Bodily Resurrection And 1 Corinthians 15: 42-54

Bodily Resurrection and 1 Corinthians 15: 42-54


     By: Joe Scholar


     One of the most significant issues concerning nearly all religions,

Christianity among them, concerns the fate of men following their death.

Believing in an inevitable resurrection of the body among the faithful, Paul, a

principle founder of Christianity, asserted his beliefs on the nature of bodily

resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15: 42-54.  As eternity tends to last a long time,

believing Christians (even agnostics such as myself) would likely be somewhat

eager to arrive at an accurate interpretation of Paul's message found in the

above verses, so as to glean insight as to what might await them following their

last heartbeat.  The approach I will take in analyzing 1 Corinthians: 42-54 will

be to: 1) explain how the verses fit in with the overall structure of the book;

2) to explain and paraphrase the meaning behind the passage; 3) relate the

verses to similar passages expressed elsewhere by Paul; 4) and lastly to touch

upon some of the controversy associated with the verses.

     1 Corinthians was written around 54 C.E. and was addressed to the

congregation which was made up primarily of gentiles and was located in Corinth.

At the time, Corinth was a highly urbanized and religiously diverse city which

made it very conducive to the early Christian movement.  Paul's first letter to

the Corinthians was written as a response to a letter he had received (which did

not survive) from the Corinthians in which Paul was asked to settle various

disputes that were arising within the struggling congregation.  Writing in

apostolic fashion to the congregation he had founded, Paul's letter while

pastoral,  answered numerous questions and demanded numerous changes ranging

from: the rich eating with the poor at the church suppers (11:18-22); to curbing

the acceptance of sexual immorality (5:1-13); to abstaining from taking fellow

Christians to court (6:12-20); to answering the question on the acceptability of

eating meat begot from pagan sacrifice (8:1-13); to the role of women in the

church (11:2-16); to the importance of prophesying (14:1-40); and much, much

more.

     It was under these auspices that Paul answered the question of whether

man would be with or without a body following resurrection. Although all of

the 15th chapter deals with issues of resurrection, the place of the body is

curtly addressed in verses 42-54 and is prefaced with the 35th verse which asks,

"But someone will ask, ŒHow are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they

come?'"(15:35).

     Paul believed that at the time of the resurrection the perishable body

would be transformed into an imperishable body, that would neither be a ghost-

like spirit nor a fleshly body, but rather some sort of combination of the two.

As Sanders phrases it, "...resurrection means transformed body, not walking

corpse or disembodied spirit." As William Wrede describes Paul's transformation

of the body, "He says that they Œare dead' or Œare risen again' Œwith Christ';

or more specifically Œthey are dead to sin, to the Law,' Œcrucified to the world'

; Œthe body of sin is destroyed'; Œthey are no longer in the flesh'; or else he

says simply that they are Œdead'"  Paul, whether because he does not recognize

the need for further elaboration, or equally as likely, as he does not know how

to accurately elaborate further, does not offer any greater explanation as to

the nature of the new imperishable body.

     Seemingly similar to changing one's clothes, Paul simply explains the

transformation, in the capacity of the mortal body Œputting on' immortality.

The nearly tautological backbone behind Paul's reasoning is that the since the

mortal, by definition isn't immortal, in order to gain an eternal life, the

mortal must necessarily become immortal. As Wrede interestingly interprets it, "

If the misery of man consists in his habitation in the flesh, his happiness must

depend on his liberation from the flesh, that is, on his death."  Moreover, once

immortali
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