PMW 2025-027 by Ben Witherington

Gentry note: As I continue daily research for my next book, I have stumbled on a helpful one titled Jesus, Paul and the End of the World by Ben Witherington (IVP 1992). Dr. Witherington is Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary and a widely recognized scholar who has written over sixty books on a variety of biblical issues and from leading evangelical publishers. Although I do not endorse everything he states in this work, he has many valuable, well-researched, deeply-exegetical insights that have been profitable for me. This is only an excerpt from pages 187–191 of this work. There is a lot of surrounding context that is necessary for grasping the full force of his argument. But this ought to whet your appetite. And steer you clear from the proto-Gnosticism of hyper-preterists who see the resurrection body as an ethereal, spiritual reality rather than a corporeal, material one.

That which follows is by Witherington and is cited from his book Jesus, Paul and the End of the World:

In 1 Thessalonians 1:10 Christ’s resurrection is connected with the believer’s future deliverance from God’s wrath. In fact, almost always when Paul speaks of Christ’s resurrection he does so in connection with the events that will transpire when Christ returns. He clearly does not see Christ’s resurrection as an isolated historical anomaly but as an eschatological event that is the harbinger and in some sense the trigger or at least the prerequisite of future eschatological events. Paul is surely dealing with Christians in Thessalonica who had speculated about such eschatological matters, and it may even be that the Thessalonian Christians were reflecting the characteristics of a millenarian movement. If so, then it would appear that Paul is trying to offer a certain amount of “eschatological reserve” while still affirming much of the substance of the Thessalonians’ beliefs about the future. Here Paul grounds the believer’s future status in the belief in the past Christ-event.

I have already dealt with 1 Thessalonians 4:14 in the previous chapter but note here that the future resurrection of deceased believers is linked with the past death and resurrection of Jesus. The link here, however, is unlike that in 1 Corinthians 15. Here belief in Christ’s resurrection is seen as the proper grounds for believing that deceased Christians will likewise be raised. Verse 16 also makes clear that Paul is only referring to the future of “the dead in Christ,” that is, dead Christians. Christ’s resurrection is not a guarantee or proof of the future general resurrection of all the dead. Finally, since in verse 17b Paul says “and so [or ‘in this way’– kai houtōs] we shall be with the Lord forever [pantote],” this must count strongly against the idea that this text is talking about some interim stay with Christ in heaven during a period of earthly tribulation.

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This brings up a very crucial point that I shall develop at length when we turn to 1 Corinthians 15, but it bears mentioning here. For Paul resurrection means final conformity to the likeness or image of God’s Son, even in regard to one’s body. In other words, resurrection seems to have a very specific positive content that has to do with the consummation of Paul’s ideas about the imitatio Christi. In such a context it is hardly surprising that Paul never speaks of the resurrection of nonbelievers. If one has not participated in the process of being conformed to the image of the Son in this life (Rom 8:29), it is hardly to be expected that one would get the final installment or completion of this ongoing process later. Resurrection ushers the believer into the new world and the kingdom promised to them by God. Vos has it right when he says:

“If we may judge of the resurrection of believers mutatis mutandis after the analogy of that of Christ, we shall have to believe that the event will mark the entrance upon a new world constructed upon a new superabundantly dynamic plane. . . . The resurrection constitutes, as it were, the womb of the new aeon, out of which believers issue as, in a new, altogether unprecedented sense, sons of God…. The analogy and its bearing upon our problem become most clear when the passage Rom. 1:3–4 is somewhat closely analyzed…. The Resurrection (both of Jesus and of believers) is therefore according to Paul the entering upon a new phase of sonship characterized by the possession and exercise of unique supernatural power.”

The truth of this observation will become readily apparent when we examine Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 15 more fully below. However, I submit that this theological truth already stands behind what Paul says in texts like 1 Thessalonians 3:13 and 5:23 where the ongoing process of sanctification is seen as preparation for the coming of Christ. The work of the Spirit in the present in the believer is preparing that believer not only for the final judgment of Christ, but for the final work of the Spirit for the believer, that is, resurrection in the likeness of Christ’s glorified body. For Paul, Christology, pneumatology, soteriology, eschatology and ethics are so closely interwoven that any attempt to treat one or another of these aspects of Paul’s thought in isolation from the others does less than justice to them all. This is especially true when we come to what is for Paul a sine qua non of Christian faith — the belief in both Christ’s and the believer’s resurrection.\

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One last aspect of Paul’s discussion in 1 Thessalonians 4:14–17 bears scrutiny. Resurrection here, as in 1 Thessalonians 1:10, has to do with something that happens to a dead person, not a living one. First Thessalonians 4:17 may imply that some similar transformation will happen to living believers but it is not called resurrection here. Since 2 Thessalonians adds nothing to our discussion, we will pass on to 1 and 2 Corinthians.

The first passage under consideration, 1 Corinthians 6:14, comes in the middle of Paul’s discussion about the proper use of the human body. Resurrection is introduced here to explain why it is important to act morally in and with the body — body is meant for the Lord and in fact will participate in the eschatological state of salvation. Verse 14 makes the analogy between Christ’s resurrection and that of believers quite explicit. Both are raised up by God’s power. The context makes clear that by resurrection Paul means something involving a body. In view of the future verb katargesei in verse 13, the future exegerei is surely to be preferred in verse 14 (compare 2 Cor 4:14). Again we see a clear connection made between the believer’s present condition and conduct and his future condition. Ethics circumscribes bodily conduct because the body has a place in the eschatological future of the believer. Paul is countering the “spiritualizing” tendencies of Corinthian eschatology and soteriology. “This affirmation stands in bold contrast to the Corinthian view of spirituality which looked for a ‘spiritual’ salvation that would finally be divested of the body.”

There has been much debate over what Paul is combating in 1 Corinthians 15. On the surface of things verse 12 seems to give a straightforward answer — some in Corinth were saying, “there is no resurrection of the dead.” Paul attributes this view to only “some” (tines), but these some were evidently sufficient in number and/or in importance in the Corinthian church for Paul to correct the problem in this letter to the church as a whole. Indeed, the space Paul devotes to this problem suggests that it is part of the larger general problem in Corinth of what may be called spiritualized eschatology, which Paul has been correcting all along in this letter.

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Could these “some” be the same ones who were also baptizing for the dead? It is often pointed out that the practice of baptizing for the dead surely implies some hope about the future of the deceased ones for whom proxy baptism is being undertaken. Paul, by implication, certainly seems to think there is some connection, at least in the minds of those receiving this peculiar baptism, between this practice and one’s hope for the future of these deceased persons. What is not clear from verse 29 is whether that future hope entailed a hope for some sort of resurrection or rather some sort of less material participation in eternal life. Paul does not specifically identify the some who are denying the resurrection with “those” who are receiving proxy baptism.

It also seems reasonable to maintain that if Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:12 had future resurrection, he would have said anastasin ēdē gegonenai not anastasis ouk estin.

Perhaps the problem lies with the fact that we have overlooked the qualifier in verse 12 — what is being denied is not just “resurrection” simpliciter but resurrection of the dead (nekron). A. J. M. Wedderburn asserts “that ‘resurrection’ would mean, especially to Hellenistic readers, something physical, earthy, which only gradually came to be spiritualized as groups of Christians… sought to reconcile their Hellenistic or gnostic aversion to the body with the ineluctable of the idea of resurrection in … Christian tradition.”

However, there is evidence in 1 Corinthians that at least some of the Corinthians themselves already had been involved in such a spiritualizing of matters. Besides the fact that a case can be made for some proto-Gnostic tendencies in Corinth, if 1 Corinthians 6:13b is a quote of the Corinthian’s view that God will destroy the body, thus implying that salvation has nothing to do with it, or if in fact 1 Corinthians 4:8 ascribes to various Corinthians an overrealized, as well as an overly pneumatic, view of salvation in which the new life called by Christians “resurrection” is seen as a matter of life in the Spirit here and now, it is not hard to believe that some Corinthian Christians were denying “resurrection of the dead.” Wedderburn says, “For the Corinthians what they treasure as life-giving and divine is the pneuma specially granted to them and not the psyche which is in every [one].” Resurrection of dead persons might well have connoted to such Corinthians “the standing up of corpses” (see Acts 17:31–32). This would have seemed repugnant to those who saw salvation/new life in a purely spiritual vein, whether in this life or the next.

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Thus we should not try to envision a group of Christians in Corinth who flatly denied “resurrection,” whether Christ’s or believers’ per se. Paul would hardly have addressed such persons as adelphoi (15:1), in view of how strongly he feels about resurrection being a sine qua non of Christian faith (see 15:12–19). Nor would he have reminded them that they had already believed in the resurrection if it were not so (15:11). Rather, he is trying here to correct an overly spiritual and an overrealized view of resurrection. He corrects the former by stressing that resurrection involves a body. He corrects the latter by setting forth a sketch of the order of future eschatological events, including resurrection of the dead. The Corinthians apparently thought the body was at best something inferior, temporary, of no eternal significance, and at worst some of them may have seen matter as tainted or even evil. In either case they did not envision eternal life/resurrection as involving a body. This is not surprising in an environment where the dominant idea of immortality was still the immortality of the soul. K. A. Plank sums up the matter well:

“The problem in Corinth is not the denial of the kerygma but its enthusiastic interpretation: the scandal of the crucified Messiah has been overcome by an through sacramental realism that understands redemption to have already uncontrolled exaltation christology; obedience to his lordship has been lost through sacramental realism that understands redemption to have already been effected. The difficulty is not the failure of the Corinthians to believe in the resurrection, Christ’s or their own, but the fact that they believed “too much”!… To oppose the Corinthian position and be true to his own Paul must be both “for and against a theology of the resurrection.”

Thus, ends Witherington citation. To read his full argument, purchase the book at: Amazon