Theo Todman's Book Collection (Book-Paper Abstracts)

Author's Introduction

• What would you say is the most distinctive, attractive, and far-reaching of all the things we believe? For me the answer has to be the resurrection. Though not exclusively Christian since both Judaism and Islam have a doctrine of resurrection of their own, it is nevertheless the most distinctive of all our beliefs, and certainly the founder of no other religion claims to have risen from the dead. It is the most attractive because it holds out the promise of eternal life on the other side of the grave. And the most far-reaching because the resurrection life goes on for ever and ever!
• That is why 1 Corinthians 15 is such an important chapter. This chapter tackles the whole subject of resurrection against the backdrop of some who denied or doubted there was any such thing. To the Greek way of thinking bodily resurrection was a ludicrous idea, and there were Jews also, the Sadducees in particular (Acts 23:8), who entertained the same scepticism with less excuse. When Paul spoke of the resurrection of the dead at Athens he was mocked by his philosophical audience and his address was cut short (Acts 17:32). The Greek philosophers were all agreed that death sets one free from the shackles of bodily existence. The immortality of the soul, of the soul alone, was the one thing they looked for. But for Paul, as for the Bible as a whole, there is no immortality of the soul as if the soul was a spiritual entity that was imprisoned in the body, as thought by Greek philosophers. The soul is the person himself, and our biblical hope is the resurrection of the entire person, body, soul and spirit, not just the body.
• Some of the Christians at Corinth were still deeply influenced by Greek philosophy. Their negative thinking on the subject of resurrection was undermining their teaching on salvation and that Christ died for sins and was raised for our justification (1 Corinthians 15:3-4; Romans 4:25). The whole church was in danger of going off the rails if this false teaching was not nipped in the bud. This is what Paul sets out to do in the chapter before us.
• But what of today? Isn’t all this rather academic in the twenty-first century? Far from it! Ask the average believer what he is expecting and hoping for and he will probably say, to go to heaven when he dies and to meet up with family and friends! Like the ancient Greeks he is still committed to the immortality of the soul. He may pay lip service to “the resurrection of the body” in the words of the (so-called) Apostles’ Creed, but this is not the main focus of his belief. Paul never uses the expression “resurrection of the body”; for him it is always the resurrection of the dead (see verses 12,13,21,42 and five other places in the New Testament). It is the entire person who dies and the entire person who rises from the dead. There is no intermediate state mentioned in Scripture. Paul never entertains for a moment the possibility of life after death without the prior resurrection of the dead person. He doesn’t even pause to refute the idea. If we aspire to be scriptural in our thinking, we shall want to pay careful attention to what Paul says in this chapter and be firmly committed to the Christian doctrine of “the resurrection of the dead”.
• The OBT has already published one booklet on 1 Corinthians 15, namely The Resurrection Chapter by Fred Heyman (1997). In the present booklet I shall try to delve a bit deeper into Paul’s thinking and to confront some of the issues raised by modern scholars. I would like to express my gratitude to Brian Sherring and Roger Barnett for their constructive criticisms.