Foundations of Eschatological Resurrection Belief and Paul’s Argument in 1 Cor 15:12–19

A Pre-Publication Draft

(avg. read time: 19–38 mins.)

Readers generally recognize that Paul’s argument proper for resurrection belief in 1 Cor 15 begins with v. 12, after the commonly agreed background has been set in vv. 1–11.¹ Verse 12 itself begins a portion in which Paul argues first negatively and then positively for the linkage of the resurrection of Christ with the resurrection of the dead (ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν, i.e., the general resurrection; cf. Matt 22:31 [par. Luke 20:35]; Acts 17:32; 23:6; 24:21; 26:23; Heb 6:2) as two parts of one event of the eschatological resurrection. The negative argument by appeal to negative consequence in vv. 12–19 will be my focus here, as it has been the subject of much misunderstanding due to the misapprehension of the assumptions that inform Paul’s argument.

One case in point outside the realm of NT scholarship comes from the philosopher C. D. Broad.² According to Broad, Paul’s argument has no merit:

if Christianity be true, though Jesus was human, He was also divine. No other human being resembles Him in this respect … the body of Jesus did not decay in the tomb, but was transformed; whilst the body of every ordinary man rots and disintegrates soon after his death. Therefore, if men do survive the death of their bodies, the process must be utterly unlike that which took place when Jesus survived His death on the cross. Thus the analogy breaks down in every relevant respect, and so an argument from the resurrection of Jesus to the survival of the bodily death by ordinary men is utterly worthless.³

One wonders why Broad has construed Paul’s argument as one from analogy. Did Broad imagine that Paul was unaware that bodies decayed in tombs, and this despite his use of terms related to decay and corruption later in this same chapter? Did he think Paul was unaware even of Jewish practice of secondary burial after the body had decayed and left bones, which were then placed in ossuaries? Furthermore, such an argument would have obviously left Paul vulnerable to counter in his context. The myths of Osiris and Pelops involved reassembly of their dismembered bodies, albeit with one member missing. In these and other myths, it was crucial to preserve the body, whether through an actual preservation process or through quick action, because of the problem of decay. Paul could not have been ignorant of this problem and so there is no reason to suppose that he made the argument from analogy that Broad charges him with. Indeed, Paul’s argument in general is not illuminated, but made incomprehensible by this supposition.

But this misguided critique nevertheless raises the question of what type of argument Paul is making here. He assumes a causal relationship between Christ’s resurrection and the general resurrection. In view of the larger segment, as well as general theological considerations, Albert the Great described God’s power as the first or principal cause of the general resurrection, whereas Christ’s resurrection is the more proximate efficient cause (Res. 2.Q1.S5; cf. Aquinas, Comm. 1 Cor. §§913–915).⁴ This fits Paul’s overall argument and allows us to see the implied syllogism as follows:

P1) If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised (vv. 13, 16).

P2) Christ has been raised (v. 20).

C) Therefore, there is a resurrection of the dead.

This is a valid argument in the modus tollens form. Other scholars have also noted that this segment overall (with v. 20 included) comports with modus tollens argumentation.⁵ The only way out that Paul allows for this argument would be to formulate a modus tollens argument that entails both a negative conclusion that the Corinthians cannot accept and the negative hypothetical reality that Paul articulates throughout this text to v. 19:

P1*) If Christ has been raised from the dead, then there is a resurrection of the dead.

P2*) There is no resurrection of the dead.

C*) Therefore, Christ has not been raised.

In either case, the relationship assumed between Christ’s resurrection and the general resurrection in P1 and P1* remains intact. The causal relationship better explains the logic than the occasional claim that Paul is making a reductio ad absurdum in response to a recasting of the deniers’ claim into a revised “Socrates is a man” type of syllogism:⁶

P1^) The dead are not raised.

P2^) Christ is one of the dead.

C^) Therefore, Christ has not been raised.

This syllogism cannot explain why Paul can work with the assumed causal relationship in P1 and P1*, which is in turn crucial to vv. 20–28.⁷

What requires further explanation is what underlies this causal relationship, for which reason it is crucial to set vv. 12–19 not only into the larger context of ch. 15, but also of 1 Corinthians as a whole. While ch. 15 may be the only chapter in which Paul addresses the subject of resurrection belief at length, the chapter also represents a crescendo of points Paul has been building upon throughout the letter, and so both the chapter context and the letter context will be necessary for analyzing the assumptions that inform this argument. I argue that in vv. 12–19 there are at least three assumptions—what I call “foundations of eschatological resurrection belief”—operative in Paul’s argument. The first and most obvious foundation is that Jesus’s own resurrection is the cornerstone event from which springs all other eschatological hope. The second and most contentious foundation—the one most extensively undergirding vv. 12–19—is that resurrection is the theo/logical (i.e., in terms of theological reasoning) telos of the Christians’ incorporative, identifying, and participatory union with Christ.⁸ The third foundation is that God’s inexorable, faithful love, love which keeps the word to those promised even after their death, is what ultimately brings about resurrection.

Paul’s argument is organized in such a way that he presents the second foundation as a necessary concomitant of the first, so that the denial of the second means the denial of the first, and the denial of both entails a denial of the third, presented in the fulcrum of Paul’s argument in this segment in v. 15, from which all other negative consequences follow. Although there are many other ways to proceed in the analysis of this segment according to principles of formal logic or Greco-Roman rhetoric, I find it more helpful for my purposes to unpack Paul’s assumptions and so to proceed through the three foundations as they emerge as operative in his argument. As such, I begin with the foundation of Jesus’s own resurrection as it is operative in vv. 12–19 and its context.