reproduced in the Churches by the apostles themselves, and the evangelists formed by them, from the day of Pentecost downwards. This is what appears from the nature of things, and what we find established in this very chapter, in which the apostle enumerates as apostolical traditions the principal appearances described in our Gospels. That Paul himself thinks of bodily appearances is beyond all doubt, in view of the inference which he draws from them, to wit, our own bodily resurrection.

The treatment of the subjects which the apostle had in view being finished, it only remains for him to close this letter with a conclusion like those which are generally found at the end of his Epistles, and which refers to certain special communications (matters of business, commissions, news, salutations) which he had to make to the Church.