RTS Papers / Pauline Epistles / Summer 2018
Many things that puzzle the modern reader about Paul’s letters. One of them is his logic. By “logic” I do not simply mean the form of argumentation, but also the rationale that lies beneath the surface. Paul had a gospel logic. Not that his letters were systematic theology textbooks in the modern sense, but there was a relentless connection always being made between doctrine and life. A classic example of this is found in First Corinthians 15, and especially in that tightly packed argument made in verses 12 through 19. Granting that the First Corinthian letter is a response to questions and concerns raised by a church, this does not prevent us from noting extended arguments with massive implications for the gospel and Christian worldview. The context may be situational, and yet the character of this portion is nevertheless doctrinal.
What I intend to show is this: In the mind of Paul, resurrection in general, and Christ’s resurrection in particular, is the ground of our resurrection and all of our hope. Stated negatively, what Paul is saying in 15:12-19 amounts to this: Take away the resurrection in general and you have taken away both Christ’s resurrection and our whole eternal life. To demonstrate this we will proceed in the following order: (1) the context of Paul’s argument in Chapter 15; (2) Paul’s redemptive-historical logic, or how the Old Testament saints expected the resurrection; (3) Paul’s doctrinal logic, or how the resurrection is essential to Christian belief; and then some brief concluding remarks on Paul’s gospel logic, or how the resurrection is essential to Christian hope.
THE CONTEXT OF PAUL’S ARGUMENT IN FIRST CORINTHIANS 15
What was the exact nature of the error in Paul’s crosshairs? One thing is undisputed. There is some kind of general category of resurrection being denied. There is no article in verse 12b connected to ὅτι ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν οὐκ ἔστιν, though an English article still has to be supplied in the translation as follows: that the dead are not raised. νεκρῶν is in the genitive plural (so it is not one man’s resurrection), and ἔστιν is third person singular because it is the verb of being for the singular resurrection (ἀνάστασις). Thus we have a singular resurrection for a group of dead men. That can still leave us with two choices. Either the general resurrection of the dead at the end of time was being denied, or else what we might call the “universal” of resurrection—the very idea and essence of it—was being denied. Whether these need to be divorced to begin with is another matter.
The concluding force of it is this: “If the dead are never raised” or “If there is no such thing as resurrection” or “If the resurrection is impossible” or “If the whole idea of a resurrection is ruled out.” This general sense of resurrection covers both the possibility of the resurrection as well as the prospects of the concrete, eschatological resurrection.
Our question gets thicker at the level of the nature of this resurrection. There are really two main options. Following Ridderbos: “Paul is not dealing with a materialistic, but with a spiritualistic conception of the resurrection. Over against this idea, according to which the resurrection has taken place already in this life (cf. v. 19) and thus in this body … It was not the resurrection of Christ that was denied, nor that believers shared in it, but it was said that the latter is to be understood in an exclusively spiritual sense, and to consist in the perfection to be attained already in this life, whereupon no resurrection of the body need follow.” Paul essentially aims the rest of the chapter at establishing the true manner of the resurrection and thus its necessity. This does give us some clue as to those two individuals named Hymenaeus and Philetus, who were teaching “that the resurrection has already happened” (2 Tim 2:18). Is this the exact same error as the one that had invaded Corinth? Whatever we decide, we at least have a category in the New Testament for this kind of an error.
Wright adds that, “This must mean that they were denying a future bodily resurrection, and the strong probability is that they were doing so on the standard pagan grounds,” referring to it as a “proto-gnostic belief.” On this view we do not have to choose between spiritualism and naturalism, for Hymenaeus and Philetus could have denied the future hope and offered consolation with a spiritual presence.
That verses 12 through 19 are part of a larger argument is evidenced by several factors.
First there is the opening word. Fee remarks that, “An adversative ‘but’ contrasts the preceding argument, ‘It is preached that Christ is raised from the dead’ (vv. 1-11), with their present position, ‘Some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead.’” So the logic of what is lost without the resurrection is only the negative portion of a larger case. The second factor suggesting a wider argument is that referent Some. More obscurely we might locate the “Some of you,” as Fee does, in 4:18 and 9:3, so that the Corinthians who had bought into this denial of the resurrection were either the same party that opposed Paul in other matters, or were at least cross-pollinating this error with those other errors.
Note also the diverse forms of argumentation in Chapter 15. Paul utilizes Scripture, tradition, and reason to make his case.
As to Scripture, he conceives of the resurrection of Christ “in accordance with the Scriptures” (15:4). Since the Corinthian letters are among the earliest of New Testament books, it is unlikely that this is another one of those allusions to Apostolic writings as Scripture. Rather this refers to the Old Testament. As to tradition, Paul says, “I delivered to you … what I also received” (15:3) and then closes the section off with, “Whether then it was I or they, so we preached and so you believed” (15:11). The referent “they” here is the other Apostles. They now formed a tradition. This particular tradition may have been recent and small, but since the canon was not yet closed, their unified testimony was all important. As to reason, he appeals to deductive logic in the text itself, though he provides an invitation for the reader to use their own inductive reasoning: “Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep” (15:6). To his immediate audience, there is an implicit dare to come down to Jerusalem to see for themselves; and at the very least they could interview a large group of people.
HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT SAINTS EXPECTED THE RESURRECTION
It is often supposed that the people of ancient Israel had no doctrine of the resurrection. Perhaps one developed in or following the Babylonian Captivity as a result of foreign religious influence. Then perhaps the rest attached itself to the first century church as a result of the Eastern mystery religions. In meeting this challenge, we may break down the Old Testament witness to the resurrection into four basic categories: (1) explicit statements, (2) anticipatory actions, (3) unwitting prophecies, and (4) types and shadows interpreted as such by the New Testament. This is important for the integrity of Paul’s overall argument in First Corinthians 15; for he says not merely that Christ died, but that he was raised “in accordance with the Scriptures” (v. 4). Now which Scriptures does he mean but those of the Hebrew canon? It is imperative, therefore, that our Old Testament in some robust sense point to this central miracle.
First, there are at least four explicit statements about the resurrection in the Old Testament. All four are in the Prophets (Isa 26:19, Ezk 37:12-13, Dan 12:2, Hos 13:14). These passages are so plain that the only recourse left for the critic is to point out that these are of a very late date. It may be argued that the vindicating expectation of Job is also explicit in 19:25-27. Early references may also exist in Deuteronomy 32:39, 1 Samuel 2:6, and Psalm 49:14-15.
Secondly, there are anticipatory actions that suggest an expectation of resurrection. Two events in the life of Abraham are resurrection testimonies. Of the near sacrifices of Isaac: “He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back” (Heb 11:19). Boice and Hughes comment on the purchase of a burial plot for Sarah that Abraham was funding yet another act of faith, as this place was in the heart of the Promise Land, and from it he expected to see his wife again. Wenkel argues that, “For the author of Hebrews, the narratives of Genesis 17-18 demonstrate that Abraham himself is the ‘first shadow’ of the resurrection from the dead.” The author points to Abraham’s “renewed procreative capacity” and that, “Both Romans 4:19 and Hebrews 11:1 point to Abraham’s body being dead.”
Joseph’s instructions that his bones be brought back to the Promise Land testifies to the same. What is the punchline to Hebrews 11? It is that “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that their were strangers and exiles on the earth” (v. 13). What else does this mean but that all these acts of faith were resurrection-anticipating-actions?
Thirdly, there are unwitting prophecies. Peter says: “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories” (1 Pet 1:10-11). David is said to speak of the resurrection in Psalm 16:8-11 by Peter in his Pentecost sermon (Acts 2:25-28). Now did the Psalmist intend to speak of Christ’s resurrection? Elsewhere Job cries, “Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath be past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me! If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come” (14:13-14). It may have been disingenuous repentance offered by Israel, but “on the third day he will raise us up” (Hos 6:2). New creation prophecies would have implied the hope of a future life as well: cf. Isa 43:18-21, 65:17, 66:22.
Fourthly, there are those types and shadows of the resurrection that the Jews would have, in time, learned to see as signposts to the life to come. Beale suggests an early, albeit obscure, double-hint in Genesis 3. Perhaps the constant phrase that the dying faithful one was “gathered to his people” (Gen. 25:8; cf. 49:29) was anticipatory. Jesus’s words seem to give us a central type: “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Mat 12:40). Whether Paul knew about this saying of Jesus or not, starting from the presupposition that the whole Bible has one divine Author, this verse by itself, is sufficient to justify Paul’s claim that the resurrection was “according to the Scriptures.” Lunn argues that central to the Jonah sign is the concept of rising up out of the water, the sea being a place of judgment.
Alexander argues from the differing expectations of the righteous and the wicked in Sheol to resurrection. His premises arise from Genesis 2-3 and from Psalm 49 that death is unnatural and the righteous are rewarded in the end.
Consequently if all must go to the same Sheol, but the eternal state of the righteous in far better, something like the resurrection must be true.
Although it does not prove the full antiquity of the Jewish view, there is a significant perspective in the Babylonian Talmud, that, “There is not a single precept in the Torah whose reward is [stated] at its side which is not dependent on the resurrection of the dead.” And how else does a simple Jewish woman like Martha confess, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (Jn 11:24). It may be that Paul was capitalizing on the knowledge that the Jewish Christians in Corinth could offer their brethren.
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