Paul's Uncertainty About His Death in His Letters
(avg. read time: 7–15 mins.)
This post serves as both an update and a more focused analysis on the subject than what I have posted previously. Most extensively, I have written about Paul’s beliefs concerning the timing of Jesus’s return in my post on resurrection in 2 Cor 4:13–5:10. But there I was addressing it as one issue among others for a text that has raised plenty of questions. As Philippians is mostly regarded as even later than 2 Corinthians (depending on which imprisonment one assigns the writing of the letter to), it is also important to the question of how Paul regarded the likelihood of him being alive when Jesus would return. A rather popular account goes that Paul both thought and taught that he would live to see the Parousia in 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians, but then he started to change his perspective on this in his later letters, supposedly tempering his expectations. What exactly brought this supposed change about, beyond some general appeal to the “delay of the Parousia,” is unclear, nor indeed is it clear that Paul changed in his views. It is more that his earlier letters have often been misunderstood, and Philippians will further demonstrate as much, as we see that he is still uncertain about his death.
Both 1 Thess 4:15 and 1 Cor 15:52 are construed as evidence that Paul thought and taught that he would be alive when Jesus returned because in both cases Paul uses the first-person plural in reference to those alive at the time of the Parousia (“we” will be changed vs. “the dead” will be raised), rather than a third-person plural. Likewise, 2 Cor 4:14 is construed as indicating a change in thinking with Paul using the first-person plural to place himself among those who will be raised. Apparently, the only slightly older Paul had quickly changed his tune without a specific crisis that adherents of this view can point to.
Much has been written on this question, as well as the larger matter of whether the so-called “delay of the Parousia” was a defining crisis for the NT Christians. On these points, I would recommend a book by my professor Ben Witherington: Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World. I would also recommend two articles:
Ben F. Meyer, “Did Paul’s View of the Resurrection of the Dead Undergo Development?” TS 47 (1986): 363–87.
N. T. Wright, “Hope Deferred? Against the Dogma of Delay,” EC 9 (2018): 37–82.
My comments will be comparatively brief, but I hope they will still be helpful. Those who make this argument about change in Paul’s thinking consistently fail to demonstrate why Paul’s statements imply him thinking that he would live to see the Parousia, as opposed to him thinking that he could live to the see the Parousia. Since the former kind of statement would be stronger and more direct, it does not appear to be what Paul is saying, wherein the strongest evidence in its favor is simply his use of the first-person plural. But if he were to use the third-person plural in the earlier texts, the implication would apparently be that he expected he would most likely not live to see the Parousia. He needed ways of articulating himself to express an expectation that the Parousia could precede his death, without either implying knowledge he did not have (per 1 Thess 5:1–11) or undermining the eschatological urgency of his message. I suggest he found exactly such ways of articulating himself.
That Paul found adequate ways of expressing a genuine possibility about which he was uncertain is actually indicated by his use of the first person. It is possible, as has been proposed by J. Andrew Doole,1 that in 1 Thess 4:13–17 Paul is giving people a sort of consolatory statement to share with one another, as indicated by 4:18. Thus, the “we” in this statement in 4:15 is not even meant to be indicative of what Paul regards about himself. But even if we do not go this route, there is no reason to take this as some statement of certainty that Paul would be alive at the time of the Parousia. This is already indicated in 1 Thess 5:1–11. Even though it is usually statements about the day of the Lord coming as a thief in the night (5:2, 4) and the suddenness of that coming (5:3) that are stressed in contrast to the claim that Paul expected he would be alive at the time of the Parousia, we should also note 5:10. Following the description of the resurrection at Jesus’s Second Coming in 4:13–18, Paul says that whether we are awake (alive) or asleep (dead, per 4:13–15), we will live together with him. If the “we” statements are taken as inclusive of Paul, he would thus be placing himself on both sides of the living-dead divide, for the outcome will be the same: living with the Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed the “we” statements here are like what we find in 1 Corinthians.
Before his major resurrection teaching in 1 Corinthians, he declares his expectation that God will raise “us” (6:14). This is in a text that is supposed to declare that Paul expects to be alive when Jesus returns, but it uses the same phrasing (albeit with a slightly different verb) as 2 Cor 4:14 (in a letter that, despite being written only a few years later, supposedly represents a crucial change in thinking on this subject). Paul thus places “us” on both sides of the living-dead divide, even in the same letter with 1 Cor 6:14 and 1 Cor 15:52 (as he did earlier in 1 Thessalonians). In this light, it becomes clear that when Paul says, “the dead will be raised … and we will be changed,” he is making no statement about his degree of confidence about being alive at the time of the Parousia beyond it being a genuine possibility. After all, the statement of 1 Cor 15:51 implies that the dead will be changed as well. Likewise, v. 51 determines the content of “we.” Paul has already indicated that at least some of the “we” will sleep, as some have already fallen asleep (vv. 6, 18), and Paul had reason to believe that he could too (vv. 30–32), and this in the letter before 2 Corinthians. But all of the people in the sphere of “we,” whether they are asleep at the time or not, will be changed. Furthermore, as noted above, Paul’s description of the raising of “us” in 2 Cor 4:14 is not a statement about the dead in general, but about the apostles in particular. That is what motivates him to use the first-person plural here, not his placement of himself among the dead believers in general.
We should also note that in 2 Cor 5, Paul describes resurrection in terms that imply a reception of the transformed body after death without a period of waiting for Jesus’s arrival. But does this then represent a change in Paul’s thinking from 1 Thess 4 and 1 Cor 15, where he connected the general resurrection to Jesus’s Second Coming? I am inclined to think that the hints of the conditional clause in 5:1 as well as the description of Jesus “presenting” the believers in 4:14 still indicate Paul implicitly connecting the resurrection with Jesus’s Second Coming. It is also never made clear by those who argue that this does represent a change in Paul’s thinking why he would shift so significantly from these foundational teachings in the other texts, based as they would be on a long time of teaching, reflecting, and rethinking on resurrection in light of the resurrection of Jesus (what I have called “Christomorphic resurrection belief”). And why would he undergo such a drastic change in thinking in such a relatively short interval between the writing of 1 and 2 Corinthians, rather than in the approximately fifteen years of Christian ministry before even writing 1 Thessalonians? Also, it is never really explained why, if Paul expected that Jesus’s return would be soon, he necessarily expected at the point in his ministry represented by 1 Thessalonians that he, specifically, would be alive to see it. He knew other Christians had died, he knew for many years that he was at a higher risk of dying because of his ministry, so why did he supposedly think he, specifically, would live to see the Second Coming even if he believed that it would happen soon? One aspect does not entail the other.
More likely, the difference in what we have seen is explained by the differentiation in perspective between 1 Thess 4 and 1 Cor 15 on the one hand and 2 Cor 5 (as well as Phil 1, addressed below) on the other hand. The first two texts present the collective and external perspective on the event of the general resurrection and thus present its linkage to the Second Coming. 2 Corinthians, though, presents the individual and internal perspective on the event, for whom there has been no interim experience or perception of the passage of time; as far as the one who has died and arose is concerned, the transition is immediate. Only from the external perspective has there been a passage of time. Only when speaking from this external perspective does Paul describe the dead as sleeping (1 Cor 7:39; 11:30; 15:6, 18, 20, 51; 1 Thess 4:13–15; 5:10). Since he is here explicitly describing what happens not in terms of the resurrection event in general, but what happens specifically for those who die, he speaks from the internal perspective.
It should also be noted that 2 Cor 5:9 describes his aim of being pleasing to the Lord whether “at home” or “away.” I have gone into more depth on v. 9 in my aforementioned post, and so my comments here will be brief. Since Paul has applied the verbs to both the living and the dead in turn, he does not specify here which he means when referring to being at home or away. But in the earlier text of 1 Thess 5:10, following the description of the resurrection at Jesus’s Second Coming in 4:13–18, Paul says that whether we are awake (alive) or asleep (dead), we will live together with him. Then in the later text of Rom 14:8–9, immediately prior to a statement about appearing before the judgment seat (as here), he says whether we live or die we are the Lord’s, and that Christ died and rose again in order to be Lord of both the dead and the living. We see a similar, but less specific, encompassing statement here, though now applied to the goal of pleasing the Lord both in this life and in the state of resurrection, in anticipation of appearing before the judgment seat.
This point, considering that it also incorporates a letter between 2 Corinthians and Philippians in Romans, thus serves as a bridge to our concern about what Paul says about this matter in Philippians. Although Paul is in prison and although he is writing even later than the supposed turning point in his expectations of being alive at the time of Jesus’s Second Coming, we still see Paul expressing some uncertainty about his death. When he talks of his death, he expresses himself in conditional statements.
First, we see this in Phil 1:20–24. As I have already written about this text in relation to the question of the intermediate state, I can build off of those comments here. Paul is expressing in this letter written from prison his desire that, no matter what, Christ should be proclaimed. As such, he uses the conditional statement that “whether” he lives or dies, he wants for Christ to be exalted in his body. This leads for him to say in v. 21, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” This implies a preference for the condition he will experience after death, as in 2 Cor 5:8. But at the same time, he is torn, knowing that to continue to live in the flesh (the body of the present as opposed to the glorified body of Phil 3:21) will lead to fruitful work. But he also says in v. 23 that he has the desire to depart and to be with Christ, which he describes as much better.
This text lacks the peculiar language of 2 Cor 5:8, but in concept it conveys much the same points. And like with that text, the typical dualist reading is presumptuously eisegetical. The same elements of identifying the person with the soul as distinguished from the body, of the soul leaving the body at death, and of the soul specifically going to heaven are read into this text. He introduces no such anthropological divisions and distinctions here that many, based on the forcefulness of common-sense dualism more so than on the demands of the text itself, attribute to him. He simply says that death would involve him departing and being with Christ.
As with 2 Cor 5:8, we should see this text as a reference to resurrection described from the individual and internal perspective. The language of departure matches the description of being “absent from the/this body” there. Likewise, the description of being with Christ as being better matches the description of being “at home with the Lord” as preferable there. In the context of 2 Cor 5, this language made the most sense as referring to resurrection using Paul’s language and internal perspective peculiar to that text. Here, it thus also makes sense as a reference to resurrection, which he will talk about more in ch. 3, whereas his text otherwise has no place for an intermediate state. He simply countenances the possibility, which, as far as can be told, he always countenanced in his letters, that he would go through the resurrection and not only the transformation (as would be the case if he lived).
But unlike in 2 Cor 5:8, he explicitly states that it is more necessary for him to remain in the flesh because of his audience in Philippi (v. 24). In part, this also has to do with a further difference from 2 Cor 5, where he speaks from the first person as a representative of the apostolic ministry. But here, he speaks only for himself and for his own circumstances. Obviously, he would prefer above all for Christ to return, resolve this tension for him, and bring all his hopes to pass. But that is not his concern. His concern is his life and the ministry that comes with it, both given to him as a charge by God.
Second, Paul uses another statement in 2:17. Here he says, “But even if I am poured out as an offering even upon the ministry of your faith, I am delighted and rejoice with all of you.” Just as his statements about his apparent expectation of what would happen did not match claims of the strength of his articulated confidence on timing, so too this is not a particularly strong claim to the contrary. He is reckoning with the possibility that he could be poured out as an offering; hence he uses the conditional “if.” But at no point does he make the strong, direct statement that he expects to die. Whether that is because he thinks this imprisonment will not lead to his death or because he thinks the Second Coming could happen before his death, the fact remains that he does not speak of it as some inevitability. Ironically, as we saw earlier, in 1 Corinthians, a letter where he was supposed to have been asserting his expectation of living to see the Second Coming, there is a text that could be read in isolation as implying that he did expect to die, in contrast to this text, where it is a possibility. But as a matter of fact, Paul is being consistent here with his general statements of uncertainty while maintaining the sense of imminence.
Third and finally, we must consider 3:8–11. This is another text that I have explored previously, as it is a key expression of Paul’s teaching of making the gospel story our story in union with Christ. He speaks of his purpose of gaining Christ and being found in him, that is, of fulfilling the union with him. This also means that he has the purpose “to know him, the power of his resurrection, and the participation of his suffering, thereby being conformed to his death, if in that [certain] way I will arrive at the resurrection that is from the dead” (3:10–11). Even here, where Paul speaks of being conformed to Jesus’s death, he still follows it up with a conditional statement. He uses an “if” statement with reference to attaining the resurrection that is out of the dead, meaning the resurrection that separates from the rest of the dead in conformity with Jesus and in reception of everlasting life. Likewise, as I noted in the last post, he will write in 3:21 about the transformation of “our” bodies, which was something expected of both the living and the dead in his teaching in 1 Cor 15, as well as 2 Cor 5. Even in this letter, his statements fit with someone who thought he could live to see Jesus’s Second Coming but who did not claim to know when Jesus would return. From his perspective, he could have been among the living who are transformed at the Second Coming or among the dead who will be resurrected and transformed in meeting the Lord at his Second Coming.
J. Andrew Doole, “Did Paul Really Think He Was Going to Die? Paul, the Parousia, and the First Person Plural in 1 Thess 4:13–18,” NovT 62 (2020): 44–59.