1 Corinthians 15 Footnotes

15:1 This chapter addresses Corinthian skepticism about the future resurrection (vv. 12,35). At issue was the difference between the Greek (and Corinthian) and Hebrew understandings of the life to come. Greeks who believed in an afterlife tended to speak of the immortality of the soul. They viewed the soul as something different than matter. In the Greek view, the soul is liberated from the body and lives forever in a non-corporeal state. Christians are in the Hebrew tradition regarding the afterlife, believing in the resurrection of the body. The resurrected Christ is “Exhibit A” and offers a glimpse of the life to come. (On the intermediate state, the state between the death of a person and his being raised to life everlasting, see 2Co 5:1-9.)

15:3-7 Paul probably received this confessional statement twenty years earlier at his baptism in Damascus and later handed it over to the Corinthians when he established the church there. This vital summary of Christian belief was formed during the period between Christ’s resurrection and Paul’s Damascus call and baptism. This formula was carried by fugitives from Paul’s persecutions to Damascus, where it was handed over to the new convert at his baptism. This statement may be the earliest formulation of NT Christianity, predating Paul’s earliest letters by fifteen years.

This section raises some questions. First, the “third day” need not imply three complete days; Jews counted partial days as whole days. Jesus was buried on Friday, and the tomb was empty when the women arrived at Sunday’s first light. Also, Christ was “raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” Where in the OT is this anticipated? Here it is not clear whether the Scriptures prophesy the fact of his resurrection or the detail of his resurrection on the third day. OT passages support both possibilities: Ps 16:10 supports the first and Hos 6:2, the second. Note also that help, salvation, or deliverance is frequently associated with the “third day” in the OT (see Gn 22:4; 40:20; 42:18; Ex 15:22-25; 19:11; 2Kg 20:5; Est 5:1; Jnh 1:17)—making it all the more appropriate for God to deliver his Son from death on the third day.

Second, Paul did not mention the empty tomb (though each of the Gospels does). The word translated “buried” means “entombed, placed horizontally in a [rock] tomb,” not “placed down into the ground.” Yet Paul strongly implied an empty tomb; what else could the original words “he was buried … he was raised” mean? For the first-century Jew, a resurrection that left a body in the tomb was a contradiction in terms. Furthermore, Paul cited a tradition that Peter also articulated in different words: “They killed him … God raised up this man on the third day and caused him to be seen … by us whom God appointed as witnesses” (Ac 10:39-41); the empty tomb was assumed. Neither Peter nor Paul specifically mentioned it in this commonly held “third day” tradition, whereas it was prominent in the “first day” traditions underlying the Gospels. This is no contradiction, however, but merely points to a number of overlapping early traditions of the gospel that were then current.

The specific place or occasion on which the risen Christ appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once is unknown. Paul added that most of these witnesses were still alive when he wrote. In effect, Paul was inviting the Corinthians to check his claims. Jesus’s resurrection was not just his spirit being received in heaven. His body was raised from death and was seen by individuals, small groups, and a large group.

15:8-9 Christ’s appearance to Paul occurred many months after the appearances to the other named witnesses. The original gospel formulation Paul received clearly did not contain references to Christ’s appearance to him. Paul added this afterward.

Paul here wrote of himself as “one born at the wrong time,” an unusual expression that may mean “born later than expected.” Unlike the Twelve, Paul became an apostle without having had the gestation period of knowing Jesus on earth, ministering with him, listening to his teaching. Rather than being eased into apostleship, Paul was dramatically confronted on the Damascus road. All this, however, only reinforces the proposal that the earlier appearances to Peter and the others were concrete, bodily manifestations on earth. Paul was not in any way implying that he merely saw the Lord in his mind or as a subjective vision. Paul saw Christ objectively, outside of himself; he witnessed Christ raised from the dead and exalted at God’s right hand (see Ac 7:56).

15:12 The phrase “resurrection of the dead” (lit “the standing up of dead ones”) meant just that. The notion of a nonmaterial resurrection—an idea that appeals to many today—would have been incomprehensible to Jews then.

15:29 Paul’s question to the Corinthians about why they were “being baptized for the dead” is puzzling and most unusual, and no parallel reference in the NT exists to clarify it. The context gives some help: Paul spoke of “danger” to him (v. 30) and of being, metaphorically speaking, forced to fight wild animals (v. 32). Life was precarious for the apostle and, we infer, for the local church people also. It seems, then, that some believers in Corinth had lost their lives under persecution before an opportunity arose for baptism and that others had been baptized in their places (Gk hyper), by substitution. Presumably this was done for pastoral reasons—to assure surviving believers, including family members, that all that baptism signified was true for the deceased.

Note that Paul did not prescribe this practice but merely referenced it. Mormon baptism for the dead cannot be sustained by this obscure passage. The vicarious baptism for thousands of deceased persons (including tracking and storing genealogical records) grossly distorts Paul’s teaching. He simply said the practice of being baptized on behalf of deceased members was utterly irrational where the resurrection of the dead was being doubted, as it was by some within the Corinthian church.

15:44 Are the spiritual bodies believers will have at the coming resurrection nonmaterial bodies? If so, it would imply that Christ’s risen body was nonmaterial. This, however, was not what Paul meant. Rather, descendants of fallen Adam cannot enter God’s kingdom unchanged. The “spiritual body” is a true body—a material body—but a transformed one. The two bodies contrasted are not “physical” versus “spiritual” but rather “soul-oriented [psychikon]” versus “Spirit-oriented [pneumatikon].” (See 2:14-15, where Paul contrasted the psychikos person, or the natural/this-worldly-oriented person, with the pneumatikos, or the believer, who has God’s Spirit.) Also, Paul’s reference to the spiritual body was not to Christ’s risen body but to the risen bodies of the descendants of the first man, Adam, redeemed so as to be fit for the kingdom of God (15:42-50).