Body vs. Flesh, Spirit vs. Soul: 1 Corinthians 15 Questions

Ok, I'd like to bring this discussion out to the front page, because it's important. The question stems from a general discussion of Bauckham and Wright's work, and it focuses on 1 Corinthians 15 in particular. Just what was Paul saying in that chapter?



I'm going from memory, but my sources include intense study of the epistle a year ago starting from Thiselton, Hayes, and Wright's commentaries, as well as the central points from Wright's 3rd book in Christian Origins and the Question of God and a tip of the hat to Bauckham as well, since evaluating his arguments is what got us here in the first place (although I only just read his book, and his book does not deal with Paul much at all, but rather the gospels and the early church fathers).



So the disclaimer is that I have studied all this on my own in some detail, but of course this isn't my day job. But I want to talk about what I think from reading the epistle and why, and this blog is the place to do it. I also can't vouch for any real organization, because I just want to rattle off my answers to various questions posed in particular by Stephen Carr in the previous comment section. (By the way, Stephen, hello, I've noticed your comments on some other blogs, including Mark Goodacre's NT Gateway blog if I'm not mistaken?)



OK, let me start with my bottom line. I don't know much Greek beyond the alphabet but I have studied this intently, and I've also been reading the Bible all my life (well, since I was 5 ...). So what I have here is a layman's perspective but a layman who practices the sciences and is trying to be the same person in the lab and in the pew. I'm obviously predisposed to trust the Biblical source because of my background. That's just where I'm coming from.



Coming from this perspective, growing up, reading 1 Corinthians and Romans always fascinated me but it seemed like there were passages and points that Paul spent time on, but didn't fit into my nice little evangelical Roman Road tract. Reading NT Wright's big book series made those odds and ends passages make sense and cohere, and also fit with my intuitive understanding of the passages from my personal reading. So that's a major influence, but it always comes down to a test of, what does the text mean? And that's the issue here: what is Paul saying in 1 Corinthians about the resurrection?



I think he's saying it's physical but different/transformed. Here's some motley points as to why:



1.) Let's start with the big negative statement: "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" -- yes, and sarx (flesh) is not soma (body). Paul obviously has a negative attitude toward flesh as something to be gotten rid of. But Romans (written in Corinth soon after this letter) shows that flesh is one thing, a physical body is another. The whole point of the passage is that the body can be transformed, the flesh can be shedded. Paul's using "soma" so much he's wearing out his little sigma: "body" is the best way to describe his subject. That is unabashedly physical, although he seems to be struggling to describe its difference from our ordinary stuff, our "flesh and blood." If he's just talking spiritual, he'd be a lot better off just talking about spirit all the time. What's his body fixation if he's really thinking spirit?



2.) Paul does call some (it's important to keep in mind that the church was so fractured no one statement can describe them all) Corinthians fools for succumbing to the pressures of the culture around them, for believing that "there is no resurrection of the dead." But rather after death "God gives it a body as he pleases" with the metaphor of a seed. The seed produces something physical and continuous with itself. If Paul's trying to say God takes the spirit to heaven for eternal life he picked a terrible metaphor for it. Rather he picked a metaphor of something physical that disappears in the ground and dies (indeed, decaying a little) but reappears transformed. It's a much better metaphor for a physical transformation than for a spiritual translation of some sort.

By the way, this "foolishness" motif fits very well with the first 4 chapters of the letter. Also, in Chapter 5, Paul objects to their lawsuits because they bring church matters before the Romans, so their economic/legal habits are conforming to the Greco-Roman world. Chapter 6 = Paul objects to their sexual habits conforming to the Greco-Roman world. Chapter 8-10 = Paul deals with their tendency to go to dinner feasts in Roman temples (a nuanced treatment, but obviously caused by the tendency of the Greco-Roman world to influence them). Practically every problem Corinth has is caused by their going along with the Greco-Roman way of looking at things. Chapter 15 is no different, they're adopting the Greco-Roman attitude toward resurrection and God's ultimate justice. I can see how new believers would be pulled to be "more reasonable" with their crazy beliefs about the resurrection: Can't the resurrection just be spiritual in nature? The pressures from the surrounding world are evident throughout this letter, and the Roman pressure would be to spiritualize (Platonize) the resurrection, to remove the embarrassing Jewish Ezekiel/Isaiah-type physical dry-bones elements. Paul's basic point with Corinthians is to show how crucifixion and resurrection matter to all these areas. Chapter 6, especially, makes no sense whatsoever if physical resurrection is removed from the argument: "The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also." How can this mean anything else? The body matters intensely, and resurrection involves this body, the logic of the argument demands it. How could it be "for the Lord" if it'll just die and decompose? I don't think Paul's talking about donating your body to the great Carbon Cycle of Life when he says it's for the Lord -- he means something about it will persist through resurrection, and that is God's body now -- this physical arrangement of cells will be raised. To paraphrase an early church father, I don't know how he'll do it, but if he created it, he can re-create it.

3.) Back to Chapter 15, The next metaphor of different bodies first goes through species, then moves to the heavenly bodies. (A nice reference to the end of Daniel and the concrete resurrection prophecy there.) The point is a different kind of splendor from one thing to another, explicitly stating that heavenly and earthly things are different but also that earthly differs from earthly and heavenly differs from heavenly. If the point is physical vs. non-physical, again, Paul's making his point in kind of a strange way. Why does "star differ from star in splendor" just like men from animals? If the central point is the heaven-earth contrast, why explicitly include all of creation differing from each other? Now, if the point is that the creator can re-create, that makes sense. It doesn't make sense as simply distinguishing earthly from heavenly bodies. The point is God's power to create and create something as glorious as the moon. Sure, the bodies are different and glorious, but they're still bodies!



4.) "Natural" vs. "spiritual": I'm always reminded reading this how back in Chapters 8-10 Paul says that the Israelites wandering in the desert are "spiritual" food and drank "spiritual" drink. Spiritual food can be physical -- there's nothing more physical than the wandering in the desert. So the "spritual body" must be like the manna and water from the rock: provided from heaven, but real, tangible, and here.

5.) Back to the creed that is "of first importance": if it was a spiritual experience, why is it always "after three days"? Why is it emphasized that Christ was "buried" then raised (by the way, that would make an empty tomb -- and what's interesting is our two earliest sources on the resurrection are complementary: Paul talks about the appearance of the risen Jesus and Mark talks about the empty tomb. Both don't mention the other element, but together they are undoubtedly as early as we have -- so there's no evidence that one of these two elements preceded the other)? And of the "five hundred at once", if Paul's talking about a vision, that's some vision first off, and his statement "of whom the greater part remain to the present", why bother telling people to check a vision like that? I don't know of any other "multiple party" visions in ancient literature, and even if there are, I doubt that any of them include the "and they're still around" statement that is proof -- I don't doubt that people have visions, I doubt that they see something physical.

6.) Why is Christ the firstfruits if others have fallen asleep? If all we're talking about is life after death, the others would have joined him. If all we're talking about is Christ's exaltation, then he wouldn't be the firstfruits, he'd be the only fruit! This phrase is telling: what happened to Jesus will happen to the rest.

7.) Baptism for the dead: I don't think anyone really knows what to make of this. I think Thiselton had listed more than 30-40 theories on the practice. I'm not willing to draw any conclusions from it, since it's probably a bizarre local practice that justifiably withered away.

8.) Why must the corruptible "put on" incorruption if there is no physical continuity? That's a strange choice of words (why the concept of a corruptible core?) unless there's significant continuity.

9.) Destroying death doesn't make sense if the body's still decaying. The reversal, death's defeat, must be as real as the enemy for the enemy to be destroyed. For Paul's little victory dance to make sense, this is not an evasive maneuver: it is a destruction.

(And speaking of destruction: for stomach and food, Ch. 6 "God will destroy them both" is a statement of judgment, not of categorical abolition. God's judgment will destroy the glutton; that doesn't mean all stomachs and all food will be destroyed. It's a witty way of passing judgment on the Corinthians by reversing their own statements, and says nothing about the nature of the resurrection body. Judgment on the one hand, resurrection on the other.)

Either Paul's such a bad writer that he can't choose a metaphor to save his life, or he actually communicated his intention through these words.

For these reasons and more that I'm just not thinking of now (this is off the top of my head), I have always read 1 Corinthians 15 as being about the actual reversal of death, something strange and offensive and hard to describe, but something real and reported in great detail in about 50 AD, as something "handed down" in a polished, creedal form. How can that happen, that fast, among a group of fishermen following a dead rabbi? If you start from the point that there must be a normal explanation, I guess you'll be able to find one. I just don't find it plausible, myself.

Hayes, Wright, and the others have helped me see how the parts fit in to what has always been my basic reading of the text. So, for all the words back and forth, I can't see how I can change my mind from this position. It ties the chapter together, it ties the chapter to the rest of the letter, to the other Pauline letters, to the gospel, and to the Jewish prophets. I have studied and read this for myself more than most other parts of the Bible, and this is how I read it. This is a well-founded opinion based on evidence and a lifetime reading this passage, and the more I look into it, the more it fits with everything else.