Paul and Jesus

Paul’s Corinthian opponents challenged him directly with these very questions: “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” (1 Corinthians 15:35). They found the very idea absurd. Paul calls them fools who limit the capacities of God as Creator. If God created our physical world with all of its variety of “bodies,” or outward forms, for various plants and animals, surely he can provide spiritual bodies for those whom he raises from the dead in the new creation (1 Corinthians 15:36–38). Paul thinks of a body as a mode of being, whether in a physical creation or in the new spiritual creation that God would fashion in the future.

Paul uses the resurrection of Christ as his illustrative example, viewing Jesus as the prototype of what will take place in the future for all the dead who will be raised at Jesus’ coming. Just as God created Adam “from the dust” with a physical body, Christ, through his resurrection from the dead, became a new heavenly Adam, with a spiritual body. Paul expresses this with five contrasting couplets and a conclusion:

1. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.¹⁸

2. The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam [Christ] became a life-giving spirit.

3. It is not the spiritual that is first but the physical, and then the spiritual.

4. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.

5. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:45–49)

Conclusion: Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable (verse 50).

As a Pharisee Paul must have had some general notion of resurrection of the dead as involving a reembodied spiritual self, but as a Christian he has developed his understanding much further. He is convinced that Jesus’ resurrection is actually the proof that this new cosmic process of transforming physical beings into a higher spiritual form is underway. He argues, “For as by a man [Adam] came death, by a man [Christ] has come also the resurrection of the dead.” This is not something Jews in general, or Pharisees and Essenes in particular, would say, since the hope that God would raise the dead would have no necessary connection to Jesus’ being raised. But for Paul the two are inseparable: Christ’s resurrection as a life-giving spirit inaugurates the process of the new creation.

THE BODY IN QUESTION

Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ resurrection allows us to approach with a new perspective the question of what happened to Jesus’ body after he was taken from the cross. Paul begins his “resurrection chapter” with a formula-like recitation of what he calls “the Gospel”:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:3–4)

Paul is writing this around twenty-five years after Jesus’ crucifixion and since he was not a witness to the death, burial, and resurrection on the third day, he passes along something he has “received” to the Corinthians. Most scholars take this to mean he is passing on a formal early Christian creed that he got from the Jerusalem apostles, or perhaps from Christians at Antioch. Although this is possible, I don’t think it is at all certain, since Paul swears so adamantly that the gospel he “received” was not through men or from men, but by a direct revelation of Christ (Galatians 1:11–12). Earlier in 1 Corinthians he writes that he “received from the Lord” (same Greek verb, paradidomi), meaning from Jesus, his tradition about the Last Supper. Either way, whether by tradition or revelation, Paul offers his testimony of what he preaches.

Paul then lists a series of “sightings” (Greek ophthe) of the risen Christ to various people, including Peter, James, and the twelve apostles, and finally his own experience of having “seen” Jesus.¹⁹