- Open Bible Trust, 2013
- I had a hard copy of this booklet, but seem to have lost it.
- I have therefore re-purchased it on Kindle.
"Ozanne (Charles) - If there is no resurrection of the dead … What then? An exposition of 1 Corinthians 15"
Source: Ozanne (Charles) - If there is no resurrection of the dead … What then? An exposition of 1 Corinthians 15
I have prepared other papers on this topic:-
- "Todman (Theo) - Resurrection": A paper on the topic of resurrection written for an OBT fellowship weekend in early May 2026.
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - 1 Corinthians: 15": I have ‘footnoted’ the whole of 1 Corinthians Chapter 15.
- "Penny (Sylvia) - The Resurrection Chapter: 1 Corinthians 15": My comments on this article from OBT's Search Magazine.
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Resurrection": The Note that forms part of my Thesis on Personal Identity.
- "Todman (Theo) - Thesis - Chapter 11 (Resurrection)": The full Chapter on Resurrection in the above.
Write-up1 (as at 02/08/2026 01:22:05): Todman - Review - Ozanne - If there is no resurrection of the dead?
Introductory Note
- I start off by footnoting a few comments to the author’s introduction, repeated below, and then add a few comments on the subsequent text.
- Hopefully these comments will make sense to those who don’t have a copy of Ozanne’s booklet to hand.
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 dead2. 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 ever3!
- 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 spirit4, 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 soul5. 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 body6”; 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 person7 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.
Notes on the rest of the Booklet8
- Ozanne mentions positively the (much maligned in fundamentalist circles) "Morison (Frank) - Who Moved the Stone?", where – if I remember correctly – objectively contradictory – or at least ‘different’ – accounts are taken as evidence of verisimilitude. Eye-witnesses remember things differently and partially – and are often unreliable – but their various accounts are evidence that something happened.
- Ozanne picks up the parallelism in v. 22 – ‘all’ applies – as the text says – to all men. He has it that not all, however, take advantage of the offer. Also, he correctly invokes a trans-temporal interpretation. All die at various times, and all will be raised at various times – including the first and second general resurrections (Ozanne cites Revelation 20:5,12-13 and blames the amillennialism of commentators such as CK Barrett for failing to see this).
- On the ultimate subjection of the Son to the Father, Ozanne suggests “We need to distinguish between Christ’s essential being and His role as ruler and redeemer. In His capacity as Logos He is equal with God and indeed Himself God (John 1:1-2), but in His capacity as Son He is subject to the Father.” Fair enough, but he doesn’t explain why Paul embarks on this diversion in this place.
- I was pleased to see that Ozanne adopts the traditional translation and interpretation of the odd practice of ‘being baptised for the dead’ rather than Bullinger and some others’ repunctuation. In any case, the point is the futility of the practice (our own or a vicarious baptism) if the dead aren’t raised.
- I’d always thought that when Paul says “Humanly speaking” … (he) “fought with beasts at Ephesus” the “Humanly speaking” indicates a figure of speech and he’s being derogatory about his (human) opponents, for the reasons given by a commentator Ozanne dismisses. Ozanne says Paul isn’t prone to exaggeration, despite the fact that he says ‘he dies every day’. Maybe he did die, once, when stoned, but it can hardly have been a daily routine. But, I don’t really care.
- Ozanne addresses Paul’s use of the ‘seed’ analogy. He seems to suggest that the seed is the corpse and – indeed – this has been the traditional view and led to a reluctance to adopt cremation as against burial. But resurrection doesn’t depend on the location of a corpse, so this can’t really be Paul’s point. Rather, there is something in what we were that leads on to what we will be. The resilience of seeds is also not the issue.
- I wasn’t impressed by the tall tale of an acorn growing through a mass of concrete as a just repost to an atheist effectively saying ‘resurrect me if you can’. Also, the fact that Revelation says that those lost at sea will be resurrected doesn’t really add anything to what we know about the general difficulties. If the Corinthians are sceptics, maybe their questions can be batted away along the lines of ‘with God nothing is impossible’, but they might be genuine questions as answers to them would give clues to our own constitution both before and after resurrection and to the nature of the future life.
- Ozanne sees two questions put by the Corinthians … “how are they raised” and ”with what body”. I view them as the same question – the “how” is asking “in what form” and the so-called second question is a clarification of the first. Doubtless we’d like to know how the ‘magic’ is performed, but Paul doesn’t provide an answer to that, but focuses on the “what”. Ozanne thinks the agricultural cycle of planting and growing provides the answer to the ‘how’, but not really. The acorn is the seed of an oak that produces another oak the same as the parent.
- Ozanne doesn’t take ‘glory’ to be a place, but a characteristic. So far so good. But he takes Paul to be saying that the resurrected believers will be variously ‘glorious’ according to their various callings (and maybe accomplishments). I can’t see that Paul has this in mind. He’s merely pointing out that God provides bodies as he wills, and that there are different kinds of bodies. So, there’s no reason to believe that the resurrection body would be the same as that which died.
- Ozanne tries to address the question of how similar we will be in our resurrected state to what we were like before and whether we’d recognise one another – making an analogy with Christ not being initially recognised on the road to Emmaus. He says our bodies will be somewhat similar to those we had pre-mortem, again presumably by analogy with Christ’s resurrection body being to some degree recognisable. But the resurrection appearances don’t seem to present the resurrected Christ as ‘glorious’ – how can you think you’re chatting to a regular guy9 ignorant of the recent events if he looks like lightening? Of course, there is a question as to what stage of life the resurrected body is similar to. If you’ve only known great grandma as an old crone you’ll presumably find it difficult to recognise her, as she will find it difficult to recognise little Johnny who died age 5 but presumably doesn’t spend eternal life as a tiny tot. No doubt there are answers to these questions, but they are not addressed by Paul (or Ozanne).
- Ozanne summarises the four differences between the mortal and resurrection bodies – the first three are uncontroversial (perishable vs imperishable; dishonour vs glory; weakness vs power). The fourth (natural vs spiritual) requires some unpacking. To quote: “Our Lord’s resurrection body was spiritual, but not in the sense of non-material. He could eat fish and be touched, but at the same time He could pass through closed doors, appearing and disappearing at will”. There’s something deeply incoherent about all this. What is ‘matter’ in this context and what is ‘spirit’? Is the fish rapidly metabolised into some new form of spiritual matter so that it doesn’t get stuck when passing through a closed door? Presumably the resurrected Christ could be touched – else he wouldn’t have forbidden it ‘as he’d not yet ascended to the Father’, but what would he have felt like? Some of these appearances sound like visions. Others as demonstrating something rather than showing what our resurrection bodies will be like. At the last supper Jesus implies that he will drink wine with his disciples in the Kingdom of God. Is this literal or the language of condescension, figurative in some way? Or is it supposed that they would still be alive – and on the old earth – when the millennial Kingdom is inaugurated?
- Ozanne states “The flesh will be of a more refined texture and the blood will be replaced by the life-giving Holy Spirit. Our Lord could pass through closed doors (John 20:19), yet Thomas was able to feel the nail holes and put his hand in the Lord’s side (20:27).” Well, Thomas was given the opportunity to do as Ozanne says, but the passage doesn’t suggest that he did so. What does it mean to say that the blood is replaced by ‘spirit’ (much like ichor in the Greek gods) and just what is this flesh of refined texture?
- The ‘change’ that those believers alive at the Lord’s return undergo is discussed, but the apparent contradiction of what was said earlier – the seed must die – isn’t. No doubt there’s an answer, but it’s not addressed here. It is suggested that for these individuals the resurrection body is like some form of outer-garment to their mortal ones. This is all rather odd.
- I didn’t find the example of the snake shedding its skin helpful. As Ozanne notes, Paul doesn’t avail himself of it. But if our current body is clothes – or a tent – that we can dispense with, just what are we that do the dispensing?
- Ozanne mentions Enoch and Elijah being taken up to heaven, but not that they are counter-examples to Paul’s argument. He says they have “not yet put on the imperishable and immortality as described here” but is there any evidence for this? The NT teachings deal with the general case, not with exceptions.
- Ozanne seems to suggest that Jesus was ‘transformed’ much like those alive at his return. Though he had truly died, his body hadn’t corrupted. Fair enough.
- Ozanne concludes with an exhortation to stick to Scripture, rather than ‘hold to preconceived ideas’ as some then contemporary self-styled Christians did. I presume this is the tendency either to doubt the real resurrection of Christ (as with the one-time Bishop of Durham’s rejection of ‘conjuring tricks with bones’) or of rejecting our own physical resurrection in favour of some more ‘spiritual’ future state as did the Corinthians. The Conclusion ties back to the Introduction.
In-Page Footnotes ("Ozanne (Charles) - If there is no resurrection of the dead … What then? An exposition of 1 Corinthians 15")
Footnote 1:
- This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (02/08/2026 01:22:05).
- Link to Latest Write-Up Note.
Footnote 2:
- This is an odd way of putting things.
- It’s normally said that Jesus’ disciples claimed that he had risen from the dead.
- It would be odd for someone to ‘claim’ that they had risen from the dead, as the ‘claim’ would be self-authenticating unless either they weren’t the person they claimed to be, or else they hadn’t died.
Footnote 3:
- ‘For ever and ever’ is the normal meaning of ‘eternal’, so we have one promise rather than two.
Footnote 4:
- Again, this is an odd way of putting things. Ozanne holds – probably correctly – that there’s no separable soul and that it is not ‘the body’ that is resurrected, so why invoke this tripartite analysis of the human being?
Footnote 5:
- Who knows how people think of the afterlife? Their ideas are unlikely to be coherent, whatever they are.
Footnote 6:
- This is an important point, in that it’s not the body that died that is resurrected, patched up in some way, but fundamentally the same.
- That said, Christ’s human body was not left behind when he rose from the dead.
Footnote 7:
- Firstly, what is ‘the entire person’, firstly before and secondly after resurrection?
- Secondly, what makes it the case that the resurrected person is the same person as the one that died, especially given no ‘intermediate state’.
- Thirdly, is what is intended ‘no conscious intermediate state’.
- A believer’s death is described as ‘falling asleep’ and the believing dead as ‘asleep in Christ’. Do they still exist in this state of sleep?
Footnote 8:
- This isn’t intended as a full analysis or review. Just picking up on a few points.
Footnote 9:
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)