1 Pet 3:18 & 1 Cor. 15:45--resurrection

by M.J. 25 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Narkissos

  M.J.

  I suppose you meant Acts 17 instead of 15 in your first post today. No further comment on this one, except I don't think this passage really reflects the Pauline view.

  I read the apologetic article you linked to in your second post with much interest. I think the author makes very good points (especially about the philosophical presuppositions affecting the history of exegesis).

  The big problem imo is that he fails to situate Paul's teaching(s) on the resurrection within the broader picture of Pauline Christology. As I tried to point out above, to Paul "Christ Jesus" is definitely more than a mere human in need of either a psychical or a pneumatical body. He is the heavenly Son of God assuming "the likeliness of sinful flesh" (docetic overtones Pauline) for a specific purpose. His resurrected "body" is not a pneumatical body among or along others (as illustrated by the WT maths, 144,000 + 1), it is the church living by his Spirit (or, whose Spirit he is, 1 Corinthians 15:45) and integrated to his very being through baptism (Romans 6) and the Eucharist (1 Corinthians 10--11). Dismissing all those essential aspects of Pauline theology (but not Jesus' resurrection) as mere metaphors will not do the trick.

  Side notes:

  - Interpreting sôma pneumatikon as a "Spirit-oriented physical body" makes the body of resurrection conceptually undiscernable from the extant situation of believers, who are also supposed to be Spirit-oriented in their current physical body --> which leads directly to the later stance asserted in Colossians-Ephesians and denied in the Pastorals, i.e. that "the resurrection has already taken place".

  - Reading the future creation of the resurrection body into 2 Corinthians 5 which clearly describes it as an existing heavenly reality goes against the very wording of the text. Which is inevitable when one fails to take into account the progression (or drift) within Pauline thought.
• 

  M.J.

  Oops. I'm sorry, I meant to type 1 Corinthians 15. NOT Acts 15. How'd that happen?

  Here's the passage:

  15:12 Now if Christ is being preached as raised from the dead, 9 how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 15:13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 15:14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is futile and your faith is empty. 15:15 Also, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we have testified against God that he raised Christ from the dead, when in reality he did not raise him, if indeed the dead are not raised. 15:16 For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised. 15:17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless; you are still in your sins. 15:18Furthermore, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished.15:19For if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied more than anyone.

  15:20 But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 15:21 For since death came through a man, 11 the resurrection of the dead also came through a man. 12 15:22 For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. 15:23 But each in his own order: Christ, the firstfruits; then when Christ comes, those who belong to him. 13 15:24 Then 14 comes the end, 15 when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has brought to an end all rule and all authority and power. 15:25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 15:26 The last enemy to be eliminated is death. 15:27 For he has put everything in subjection under his feet. 16 But when it says “everything” has been put in subjection, it is clear that this does not include the one who put everything in subjection to him. 15:28 And when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all.

  15:29 Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? 17 If the dead are not raised at all, then why are they baptized for them? 15:30 Why too are we in danger every hour? 15:31 Every day I am in danger of death! This is as sure as 18 my boasting in you, 19 which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord. 15:32 If from a human point of view I fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, 20 what did it benefit me? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. 21 15:33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.” 22 15:34 Sober up as you should, and stop sinning! For some have no knowledge of God – I say this to your shame!

  Like I mentioned, this doesn't seem to be an argument against platonic thinking, but Epicurean thought instead...
• 

  Narkissos

  Aha...

  (Oddly enough v. 18 and 32 suited the two occurrences of anastasis in Acts 17, whence my mistake.)

  Imo what may sound Epicurean in 1 Corinthians 15 belongs to the category of argument ab absurdo -- pushing the assumedlogical consequences of the "adversaries" to the extreme limit; which they never do of course. It builds a caricature, a "bogeyman," which doesn't actually represent their opinion. The method is only effective inasmuch as the interlocutor considers the logical chain of argument as constraining, which is rarely the case. And the additional risk is that a third reader (like us) can pick up the "absurd" end of the argument (e.g. "our faith is vain," "let's eat and drink"), initially meant as a deferral ("God forbid"), in a completely different, "why not?" way... A frequent problem in Pauline rhetorics, but I think this one of his worst pages from this perspective...
• 

  jgnat

  M.J., I'm trying to imagine the poor study leader who picked YOU as his return visit. I pity the man.
• 

  jgnat

  Though this conversation is fascinating to the highest degree, I'm having trouble with comprehension. I needed pictures. I've built a power point presentation, representing the various opinions on the state of the living, dead, and resurrected. I need help from a geek out there on how to load it up to the web. Any ideas?
• 

  M.J.

  Alan F. Segal writes in Life After Death, p. 425, re:1 Cor 15:

  It is not necessarily true, as Paul argued, that those who died in Christ would have been thought by his listeners to have perished. They may merely receive their divine reward on the basis of their deeds, or knowledge, or the soul's natural inclination. But, as Paul suggested, this notion, whoever the author is, denies the salvific nature of Christ's death in totality. It is the bodily resurrection of Jesus that guarantees that God's plan for the final destruction of the evil ones of the world is already set in place. For if the soul is immortal by nature and that its the highest form of immortality to be acheived, then the sacrifice of Christ is unecessary.

  On p. 429 he goes on regarding 1 Cor 15:37-50:

  In 1 Corinthians 15:35 Paul began a breif exposition of the nature of the resurrection body. He was, in this passage, outlining a notion of the afterlife which had nothing to do with immortality of the sould; it is an offshoot of Jewish apocalypticism, out of which the Christian kerygma grows. But he was also cognizant of the beliefs of the audience so he merely ignored and did not argue against the immortality of the soul. Instead, he fastened again on the notion of spirit to explicate how the physical body of believers would be transformed by the resurrection. His argument had nothing to do with what happened to Christ during the passion nor did he mention any empty tomb. His argument is by analogy with his own experience and, by expressing it this way, he was trying to keep faith with his own expereince of the Spirit of God. His use of language of the body is entirely unique.
  
  The term for "physical body" is not exactly what one might expect but this is due to an unfortunate English translation. Neither the term soma sarkikon (fleshly body) nor the term soma phychikon (physical body), occurs; rathe the term which occurs is soma psychikon, "ensouled body," a word which can mean "natural body" but is not the most obvious term for it. Since it combines the word for sould with the term for body, it is in a sense the totality of the Platonic ensouled-body as the Hellenistic world understood it. In a Platonic system that would only mean human bodies as we know them, with matter and sould both, therefore corruptible bodies. Because "psyche" could be taken to mean life in the physical sense in a non-Platonic setting, it is not necessarily a problem, strange though it may look; soma psychikon does not occur in Hellenistic literature with that meaning.
  
  But the contrasting term, soma pneumatikon is a complete contradiction in terms for anyone in a Platonic system, especially when contrasted with the psychic body just mentioned: "It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body" (1 Cor 15:41)
  
  There is no easy way to subsume this pair of statements into Platonism. What Paul was doing, however, was contrasting the Platonic view of humanity (the unredeemed body composed of soul and flesh) with his own view of the redeemed body, one that had now been transformed by the Spirit of God. One might say that Paul was trying to characterize his apocalyptic vision in a Hellenistic context, something like Josephus did for the speech of Eleazar ben Yair. But Paul's message only really makes sense within its Jewish, apocalyptic context. For Paul, life in its most basic sense, psychic life, was also bodily life. "Pneumatic," spiritual life is bodily as well, though Paul immediately reiterated that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50). The psychic body is the ordinary body (flesh and soul); the soma pneumatikon is the ordinary body subsumed and transformed by the spirit...