On the Terminological Hang-Up of Describing Resurrection as "Physical"
(avg. read time: 16–32 mins.)
Christian orthodoxy has regularly maintained the centrality of Jesus’s resurrection and the expectation of our own resurrection to the declaration and proclamation of the faith. But there has been no small consternation about how precisely to describe resurrection belief, whether in terms of Jesus’s resurrection or the general resurrection, the connection of which Paul most clearly articulates in 1 Cor. 15. Indeed, one of the most significant controversies that tarnished the legacy of Origen and the Origenists in the eyes of the orthodox mainstream, particularly as represented by Methodius (Res. 2–3), Pamphilius (Apol.), Epiphanius (Pan. 64), and Jerome (Jo. Hier. 25–36), was the former’s description of the resurrection body.1 While the Origenists accepted the resurrection of the body, they took issue with the description that emerged in the second century of describing the resurrection ‘of the flesh,’ which they thought to express too much continuity between the present body and the resurrection body.2 Indeed, in addition to the several influential teachers that used such a description of resurrection, many early confessional formulae—including the Old Roman Creed, the Apostles’ Creed, the Creed of Jerusalem, the Creed of the First Council of Toledo, and Apos. Con. 7.41—declared belief in the resurrection of the flesh.3
However, well after the Origenists, such declarations have been problematised. After all, the expression ‘resurrection of the flesh’ appears nowhere in Scripture (even if it is strongly implied in Luke 24:39 and Acts 2:31). And particularly since the time of Otto Pfleiderer and Ernst Teichmann, some have argued that Paul’s expressions in 1 Cor. 15 are utterly incompatible with such an idea.4 Indeed, some have insisted either the Gnostics5 or the Origenists6 were more in line with Paul’s teaching on resurrection than what became the orthodox mainstream. Still, others argue that the descriptions of the ‘resurrection of the flesh,’ while different in emphasis from Paul, are fundamentally consistent with the assumption of bodily continuity in Paul’s teaching, even if it deviates from Paul’s precise language.7
A similar debate of more recent vintage concerns whether or not ‘physical’ is an apt description of the resurrection of Jesus and of the general resurrection. Again, ‘physical’ is not, strictly speaking, a term that Scripture applies to the resurrection. And those who criticise it insist that it is obfuscating and overly insistent on bodily continuity to the point of portraying resurrection as a mere reconstitution. On the other hand, those who use the phrase ‘physical resurrection’ insist that, even though Paul does not use the phrase, it is an apt description of what he teaches about resurrection.
My own argument in this article is that ‘physical resurrection’ remains an apt description for Paul’s teaching on resurrection (as well as, secondarily, NT descriptions in general) and that it is those who have criticised this term who have introduced undue consternation and obfuscation because they have distorted what ‘physical’ must mean. To make this argument, I will proceed in three steps. First, I examine what those who use the phrase ‘physical resurrection’ mean when they use it. Second, I examine what those who criticise the phrase think their interlocutors mean, demonstrating in the process where the former group introduces distortions into the discussion. Third, I show how ‘physical resurrection’ fits Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor. 15.
What Does ‘Physical’ Resurrection Mean to Those Who Use the Description?
For as important as the term ‘physical’ is as a descriptor of resurrection for those who prefer to use it, it is notable that they do not dedicate special attention to the matter of defining the term. Thus, they are implying that they use the term with one or more of its conventional senses. That is, ‘physical’ can be a synonym for ‘bodily,’ especially in contexts where it is contrasted with another adjective referring to a different domain (e.g., ‘mental’ or ‘spiritual’). It can also have the sense of referring to material qualities, especially in terms of being perceptible to the senses in some fashion (usually visible and tangible). When applied to resurrection, ‘physical’ thus has the sense that it involves the body (particularly the body that died), that the result of resurrection involves that body and thus produces material results involving that body (as opposed to a process that leaves that body unaddressed and instead involves some other anthropological aspect or substance), and that the resurrection body is able to be perceived by the senses, especially by being visible and tangible.
This observation is borne out in the actual statements of these scholars. For example, John Granger Cook says, ‘In ancient Judaism (from the second century BCE on), the existing evidence demonstrates that individuals viewed resurrection as physical (i.e. bodily).’8 He also uses such terminology in a context of contrast with notions popular in scholarship that the language could be and was used for referring to resurrection of spirits/spiritual resurrection prior to the Gnostics.9 Paul Gardner uses the terminology in reference to Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor. 15:35–41:
Even the differentiation where a seed will only produce its particular kind of plant is part of God’s creative purposes. The future lies with God, and he will see to it that the seed of the human who has died will be brought to life in the form and physical body appropriate to the realm or environment in which it will then be living. (There is nothing wrong with using the word ‘physical’ at this point, for Paul is dealing with a real resurrection of substance that is in continuity with the physical body that has died, but which has a different ‘flesh’ or outward form. There is nothing in anything that Paul says that would lead us to believe physicality as such has gone; in fact, this very use of the word ‘flesh’ militates against this.)10
E. Earle Ellis likewise describes the link of progeny with Adam and Christ in the same chapter as involving, in both cases, ‘physical, bodily existence.’11 Dag Øistein Endsjø, although describing the role of resurrection in the Greek context, regularly refers to its physicality, noting that resurrection is essential for a dead subject to attain physical immortality.12
Of course, the most frequently referenced representative of this view, not least because of his recurrent emphasis on the ‘physicality’ of resurrection is N. T. Wright.13 He regularly refers to the ‘physical body’ in contexts where he is making some form of contrast with what is said or thought of the soul or spirit. He also insists that the Gospel resurrection narratives convey that Jesus’s resurrection body is physical, particularly with their use of the empty tomb stories, as well as their references to the visibility (i.e., to objective sight, rather than a vision of religious experience).14 But where the language of physicality actually appears the most often is in his exposition on Paul’s theology of resurrection, again due to polemics in stressing the physicality of Jesus’s resurrection body over and against interpretations of Paul’s expectations of resurrection as involving a body composed of spirit. At the same time, Wright is also notable for his stress on the transformation involved in resurrection, for which reason he coined the adjective ‘transphysical.’15 In his words,
The ‘trans’ is intended as a shortening of ‘transformed’. ‘Transphysical’ is not meant to describe in detail what sort of a body it was that the early Christians supposed Jesus already had, and believed that they themselves would eventually have. Nor indeed does it claim to explain how such a thing can come to be. It merely, but I hope usefully, puts a label on the demonstrable fact that the early Christians envisaged a body which was still robustly physical but also significantly different from the present one. If anything – since the main difference they seem to have envisaged is that the new body will not be corruptible – we might say not that it will be less physical, as though it were some kind of ghost or apparition, but more. ‘Not unclothed, but more fully clothed.’16
Of course, one could expand the sense of ‘trans’ in ‘transphysical’ to also mean ‘transcendent.’17 In other words, the transformation of the body produced in the eschatological resurrection (of which Jesus is the firstfruits) is such that the body transcends presently known limitations and capacities of physicality.
According to this understanding, the Gospels signify this quality through their vague and mysterious descriptions of Jesus’s resurrection body being capable of such actions as suddenly appearing in a room behind locked doors, yet also able to be touched and to interact with other physical objects, as well as being identifiable particularly by the marks of the cross yet not being immediately recognisable, and so on. Paul signifies this quality through his description of the resurrection body as being no longer subject to decay/corruptibility, having immortality, and generally being a σῶμα πνευματικόν. I must return to these points below.
A further significance to this phrasing of ‘physical’, though less often stressed, is the implication it bears of the relationship of the body with the material/physical cosmos. After all, the body shares a history with the cosmos, as the two are ‘inextricably woven together at the physical level.’18 This is true not only of the present body and the present creation, but of the resurrection body and the new creation.19 This notion also fits with ancient beliefs about the body as a microcosm.20 Likewise, resurrection is of one piece with God’s work of new creation, in which, ‘Creation itself, celebrated throughout the Hebrew scriptures, will be reaffirmed, remade,’21 since new creation is, ‘the fulfillment and redemption of the old.’22
The clear implication of all these associations of the descriptor ‘physical’ attached to ‘resurrection’ is that such an action at least involves substantial continuity between the present body and the resurrection body, meaning that there is no change in substance, according to this view, from that which is physical/bodily to that which is non-physical/bodily. There is thus also an impetus for maintaining identical embodiment—that ‘resurrection requires post-mortem life in a body numerically identical to one’s pre-mortem body’—as essential to a Pauline and more generally biblical teaching on resurrection.23 How such an outcome of identical embodiment happens is less of a concern than affirming its necessity.
Why Is Describing Resurrection as ‘Physical’ Deemed Problematic?
The foregoing description of the notion of physical resurrection is objectionable to many for various reasons. Some think that Paul in particular could not be referring to a physical resurrection because they think he conceived of a kind of spiritual resurrection, which may or may not involve the notion that Jesus’s resurrection body is composed of spirit. I have addressed such claims more fully in my dissertation and others have done so sufficiently elsewhere, thus I only respond to this idea indirectly in my analysis of 1 Cor. 15 below.24 What is more interesting for the focus of this analysis is the insistent denial of resurrection as ‘physical’ by those who are otherwise satisfied with affirming that resurrection is ‘bodily.’
Gerald O’Collins exemplifies this mentality well, ‘Here “physical” can too easily suggest that the resurrection was merely a case of the reanimation of Jesus’ corpse and ignores the glorious transformation stressed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:42ff. “Bodily” expresses the personal reality of Jesus’ resurrection, while allowing more easily for his new, transformed existence.’25 O’Collins never explains why he makes this particular distinction, considering that ‘physical’ and ‘bodily’ are conventionally synonyms. But in his mind, ‘physical’ conjures an image of a point to which he regularly appeals as a contrast to resurrection: ‘reanimation’ or ‘mere resuscitation’ of a corpse.26 Indeed, he assumes the forcefulness of this characterisation in his response to I. Howard Marshall’s commentary on Luke concerning Jesus’s appearances, wherein Marshall argues that Luke heavily emphasises the physicality of the risen Jesus, to which O’Collins responds rhetorically, ‘But does Luke want to reduce the glorious (24:26), transformed bodiliness of Jesus to the state of a resuscitated corpse which eats and digests food?’27
The difference between ‘resuscitation’ and ‘resurrection’ as popularly used is that ‘resuscitation’ refers to a return to this life while ‘resurrection’ is linked to a reception of everlasting life. According to this popular distinction, one who is resuscitated is not implied to be transformed in some permanent fashion and the expectation is that such a one will die again. By contrast, one who is resurrected is typically understood as being transformed and the expectation is that such a one will never die again.
Likewise, so the claim goes, to describe the apostles as sensing or interacting with Jesus’s resurrected body in a physical way is to distort and degrade the nature of Jesus’s resurrected body. According to O’Collins, following Karl Rahner,
by definition a glorified being cannot enter in a massive, grossly material way into our world of normal sense experience. If the risen Christ had entered or did enter our world in that way, he would ‘fit into’ space and time and hence could be weighed, measured, finger-printed, and subjected to various laboratory tests. That would mean that he was an ordinary, earthly being (subjected to the normal limits of space and time), and no longer a glorified and eschatologically transformed being. By definition a ‘solid’ sense experience of the risen Christ was (and is) excluded.28
The basis for this claim is not clarified, but it again derives its force from the impression it creates (and O’Collins emphasises with his terms conveying mundanity, especially in an undesirable fashion) that ‘physical’ resurrection entails undue and degrading limitations on Jesus’s resurrected body.
But it is not merely the apparent degradation of Jesus’s resurrection by a supposed failure to distinguish it from ‘resuscitation of a corpse’ that adherents of this ‘bodily-but-not-physical’ view deem objectionable. The description of Jesus’s resurrection as ‘physical’ also implies the idea that neutral or hostile observers could have perceived Jesus with ordinary physical sight. By contrast, O’Collins insists, ‘If Annas or Pilate had kept company after the crucifixion with Peter and the other disciples, they would most likely have seen nothing at all when Christ appeared.’29 Presumably, this is due to two factors in the appearances of the resurrected Christ: 1) they were events of divine revelation in which Jesus took the initiative in self-disclosure; 2) they involved committed witnesses with graced capacities of perception.30 As such, Joseph J. Smith claims, ‘A public event should be open to neutral observation by anyone who might happen to be present at the time of the event. But the Easter appearances were not generally observable events of this kind. They were events of revelation by a special intervention of God through which the risen one became visible “not to all the people but to the witnesses elected by God” (Acts 10:41).’31
One problem illustrated by this overall ‘bodily-but-not-physical resurrection’ approach is the abuse of the categorical distinction between ‘resurrection’ and ‘resuscitation.’ For as popular as this distinction is in modern scholarship, it would be misleading to say that this distinction is reflected terminologically in the Bible. In fact, the same terminology appears in reference to events that most scholars deem as ‘resurrection’ on the one hand and ‘resuscitation’ on the other (the latter feature uses of קיץ or קום in Hebrew, or ἐγείρω or ἀνίστημι in Greek in 1 Kgs 17:22; 2 Kgs 4:31; 13:21; Matt. 9:25 // Mark 5:41–42 // Luke 8:54–55; Matt. 11:5 // Luke 7:22; Luke 7:14; John 11:23; 12:1, 9, 17; Acts 9:40–41; cf. Matt. 10:8; Luke 16:31). On what basis should this terminological distinction be accepted as the proper framework for differentiating these events, so that the latter category simply does not constitute ‘resurrection,’ despite what the biblical usage indicates? What makes this distinction preferable to one of a ‘temporary resurrection’ vs. an ‘eschatological resurrection’? This latter distinction acknowledges that the same terminology applies to both events, but that the differences consist in the permanence of the consequences (and thus of the life received), the implied transformation in the case of the latter for the reception of everlasting life, as well as the setting and significance of the event. Thus, the differentiation appears not in the noun or verb, but in the adjective (or adverb).
One can especially see the abuse of this categorical distinction in how it is used rhetorically. For example, to make physical resurrection seem degrading, O’Collins, Welker, and others routinely describe it as a ‘resuscitation of a corpse’ (or a ‘reanimation’). But there is not a reference to the ‘resurrection of a corpse,’ even though some kind of bodily continuity is taken for granted in the notion of resurrection. Surely one could just as well say ‘resuscitation of a body’ as one could say ‘resurrection of a body,’ but that would not have the same rhetorical force of creating an impression of repulsion seemingly inappropriate for resurrection. The impression is that ‘resuscitation of a corpse’ or ‘reanimation’ could refer to what happens to a George Romero zombie, while surely ‘resurrection’ full stop, as this camp understands it, could not.
Such an assessment is further borne out in the assumptions made about the glorification involved in Jesus’s resurrection and the eschatological resurrection of believers. One gets the impression that some manner of condescension like the Son went through in the Incarnation is now no longer possible for some unstated reason. Although the Son could become empirically accessible in the most mundane of fashions in the Incarnation, the resurrection must somehow entail that such empirical accessibility is no longer possible, even in these appearances of the risen Christ. Thus, any indications of empirical accessibility must not be taken literally. There is much that is supposed in such assertions about glorification in resurrection that is never justified.
Similarly, the claim that ‘neutral’ witnesses could not have witnessed these appearances is supposed but not justified. That these events were not publicly perceptible is an assumption not required by the vocabulary of the appearances and certainly not by the narratives. It is difficult to conceive how the appearance to the 500+ would not have been ‘open to neutral observation by anyone who might happen to be present at the time of the event.’ Likewise, in the case of Thomas (John 20:24–25), he did not see, not because Jesus’s appearance was concealed from him, but because he was not present at the time of appearance. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus were not prevented from seeing him altogether, but they were prevented from recognising him at first (Luke 24:13–16). The narrative that comes closest to validating Smith’s and others’ assumption is Paul’s, but there Paul’s companions could see a light, but apparently not the person at the center of it (Acts 22:9).
If Smith, O’Collins, and others mean by ‘neutral’ people who were not already followers of Jesus, or at least were not hostile to him, it is hardly impossible that the 500+ included such people. And, of course, the list of witnesses in 1 Cor. 15:5–8 also mentions James and Paul, the latter of whom was clearly hostile to the movement and the former of whom may have been prior to the appearance he received. Alternatively, if the advocates of this view mean people who could have potentially seen the event and been unaffected by it, other than retaining it as a memory of something that happened, it is difficult to see why the presence of such a person would change the conception of the event’s nature and not simply the conception of its effectuality.32 In fact, in neither case is it clear that the presence of a ‘neutral’ observer would have implied a different kind of event.
Furthermore, as Wright has been a key reference point for the description of resurrection as ‘physical,’ he has also been a key reference point for critique in this regard. While both Smith and Welker recognise that Wright attributes some importance to his term ‘transphysical’ as denoting a ‘transformed physicality,’ both critics ignore this sense of transformation and focus on the fact that ‘physical’ is still part of Wright’s understanding, hence particularly Welker’s preference for returning again and again to Wright’s use of the descriptor ‘robustly physical’ (as well as his description of Jesus being ‘alive again’). Although Wright clearly affirms that the resurrection of Jesus and the general eschatological resurrection involve transformation, neither critic thinks that Wright has taken account of how radical this transformation really is.33 But their problem rests on their impression of what ‘physical’ implies, not in how Wright uses it as both a synonym for ‘bodily’ and as a contrast to ‘spiritual.’34 Furthermore, the description of the risen Jesus as being ‘alive again’ is no more problematic than the use of ἀναζάω (‘revive’ or ‘live again’) in resurrection imagery (Luke 15:24; cf. variants and Textus Receptus in Rom. 14:9; Rev. 20:5) or the use of ζάω (‘come to life’ or ‘live’) in terms of coming to life after death, both in metaphorical references to resurrection and in literal cases of resurrection, both temporary and eschatological (Matt. 9:18; Mark 16:11; Luke 15:32; 24:23; John 5:25; 11:25–26; Acts 1:3; 9:41; 20:12; 25:19; Rom. 6:10–11, 13; 14:9; 2 Cor. 13:4; Gal. 2:19–20; 1 Thess. 5:10; 1 Pet. 2:24; Rev. 1:18; 2:8; 13:14; 20:4–5; cf. Deut. 32:39; 1 Sam. 2:6; 1 Kgs 17:21–22; 2 Kgs 13:21; Isa. 26:19; Ezek. 37:5–6, 9–10, 14; Hos. 6:2). Furthermore, if one objects to the use of the term “again” as somehow implying too much continuity or even mundanity, one would need to explain why Jesus promises in John 16 that his disciples will see him “again” when he refers to his resurrection (John 16:16–22).
Ultimately, such readings are uncharitable and obfuscating when these scholars claim to be offering greater clarity. They overcomplicate the conventional usage of ‘physical’ by attributing to it that which it does not necessarily entail, thereby overcomplicating their own terminology (which is otherwise synonymous). By the same logic, why could the response not simply be that if they think ‘physical’ resurrection implies too much continuity, so that ‘resurrection’ is indistinguishable from ‘mere resuscitation,’ that their own notion of ‘resurrection’ effectively does away with continuity of numerical identity between the dead and resurrected body, and entails not a redemption of creation, including the body of this creation, but a complete abandonment of it? Rather, both kinds of polemic are either disingenuous or simple distortions that should be disposed of.
Still, the point remains that this approach takes its license from Paul’s work more than any other NT text. Features of Paul’s work are typically recruited for the purpose of rejecting any notion of the resurrection body being a ‘physical’ body, which otherwise might be the default expectation, given the terminology involved.35 Thus, the last section of this article addresses 1 Cor. 15 from the perspective of answering the question of whether or not Paul’s teaching on resurrection can be described as being a ‘physical’ resurrection.36
1 Cor. 15 and Physical Resurrection
It is necessary at this point to reiterate what I mean by ‘physical resurrection.’ In that ‘physical’ can be synonymous with ‘bodily,’ especially when contrasted with adjectives like ‘spiritual,’ a physical resurrection involves the body that dies, so that the resurrection body is numerically identical with the pre-mortem body (i.e., physical resurrection entails identical embodiment). The results of resurrection involve that body, rather than leaving it unaddressed in favor of some other anthropological aspect or substance, and the resurrection body is able to be perceived by the senses, especially by being visible and tangible.
Four features of 1 Cor. 15 often presented as contrary to this understanding of resurrection are as follows. First, the description of Jesus’s appearances fit with the descriptions of theophanies, not physical appearances.37 Second, in rebuttal of both physical resurrection and the early Christians’ majority preference for referring to the resurrection of the flesh, some note that Paul refers to the body as what rises, not the flesh.38 Third, the description of the resurrection body as related to spirit/Spirit in some way (as σῶμα πνευματικόν) implies such a radical transformation as to eschew any notion of the body as ‘physical.’39 Fourth, Paul’s explicit denial that ‘flesh and blood’ can inherit the kingdom of God is thought to be a direct rejection of ‘physical’ description.40
On the first point, while much more has been written on the significance of the language of Jesus ‘appearing’ (ὤφθη), particularly in terms of its proposed theophanic resonances, than I can properly review here, the fact remains that the language is ambiguous concerning modality or physicality by itself.41 The term can refer to a theophany (e.g., Gen. 12:7; 17:1; Exod. 33:22–23; Num. 20:6; Acts 7:2) and it may imply a visionary experience in some cases, but this passive form of the verb also refers to the appearances of many others, including humans (e.g., Exod. 10:28–29), angels (e.g., Judg. 6:12), land (Gen. 1:9), a horse (2 Macc. 3:25), and so on (for other references to the basic act of ‘showing up’ or ‘making an appearance’ at a location, see Acts 7:26; Rev. 11:19; 12:1, 3).
Other accounts of resurrection appearances use this aorist passive form (Luke 24:34; Acts 13:31; 26:16; cf. Acts 9:17) along with other tenses and voices to refer to encounters with the risen Jesus (Matt. 28:7 // Mark 16:7; Matt. 28:10; Luke 24:24, 39; John 20:25, 29; Acts 9:27; 22:14–15; 26:16). For Paul and the Gospel writers, there does not seem to be a stark distinction between the active, middle, and passive forms of ὁράω in terms of what kind of experience they convey, even as Paul himself uses the perfect active ἐόρακα in 1 Cor. 9:1 to refer to how he saw the risen Lord. The major distinction is that the passive draws attention to the action of Jesus while the active draws attention to the action of the witness. This notion fits with the tradition in 1 Cor. 15, where the focus remains on Jesus even as the various witnesses are listed. The sense is that Jesus shows up, being visible (and, in the Gospels at least, even tangible) to the witnesses, and initiates encounters for his purposes.
More importantly, the key verb used for referring to Jesus’s resurrection is less ambiguous on the matter of modality and physicality than the verb for referring to his appearances, meaning that it is the more restrictive verbal idea that should shape our understanding of the more open-ended one. The verb ἐγείρω has its source domain in physical movement. As Cook observes, the basic meaning is to, ‘imply a physical motion upward from the state of sleep, lying down or death – in contexts where individuals are sleeping, lying down or dead.’42 As such, it is a term that appears in mostly Christian and some Jewish sources to describe resurrection as getting up/awakening/arising from the sleep of death. Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida likewise include ἐγείρω in the semantic domains of change of state (by restoring), existing (causing to exist), standing, waking, health (restoring someone to health), and living (living again after being raised from death).43 In the context of this verb, particularly when applied to resurrection from the dead, there is no reason to think that the Jesus who was raised physically from the dead—as implied by the term without any clear indications to the contrary—appeared in any fashion other than physically as well.
As for the second point, it is true that Paul often uses ‘flesh’ in a decidedly negative fashion, but he also can use it neutrally as a synonym for or as a part of the ‘body,’ his preferred anthropological term in this chapter on resurrection.44 In this chapter there is such a neutral usage in v. 39, where it is subsumed under a larger exposition on the body and God’s creative will expressed in principles of teleology (‘God gives it a body just as he has purposed’) and differentiation (‘to each of the seeds a body of its own’), as God makes certain bodies for certain creatures, spaces/environments, and overall purposes (vv. 36–41). Each form of flesh attests to how the creature is equipped for the environment they inhabit. Likewise, his extension of ‘body’ language to the various heavenly objects in v. 41, as well as his reference to heavenly and earthly bodies each having glory appropriate to them in v. 40, illustrate these principles that show how the Creator can make bodies fit for the new creation (cf. Tertullian, Res. 60; Origen, Princ. 3.6.4).
This exposition follows the example of the seed that also illustrates the principles of teleology and differentiation, where the plant, although significantly different from the seed, is not something different in kind from the seed. By these same principles, the seed contains within itself the telos of the plant that it will become, the body God has purposed for it (cf. Gen. 1:11–12).45 There is numerical identity between the initial state of the seed and the final state of the plant, as there will be numerical identity between the pre-mortem and post-mortem resurrection bodies. The use of ‘flesh’ in the segment of vv. 36–41, as well as the overall tenor of Paul’s argument ultimately vitiates the attempt to undermine the notion of physical resurrection.
As with the first point, there is much to say about the controversy surrounding the third point. But insofar as the matter of the σῶμα πνευματικόν in v. 44 concerns the question of the physicality of resurrection, the only reason to think that it rules out a physical body being involved in resurrection is if one makes faulty presumptions both about what ‘physical’ means and about what πνευματικός could mean in this context. After all, the terminology does not signify that the resurrection body will be composed of spirit, even as its contrast, σῶμα ψυχικόν, does not describe the present body as composed of ‘soul.’ The definition Paul gives the term is a function of both contrast and content.
And the contrast is notably not that of spirit vs. flesh, although that would be a natural contrast in Paul’s context, as Andrew Clinton Johnson is keen to note, ‘The careful hierarchy represented by the first three pairs of antitheses is disrupted by this antithesis. In a hierarchy of ‘stuff’ composing the human body in the ancient world, the material of psyche and that of pneuma simply aren’t at opposite ends of the scale. The most natural opposite of pneuma on the cosmological scale is clearly flesh (sarx), not psyche.’46 If Paul’s point was to teach that the resurrection body will have no consistency of flesh (specifically in the neutral sense) or be physical, this alternative contrast would have been the clearest way to signify such. However, it is not what Paul says.
Rather, the resurrection body is ‘spiritual’ in that it ‘pertains to’ and ‘belongs to’ the life-giving Spirit (here identified with Christ in v. 45). Such is the general sense derived from the -ικος suffix to the root word (cf. Rom. 1:11; 7:14; 15:27; 1 Cor. 2:13–15; 3:1, 3; 9:11; 10:3–4; 12:1; 14:1; Gal. 6:1; Eph. 1:3; 5:19; Col. 1:9; 3:16).47 In this case, one can be more precise in observing that the term signifies: 1) the Spirit’s animation and governance of the resurrection body (in light of the contrast of the two kinds of bodies); 2) union with Christ the life-giver, who communicates resurrection life with the Spirit (in light of the reference to Christ as life-giving Spirit); 3) the suitability of the body for the new creation according to the purposes of the God who will be ‘all in all’ (v. 28) in a world in which the effects of sin are removed (in light of what was noted in the previous segment of vv. 36–41 about the fitness of bodies for their environment).48 In other words, ‘spiritual,’ as the adjective is often (albeit unhelpfully) translated, has nothing to do with what the body is composed of, but is rather a function of defining the body in relation to what animates, governs, possesses, and, indeed, contextualizes the body (note that this description of the body is the last in a series in vv. 42–44 that characterizes the body in terms fit for a new creation).49
It is at this point that Wright’s aforementioned notion of ‘transphysicality’ is helpful. The text has given no explicit indication that the body is non-physical, but it is clear that the physicality of the body is different from the present one. This description of the body as ‘spiritual’ or ‘belonging to the Spirit’ (in the senses outlined above) is the climax in a series of contrasts between the present body that is sown and the future body that is raised. The present body cannot be described as having incorruptibility (or, as I prefer to translate it, ‘complete vivification’), glory, power, or indeed as ‘belonging to the Spirit’ without undergoing transformation in the eschatological resurrection. But just as the body that receives the actions of both ‘sowing’ and ‘raising’ is the same body transformed, so too the logical implication, without further qualification indicating the contrary, is that the body remains physical, albeit with transformed physicality that transcends the limitations of the current physical body that make it corruptible, humiliating, weak, and belonging to the mortal soul/ψυχή.50
That leaves the last feature and the one most frequently appealed to for a denial of ‘physical’ resurrection in Paul’s statement that ‘flesh and blood’ cannot inherit the kingdom of God. This denial would indeed seem to be precisely what I said was missing from the previous contrast of σῶμα ψυχικόν and σῶμα πνευματικόν if Paul meant to deny resurrection of the flesh (in the neutral sense that is synonymous with the body or the substance thereof) or physical resurrection as such.51 But one must remember that this phrase, as well as the reference to the ‘kingdom of God,’ is part of the same series of contrasts between the present state and the resurrection/new creation state that began in v. 42 and has extended through the Adam-Christ contrast in vv. 45–49. This is further indicated in the parallelism created in the last clause of v. 50 with the terms carried over from v. 42 of φθορά and ἀφθαρσία.52 In both texts, the operative assumption is that bodies of the present age experience in themselves and in the world around them the characteristic principle of decay, while bodies of the new age will experience decay’s reversal in complete vivification (in the sense of having a life that is no longer susceptible to any trace of corruption or decay, as the body now transcends the limitations of corruptibility). Indeed, Paul says that for humans to participate in the new creation characterised by this complete vivification (ἀφθαρσία), they must be transformed to have that same attribute (vv. 53–54).
In such a context, ‘flesh and blood’ functions as a phrase that refers to mortal—and thus frail and weak—nature or to humanity as opposed to the divine.53 Indeed, such an interpretation is well supported by the parallelism with φθορά, the larger structure of parallels noted above, and consideration of how Paul and others used the phrase in the ancient world (Sir. 14:18; 17:31; 1 En. 15:4; T.Abr. 13:7; Matt. 16:17; Gal. 1:16; Eph. 6:12; Heb. 2:14; m. Naz. 9.5; m. Soṭah 8.1; b. Sanh. 91a; b. Ber. 28b; cf. Lev 17:11; Philo, Heir 57). This interpretation is also able to account for why Paul refers to both flesh and blood, whereas anti-physical interpretations in modern scholarship fixate on ‘flesh’ and thus assumes that Paul is referring to compositional substance, leaving ‘blood’ unaccounted for while never explaining why Paul did not simply refer to ‘flesh’ if such were his point.
Indeed, in further contrast to an anti-physical interpretation, Paul insists that it is ‘this corruptible [body]’ and ‘this mortal [body]’ that must be clothed with the transformative qualities of the resurrection (vv. 53–54). The only clear nominal antecedent for this τοῦτο is the body in vv. 42–44. Specifically, because this body is on the negative side of the contrast with the transformed outcome in all four contrasts of vv. 53–54, it is the parallel for the state of Adam-like humanity in vv. 45–49 and for the σῶμα ψυχικόν in vv. 42–44.54 By extension, what Paul describes as fully vivified and immortal is the parallel for the state of Christ-like humanity and for the σῶμα πνευματικόν. Multiple ancient authors described Paul as tactilely pointing to his own body when he says ‘this,’ and such an account is certainly plausible in the context of a reader performing a public reading (Tertullian, Res. 51; Origen, Princ. 2.3.2; Rufinus, Symb. 45; cf. Jerome, Jo. Hier. 29).55 But in any case, Paul states that it is this present body, the body currently characterised by corruptibility and mortality, that must be clothed. Furthermore, Paul’s use of Scripture in vv. 54–55 indicates that it is not the body that is swallowed up, but the death (or mortality) that dominates the present mortal body. This body is rescued, redeemed, and renewed, not replaced.
Paul’s argument throughout this chapter, rather, fits what I have defined as ‘physical resurrection.’ The last point in particular reinforces what I have observed from the other three features that Paul conveys identical embodiment, a notion best maintained with adherence to physical resurrection, rather than the needlessly obfuscating ‘bodily-but-not-physical’ approach. Paul may never use the terminology of ‘physical’ in his description of resurrection, but it fits his teaching, nonetheless.
Conclusion
I have reviewed the debate about the use of ‘physical’ to describe Jesus’s resurrection and the eschatological resurrection and I have found the description to be helpful for conveying what Scripture teaches, with the focus on Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor. 15 here. Those who reject this description have overcomplicated what it means and introduced obfuscating distinctions, rather than providing better illumination to the statements of Scripture. The biblical teaching is not that the resurrection is ‘bodily, but not physical,’ but rather ‘bodily and thus physical.’ Both temporary resurrection and eschatological resurrection are physical in the senses that have been noted, but eschatological resurrection also produces a result that is ‘transphysical’ in terms of a body having a transformed physicality that transcends the present limits of physicality. I have only had space to explore Paul’s teaching here, but further exploration of the NT would likewise demonstrate the applicability of the points made here.
Also note Anathemas 10 and 11 of the Fifteen Anathemas of 553.
The earliest implied post-NT reference to this resurrection of the flesh in Christian discourse is the citation of a Greek translation of Job 19:26 that refers to the raising of “this flesh of mine” in 1 Clem. 26:3. The earliest explicit declaration comes from Ignatius, Smyrn. 3. Also see 2 Clem. 9:1–6; 14:3–5; Justin (?), Res.; Irenaeus, Haer. 1.22.1; 3.16.6; 4.33.2; 5.3.3; 5.7; 5.9–15; 5.31.2; 5.33.1; Tatian, Or. Graec. 15 (cf. 6; 25); Theophilus, Autol. 1.7. After the second century, Tertullian is particularly noteworthy, as the very title of his work on resurrection—On the Resurrection of the Flesh—attests to his favor of this description in his references to “flesh” in a way equivalent to the neutral sense of the Greek equivalent as the substance of the body (see esp. chs. 2; 4–10; 16–18). The stress on bodily continuity went together with a perceived need for more clarity on what is involved in resurrection, as the Gnostics had expanded the semantic domains of the relevant terms for resurrection, as they had not previously referred to the resurrection of the soul or spirit. In response, the patristic authors made more explicit what had previously been implicit in resurrection language as involving a bodily event (whether literally or as a source domain for metaphorical usage). Origen also sought to distinguish his own teaching on resurrection from the views associated with Gnostics, even if he also rejected the majority view of the patristic authors. For more on the semantic issues and history involved in the use of resurrection language, including the Gnostics’ broadening of the semantic domains of the relevant terms, see John Granger Cook, ‘The Use of ἀνίστημι and ἐγείρω and the “Resurrection of a Soul”,’ ZNW 108 (2017), 259–80.
More generally, Caroline Walker Bynum observes, ‘a concern for material and structural continuity showed remarkable persistence even where it seemed almost to require philosophical incoherence, theological equivocation, or aesthetic offensiveness’ (The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1995], 11).
Otto Pfleiderer, Paulinism: A Contribution to the History of Primitive Christian Theology, vol. 1: Exposition of Paul’s Doctrine, trans. by Edward Peters (London: Williams & Norgate, 1877), 128–32, 260; Ernst Teichmann, Die paulinischen Vorstellungen von Auferstehung und Gericht und ihre Beziehung zur jüdischen Apokalyptik (Freiburg: Mohr, 1896), 33–62. Also see Andrew W. Pitts, ‘Paul’s Concept of the Resurrection Body in 1 Corinthians 15:35-58,’ in Paul and Gnosis, ed. by Stanley E. Porter and David Yoon, PAST 9 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 44–58 (44–45); James P. Ware, ‘Paul’s Understanding of the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:36–54,’ JBL 133 (2014), 809–35 (813 n. 15).
James M. Robinson, ‘Jesus – from Easter to Valentinus (or to the Apostles’ Creed),’ JBL 101 (1982), 5–37 (9–16). For more on Gnostic interpretation of 1 Cor 15, see Elaine H. Pagels, ‘Mystery of the Resurrection: A Gnostic Reading of 1 Corinthians 15,’ JBL 93 (1974), 276–88.
Dale C. Allison, Jr., Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (New York; London: T&T Clark, 2005), 225–27. Such an argument may also be implied, without explicit appeal to Origen, in Joseph J. Smith, ‘N. T. Wright’s Understanding of the Nature of Jesus’ Risen Body,’ HeyJ 57 (2016), 29–73 (55–57).
Robert H. Gundry, Sōma in Biblical Theology: With Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987), 47–50, 161–62; N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 494, 503.
John Granger Cook, ‘Resurrection in Paganism and the Question of an Empty Tomb in 1 Corinthians 15,’ NTS 63 (2017), 56–75 (57).
Cf. also Cook, ‘Use,’ 259–80; Gundry, Sōma, 161–69.
Paul Gardner, 1 Corinthians, ZECNT (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018), 707.
E. Earle Ellis, ‘Sōma in First Corinthians,’ Int 44 (1990), 132–44 (142).
Dag Øistein Endsjø, ‘Immortal Bodies, before Christ: Bodily Continuity in Ancient Greece and 1 Corinthians,’ JSNT 30 (2008), 417–36 (423–27). Where he would register an objection is in how he thinks Paul is using the terminology here: ‘But what transformation from soma psychikon to soma pneumatikon actually implied remains just as contested as Paul’s metaphor of the seed. The way this passage is often translated as the present “physical body” shall be transformed into a “spiritual body” represents no correct rendition, but it may, nevertheless, reflect correctly how Paul understood the resurrection body as the flesh definitely is excluded’ (Endsjø, Greek Resurrection Beliefs and the Success of Christianity [New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009], 143).
Wright, Resurrection, esp. 342, 348–53, 477–78, 604–7, 722.
For more extensive articulations of the debate on how Jesus’s resurrection body was seen, see Jacques Schlosser, ‘Vision, extase et apparition du Ressuscité,’ in Résurrection: L’après-mort dans le monde ancient et le Nouveau Testament, ed. by Odette Mainville and Daniel Marguerat, MdB 45 (Geneva: Labor et Fides; Montreal: Médiaspaul, 2001), 129–59 (146–59).
Wright, Resurrection, 477.
Wright, Resurrection, 477–78.
Cf. Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000), 1279.
Andrew Clinton Johnson, ‘Turning the World Upside Down in 1 Corinthians 15: Apocalyptic Epistemology, the Resurrected Body and the New Creation,’ EvQ 75 (2003), 291–309 (308; italics original).
Cf. also C. F. D. Moule, ‘Introduction,’ in The Significance of the Message of the Resurrection for Faith in Jesus Christ, ed. by C. F. D. Moule, SBT 2/8 (London: SCM, 1968), 10; John Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2002), 116.
Joel B. Green, ‘Eschatology and the Nature of Humans,’ Science and Christian Belief 14 (2002), 33–50; Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); N. T. Wright, ‘Mind, Spirit, Soul and Body: All for One and One for All: Reflections on Paul’s Anthropology in His Complex Contexts,’ in Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978–2013 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 455–73 (467–73).
Wright, Resurrection, 127.
Wright, Resurrection, 334.
Joshua Mugg and James T. Turner, Jr., ‘Why a Bodily Resurrection? The Bodily Resurrection and the Mind/Body Relation,’ Journal of Analytic Theology 5 (2017), 121–44 (125). For more on the importance of this point of identical embodiment, see Mugg and Turner, ‘Why a Bodily Resurrection,’ 126–40. ‘Numerical identity’ is a contrast to ‘qualitative identity.’ The former refers to ‘selfsameness’ or being the selfsame entity (x and y are identical if and only if the terms designating them have the same referent, as my mother is numerically identical to my brother’s mother) while the latter refers to having identical qualities (e.g., two cars of the same make, model, year of production, and color).
Cook, ‘Resurrection,’ 56–75; Cook, ‘Use,’ 259–80; K. R. Harriman, ‘Why Should God Raise the Dead? Worldview Foundations and Functions of Resurrection Belief in Dan 12, 1 Cor 15, and Q Al-Qiyamah 75’ (PhD diss., Asbury Theological Seminary, 2022), 226–37; Ware, ‘Paul’s Understanding,’ 809–35; Ware, ‘The Resurrection of Jesus in the Pre-Pauline Formula of 1 Cor 15.3–5,’ NTS 60 (2014), 475–98.; Wright, Resurrection, 347–53.
Gerald O’Collins, Jesus Risen: An Historical, Fundamental and Systematic Examination of Christ’s Resurrection (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1987), 122. Cf. Smith, ‘N. T. Wright’s Understanding,’ 29–31.
Also see Gerald O’Collins, The Easter Jesus, (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1973), 60; O’Collins, What Are They Saying About the Resurrection? (New York: Paulist, 1978), 47, 49–50. Cf. Michael Welker, ‘Wright on Resurrection,’ SJT 60 (2007), 458–75 (458–59, 470, 474).
Gerald O’Collins, Interpreting the Resurrection: Examining the Major Problems in the Stories of Jesus’ Resurrection (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1988), 79. Also note O’Collins, What Are They Saying, 46–47: ‘Such overbelief also entails holding that he quite literally took and ate a piece of broiled fish (Lk. 24:42f.), and that more or less gaping holes remained in the hands and side of his risen body (Jn. 20:20, 25, 27). It is easy to spot the weak and even comic side of such overinterpretations. If a resurrected man took a snack, what kind of digestive system did his body have? Can ordinary food be transformed into glorious (normally invisible?) matter or does it pass through without genuinely interacting with such a body? And how could five wounds (the nail marks in hands and feet, as well as the lance wound in the side) remain in this body?’
O’Collins, Jesus Risen, 82. Cf. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. by William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1978), 276.
O’Collins, Easter Jesus, 59.
O’Collins, Interpreting the Resurrection, 6; O’Collins, Jesus Risen, 119–20; Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 266–68; Smith, ‘N. T. Wright’s Understanding,’ 45–46, 58–63.
Smith, ‘N. T. Wright’s Understanding,’ 45. Cf. Welker, ‘Wright on Resurrection,’ 474.
Murray J. Harris notes, ‘Only in the apocryphal gospels (e.g., Gospel of Peter 35–49; Gospel of the Hebrews apud Jerome, Vir. ill. 2) do unbelievers become witnesses of the risen Jesus—and remain unbelievers’ (Raised Immortal: Resurrection and Immortality in the New Testament [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985], 50).
Smith, ‘N. T. Wright’s Understanding,’ 29–73; Welker, ‘Wright on the Resurrection,’ 458–75. Such criticisms are reiterated in Karl Olav Sandnes and Jan-Olav Henriksen, Resurrection: Texts and Interpretation, Experience and Theology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2020), 185–86.
Welker better recognises this context for Wright’s usage of the term, but claims that the Gospels do not allow it, mainly on the basis of the motif in which the disciples have trouble recognising Jesus (‘Wright on Resurrection,’ 464–69). I do not have space here to respond fully to Welker’s problem, but all that this point works against is a notion of Jesus’s resurrection that involves no transformation, which, of course, neither Wright nor other representatives of the ‘physical resurrection’ view ever claim. It does not rule out that Jesus’s resurrection was physical in the sense of involving his body that was buried, so that the resurrected body is numerically identical to that body, in contrast to a body somehow composed of spirit, and producing a resultant body that was visible and tangible.
O’Collins, What Are They Saying, 48–49; Smith, ‘N. T. Wright’s Understanding,’ 37–41, 43–47. Cf. also Bruce D. Chilton, Resurrection Logic: How Jesus’ First Followers Believed God Raised Him from the Dead (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2019), 70–73; Brian John Schmisek, ‘The “Spiritual Body” as Oxymoron in 1 Corinthians 15:44,’ BTB 45 (2015), 230–38 (234–36).
The reader may wonder why this section does not feature discussion of the empty tomb. This absence is due to the fact that the empty tomb is not present in Paul’s text. Given my spatial limitations, I have sought to focus on elements that apply to resurrection in the NT more generally that can be carried over to the analysis without engaging in any lengthy argument about how Paul does, in fact, assume the empty tomb, even if he does not mention it. Furthermore, engaging with this subject would require an additional detour to address how those who object to the ‘physical’ description see the empty tomb and what it signifies about the relationship of Jesus’s buried body and resurrection body. As Welker exemplifies for this view, the empty tomb conveys a sense of mystery, ‘The pre-Easter body of Jesus Christ is withdrawn! For they all speak of the immense difficulty of the disciples to reidentify and recognise the resurrected Jesus. And this could not have been a problem if he had been “thoroughly alive again”.’ Welker, ‘Wright on Resurrection,’ 468. On the matter of Paul and the empty tomb, see Harriman, ‘Why Should God Raise the Dead,’ 140–43.
E.g., Smith, ‘N. T. Wright’s Understanding,’ 41–47 and sources cited there.
E.g., Welker, ‘Wright on Resurrection,’ 460–61.
E.g., Smith, ‘N. T. Wright’s Understanding,’ 37–41.
E.g., O’Collins, What Are They Saying, 48–49.
Andrzej Gieniusz notes that the term, along with a dative object, can be used for, ‘(1) ordinary seeing of material object and (2) for a real and objective visualizing of supernatural beings, normally invisible, made possible for the seer because of divine enablement, or even for (3) a kind of a vision that is clearly intellectual’ (‘Jesus’ Resurrection Appearances in 1 Cor 15,5–8 in the Light of the Syntagma Ὤφθη + Dative,’ BibAn 9 (2019), 481–92 [490]).
Cook, ‘Resurrection,’ 59. Cf. Ware, ‘Resurrection,’ 492–494; Franco Montanari, ed., The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek (Leiden: Brill, 2016), s.v. ἐγείρω; BDAG, s.v. ἐγείρω. The same observations apply, mutatis mutandis, to Paul’s use of the nominal term for resurrection—ἀνάστασις—as these sources show elsewhere.
L&N 13.65, 83, 17.7, 9–10, 23.77, 94, 140.
For more on the various functions of ‘flesh’ in Paul’s anthropology and the various references of his ‘flesh’ terminology, see James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998), 62–73; Sarah Harding, Paul’s Eschatological Anthropology: The Dynamics of Human Transformation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), esp. 78, 109, 171–201.
Gregory the Great, Mor. Job 14.73; Albert the Great, Res. 1.Q1.S8; Aquinas, Comm. 1 Cor. §§973, 1015; David R. Kirk, ‘Seeds and Bodies: Cosmology, Anthropology and Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15:35–49’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Aberdeen, 2015), 117–31.
Johnson, ‘Turning the World,’ 301.
BDAG, s.v. πνευματικός; Pierre Chantraine, Études sur le Vocabulaire Grec (Paris: Librairie Klincksieck, 1956), 170; James H. Moulton and Wilbert F. Howard, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament, vol. 2: Accidence and Word-Formation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1920), 359, 378; Wright, Resurrection, 349–52.
The preceding text summarizes all to briefly my analysis in Harriman, ‘Why Should God Raise the Dead,’ 226–37. Even though I agree with the sources in the previous footnote that a function of this contrast consists in animation, that is an implication of the use of the suffixed term in context, not what it semantically signifies anytime it is used, as, for example, σαρκικός in 1 Cor. 3:3 and 9:11 does not signify something animated by flesh. That is why I use the more general sense that Chantraine uses and unpack what ‘belonging to’ or ‘pertaining to’ means in this context.
Harriman, ‘Why Should God Raise the Dead,’ 217–25.
On the matter of the continuity of the body receiving these actions, in contrast to what would be an unprecedented frequency of switching references to two different bodies so many times in such a small space, see Ware, ‘Paul’s Understanding,’ 818–24.
This was a frequent claim that patristic authors faced from their interlocutors, as noted in Jennifer R. Strawbridge, “How the Body of Lazarus Helps to Solve a Pauline Problem,” NTS 63 (2017), 588–603 (589–91).
Occasionally, the suggestion reemerges that the parallelism here is synthetic rather than synonymous, so that ‘flesh and blood’ refers to the living, while ‘corruptibility’ refers to the dead, particularly under the influence of Joachim Jeremias, ‘Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom of God,’ NTS 2 (1956): 151–59. This interpretation fails for two reasons. One, φθορά does not refer to death or the dead as such, but to that which is susceptible to destruction, corruption, decay, and mortality. It is this quality, not a quality of being identical with death, that makes it incapable of receiving what lasts forever. Two, it is exceedingly difficult to explain why the A members in this parallelism (‘flesh and blood’ and ‘corruptibility’) are supposedly in synthetic relationship, but the B members (‘kingdom of God’ and ‘complete vivification’) are not.
For more on this point, see John Gillman, ‘Transformation in 1 Cor 15,50-53,’ ETL 58 (1982), 309–33 (316–19).
Thiselton, Corinthians, 1297; Ware, ‘Paul’s Understanding,’ 825.
Cf. Pitts, ‘Paul’s Concept,’ 57.