RTS Papers / Pauline Epistles / Summer 2018
HOW THE RESURRECTION IS ESSENTIAL TO CHRISTIAN BELIEF
Many shudder at the thought of logic being used in Scripture. Godet opposed naturalistic interpretations of this text, yet was equally strict against those who appealed to “the laws of logic” for the connection Paul made. In his mind, this makes the resurrection in general an abstract category. Aside from showing a misunderstanding of logic, this suspicion would make our Lord’s reply to the Sadducees very puzzling (cf. Mat 22:23-33). Jesus corrected their general disbelief in the resurrection with general categories of divine life and power. Paul’s starting point of the bare possibility-impossibility of the resurrection does not reduce the resurrection to an “abstraction.” Before examining the form of Paul’s argument, we must understand what is behind the premises. We must grasp the reason behind Paul’s reasoning. Let me offer four such reasons for the resurrection that Paul is really fighting for by implication.
(1) The resurrection is first of all a real event. This is how Paul treats it at the beginning of the chapter (vv. 4-6). So clear is the meaning of the tradition handed down that critical writers like Luedemann expend much effort breaking apart 15:1-11 for potentially diverse sources. Now of course there was at least one kind of source besides Paul. That is after all what Paul claims: that he “received” it. All that this means is that it was received from the Jerusalem Apostles, which is not exclusive of his own encounter with the risen Christ. Real must at least imply the possibility of historical verification. It does not require such verification, but neither can it exclude it. This is why Barth’s realm of Geschichte is not really an improvement upon the liberal notion. In his “meta-history” the theologian seeks to hide the articles of faith from the probing lens of reason.
(2) The resurrection is second of all the conquest of death. Machen especially beat this drum against liberalism’s translation of the resurrection into a purely “spiritual” phenomenon. Christianity is nothing without the real event and apart from the apostolic doctrine (news) about that event. Theological liberalism had given birth to the kind of skeptic to the resurrection who set forth a Jesus whom his disciples took to be only “spiritually risen” or “risen in their hearts” or “hopes.” Others, like Brown, do not reduce the whole resurrection to a phantom, and yet understand Paul’s reasoning in 15:44 to preclude a “flesh and blood” resurrection. In other words they rest their case for a merely spiritual resurrection on supposed exegetical grounds. But since the human being is a spirit-body unity, it follows that the whole is being redeemed. The Son of God assumes precisely what he intends to redeem and restore.
(3) The resurrection is third of all connected to justification and the forgiveness of sins. Note that Paul says that “you are still in your sins” (v. 17) if Christ has not been raised. Is this only in a distant sense: i. e. since we will all die, never to rise, that any forgiveness of sins is to that extent worthless? We may think this if the New Testament had nothing else to say about the forensic character of the resurrection. However Paul says elsewhere that Christ “was raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25). The basic reason for this is that the biblical worldview sees death as a cursed and guilty state. So the New Testament speaks of a state called “dead in our sins” (Eph 2:1, 5, Col 2:13, cf. Jn 8:21, 24).
(4) The resurrection is fourth of all the eschatological firstfruits of the new humanity and new world. Beale goes as far to say that resurrection is “equivalent to eschatological new creation.” Jesus is called “the firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18). Wright sees both the cross and resurrection as the deliverance from the present evil age, leaning on Galatians 1:4-5. So the force of First Corinthians 15:17 is that “if the Messiah has not been raised … the great deliverance has not yet occured; but Paul’s whole worldview is based on the belief that it has.” Beyond deliverance, Wright also sees a vindication of the original creation in this argument. For “Paul is after all a creational theologian.” The resurrection of Christ is the hinge that encompasses both redemption and restoration; completing the one and initiating the other.
These formed Paul’s “hidden premises,” we might say, and that which motivates his polemical strategy in 15:12-19. What rises to the surface of his logic is a Christ-event sufficient to justify the Christian faith. Calvin explains that, “he cannot be the author of salvation to others, who has been altogether vanquished by death.” So whether viewed from the side of what was psychologically possible in the disciples or from the side of objective salvation, the resurrection is the sine qua non both of the gospel and the origin of the church.
We are now ready to approach the argument of the text itself. There is not much doubt among the recent commentaries on the similarity between Paul’s argument in 15:12-19 and several of the rules of inference in a textbook on logic. Morris even identifies an “inferential participle” (ἄρα). However one understands the logical form and literary structure of 15:12-19, it is difficult to derive any conclusion without getting a sense of its component parts.
Prior discerns seven of what he calls “essentials” of the Christian message that would be lost if one takes the position that Paul was refuting. These can be summarized as follows: i. Christ has not been raised (13, 16). ii. Our preaching is in vain (14). iii. Your faith is in vain (14). iv. We are misrepresenting God (15). v. You are still in your sins (17). vi. Those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished (18). vii. We are of all men most to be pitied (19).
To the eyes of a beginning apologist it may seem as if Paul is utilizing something like a hypothetical syllogism (e. g. A ⊃ B, B ⊃ C, ∴ A ⊃ C). However, he would be assuming the punchline in his second premise and draw things out more, as in the following:
If there is no resurrection, then Christ is not risen.
If Christ is not risen, then you will not be raised (i. e. your faith is in vain).
Therefore, if there is no resurrection, then your faith is in vain.
Indeed this is the overall point of the passage. However Paul’s ordinary Greek sentence structure is more terse. What that amounts to in his logic is more like another rule of inference called modus tollens (e. g. A ⊃ B, ~B, ∴ ~A), which is a kind of hypothetical form. Understood in this way, we have something closer to the exact text:
If there is no resurrection, then Christ is not risen.
Christ is risen.
Therefore, there is a resurrection.
Now just because Paul is not providing us with a textbook example of his logic does not mean there is not a discernible structure. Fee even draws out three chiastic patterns that serve this hypothetical reasoning, the literary and logical forms existing in a symbiotic relationship. It is most likely however that the logical form is negative.
Vern Poythress categorizes Paul’s form here as a reductio ad absurdum in his text on Logic. This is that indirect form of argument that attempts to draw out the contradiction inherent in the position of one’s opponent. Wright takes this same view, so that Paul is “showing that those who deny the future resurrection are cutting off the branch they are sitting on.” That may be the case, but it would only be effective to persuade the resurrection-denying party if they granted that Christ’s bodily resurrection was necessary in any event. Perhaps they were ready to deny that. On the other hand, as a reductio ad absurdum, it would have been quite effective to awaken those Corinthians who believed both (a) that Christ rose bodily and (b) that the future state implies some bodily existence.
This reminds us that an orthodox mind is often maintained (and heterodox commitments avoided) by simply having the terrible implications worked out for us.
In other words the argument here is a model for pastoring and preaching. Prior comments on the imperative that Paul assumes: “to push people to see the logic of their beliefs, whether those beliefs are orthodox or heretical.” This is true of the sheep as well as of the false shepherd: “These men must be made to see the logical consequences of the position they have taken up,” Morris says. We might remember that the Apostle had a category for salvaging even the would-be heretic by gentler persuasion (cf. 2 Tim 2:24-26).
There is one more kind of argument that Paul makes that I have not yet addressed. It also falls under the category of reason, but it is a moral reasoning. He says, “We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised” (v. 15). This would be the worst kind of false witness; namely to lie about God. Morris adds that, “Testified of God is literally ‘testified against God’.” Elsewhere it is explicitly stated that “God raised him” (Acts 13:30).
HOW THE RESURRECTION IS ESSENTIAL TO CHRISTIAN HOPE
What we have seen is that Paul’s logic is not some unnatural appendage to the basic needs of the churches to which he writes. It is doctrinal and therefore it is related to all of life. “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel” (2 Tim 2:8). The fundamental ground of Paul’s logic is theological: “the organic union between Christ and believers, between his resurrection and theirs.”
If our theology has no place for salvation being an objective work of God, a unity between the Persons of the Trinity, and a representative act of Christ, then it will be easy to miss the import of those biblical passages that treat the resurrection that has happened to us (past) and has implications for us (present).
We may believe in its future dimension, and we may believe in the past dimension of Christ’s own historical resurrection. But without our union with Christ in the resurrection, we are dead in our sins.
The past and present logic is necessary to the future logic, which is only another way to say that the basic objects Christian belief are foundational to real Christian hope. As Calvin paraphrases the Apostle’s train of thought, “Christ did not die, or rise again for himself, but for us: hence his resurrection is the foundation of ours, and what was accomplished in him, must be fulfilled in us also.”
The twentieth century saw the rise of popular apologetics, majoring on the historical evidence for the resurrection. This is not a bad thing—unless we begin to treat the resurrection as a sign for the unbeliever to enter the front door, but which does little else. The ultimate consequence of reducing the resurrection to a centerpiece of apologetics is that we may find ourselves recapitulating the Corinthian error. We may firmly believe that Jesus rose from the grave in verifiable history and yet fall short of the expectation of rising ourselves. In the name of a good argument, we may neglect the good news!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexander, Desmond. “The Old Testament View of Life After Death,” Themelios 11 (1986) 41-46
Beale, G. K. New Testament Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011
Brown, Raymond E. The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus. New York: Paulist Press, 1973
Calvin, John. Calvin’s Commentaries, Volume XX. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979
Craig, William Lane. Reasonable Faith. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994
Fee, Gordon D. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987
Godet, Frederic Louis. Commentary on First Corinthians. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1977
Kruger, Michael J. ed. Biblical-Theological Introduction in the New Testament. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016.
Luedemann, Gerd. The Resurrection of Jesus. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994
Lunn, Nicholas P. “‘Raised On the Third Day According to the Scriptures’: Resurrection Typology in the Genesis Creation Narrative” JETS 57/3 (2014) 523-35
Machen, J. Gresham. The Origin of Paul’s Religion. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1925
Morris, Leon. The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981
Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Jesus—God and Man. London: SCM Press, 1968
Poythress, Vern. Logic: A God-Centered Approach to the Foundation of Western Thought. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013
Prior, David. The Message of 1 Corinthians. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1985
Ridderbos, Herman. Paul: An Outline of His Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997
Sparrow-Simpson, W. J. Our Lord’s Resurrection. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1964
Van Pelt, Miles V. ed. Biblical-Theological Introduction in the Old Testament. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016.
Wenkel, David H. “Abraham’s Typological Resurrection from the Dead in Hebrews 11” Criswell Theological Review; 15 no 2 Spr 2018, p 51-66
Wright, N. T. Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Parts I & II. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013
__________. Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Parts III & IV. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013
Wright, N. T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003
Comments