Resurrection in 2 Corinthians 4:13–5:10

(avg. read time: 23–45 mins.)

In case I have not made it clear enough recently, I am a bit interested in what the Bible says about resurrection. This is also clear in my dissertation. The longest chapter in that dissertation concerns Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor 15. However, I have previously not written anything addressing the other most discussed and controversial Pauline text on resurrection in 2 Cor 4:13–5:10. I will not be giving this text the same level of treatment as I did 1 Cor 15 in my dissertation (where I interacted with hundreds of sources across history). If God is willing, I hope to engage this text to that kind of extent for the planned volume on resurrection in Paul that will not be written for decades (since it will be the last in my planned series). For now, I would like to do some sketch work (comparatively speaking) on this text in order to address three questions often raised about it. 1) Does Paul think that the resurrection will happen to a person immediately after death, and does this then represent a change in thinking from his earlier connections of the resurrection with the eschaton? 2) If Paul is not describing resurrection in this fashion, could the opening verses of ch. 5 be addressing a disembodied intermediate state of life after death prior to resurrection? 3) Does this text represent a development in Paul’s beliefs about whether or not he will live to see Jesus’s Second Coming?

First, we need to note how the immediately preceding 4:7–12 prepares the way for this text. In light of his larger comparison and contrast extending back to ch. 3 between the ministries of the old and new covenant, Paul describes the gospel as removing the veil of glory for those who will receive it, glory which he describes in 4:6 as “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” But he says this glorious treasure is one the apostles carry around in “earthen vessels” (4:7). This type of image serves at least two functions. One, it prepares for Paul’s description of the “inner person” in our text, which is being transformed by the Spirit who is working within the apostles (cf. 3:17–18). Two, more immediately, it introduces the notion that Paul describes from vv. 7–10 of the apostolic ministry as a cruciform one, defined by affliction and suffering, rather than presently visible glory. Their glory is in the message that they speak, but their bodies reflecting that glory will only be an eschatological condition after the resurrection. For now, they carry around the dying of Jesus in their body, because they know that in their body the resurrection life of Jesus will also be manifested. This is the pattern of participatio Christi, of participation in the gospel story, that characterizes the apostolic ministry in particular and the Christian life in general, which Christians signify by their baptism. As the suffering of the apostolic ministry—which Paul manifests most extensively in this letter—participates in the suffering and death of Jesus for the benefit of others (that they may receive life), so too will the resurrection to everlasting life participate in the resurrection life of Jesus. For now, as in vv. 11–12, the testimony to the resurrection glory appears in the suffering of their mortal bodies, since the gospel ministry and the suffering it brings leads others into the resurrection life of Jesus.

That point leads directly into v. 13 and Paul’s quotation of Ps 116:10 [115:10 LXX] to characterize himself and other apostles as having the same spirit of faith (or “the same spirit that is faith”) as the psalmist. Both the psalmist and the apostles can declare that they are greatly afflicted, and they are in this condition because they have had faith (or allegiance) and therefore have spoken. But now that the apostles are on the other side of the incarnation, ministry, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus, they have a clearer understanding of the basis of faith. Paul defines this greater knowledge in v. 14 as consisting of knowing that “the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also together with Jesus raise us and present us together with you.”

Paul is here making the same point of the connection of Jesus’s resurrection with the resurrection of believers to everlasting life as he has in 1 Thess 4 and 1 Cor 15 (which he will also make later in Rom 8 and Phil 3). In comparison to those texts, there are three other points to note here. First, this text uses a substantive participle to describe God’s raising of Jesus as an identifying action (“the one who raised the Lord Jesus”). I have noted similar cases in the series on the resurrection in the OT, but such a tendency for participial expression to use resurrection as an identifying action of God becomes more frequent in the NT. Alongside various more straightforward statements that “God raised Jesus” (Acts 2:24, 32; 3:15; 4:10; 5:30; 10:40; 13:30, 34, 37; 17:31; Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 6:14; 15:15; Eph 1:20; 1 Thess 1:10), there were also statements like 2 Cor 4:14 that used the substantive participle to describe such raising—whether of Jesus or the dead—as a characteristic and identifying action of God (Rom 4:24; 8:11; 2 Cor 1:9; Gal 1:1; Col 2:12; 1 Pet 1:21).

Second, while I generally argue against the popular development hypothesis regarding Paul’s beliefs about the timing of Jesus’s Second Coming, this text shows development at least in how Paul describes resurrection (although not in terms of changes in Paul’s thinking about resurrection). In 1 Thess 4 Paul describes the dead as being raised and returning with Jesus, while those who are alive at the time of his arrival will be caught up to meet him and the entourage of those who had slept in Christ. The dead and the living are both referenced here, but Paul does not describe in any specificity what happens to the living, except that they will be caught up. In 1 Cor 15, Paul emphasizes what is muted in 1 Thess 4 in describing both the dead and living being transformed at Jesus’s arrival. Verses 42–49 in this chapter show that resurrection can be taken as a synecdoche referring both to the revival of the dead to bodily life (resurrection proper) and the transformation of the revived dead, but in vv. 50–57 he must break the synecdoche apart to say that the living will only be transformed (rather than resurrected, which happens to the dead). And now in 2 Cor 4:14 Paul says that God will raise “us” (the apostles) together with Jesus and present “us” together with “you” (the audience). Whereas in the previous texts, Paul has spoken of the dead and living in general, here he speaks in more intimate terms of the resurrection as involving “us” and “you.” This is not explicitly indicating that Paul expects to die before Jesus’s arrival, so much as a continuation of what he has been saying about the cruciform apostolic ministry, manifesting the death of Jesus in order to also manifest his resurrection. To place himself on the side of the living all of a sudden in this same text would have presented a discordant note and would explicitly indicate that Paul not only believed that Jesus could return before his death, but that he would. But if one were to press this language that far, Paul would still be saying that Jesus’s Second Coming would happen not long after his death if he expects that the apostles will be presented together with the “you” who are his audience in Corinth. However, that is to treat this exposition as a portrayal referring to both the dead and the living, as has been the case in the previous texts, but that is not explicitly stated here. In any case, the picture is more complicated than is often portrayed.

Third, we are thus led to our question about whether Paul expects to be alive when Jesus arrives and thus whether this belief represents a change in thinking from 1 Thess 4 and 1 Cor 15. Both 1 Thessalonians 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. 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.

Here, I will only make brief comments on this issue. 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 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.