Principles of Creation in Gen 1, Ps 8, and 1 Cor 15

(avg. read time: 9–18 mins.)

As I have noted before, I wrote much about 1 Cor 15 for my dissertation. Today, I am adapting part of my dissertation concerning a section of 1 Cor 15 I have not directly posted about before: vv. 35–41. Specifically, I am examining this text not only in light of how it functions in 1 Cor 15, but also how it draws on principles of creation articulated in texts that are important context for Paul’s argument in Gen 1 and Ps 8. The principles I am referring to are those of teleology/purpose and differentiation in accordance with God’s creative will and power.

Genesis 1

These principles of creation are established from the opening book of the canon, specifically the story of creation in Gen 1. God creates by his word (or as later texts like John will make clear, his Word). This word is the declaration of his will, including to create. (We will not be exploring it here because we have examined it elsewhere, but another frequent theme associated with his word and will is his wisdom, which is inextricably intertwined with everything else we will be talking about here.) And because his word is powerful, it is also able to make itself effective in enacting the will thereby declared. No other principles of creation are more fundamental than the foundation of it all in God’s creative will and the power to enact it in his word. And what are regular themes of the will declared in God’s word?

One is the principle of teleology or the designation of purpose, as well as the functions to fulfill said purpose. After all, this addresses the issue of how the cosmos was תֹהוּ and בֹהוּ in 1:2, meaning that it was, “empty of purpose, meaning, and function—a place that had no order or intelligibility” (Deut 32:10; 1 Sam 12:21; Job 26:7; Ps 107:40; Isa 29:21; 34:11; 40:17, 23; 44:9; 45:18–19; 49:4; Jer 4:23).¹ As in similar stories to Gen 1, a primary way of assigning functions is through the endowment of names, which showed the essence of something in giving it identity, role, and function (Gen 1:5, 8, 10).² The naming happens directly in the first three days (the only appearances of קרָאָin this text) because those days concern the establishment of functions: time, weather, and fecundity.³ On the other hand, the next three days concern the establishment of functionaries to occupy the realms of creation. On the fourth day the sun, moon, and stars are given their designated purposes of marking time by day and night (1:14–18). On the fifth day, the spaces designated on the second day are populated with creatures who are also given the purpose of being fruitful and multiplying to carry out their various functions in those spaces. Likewise, the land spoken of in day three is populated on the sixth day and those creatures are likewise told to be fruitful and multiply. On this sixth day humans are designated for a purpose similar to other creatures in being fruitful and multiplying, as well as a distinct purpose of being made in the image and likeness of God, which carries with it the charge to rule as stewards bearing God’s image and likeness (1:26–31). Finally, the seventh day is designated for rest as the day of completion, and it is rest that signifies God’s kingship/kingdom.

Another principle we see throughout this story is that of differentiation. From the first day, light is differentiated from darkness as day is from night, even as both are united in the purpose of marking time. The second day likewise shows differentiation between the waters above and the waters below, even as both are united in contributing to the weather. The third day obviously involves differentiation between the waters below and the dry land, as well as the differentiation of kinds of growing things. These differentiations are carried over to the other days as well as the functionaries populate their respective spaces. Humans are also differentiated from the rest of creation, even as they are part of creation, by being designated as the bearers of God’s image and likeness. Throughout the creation of creatures, we see how differentiation is required for there to be complementarity necessary for being fruitful and multiplying as the differentiation of the sexes is also important in God’s creative will. Finally, the seventh day is differentiated from the others by being sanctified for a purpose apropos to its significance of completion distinguished from the other days occupied with the process.

Indeed, teleology and differentiation are intertwined and complementary principles. Not all things are given the exact same purpose, but the differentiation is thus crucial to the designation of purpose. And both the designation of purpose and the differentiation tied thereto proceed from one creative will and are established by one creative power.

Psalm 8

While Ps 8 does not provide a point-by-point progression through creation, it nevertheless offers poetic reflections that convey these same principles. The creative will and power of God are seen in the heavens, described as the work of his hands that he has set into places (8:3). But most surprising to David is that the Creator who did this should have any regard for humans (8:4), yet by his creative will and power they have been set for an exalted purpose in creation in the position of stewardly rule (8:5–6). The last point in itself expresses teleology, for such a position and function is according to God’s purpose, as was the fact that God has set the heavens in place. That humans have been so designated signifies their differentiation from the rest of creation according to God’s will. There is also implicit differentiation in how creation is described in terms of the livestock, the animals “of the field,” the birds “of the heavens,” and fish “of the sea” (8:7–8).

Other texts could be cited to exemplify these principles of creation, but these are the two texts most pertinent to 1 Cor 15:35–41. To see how this works, we must consider how these verses function in 1 Cor 15, for which I adapt the relevant portion of my dissertation.

1 Cor 15:35–41

With v. 35, Paul makes his cleanest break in his argument to begin a new section with the opening ἀλλά, which does not mark continuity like the δέ Paul has been using previously (hence, I translate it as “Nevertheless” in this case). He also marks a distinct section of his argument with the fact that he gives voice to some interlocutors by posing questions: “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body can they come?” These questions drive the rest of vv. 36–49, as well as, indirectly, vv. 50–57.

Paul opens his answer by calling the questioner a “fool” (ἄφρων). This epithet is as cutting as Paul’s remark in v. 34 against one who might claim knowledge. What is more, as with v. 34, this epithet is more specifically appropriate for referring to one who takes no account of God, God’s will, and/or God’s action (cf. the use of the term in Pss 13:1; 52:2; 93:8 [all according to the LXX designations]; Jer 4:22; 17:11; Luke 11:40; 12:20; Eph 5:17; 1 Pet 2:15).⁴ Appropriately, the first part of Paul’s argument in this section appeals to creation and God the Creator who makes it function by his creative power and purpose/will.

Paul is in line with several of his predecessors—scriptural or otherwise—in linking expectations of God’s salvific or royal action to God’s creative activity, particularly as a basis for confidence, as we have reviewed elsewhere. He is also in line with them in linking expectations of God’s coming kingdom to expectations of new or renewed creation (Isa 11; 35; 42:1–44:8; 65:17–66:24; Ezek 36–37; 47; Zech 14:6–9; 1 En. 91:16–17; 92:2–5; Sib. Or. 3.767–795; T.Dan 5:10–13; 4QPs^f/4Q88 VII–IX). According to this worldview framework, the Creator remains sovereign over the continuing operation of creation. When one combines this assumption with the larger structure of covenantal theology, the expectation arises that if the God of creation is the God of covenant, then the promises of God will come to pass by the same power and fidelity that keeps the cosmos functional. And since the God of covenant is also the God of creation, the promises of covenant in some way have cosmic scope and significance, meaning that these covenantal promises are essential to solving the larger problems that the creation created by that God now faces.⁵ In this worldview, the covenantal promises of divine presence and divine kingdom are interlocked with the promise of new creation. Paul demonstrates this logic in multiple ways, as resurrection is necessary to the fulfillment of covenantal promises of the kingdom and to the fulfillment of God’s creative purposes in new creation. In other words, the framework Paul draws from in this portion of his argument depends on the foundations (which I explored more in my dissertation) of God’s inexorable, faithful love, and the promises of kingdom and new creation that correspond to the fulfillment of God’s creative will.

Paul initiates this connection in vv. 36–38 with the statement that what one sows is not made alive unless it dies. Readers throughout history have linked this first statement with Jesus’s statement in John 12:24. While both texts use seed imagery for how God brings new life out of death (specifically Jesus’s death in John), the resurrection connection is not explicit in Jesus’s saying, as his saying is focused on fruitfulness from death rather than the particular seed being “made alive.”⁶ Furthermore, Paul’s statement is part of a larger point that he proceeds to articulate in vv. 37–38 about sowing, reaping, the body produced, and how the entirety is subject to the creative purpose of God.⁷ The seed language is also the means by which he introduces the “body” language in his answer and the cosmic scope of this “body” language that frames the rest of his answer. Within this frame, he uses “body” language to microcosmically describe creation and new creation in vv. 42–49 (as well as the kingdom of God in v. 50); he uses “sowing” language to precede “raising” language in vv. 42–44; and he anticipates the later “clothing” language of transformation in vv. 53–54 through his reference to the “naked” grain before it is “made alive” in v. 37.

Most interpreters have understood the whole cosmological text of vv. 36–41 as presenting metaphors via analogies for the resurrection explicated in vv. 42–49, especially in that they equate sowing with burial.⁸ The life cycle of seeds is taken to be an analogy stressing how the resurrection body differs radically from the present body; it is taken to be an analogy stressing continuity despite radical difference in appearance; or it is a way of simultaneously illustrating both continuity and discontinuity, depending on who is analyzing the analogy.⁹ Murray J. Harris succinctly expresses the ambiguity of the metaphor according to this analogical interpretation, “And while the seed analogy may highlight not so much the factor of identity as that of difference, it nevertheless suggests both continuity (v. 36) and discontinuity (vv. 37-38) between what is sown and what is raised—or, perhaps more aptly stated, it suggests identity with a difference.”¹⁰ Likewise, the differing kinds of flesh and the differing splendors of the earthly and heavenly bodies are seen as offering some kind of analogy for resurrection.

However, it is better to take this text and the contrasts of vv. 42–49 as operating within a common cosmological frame of reference relating the present creation to the new creation in which the resurrection will be as instrumental as the creation of humanity was to the present one (as already established with the Adam-Christ contrast in vv. 20–28). The act of “sowing” invoked in the latter text is thus not burial, but a reference to God’s original creation of humans (as narrated in Gen 1 and 2, and reiterated elsewhere).¹¹ The οὕτως καί construction at the beginning of v. 42 is more likely establishing, “an inferential correspondence between the teleological decrees of God and the taxonomic differentiation of the cosmos on the one side, and ἡ ἀνάστασις τῶν νεκρῶν on the other.”¹² That is, both operate by the same cosmological 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”) according to the creative will and power of God. By these 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).¹³ According to these same principles applied to faithful humans and resurrection, God not only has the power to raise the dead, but also has determined bodies for them according to the divine purpose for new creation. The next segment of vv. 42–49 thus defines God’s creative purposes by contrasts of the present body and the new body, the first Adam and the last Adam, and—by implication—the present creation and the new creation. The two segments combine to expand upon the Adam-Christ contrast of vv. 20–23 and the cosmic scale of hope adumbrated in vv. 24–28.

Thus, while there is obvious change between the seed and the fully grown plant, the seed reference in particular stresses continuity of identity and purpose in line with other articulations of the cycle and teleology of seed life.¹⁴ But again, what ultimately establishes this correspondence of cosmological principles with the resurrection is the continuity of God’s creative will and power, which is also what makes these principles operate.¹⁵ In the case of resurrection, God’s creative will and power takes the form of faithful love to created beings that the power of death cannot resist. To interpret the hope of the resurrection within this cosmological context is to see resurrection as essential to God’s redemption of creation, rather than God’s abandonment of it in favor of an entirely new one.

Paul’s purpose in the framing of this exposition through appeal to the foundations I have already noted—the inexorable, faithful love of God, and the hope for the kingdom and new creation—thus supplies the answer to the question that naturally arises. If Paul wants to describe the nature of the resurrection body, why does he not focus straightaway on the resurrection body of Jesus, which he only indirectly references in vv. 45–49 after he had already referenced Jesus’s resurrection earlier in this chapter? He starts at this point to establish the cosmological context of the resurrection body to make clear that God’s creative will and power exemplified in the principles of teleology and differentiation will make a resurrection body fit for the new creation, just as the present body embodies characteristics fit for the present creation.¹⁶

But before he gets to that segment, he further articulates his point by appeal to the different kinds of flesh, which also embody the principles of teleology and differentiation. 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).¹⁷

In his listing of the kinds of flesh, Paul once again alludes to Ps 8 (as he had earlier referenced in v. 27), as the order of creatures here reflects the order in Ps 8:7–8. 8:3 resonates with v. 41, but it lacks the reference to the sun. On the other hand, the psalm’s ascription of glory (δόξα in the LXX) to the human being in 8:5, alongside the reference to God’s decree that humans should rule over all of creation (8:6), provides an important resource for Paul as he describes the glories of the diverse bodies of creation, culminating in the ascription of glory to the resurrection body (vv. 40–41, 43). These glories are most likely not in reference to luminosity (since such a description does not apply to earthly bodies), but to their proper dignity, which in turn derives from the proper function of these bodies according to God’s creative will for the capacity of image-bearing.¹⁸ As Ps 8:5–6—and the more distant echo of Ps 110:1, which was collocated with it in 1 Cor 15:24–28—shows, the proper glory for humans is to function properly as God’s image-bearers and vicegerents, though on this side of the coming of Christ it is clear that both functions are Christomorphic in quality (Paul could hardly have stopped reading Ps 8 in Christocentric fashion only a few sentences later). The resurrection, according to v. 43, will restore this proper function for those who are united with Christ.

As earlier in the chapter, this use of Ps 8 establishes a link between protology and eschatology, wherein the latter is a realization of the former. The earlier Adam-Christ contrast, extended in vv. 45–49, makes this point microcosmically through the respective human progenitors. This segment and its use of Ps 8 makes this point through appeal to cosmological principles already embodied in this creation, so that the new creation fulfills God’s creative will. And as the rest of the chapter makes clear, the resurrection of humans is essential to the fulfillment of God’s creative will, as Paul will also state in Rom 8:19–23.

Although Paul is not directly focused on resurrection in this text to the extent that he is elsewhere in his argument, he uses this segment to prepare for the rest of his discourse on the subject by supplying the crucial cosmic context in which resurrection belief makes the sense that it does. Primarily, he accomplishes this preparatory goal by appeal to the foundation of resurrection belief in the inexorable, faithful love of the God he describes here chiefly as Creator. In God’s exercise of his creative power and will, he has already established the principles of teleology and differentiation with which he will act consistently to enact the resurrection and new creation. Like many others, Paul links God as Creator with his hope-filled expectations of how God will yet act as Lord, Judge, and Savior. The God whose will, wisdom, and power created all is worthy of trust to be inexorable in bringing his salvific purposes to fruition, particularly in resurrection, as the expression of his faithful love to his creation. Paul himself expresses such an idea in later works in Rom 4:17; 8:9–11; 2 Cor 4:8–10; Eph 2:1–7. Augustine likewise said, “Consider your own lifetime — let’s say you are thirty or fifty years old or even more. In the grave there is at least the dust. But fifty years ago, what were you? Where were you? The bodies of all of us, speaker and listeners alike, will be dust within a few years. But a few years ago they were not even dust. Shall he who could make what once was not be unable to restore what already is?”¹⁹ Paul, Augustine, and many others stressed the importance that the God who is the Creator is also the Redeemer, the Creator of new creation in fulfillment of his own promises.

This point leads to the other major foundation in this text in the promises of the kingdom and new creation, inextricably linked with the previous foundation here. Resurrection to everlasting life requires a new cosmic context, and the Creator will provide it. This Creator has already shown himself capable of redeeming creation by virtue of his creative will, wisdom, and power. And he has shown that he is motivated to do so out of faithful love to his creation. From this faithful love combined with the creative will, wisdom, and power of God comes the correspondence of protology and eschatology, so that the latter is, in some cases (including here), a realization of the former. Like resurrection itself, new creation is not a complete redux, but in some ways brings to completion what presently exists, even as it includes what is so new as to be only barely communicable by pushing language to its limits (much like the descriptions of the resurrected Jesus in the Gospels). For now, the only way to establish a cosmic context for resurrection is to begin with what the Creator has already done and use it as a basis for picturing the eschatological completion. The promises of the kingdom of God and new creation within which the promise of resurrection makes sense thus maintain a logical continuity with the creative purpose of God. But obviously these eschatological expectations are not simply amplifications of the circumstances of the present time, so there must be discontinuity with the present in order for these promises to be fulfilled.  On the anthropological level, resurrection is essential to ensuring that the recipients of the promise are also the recipients of the fulfillment, regardless of the intervention of death, and it is essential to bringing humans into continuity with God’s creative purpose.

1. John H. Walton, Genesis, NIVApp (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 73.

2. Ibid., 72; John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 188–90.

3. Walton, Genesis, 79–80, 91–92, 110–16.

4. Earlier in the letter, Paul used μωρία for “foolishness” to refer to how the things of God appear to those who are ignorant (1:18, 21, 23; 2:14; cf. 3:19).

5. Cf. N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, vol. 1 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 249–52.

6. Cf. 1 Clem 24–26.

7. For more on the comparison and contrast of these texts, see David R. Kirk, “Seeds and Bodies: Cosmology, Anthropology and Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15:35–49” (PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, 2015), 115–16.

8. Tertullian, Res. 52; Ambrosiaster, Comm. 1 Cor. 15:42–43; Aphrahat, Dem. 8.3; John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith 4.27; Christopher Bryan, The Resurrection of the Messiah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 51; F. W. Grosheide, Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953), 383; H. A. A. Kennedy, St. Paul’s Conception of the Last Things, 2nd ed. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904), 250–51; Simon J. Kistemaker, Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 567, 573; William F. Orr and James Arthur Walther, 1 Corinthians, AB 32 (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 343; Michel Quesnel, La première épître aux Corinthiens, Commentaire biblique: Nouveau Testament 7 (Paris: Cerf, 2018), 405; Wolfgang Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther (1 Kor. 15,1-16,24), EKKNT 7/4 (Düsseldorf: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2001), 281–93; Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000), 1260–69; James P. Ware, “Paul’s Understanding of the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:36–54,” JBL 133 (2014): 822–23. For the most extensive pursuit of this reasoning, albeit in staunch disagreement with these others about how Paul describes the resurrection body, see Morton Smith, “Transformation by Burial (1 Cor 15:35-49; Rom 6:3-5 and 8:9-11),” Eranos 52 (1983): 87–112.

9. Discontinuity: Marcus J. Borg, “The Truth of Easter,” in The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 123; Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 125; Schrage, Korinther, 283–85; Vigdis Songe-Møller, “‘With What Kind of Body Will They Come?’ Metamorphosis and the Concept of Change: From Platonic Thinking to Paul’s Notion of the Resurrection of the Dead,” in Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, ed. Turid Karlsen Seim and Jorunn Økland (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 116; Ben Witherington III, Conflict & Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995), 307. Continuity: Irenaeus, Haer. 5.12.3–5; Tertullian, Res. 52; 55–57; 59; Rufinus, Symb. 43; 45–46; John Chrysostom, Hom. 1 Cor. 41.3; Jerome, Jo. Hier. 36; Aphrahat, Dem. 8.2; Theodoret, Dial. 2; Gregory the Great, Mor. Job 14.77; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, rev. ed., NICNT (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2014), 862–65; Kirk, “Seeds,” 130–31; Eckhard J. Schnabel, Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther, Historisch Theologische Auslegung (Wuppertal: Brockhaus, 2006), 962; Ronald J. Sider, “The Pauline Conception of the Resurrection Body in 1 Corinthians XV.35–54,” NTS 21 (1974–75): 431–32; Thiselton, Corinthians, 1264–65; N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 344. Both: Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 6; Paul Gardner, 1 Corinthians, ZECNT (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018), 705–6; John Gillman, “Transformation in 1 Cor 15,50-53,” ETL 58 (1982): 326; James Moffatt, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, MNTC (New York; London: Harper and Brothers, 1900), 261.

10. Murray J. Harris, “Resurrection and Immortality in the Pauline Corpus,” in Life in the Face of Death, ed. Richard N. Longenecker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 155 (emphasis original).

11. Jeffrey R. Asher, “Σπειρεται: Anthropogenic Metaphor in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44,” JBL 120 (2001): 102–11; Kirk, “Seeds,” 63, 124–31, 192–94, 205–6.

12. Kirk, “Seeds,” 193. Cf. Jeffrey R. Asher, Polarity and Change in 1 Corinthians 15: A Study of Metaphysics, Rhetoric, and Resurrection, HUT 42 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 106. For other instances of this construction in Paul’s works, see Rom 6:11; 1 Cor 2:11; 12:12; 14:6, 12; Gal 4:3.

13. Gregory the Great, Mor. Job 14.73; Albert the Great, Res. 1.Q1.S8; Aquinas, Comm. 1 Cor. §§973, 1015; Kirk, “Seeds,” 117–31. Thiselton observes the importance of the aorist ἠθέλησεν as pointing to God’s creative decrees narrated in Gen 1 (Corinthians, 1264).

14. Kirk, “Seeds,” 84–109. Cf. Lucretius, Nat. 1.583–598; Diogenes Laertius, Lives 7.135–136, 148; Aristotle, Part. an. 1.1, 640b; 642a; Phys. 1.7; Metaph. 9.8, 1049b.

15. For all the differences in philosophical perspectives, this is the essential point held in common in Lynn Rudder Baker, “Persons and the Metaphysics of Resurrection,” in Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?, ed. Georg Gasser (London; New York: Routledge, 2010), 174–75; Jürgen Becker, Auferstehung der Toten im Urchristentum, SBS 82 (Stuttgart: KBW, 1976), 94; Kevin Corcoran, “Constitution, Resurrection, and Relationality,” in Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?, ed. Georg Gasser (London; New York: Routledge, 2010), 202–3; Stephen T. Davis, “Resurrection, Personal Identity, and the Will of God,” in Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?, ed. Georg Gasser (London; New York: Routledge, 2010), 19–31; Joel B. Green, “Resurrection of the Body: New Testament Voices Concerning Personal Continuity and the Afterlife,” in What about the Soul? Neuroscience and Christian Anthropology, ed. Joel B. Green (Nashville: Abingdon, 2004), 98–100; Murray J. Harris, Raised Immortal: Resurrection and Immortality in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 126–27; Hans Kessler, Sucht den lebenden nicht bei den Toten: Die Auferstehung Jesu Christi in biblischer, fundamentaltheologischer und systematischer Sicht (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1985), 333; R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul's First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1963), 731–32; Detlef B. Linke, “God Gives the Memory: Neuroscience and Resurrection,” in Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments, ed. Ted Peters, Robert John Russell, and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002), 191; Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions, trans. Margaret Kohl (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 261–62; 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): 123–28, 131–33, 140; Nancey Murphy, “The Resurrection Body and Personal Identity: Possibilities and Limits of Eschatological Knowledge,” in Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments, ed. Ted Peters, Robert John Russell, and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002), 215–17; Alan G. Padgett, “The Body in Resurrection: Science and Scripture on the ‘Spiritual Body’ (1 Cor 15:35-58),” WW 22 (2002): 162; Ted Peters, “Resurrection: The Conceptual Challenge,” in Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments, ed. Ted Peters, Robert John Russell, and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002), 305–6, 320–21; John Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2002), 108; Songe-Møller, “With What Kind of Body,” 118–19; Thiselton, Corinthians, 1259; Kôshi Usami, “‘How Are the Dead Raised?’ (1 Cor 15,35-58),” Bib 57 (1976): 481; Witherington, Conflict, 307; Christian Wolff, Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther, THKNT 7 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2000), 403, 415–17; Christopher Woznicki, “‘Thus Saith the Lord’: Edwardsean Anti-Criterialism and the Physicalist Problem of Resurrection Identity,” TheoLogica 2 (2018): 115–35.

16. On this larger point of the unity of the microcosmic body with the macrocosmic reality, see Joel B. Green, “Eschatology and the Nature of Humans,” Science and Christian Belief 14 (2002): 33–50; 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), 467–73.

17. Thiselton, Corinthians, 1268.

18. Gardner, 1 Corinthians, 709; Kirk, “Seeds,” 165; Wright, Resurrection, 345, 347.

19. Augustine, Serm. 361.12, in 1 Corinthians: Interpreted by Early Christian Commentators, ed. and trans. Judith L. Kovacs (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2005), 267. Cf. Irenaeus, Haer. 5.3.2.