House Divided
Bridging the Gap in Reformed Eschatology A Preterist Response to
When Shall These Things Be?
Chapter Seven
The Resurrection of the Dead
An Exposition of First Corinthians Chapter Fifteen
David A. Green
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The position I take in this exposition is often called “the collective body
view” or “the corporate body view.” It is as follows:
Some at Corinth were denying that the pre-Christian saints[1] would
rise to inherit the kingdom at the Parousia. Those who were in error
at Corinth were not arguing with Paul about the reality of the resurrection.
They were arguing with Paul in regard to who would participate
in the resurrection. They believed that believers in Christ would be
resurrected but that “the dead” would not. Paul’s answer to their error
was that “all”—not merely some of God’s people—would be raised.
Through the Spirit-empowered dying (to Sin and to the Law) of the eschatological
church on behalf of the dead (the Old Testament saints),
the mortal “body” of Sin and Death (the Adamic/Mosaic saints and the
eschatological church; the entire “world” of God’s people) would rise
and be “changed”/“transformed” into the spiritual body of Christ in the
kingdom of God.
Though this interpretation is commonly called “collective” or “corporate,”
these terms are inadequate. Paul does not speak only or merely
in collective terms of the resurrection body. Not even in 1 Corinthians
12 is “body” simply a reference to a collective or communal “body of
believers.”
The terms “body of Christ” and “body of believers” are not synonymous.
The church is not a “body” because it is a group of people who have
organized and united around Christ. Nor is it a body because it is a kind
of “corporation.” The church is the body of Christ because it is literally
the dwelling and fullness of the individual Man, the Person, Christ Jesus
(Gal. 4:19; Eph. 1:23; 4:13). “This mystery is great. . . ” (Eph. 5:32).
As we shall soon see, Paul used the word “body,” in the relevant
passages, not as a term of either physicality or collectivity, or even as a
term of mere anthropological wholeness. Paul used the word “body” as
a term of theology, much as he used the terms “spirit,” “new man,” “the
world about to come,” the “new creation,” the “kingdom of God,” and
the heavenly “house/home.” All of these eschatological terms (and their
opposites, “mortal body,” “flesh,” “old man,” etc.) are intimately related in
their meanings, and are not easily defined with exactness.
As I will explain in more detail below, “body” describes God’s people,
whether individually or as a whole, whether living or dead, in terms
of their cosmic-covenantal self or identity, as they are constituted either
in Sin and Death or in Christ. Thus the view I am presenting in this
chapter may more accurately be called “the cosmic-covenantal body
view.”
Necessary Inferences
In beginning this exposition, we must understand that reading 1 Corinthians
15 is comparable to listening to one side of one phone conversation
out of a series of phone conversations. Paul and the resurrection-of-thedead
deniers have a long established context with long established word
usages. We on the other hand, as a third party, may have our own context
and our own usages that we unwittingly apply to the conversation.
This is the problem we face in 1 Corinthians 15. We hear Paul’s refutation
of the resurrection error but we do not hear many details about
what he is refuting. All we know from explicit statements in the chapter
is that some at Corinth denied “the resurrection of the dead” because
they believed “the dead” had no “body” by means of which they could
be rising (1 Cor. 15:35). But what does this mean? What did Paul and
those who were in error at Corinth mean when they used those terms?
If we do not make correct inferences from Paul’s side of the “conversation,”
we not only misunderstand the error he was refuting, we
misunderstand the truth he was defending. This has been the historic
failure of the futurist interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15. Futurists have
resisted making necessary inferences in Paul’s arguments because those
inferences do not fit the futurist paradigm.
It is widely believed that the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers denied
the very concept of the resurrection of dead people universally,
and that they therefore denied the resurrection of Christ and of Christians.
The implications of Paul’s words, however, do not support this
view. As Paul argued, if the dead are not being raised, then:
1. “not even Christ has been raised” (1 Cor. 15:13-17)
2. the apostles are liars (1 Cor. 15:14-15)
3. “those also who have fallen asleep in Christ perished”
(1 Cor. 15:18)
4. we are hoping in Christ “in this life only” (1 Cor. 15:19)
These four logical outcomes of the resurrection error were not doctrines
that the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers were teaching. These
conclusions were not designed to describe the error. They were designed
to overthrow it, through reductio ad absurdum. Paul was bringing
the resurrection error to absurd conclusions that were antithetical
to the beliefs of the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers. Paul was essentially
saying:
“We all believe in the resurrection of Christ (1 Cor. 15:13-17)
and in the eschatological hope in Christ that all believers share
(1 Cor. 15:19), both living and asleep (1 Cor. 15:18); but you do
not realize that if there is no resurrection of the dead, as some
of you are saying, then these gospel truths that we all hold so
dear are nothing but falsehoods and delusions.”
We can infer from Paul’s “if . . . then” arguments that the resurrection-
of-the-dead deniers did not espouse those inevitable results of
their teaching. Instead, they agreed with Paul that:
1. Christ had been raised from the dead.
2. The apostles were faithful and true witnesses of God.
3. Christians who had “fallen asleep” had not “perished” (i.e.,
had not died in their sins).
4. All Christians, both living and “asleep,” had a sure “hope” in
Christ. Their hope in Him was not a pitiable delusion.
Because the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers believed in the resurrection
of Christ, and because they believed that sleeping Christians
had therefore not died in their sins (“perished”) but were, along with the
living, looking forward to the fulfillment of the Christological “hope,”
we must infer that the “hope” to which the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers
looked was that of the Christological resurrection of Christians,
both living and “asleep” (Acts 23:6; 24:15; 26:6-7; 28:20; Eph. 4:4). They
did not believe merely in the continuation of existence after death; they
looked forward to the fulfillment of the eschatological “hope” in Christ.
We can also reasonably surmise that since the resurrection-ofthe-
dead deniers believed that the apostles were faithful witnesses and
since they believed in the apostolic gospel of the historic resurrection
of Christ (1 Cor. 15:13-17) and in the Christian resurrection-“hope,” it is
not unlikely that they also believed the apostolic testimony that Christ
Himself had raised multiple people from the dead and that the apostles
themselves had raised multiple people from the dead.
(We can add to this that since the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers
were members of the church at Corinth, which was filled with the gifts
of the Holy Spirit, including miracles, it is not far from the realm of
possibility that resurrection-miracles were performed at the Corinthian
church before the very eyes of the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers.)
So from verses 13-19, we must infer that even though those who
were in error at Corinth denied the resurrection of “the dead,” they nevertheless
believed in the resurrected and resurrecting Christ, and in the
resurrecting apostles, and in the miracle-working church at Corinth,
and in the resurrection-“hope” of all Christians, living and asleep.
These inferences have been overlooked because under the assumption
of futurism, they make no sense. How could someone deny the
very concept and possibility of the resurrection of dead people and at
the same time believe in the resurrected and resurrecting Christ, and in
the resurrecting apostles, and in the Christological resurrection-“hope”
of all Christians, living and asleep? With futurism as our starting point,
there is no answer to this question. There are only strained theories.
The problem for futurism thickens when we see other implications
of Paul’s arguments in 1 Corinthians 15. In verses 35-37 we read:
But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? And with what
body do they come?” You fool! That which you sow does not
come to life unless it dies; and that which you sow, you do not
sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat
or of something else.
We know that Paul’s argument here was aimed at those who already
believed in the eschatological resurrection of Christians. We can infer
then that he was not trying to convince them of the concept of resurrection.
We can also infer that body-sowing and body-rising (bodyresurrection)
were “givens” in the seed analogy. The only doctrines that
Paul was defending and seeking to prove in his analogy were body-death
(“You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies”) and
body-change (“and that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is
to be”). Sowing and coming to life (resurrection) were givens. Putting
the body to death and changing the body were not givens.
The resurrection-of-the-dead deniers believed in the sowing of the
body and in the resurrection of the body but they denied that the body
had to die and be changed. They erroneously espoused the burial and
resurrection of the same, unchanged, living body. This makes no sense
in the futurist framework, but we shall see below that it makes perfect
sense in Paul’s preterist framework.
We see again that the resurrection body was a given, in verse 46:
But the spiritual [body] was not first, but the natural [body],
then the spiritual [body].
No one at Corinth needed to be convinced of the coming “spiritual
body . . . that shall be” (1 Cor. 15:37), or of the “hope” of the raising up
of Christians, whether dead (“asleep”) or living (1 Cor. 15:19), or of the
coming kingdom of God (1 Cor. 15:50). They needed only to be convinced
that there was a “natural body” that came first, and that it had to
be put to death and “changed” into the different “spiritual body.”
The Dead
Let us now look at one more inference we must make from Paul’s arguments—
an inference that will begin to allow us to undo the confusion of
the futurist interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15. Verse 35:
How are the dead raised? And with what body do they come?
As this verse implies, the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers could
not fathom the possibility of the resurrection of the dead. They could
not so much as conceive of “how” “the dead” could have a “body” with
which they were being raised. The very idea was beyond their capability
to believe.[2]
As we have seen, those who were in error at Corinth believed in
the historic resurrection of Christ and in the “sowing” of the “spiritual
body” and the resurrection of the same “spiritual body.” They looked
forward to the fulfillment of the “hope” that all Christians, living and
asleep, would be raised with the spiritual body in the kingdom of God.
Yet at the same time, according to verse 35, we see that those who were
in error at Corinth were unable to conceive of the feasibility of the bodily
resurrection of the dead.
How can this be? In the futurist paradigm, this simply “does not
compute,” and the exegetical dilemma is mind-bogglingly insoluble.
The blinders of futurism have thus made it impossible for interpreters to
make sense of all of 1 Corinthians 15. The result has been that, through
a time-honored exegetical haze, futurism has unwittingly transformed
the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers into veritable madmen.
There is no doubt that the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers were
ignorant and foolish regarding the resurrection of the dead, but it is
not reasonable to portray them as thinking in insanely contradictory
propositions, i.e., believing in the reality of resurrection and at the same
time being unable to conceive of the very possibility of resurrection.
The resurrection-of-the-dead deniers had no rational reason to reject
the believability, imaginability, thinkability, or feasibility of a biological
resurrection of the flesh. Therefore, what they denied—and what Paul
was defending—was something else.
Those who were in error at Corinth were denying neither the existence
of, nor the futurity of, nor the somatic (bodily) character of the resurrection.
They believed in the future body-resurrection of Christians.
Yet at the same time, they denied the resurrection of “the dead” because
they could not conceive of the possibility of the dead having a body by
means of which they could rise. This means that the resurrection-of-the-
dead deniers were not denying the bodily resurrection of everyone, but
were denying only the possibility that certain people other than Christians—“
the dead”—were participating in the resurrection of the body.
“The dead” in 1 Corinthians 15 were, in contrast to dead Christians,
Hadean saints (1 Cor. 15:55). They were, as Paul says, those “out from
among” whom Christ had been raised (1 Cor. 15:12, 20). Christ did not
rise “out from among” dead, Spirit-indwelt Christians. “The dead” were
the saints who had lived and died, not in Christ, but “in Adam” (1 Cor.
15:22), before Christ. They were those who were “asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20),
in contrast to those who had “fallen asleep in Christ” (1 Cor. 15:18).
They were none other than the pre-Christian saints;[3] which inescapably
means they were primarily and for the most part those who lived
within the Abrahamic community of historic covenant Israel.[4]
Buried Alive
Let us look again at 1 Corinthians 15:36:
. . . That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.
As I mentioned above, Paul teaches in this verse that the body is first
sown (planted, buried, or entombed), and then it dies in order that it can
be raised a changed body. If Paul was teaching a biological resurrection
of the dead, then we must admit that he was saying that only physical
bodies that have first been buried alive and have then been put to death
underground can be raised to eternal physical life on Resurrection Day.
Futurism has thus created an absurdity and a contradiction in
verse 36. The absurdity is the teaching that only physical bodies that
have been buried alive can be resurrected. The contradiction is the
idea that physical death is a prerequisite to being resurrected. This
contradicts verse 51, where Paul said that the physically living would
be “made alive” (resurrected) and changed along with the physically
dead (cf. verse 22).
No one believes that Paul was teaching that living physical bodies
must be physically buried, and that the physically buried bodies must then
physically die underground in order that the physically buried-and-dead
bodies can then be physically resurrected and changed. Although that
is definitely what Paul’s words say in the futurist framework, no futurist
accepts this meaning. Instead, most interpreters apply themselves to Herculean
efforts to making the verse make sense in the futurist framework.
Their time, however, would be better spent finding Paul’s meaning,
letting him say what he says, rather than making his words conform to
the futurist paradigm. To find Paul’s meaning, we need only find where
in Scripture Paul elaborated on the doctrine of a human “body” that had
to be sown/planted/entombed and concurrently put to death, in order
that it could be made alive and changed in the resurrection of the dead.
This takes us to Romans 6-8, Colossians 2, and Philippians 3.
In these Scriptures, especially in Romans 6, Paul teaches that believers
had been bodily “planted,” through Spirit-baptism, into death / into
the death of Christ, in order that the body that had been planted/buried
(the “body of Sin,” the “mortal body,” the “body of Death,” the “body of the
sins of the flesh,” the “vile body”) would be abolished / put to death, and
then be made alive and changed/conformed to the image of the Son of
God in the kingdom of heaven. Note the order: Burial then death.
This sequence in Romans 6 is exactly, step by step, what Paul teaches
concerning the resurrection of the body in 1 Cor. 15:36-37 and its context.
Romans 6-8 and 1 Corinthians 15 both speak of concurrent bodyburial
and body-death, followed by consummated body-death, bodyresurrection,
and body-change. Futurist assumptions notwithstanding,
there is no doubt that 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 6-8 are speaking of
the same burial, death, resurrection, and change—and therefore of the
same body.
The Body
What then is “the body” that was being put to death in Romans 6-8 and
1 Corinthians 15? What is the meaning of the word “body” in these contexts?
Essentially, or basically, the “body” is the “self” or “person/personality”
or “individual,” whether that of a singular saint or of the singular
church universal (the body of Christ). According to definition 1b
of the word σωμα (body) in Arndt and Gingrich’s Greek-English Lexicon
of the New Testament, the word “body” in Paul’s writings is sometimes
“almost synonymous with the whole personality . . . σώματα [bodies] =
themselves.”[5]
Note how that “body” and “yourselves” are used interchangeably in
Romans 6:12-13:
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you
should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting your members
[of your mortal body] to sin as instruments of unrighteousness;
but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and
your members [of your mortal body] as instruments of righteousness
to God.
Compare also 1 Corinthians 6:15 and 12:27, where “you” and “your bodies”
are synonymous:
. . . your bodies are members of Christ . . . . (1 Cor. 6:15)
. . . you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it.
(1 Cor. 12:27)
See also Ephesians 5:28, where a man’s body-union with his wife is equated
with “himself”:
So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own
bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.
However, the word “body,” when it is used in reference to the eschatological
resurrection, means more than merely the “self.” Paul
is not using the word as a common reference to “the whole person.”
It does not refer to man’s anthropological wholeness (i.e., Material
body+soul+spirit=the body). Paul is using the word in a theologicaleschatological
sense to describe God’s people as they are defined either
by the wholeness/fullness (body) of Adamic Sin and Death or the
wholeness/fullness (body) of Christ. The body is either the “person”
united with Sin and Death, or the “person” united with Christ, whether
individually or corporately.
We can begin to see this in Colossians 3:5 (KJV), where the body
parts (members) of the Sin-body are not arms and legs or other physical
limbs. The members of the “earthly body” were death-producing
“deeds,” such as “fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence,
and covetousness . . . ” (cf. Rom. 8:13). Thus John Calvin
wrote in his commentary on Romans 6:6: “The body of sin . . . does not
mean flesh and bones, but the corrupted mass . . . of sin.” Since a body
is the sum of its parts, and since the parts of the Sin-body are sins/sinful
deeds, it follows that “the body of Sin” is not the physical aspect of
man. Instead, the whole of the sins/deeds of the body equals the body
of Sin. Or more accurately, the body of Sin was God’s people as they
were identified with and defined by the Sin-reviving, Sin-increasing,
Death-producing world of the Law.
When Paul said that believers were no longer walking according to
“the flesh” (Rom. 8:1, 4, 9), he was saying that believers were putting to
death the deeds of the “body” (Rom. 8:10-11, 13). The parts/members of
the body equaled the deeds of “the body,” which equaled the walk of “the
flesh.” “Flesh” and “body” in this context, therefore, describe man as he
was defined by Sin, not man as he was defined by material body parts.
In Colossians 2:11, Paul said that God had buried believers with
Christ, raised them up with Him, and had removed “the body of the
flesh.” “The body of the flesh” was not the physical body. It was the
Adamic man/self/person that had been dead in transgressions and in
the spiritual uncircumcision of his “flesh” (Col. 2:13). That “body” (or as
Ridderbos puts it, that “sinful mode of existence”)[6] had been “removed”
in Christ and was soon to be changed into the glorious, resurrected
“body” of Christ.
As a comparison of Colossians 2:11 and Colossians 3:9 reveals, “the
body” of Sin is virtually synonymous with “the old man”:
. . . the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh . . . .
(Col. 2:11)
. . . having put off the old man with his practices (Col. 3:9; cf.
Eph. 4:22)
Compare also 1 Corinthians 15:42 with Ephesians 4:22:
[The body] is sown in corruption . . . . (1 Cor. 15:42)
. . . the old man being corrupted . . . . (Eph. 4:22)
Compare also the references to “man” and “body” in Romans 7:24:
Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from this body
of Death?
And in Romans 6:6:
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the
body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not
serve sin. (Rom. 6:6)
And in 1 Corinthians 15:44, 45:
. . . There is a natural body [the old man], and there is a spiritual
body [the new Man]. And so it is written, the first [old]
man [the natural body] Adam was made a living soul; the last
Adam [the last Man, the spiritual body] a quickening spirit.
Since the natural body is nearly synonymous with the old man, we
should expect that the spiritual body is nearly synonymous with “the
new man,” the Lord Jesus Christ. Compare 1 Corinthians 15:53-54 with
Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10 and Romans 13:14:
For this perishable [body] must put on the imperishable
[body] . . . . (1 Cor. 15:53-54)
and put on the new man [the spiritual body], which in the
likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness
of the truth. (Eph. 4:24)
and have put on the new man [the spiritual body] who is being
renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One
who created him. (Col. 3:10)
But put on the Lord Jesus Christ [the new man, the spiritual
body], and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.
(Rom. 13:14)
As most futurists agree, “the old man” and “the new man” are not expressions
that describe man in terms of physicality. “The old man” was man
as he was in Adam, alienated from God and dead in Sin. He was “the body
of Sin.” The new Man is man as he is reconciled to God in Christ, the lifegiving
Spiritual Body.
The World-Body
Note that in Colossians 2:11-14, believers had been bodily buried and
bodily raised with Christ, but it was the “handwriting in ordinances” that
God had crucified. In Romans 6:6, it was “the old man” that had been
crucified. In Galatians 5:24, it was “the flesh” that had been crucified.
And in Galatians 6:14, it was “the world” that had been crucified.
These verses together demonstrate the “cosmic” dimension of the
Pauline, eschatological “body.” The Spirit was not merely changing
hearts and lives of individuals; He was changing the “world-body” of
Adam/Moses (Israel as it was defined by the earthly temple-system of
Law-Sin-Death) into the world-body of Christ.
Thus it is in 2 Corinthians 5 that the soon-to-be-destroyed “mortal
. . . body” is equal to the “earthly [made-with-hands] house of the tabernacle”
(2 Cor. 5:1, 4, 6, 10), i.e., the old covenant world. The “house,” or
world, of the man-made temple of God was “the mortal . . . body” that
had been buried with Christ, and that was being put to death, and that
was soon to be clothed with the heavenly/spiritual body of Christ.
Though all believers were individually “putting on Christ” in anticipation
of the Last Day (Rom. 13:11-14), believers were not doing
this merely as a collective of individuals. They were together, through
the power of God, putting on (becoming clothed with) the Lord Jesus
Christ who is Himself the Tabernacle/House/Body of God from out
of heaven. They were being changed into the cosmic New Man—the
“body” of God Himself.
Through the indwelling Holy Spirit,
1) the mortal body of Sin and Death (The Adamic-Mosaic world),
2) the old man/humanity and,
3) the flesh
had been sown/planted/buried and were being put to death through
the eschatological work of the Holy Spirit, and were being raised
1) the body of the triune God (“that God may be All in all”),
2) the new Man and
3) spirit (that which is spiritual; that which is of the Spirit),
i.e., the habitation of
1) the Father,
2) the Son and
3) the Holy Spirit
The consummated change took place when the world of the handmade
city and sanctuary (the body of Sin and Death) was thrown down,
and the heavenly/spiritual city and sanctuary (the body of Christ) were
established “among men” in AD 70 (Heb. 9:8).
Through the indwelling of the Spirit, the church’s body of Sin and
Death (its old, pre-Christ world-identity; the fleshly, Adamic “man” or
self) was buried into the death of Christ. It was put to death, having been
buried with Him through the without-hands baptism of the Holy Spirit
into the dead-to-sin body of Christ. Believers had thus been “bodily”
buried together into body-death, and their body-life was hid with the
soon-to-be-revealed Savior of the Adamic world (Rom. 6:11, 13; Phil.
3:10; Col. 3:3).
The two contrasting and co-existing eschatological body–states in
Paul’s epistles (the concurrent dying and rising and changing of “the
body” that had been buried) depended on neither physicality nor nonphysicality.
[7] They depended on the saints’ relationship to Sin or to
Christ. They depended on whether one was in Adam (under the dominion
of Sin and Death) or in Christ (under grace and indwelt by the
life-giving Spirit).
The elect before Christ were the body of Sin and Death in that they
had been incorporated into Sin and Death in Adam. They were wholly
defined, constituted, organized, systematized, and comprehended in
(i.e., indwelled by and “clothed with”) Adamic Sin and Death through
the curse of the commandment of God. They were both individually
and collectively the embodiment (the body) of Sin and Death.
But in the new world in Christ, through faith in His shed blood, all
of His saints in heaven (non-physical) and on earth (physical) are the
cosmic embodiment, “fullness,” and habitation of the triune God. The
fulfillment of the resurrection of “the body” in AD 70 brought into being
the universal communion of all the saints (old covenant and new
covenant) in the one, spiritual body (Christ Himself). This is what the
resurrection-of-the-dead deniers denied would take place. They denied
the death and resurrection with Christ of the natural body (the pre-
Christian world of God’s people) and its change/transformation into
the universal (Christian and pre-Christian), spiritual body of Christ.
The Universality[8] of the Resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20-28)
In denying the resurrection of the pre-Christian saints, or of old covenant
Israel, the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers were denying not the fact of
the resurrection, but the “all-ness” of the resurrection and the “all-ness”
of Christ’s atoning work. They denied that Christ had died for “all,” and
therefore they denied that “all” would be raised. Though they agreed
with Paul that Christ had died for “our” (the eschatological church’s) sins
(1 Cor. 15:3, 11), they denied that Christ had died for the sins of “the dead.”
Contrary to their doctrine, the resurrection of Christ was not the beginning
of the resurrection of the last days church only. It was also the beginning
of the resurrection of the great cloud of saints (“the dead”/“them that
slept”) who had come and gone before the advent of the last days church.
Christ became the “First Fruits” of the eschatological church and of the
Hadean saints “out from among” whom He had been raised (1 Cor. 15:55;
Rev. 1:5). His resurrection was the beginning of the resurrection of “all” the
saints who were “in Adam” (1 Cor. 15:20), not merely of the eschatological
church. As all the saints, Christian and pre-Christian, had been condemned
and alienated from God (i.e., had died) in Adam through Sin (Gen. 2:17;
Rom. 7:9), so “all”[9] were going to be raised up in “the Christ,” the second
“Man” (or the second Humanity), the Savior of “the world” (1 Cor. 15:21-22).
Because Christians were “of Christ,” and because Christ was the First
Fruit of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:23), Christians were, in Him, “first fruits”
of the resurrection (James 1:18; Rev. 14:4), so that Christ was “the First
Fruits” of “the first fruits.”[10] The resurrection of Christians “in His Parousia,”
therefore, was not to be the consummation of the life-giving reign of
Christ (1 Cor. 15:22-24), as the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers supposed.
The eschatological church’s resurrection in “Christ the First Fruits” was instead
the beginning of the end of the resurrection-harvest, and was to be
followed by “the end,”[11] or “consummation,” which was the resurrection of
the dead, i.e., the death of Death (the abolition of the alienation of God’s
people from Him)—when “all” the elect became the habitation of the lifegiving
Spirit through the gospel (John 5:25; 1 Cor. 15:24-28; Rev. 20:5-6).
Christ, through the Holy Spirit, was not reigning in the Spirit-indwelt,
eschatological church merely so that the church by itself would
attain unto the resurrection and inherit the kingdom. He was reigning
in the church so that the historic kingdom would, in Him, be “universalized”
in and brought under the rule of “the God and Father” of
“all” the saints (1 Cor. 15:24). The Adamic saints were not going to be
left unredeemed from the “rule,” “authority,” and “power” of Satan, Sin,
Death, and Condemnation. Rather, the Father was going to place all
those kingdom-enemies under the feet of Christ, and Christ was going
to “abolish,” or “annul,” them all.
He was already in process of abolishing the last and greatest kingdom-
enemy, Death itself, through the kingdom-transforming, kingdom-
universalizing work of the Cross and the indwelling Holy Spirit (1
Cor. 15:26). “All things” (or literally, “the All Things,” the cosmic body of
Sin and Death) were going to be subjected to Christ, and changed (Phil.
3:21) in the Father, by the power of the Father, and under the authority of
the Father, so that all of the enemies would be done away; so that all of
the Father’s elect (from Adam to AD 70) would be made alive in Christ;
so that the universal church would become the habitation of the triune
God, so that He would become “All Things in all” (1 Cor. 15:28).
If the Resurrection is not Universal (1 Cor. 15:12-19; 29-34)
The Son did not come to set up His own new religion that excluded the
historic saints who had worshiped the Father in the Adamic ages. To
the contrary, the Son was sent by the Father and under the authority of
the Father for the purpose of restoring “all” the elect to the Father, to
“universalize” the Father’s dominion. Unbeknownst to the resurrectionof-
the-dead deniers, if Christ had come to save only the eschatological
church and to exclude the pre-Christian world, this would have left only
two possibilities. Either:
1. Christ would be the conqueror of the God of the pre-Christian
world, and the Father would be put in subjection under
the feet of the Son (1 Cor. 15:27).[12]
Or
2. Christ was not sent to accomplish the Father’s cosmos-saving
work; therefore the Father had never raised Him from the
dead, and the gospel was a lie, and Christianity was merely a
man-made religion.
Of these two possibilities, Paul countered the first in passing (1 Cor.
15:27), but rigorously pursued the implications of the second. As we
know, many at Corinth were living as though the second possibility was
the truth.
As Paul reasoned: If Christ did not come to accomplish the Father’s
work of restoration (Isa. 55:11), to gather and unite “all” (Christian and
pre-Christian) who were chosen in the Father from before the world
began, then Christ was not of the Father. Then neither the doctrine of
the resurrection of Christ nor the resurrection-hope of the eschatological
church was true or valid. Then Paul and the other apostolic preachers
were liars, and Christ did not die for the sins of the eschatological
church, and the Father never raised Him from the dead (1 Cor. 15:3-4,
11, 13-16).
Consequently, Christ was not reigning. Therefore no one had been
born of the Spirit that proceeded from the Father. Then the gospel was
vain, and the faith of believers was vain (1 Cor. 15:14, 17). Then no one
had been saved and empowered by the grace of God either to preach the
gospel or to believe it (1 Cor. 15:1-2, 5-8, 10-11).
Christians were, then, still in their sins, and those who had fallen
asleep in Christ had died in their sins (1 Cor. 15:17-18). Then the resurrection-
hope that believers had in Christ was false (1 Cor. 15:19). Then
those Christians who were undergoing baptism (Spirit-led suffering and
death) on behalf of the dead (1 Cor. 15:29; Matt. 20:23; 23:34-35; Luke
12:50; Heb. 11:40; Rev. 6:9-11) were in reality suffering for nothing more
than a man-invented delusion. They were not being led by the Spirit but
were instead going to a hopeless, meaningless death.
Moreover then, the apostles were fighting with “beasts” (enemies of
the gospel) and were standing in jeopardy every hour, dying daily, not to
change the world of God’s people, but for absolutely nothing, because
their gospel sufferings were not being wrought through the cosmosresurrecting,
cosmos-changing power of the indwelling eschatological
Spirit, but through the power of mere man (1 Cor. 15:30-32).
If the gospel was a lie and there was no God-ordained, worldchanging
need of dying daily through the Spirit, of suffering hardships,
humiliations and dangers, then the apostles should logically have lived
as the arrogant, carnal Corinthians themselves were living (I Cor. 4:8).
They should have rejected their humiliating sufferings for the gospel
and put off dying for some other day (“tomorrow”) (1 Cor. 15:32-34).
In the end, the whole church, following the apostles and the Corinthians,
would have forsaken the shame of the Cross of Christ and escaped
the eschatological sufferings to which it had been called. All believers
would have lived in the status quo of the old world. Though the
resurrection-of-the-dead deniers did not know it, this was the practical,
church-corrupting result of their dead-excluding error. This is why it
was urgent for them to “awake righteously” from out of their shameful
and sinful ignorance of God.
Contrary to the resurrection error, believers were being called to
“die” for (on behalf of) “all” (the whole “creation”/“body” of God’s people).
The church’s eschatological death and resurrection with Christ
was for the purpose of bringing about the transformation of the pre-
Christ world of the saints (“all Israel”). Though the resurrection-of-the
dead deniers were unaware of it, their doctrine was implicitly opposed
to the cosmic gospel-purpose of the Father.
The first-fruits church, through the indwelling Spirit of the reigning
Christ, was putting to death the Adamic world-body of Death itself
(alienation from the Father) through the newly-revealed gospel of God.
Through the Death-destroying, Life-giving, “man”-changing power of
the gospel of the death and resurrection of Christ, the fleshly, Adamic
“man” or “body” or “creation”—the whole world-system of the dominion
of Sin and Death—was being put to death and “abolished.” It was
that body which would soon be raised up and “changed” (in AD 70) into
the new, Christological, spiritual “body” in the kingdom of God (the
new covenant world).
The Seed Analogy (1 Cor. 15:35-50)
Paul’s illustrations from nature in verses 36-41 are problematic if they are
interpreted as arguments that are aimed at someone who denies the very
possibility of resurrection. How does the fact that sheep differ from sparrows
serve in any way to validate the doctrine of resurrection for someone
who does not believe in the very concept of resurrection? How does
it serve to make the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead imaginable
or feasible (345)? It doesn’t.[13]
The difficulty with Paul’s words concerning the bodies/fleshes/glories
of creation vanishes only when we let it sink into our minds that
Paul was reasoning with people who already believed in the eschatological,
body-resurrection of Christians. The resurrection-of-the-dead
deniers would have already agreed that a seed rising up to become a
plant illustrates the truth of resurrection. And that is why Paul used
the analogy. The fact of resurrection was common ground between Paul
and the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers.
Paul therefore made reference to the universal death and change of
seeds,[14] not to demonstrate the already-agreed-upon fact of resurrection,
but to demonstrate the following four things that those who were
in error at Corinth were denying:
1. The necessity of the death of the pre-resurrection body
(1 Cor. 15:36)
2. The differentness of the pre- and post-resurrection bodies
(1 Cor. 15:37)
3. The necessity of the change of the pre-resurrection body
(1 Cor. 15:38a)
4. The universality of the pre-resurrection body and the postresurrection
body (1 Cor. 15:38b)
After establishing these premises through the common-ground analogy
of the “resurrection” of seeds, Paul went on to reference the whole
of the material universe, because insofar as it is filled with innumerable,
different bodies—just like the multitudes of different kinds of seeds and
plants in verse 38b—it confirms the universality of the two different bodies
(the existence of which Paul established in the seed analogy itself).
The universal diversity of the Genesis creation served as an analogy
of the cosmos-changing work of the gospel. As the whole Genesis
creation is filled with differing bodies (fleshes, glories), so the whole
“creation” (the body) of God’s chosen ones in Adam, living and dead,
“from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other,” was going to
put off the old “body” of Sin and Death (the Adamic, mortal, corruptible,
dishonorable, weak, and natural “old man”), and was going to be
“clothed” with the wholly other “body of Christ” (the immortal, incorruptible,
glorious, powerful, and spiritual new Man; the Christological
“new creation”) (Matt. 24:31; 1 Cor. 15:42-44).
The resurrection-of-the-dead deniers thought that the eschatological
church was an altogether separate entity from the Adamic, old covenant
world. They thought that the body of Christ essentially appeared
out of nowhere, as it were, absolutely disconnected from the world that
preceded it. They thought the eschatological church was buried the
spiritual body and that it was going to be raised the same spiritual body
on the Last Day.
The reality though was that the eschatological church was itself in
the mortal, corruptible, dishonorable, weak, and natural “body” of the
pre-Christ saints. It was still bearing “the image of the earthy” (1 Cor.
15:49), not in a biological sense, but in a cosmic-covenantal sense. God’s
old covenant ministration of Death and Condemnation still stood, and
God’s church was still an organic part of that world-order. It was therefore
still in the body of Sin and Death, and was putting that body to
death through the Spirit.
The pre-Christian, Adamic saints existed in a state of “mortality” in
that they did not yet have consummated eternal life, redemption, and
face-to-face union with God (Rom. 8:23; 1 Cor. 13:12; 1 John 2:25; Rev.
22:4). They were in a state of “corruptibility”[15] in that they did not yet have
the incorruptible, “eternal righteousness” of Christ (Dan. 9:24). They were
in a state of “dishonor” in that they were not yet clothed with the glory of
the new covenant in Christ’s justifying blood (Rom. 4:24; 2 Cor. 3:7-18).
They were in a state of “weakness” in that, as long as the condemning old
covenant world remained standing, they had not yet inherited eternal life
(cf. 1 Cor. 6:14; Heb. 7:6; 1 Jn. 2:25). They were “natural” in that they had
not yet been made the spiritual dwelling of the triune God (John 14:23).
Before Christ, the saints bore the image of Adam, the disobedient
one. They were unable to attain to heavenly life (1 Cor. 15:45, 48-49).
Their sins had grounded them in the mundane, the worldly, the carnal,
the “corruptible.” Their worship of God consisted in earthly types, shadows,
and copies of the heavenly. Their fellowship with God was not face
to face, but was through the agency of sinful, earthly mediators. Their
sacrifices were reminders of sin. They were separated from the Father.
They were under the reign of Sin and Death.
Through its body-burial and body-death with Christ, the church was
putting to death that old, corruptible “world” or “body” or “creation” or
“man” through the sin-killing Spirit on behalf of the dead. In the consummation
of the Spirit’s work in the church, the body of God’s people,
living and dead (“all Israel”), was going to be redeemed, changed, and
gathered together into the eternal, spiritual kingdom of Christ.
This is the “knowledge of God” of which the resurrection-of-thedead
deniers were woefully ignorant. Because they thought that the
eschatological church, to the exclusion of “the dead,” was “the body [of
Christ] that shall be,” they could not grasp “how” the saints of old could
be resurrected with the church. Here is an expanded paraphrase of
their objection in verse 35:
“We, the eschatological church, are the blood-bought body that
has been sown (planted, buried) with Christ through the Holy
Spirit in order that we might be raised with Him to inherit the
kingdom of God. The saints of old lived and died before Christ
arrived. They have not been sown (planted/buried) with Him,
as we have. There is no resurrection outside of Christ’s body,
and we are His body. Therefore, the dead have no part in the
resurrection body. How then are the dead being raised with us?
If your doctrine is true Paul, then answer this question: With
what body are the dead being raised?”[16]
Paul’s answer (verses 36-37):
“The dead are being raised through the burial and death of the
body of Sin, of which we are still a part (since the old covenant
world has not yet vanished). The dead, therefore, are being
raised through our (the last-days, first-fruit church’s) dying to
Sin (the burial and death of the Adamic ‘body’ with Christ) on
their behalf, and they will therefore be ‘changed’ with us into the
resurrected, spiritual body of Christ in the new covenant world.
“Look at your own experience for confirmation of this truth.
When you yourselves are planting a seed (as God has planted
us with Christ) you are not planting the tree that will be. Likewise,
God did not plant the ‘spiritual body’ of the age to come
in order that the same ‘spiritual body’ will emerge. That is not
God’s purpose. The Christological resurrection-body is not
what has been sown/buried. It is not we alone who shall be
raised. Rather, it is the Adamic ‘natural body’ that has been
‘sown’ with Christ, through the Spirit in us, so that the ‘natural
body’ (the dead together with the last-days-of-the-Adamic-ages
church—the whole Adamic ‘man’) is now being raised up and
‘changed’/‘transformed’ into the spiritual body of Christ.”
The objection of the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers was not biological;
it was theological. Though they understood that the eschatological
church had been “buried” with Christ through the Sin-killing
work of the Holy Spirit in order that the church would be raised up on
the Last Day, they erroneously thought that the church had been buried
so that the church alone would be raised up on the Last Day. Thus Paul’s
corrections in verse 44 (KJV):
. . . [T]here is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.
That is, there was not a spiritual body only, as the resurrection-ofthe-
dead deniers supposed.
And in verse 46:
Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is
natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.
The spiritual body did not appear out of nowhere, as the resurrection-
of-the-dead deniers imagined. Rather, the pre-existing “natural
body” was being raised up and transformed into the “spiritual body.”
The reality that the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers did not apprehend
was that the eschatological church was in a state of Adamic bodyunion
(solidarity, interdependence) with “the dead,” and it therefore
stood in need of a universal body-change. The church was not merely
the new man and the spiritual body. It was the dying old man; the dying
body of Sin and Death.
It was not the case that the Old Testament saints would be replaced
by the body of Christ. Instead, the body of Sin had to die through the
baptism of the Holy Spirit, and be raised, and be changed by the same
Spirit (Heb. 11:40). The church could not be saved by itself. The church
was bearing the image of “the first man” and was in process of being
transformed, on behalf of the dead and with the dead, into the image of
“the Christ” (Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 15:45-49; 2 Cor. 3:18).
Without the death and universal change of “the body” through the
power of the eschatological Spirit, not so much as one Christian could
be made alive in the Father. The resurrection in Christ was to be cosmos-
wide, or not at all. The whole world of God’s people had to be
transformed.
The eschatological church thus stood in need of the consummated
world-change from the “flesh-and-blood” world-body of “corruption”
(sub-divine righteousness) to the “spiritual,” Christological body of incorruptible
and eternal righteousness in the new covenant world (1 Cor.
15:50). If that change did not take place when the temple fell in AD 70,
then Christ was never raised from the dead, the gospel was a lie, and all
Christians were and are without hope. Either the eschatological church
and “the dead” were changed and God became All Things in “all,” or
Christ was never raised, and the church remains in her sins, and the
world-body of the hand-made temple of God maintains its standing before
God today.
The Universal Change (1 Cor. 15:51-58)
The coming transformation of God’s covenant-universe (dead and living,
Jew and Gentile) through the gospel of the death and resurrection
of the body of Christ was the “mystery” that had been kept secret since
the world began. It was the mystery that the resurrection-of-the-dead
deniers failed to grasp. “The dead” and the eschatological church were
going to be made alive together in Christ and were going to be united in
the Father. “All things . . . in the heavens and things upon the earth” were
going to be summed up in Christ (Rom. 11:15, 25-26; 16:15; 1 Cor. 2:7;
Eph. 1:9-10; 3:6-10; Col. 1:26-27).
The world-change, or body-change, took place and the “mystery”
was fulfilled before Paul’s generation passed away (1 Cor 15:51). The
sounding of the symbolic “last trumpet”[17] took place when the worldly
city and sanctuary fell in AD 70 (Rev. 10:7; 11:2, 8; cf. Heb. 9:8). When
that old “house” fell and the old Adamic “garment” was folded up and
“changed,” the dead were raised and all the elect were “clothed” with the
body of Christ in the new covenant world (Heb. 1:10–12). “All” put off
the old man (Adamic Sin) and “put on” the new Man (the righteousness
of Christ). “All” God’s people were “clothed with” the tabernacle/body of
the triune God.
When the old garment was removed and the house of the old covenant
was thrown down, believers were not found “naked,” nor left “unclothed”
or homeless for even the indiscernible “moment” of “the twinkling
of an eye,” as would have been the case if there was no resurrection
of the dead and consequently no world-change (Rev. 3:17-18; 16:15;
17:16). If there was no resurrection, then the fall of the city and the
sanctuary would have been the death knell for Christians just as much
as it was for unbelieving Jews. Indeed, it would have been the death
knell for humanity. But because the dead were raised and the cosmos
of God’s people was transformed in Christ, believers were clothed in
AD 70 with the Christological, new covenant house from out of heaven
(Col. 2:2; Heb. 1:12; 8:13; Rev. 16:15).
Death (condemnation and alienation from God) was deprived of its
sting, which was Sin, when Sin was finally sealed up, covered over, and
done away in the consummation of the Adamic/Mosaic ages through
the power of Christ’s death and resurrection. This happened when
Christ appeared the second time in AD 70, having consummated His
high-priestly work of atonement (Lev. 16). This is when He swept away
the old covenant world of Sin, Death, condemnation, and alienation and
changed the universal church into the completed, anointed, Most Holy
Place of God Himself (Rev. 21:2, 16; Heb. 3:6, 9:6-8).
Sin was deprived of its power, which was the Law of Moses, when
through the power of the Cross, the Law came to its end in AD 70. That
is when the Law-covenant (the ministration of Death and Condemnation)
vanished[18] (Heb. 8:13) and “all things” in earth and in heaven (“all”
the saints, living and dead) were reconciled to God (Col. 1:20).
When all these things were consummated, the corruptible and mortal
Adamic body “put on” the incorruptible and immortal body of Christ
(1 Cor. 15:53). The old, corruptible house (the old covenant world) fell.
The new, eternal house (the New Jerusalem) came down from out of
heaven. The church and the Hadean saints were raised up and united in
the one body of Christ, and were irrevocably and gloriously “changed”
into the “perfect” tabernacle of God.
Thus, through the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, God gave His
church the eschatological, cosmos-transforming victory of faith over
Sin, Death, and the Law. Her gospel labors in Him bore world-transforming
fruit. Reigning with the risen “Christ of God,” her worldburying,
world-destroying, world-resurrecting, and world-changing
labors were consummated in the AD-70 realization of the hope of Israel
—in the universal gathering of “all” the saints, living and dead, in
“the God and Father of all” (1 Cor. 15:57-58). Thus was the beginning
of the Christian age, “a dispensation more divine than many are disposed
to think.”[19]
Summary and Conclusion
The resurrection-of-the-dead deniers believed the following:
The eschatological church was the “spiritual body” of Christ
that had been buried with Christ and which was being raised
up the same spiritual body of Christ. There was no “natural
body” involved in the church’s resurrection with Christ. There
was no body-union between the church and the pre-Christian
saints (“the dead”). The dead were not going to be included in
the resurrection and the kingdom. God, through the indwelling
Spirit, had “sown,” or “buried,” the spiritual body of Christ
(the church) so that the church by itself (to the exclusion of the
dead) would be resurrected unchanged (still the same spiritual
body of Christ that it was when it was buried with Christ) in the
consummation.
If there was no resurrection of the Old Testament dead, these were
the undesired results:
1. God did not raise Christ from the dead.
2. The eyewitnesses of the resurrected Christ were liars.
3. The preaching of the apostles was vain.
4. The faith of Christians was vain.
5. Christians were still in their sins.
6. Christians who had fallen asleep had died in their sins (perished).
7. The persecuted apostles were to be pitied more than all men.
8. Christians who were being martyred for the dead were doing
so for nothing.
9. Christians were battling the enemies of the gospel by merely
human power.
10. Christians should have forsaken their sufferings and lived
mundane lives.
11. Christians would not be able to inherit the kingdom of God.
12. Christians would remain under the curse of Sin, Death, and
the Law.
13. Christians would remain clothed with corruption, mortality,
dishonor, and weakness, and would remain natural.
Here is why those results necessarily followed from the denial of the
resurrection of the Old Testament dead:
God raised Christ from the dead not so that the natural Adamic
body (the people of God in their Adamic state of Sin and Death) would
be replaced by the spiritual body of Christ (the church). The Father
raised the Son from the dead so that the Adamic body would be buried,
put to death, resurrected, and transformed into the universal body of
Christ. The eschatological church was not in a separate body from the
Adamic dead. It was part of the natural, corruptible, dishonorable, and
weak Adamic body, and was putting that body to death through the
Spirit on behalf of the dead.
Apart from the creation-wide “body-change” of “all” the elect from
Adam to the Last Day in AD 70, there could be no resurrection-life for
any Christian. The church could not inherit the kingdom of God unless
the whole universe of God’s people was resurrected and changed
together. This was the cosmic scope and purpose of the Cross of Christ.
This is what those who were in error at Corinth did not understand.
Though futurists today do not realize it, they are, in principle, unknowing
followers of the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers at Corinth.
Futurists believe that the church (the body of Christ) has been spiritually
resurrected and seated with Christ in the spiritual kingdom for 2,000
years now, but that the pre-Christian (Old Testament) dead have not yet
been resurrected into that kingdom. Though many futurists inconsistently
believe that the Old Testament saints were released from Hades
between Jesus’ death and resurrection (contradicting the timeframe of
Rev. 20:14), they do not hold that those saints have been “resurrected”
into the kingdom. As anti-preterist Strimple teaches (in contrast to anti-
premillennial Strimple), physically dead people cannot experience a
resurrection and remain physically dead.
Though futurists certainly do not deny the resurrection of the dead,
they unwittingly teach a “short circuit” in the cosmic gospel-purpose of
the Father when they teach that God gave the spiritual kingdom to the
church on Earth, but has put off “resurrecting” the Old Testament dead
into the kingdom until 2,000+ years later.
This “gap” between Christians and “the [Old Testament] dead” is
not a biblical option. As Paul argued, either the dead and the church
would inherit the kingdom together, or no one could inherit the kingdom
at all. Either all the elect, the church and the dead, were made alive
(resurrected) together in Christ in the end of the old covenant age, or all
the elect remained dead in Adam (cf. 1 Thess. 5:10). In other words, either
all the saints were resurrected in AD 70, or none were resurrected,
not even Christ. There is no other possibility.
Therefore, as with the error at Corinth, the undesired implication
of the doctrine of a yet-future resurrection of the dead is that Christ
has not been raised and that our faith is vain and that we are still in our
sins. Futurism is not a damnable doctrine, just as the error at Corinth
was not a damnable doctrine. Nevertheless, futurism, with its parousiadelay
and resurrection-delay, shares implications with the Corinthian
error which, if followed through logically, ultimately serve to destroy
the Faith. If Paul were alive today, it is possible that he would say to
futurists what he said to his Corinthian brethren, and for essentially the
same reason:
. . . [S]ome have ignorance of God. I speak this to your shame.
(1 Cor. 15:34)
[1] Those who hold to “the collective body view” of 1 Corinthians 15 believe
that the root error at Corinth was a radical kind of “replacement theology,”
i.e., a disdain for Israel and a denial that historical Israel would take part
with the church in the resurrection and in the kingdom of God. While that
interpretation of the error at Corinth may be entirely correct, I am not convinced
that it is provable that the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers had anti-
Israel or anti-Semitic sentiments (though their error was certainly implicitly
antagonistic to God’s historic covenant nation). For this reason, I confine myself
in this chapter to defining their error more generally as a denial that the
dead from Adam until Christ would be raised.
[2] Charles Hill is therefore incorrect when he says: “It is not that the
Corinthians could not comprehend what Paul was talking about; rather, one
party in Corinth, comprehending all too well what Paul had in mind, did not
find it to their liking and were opposing it.” (104)
[3] When we consider that 1 Corinthians was written a mere twenty-five
years after the beginning of Christianity, and when we consider that the eschatological,
first-fruits church was already partaking of the coming resurrection,
and when we consider the eager expectation in that era of the imminent
fulfillment of the end of the Adamic ages and of the resurrection the dead, we
should expect that believers in that historical moment would refer to the vast
multitudes that had lived and died before the advent of Christ as the “dead
[ones].” This is not to say that the term “the dead” in the New Testament was
code for “the dead of the Old Testament in contrast to dead Christians.” It is
to say only that in that eschatological generation, if reference were made to the
pre-Christian dead in contrast to the relatively few dead Christians (in about
AD 55), the designation “the dead” or “dead ones” sufficed.
[4] There was therefore no need for Paul to say explicitly that the dead
were primarily “historical Israel,” as Hill insists in his chapter (115). If “the
dead” were the righteous, pre-Christian dead, then they were (with relatively
few exceptions) none other than the saints of the historic, Abrahamic covenant
community (i.e., Israel) along with the saints who lived before the promises
given to Abraham.
[5] Similarly in American law today the basic meaning of the word “body”
is “a person.” “A corporalis [bodily] injuria” is “a personal injury.” We use the
word “body” this way when we speak of “somebody,” “anybody,” “nobody,” or
“everybody.” This usage of the word used to be more common than it is today:
“The foolish bodies say in their hearts: Tush, there is no God.” (Ps. 14:1, Coverdale
translation, 1535)
[6] Although Reformed theologian Herman Ridderbos was a futurist and
expected a literal transformation of the physical bodies of believers, he nevertheless
understood that such Pauline terms as “the body of sin,” “the body of
the flesh,” “the earthly members,” and “the body of this death” “are obviously
not intended of the [material] body itself, but of the sinful mode of existence of
man.” Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1975), 229; Cf., Tom Holland, Contours of Pauline Theology: A Radical
New Survey of the Influences on Paul’s Biblical Writings, Mentor, 2004.
[7] “[The spiritual body] is not in the least constituted what it is by its being
physical. It fulfills its essence by being utterly subject to Spirit, not by being
either material or immaterial.” The Body, John A. T. Robinson (SCM Press
Ltd., Bloomsbury Street London, 1966), 32. Reformed theologians Ridderbos
and Holland acknowledge that some of Robinson’s exegeses are flawed, but
they endorse the substance of his insights on “the body.” I cite Robinson here
in the same spirit.
[8] When I use the terms “universal” and “universality,” I am not referring
to any form of “Universalism.” I am referring to the trans-historical assembly
of the saints of all generations, from Adam to AD 70, or from Adam to
the present day.
[9] “All” in 1 Cor. 15:22 corresponds to “the many” in Rom. 5:15-16 and
19. When Paul says that “all” died in Adam and that “all” would be made alive
in Christ, he means that all of God’s people (the whole cosmos of Gods’ elect)
died in Adam and would be made alive in Christ.
[10] Strimple inexplicably denies this doctrine on pages 309 and 342 of
WSTTB.
[11] In Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond, on page 62, Strimple
teaches that “the end” in 1 Cor. 15:24 is the same “end” that Jesus said would
come after the gospel was “preached in the whole world” in Matt. 24:14. Thus
Strimple holds that the resurrection of the dead takes place upon the completion
of the preaching of the gospel “in the whole world.” But this presents a
problem for Strimple, because the gospel was “preached in the whole world”
almost 2,000 years ago, in Christ’s generation, shortly before the fall of the
earthly house (the old covenant world) in AD 70 (Rom. 16:25-26; Col. 1:23; 2
Tim. 4:17). If we are to accept Strimple’s sequence of events, we must conclude
that the resurrection of the dead happened at the fall of the temple in AD 70,
as Jesus and the apostles said it would.
[12] This hyper-dispensational implication of the Corinthian resurrection-
error (i.e., that Christ came to wage war against and to conquer the God
of Israel and His law) was the root error of the doctrine that would later be
known as Gnosticism.
[13] If the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers already believed in the historic,
physical resurrection of Christ, as Strimple admits (309, 333), why would
Paul have needed to convince them of the “feasibility,” “imaginability,” and
“thinkability” of the very concept of physical resurrection, as Strimple says
elsewhere (quoting Berkouwer) (341)? How could it be that the resurrectionof-
the-dead deniers were unable to accept the feasibility of a concept (1 Cor.
15:35) to which they already held as the gospel truth (1 Cor. 15:11)?
[14] The necessary “death” of seeds, by the way, demonstrates that physical
corruption and physical death existed before Adam sinned. The earth, by
God’s decree, brought forth seed-yielding plants on the third day of creation
(Gen. 1:11-13), and Adam was placed in the Garden to dress and keep the plants
(Gen. 2:15). Therefore the cycle of literal seed-death and seed-resurrection/
change was already in process before Sin entered the world through the disobedience
of Adam. In the same way, God’s decree to the animals and to man
that both “be fruitful and multiply” implied the cycle of biological birth, biological
reproduction, and biological death; and that cycle was instituted before
Adam sinned (Gen. 1:22, 28). Biological death did not enter the world through
Sin. It was already in the world. It was alienation from God and slavery to Sin
(Sin-consciousness, spiritual Death) that entered the world through Sin.
[15] The terms “mortal” and “corruptible” do not describe the quality or
duration of Adam’s physicality or the quality or duration of his soul. They
describe the quality and duration of his sub-divine righteousness and works.
[16] Strimple favorably quotes Robert Gundry as saying, “Paul uses soma
precisely because the physicality of the resurrection is central to his soteriology.”
In reality, Paul used soma precisely because the resurrection-of-the-dead
deniers used the word soma in their objection (1 Cor. 15:35). The meaning of
the word cannot be deduced from the fact that Paul repeated it.
[17] In Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond (112), Strimple says
that since the Greek word “eskatos” (“last”) is used in the term “last trumpet,”
it would “seem strange” if the “last” trumpet did not signal the end of Christ’s
mediatorial reign and of the resurrection of the dead. Yet in the same book,
Strimple does not think it “strange” when he says that the “last” (“eskatos”)
days have thus far lasted almost 2,000 years (TVMB, 64).
[18] Pratt (the author of chapter three of WSTTB) speaks for perhaps most
futurists when he puzzles over the mention of “the law” in First Corinthians
15:56: “The emergence of the second theme regarding the law, however, seems
to have no real antecedent in this letter.” (Holman New Testament Commentary:
I&II Corinthians, 272) In the futurist paradigm, there is no real connection
between the condemning power of the Law of Moses and the resurrection
of Christians in the end of world history. Paul though makes the connection
because the resurrection of the dead was going to happen when the old covenant
(the Law) vanished in his generation. The two events were simultaneous
(cf. 1 Cor. 7:29, 31; 10:11; 15:51-52). Cf., Law, Sin, and Death: An Edenic Triad?
An Examination with Reference to I Corinthians 15:56, by Chris Alex Vlachos
(Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, volume 47; June, 2004).
[19] Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book I, chapter II.