1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 15:12-34
Post last updated on May 15, 2024
Image credit: RAH
Arguments are frequently founded upon the assumption that they represent the truth—or, at least, they are ordered in such a way as to persuade their audience that this is so. We can put this another way, that arguments are usually framed to suggest the implausibility or impossibility of their falsehood, and that their persuasiveness is made to rely upon just this sense. But how is this sense achieved? As we see in Paul’s treatment of the resurrection, his approach is quite different than most: He asks his readers to imagine the circumstances were the Christian account actually mistaken. He asks, what if Jesus Christ were not raised from the dead? He then answers this question: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” The longer quotation reads as follows:
For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. (1 Corinthians 15:16-20)
As others have remarked before, this is an extraordinary argument. Paul, in fact, asks his reader to conceive of the resurrection’s fact as if it were a fiction. This is an uncommon kind of argument, for it gives up the ground upon which so much rhetoric is finally made to depend—the strong, emotional sentiments that are sometimes made to stand in the absence (or refusal) of facts. One would, then, expect Paul to highlight the many benefits that, nevertheless, still attend the Christian life, even if the fact of the resurrection were not so. What would remain, he asks the reader, if the resurrection were a fable, if Christ were not raised from the dead? If such is the case, he admits, there are no consolations, no satisfactory solaces. In that case, Paul writes that he would take no comfort in whatever incidental benefits might still belong to believers—their relative peace of mind, their renewed affections, or even their exchange of vices for virtues; instead, he so much as says that such a life—whatever its present and practical advantage—is not worth living. Paul is decidedly not a utilitarian.
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Paul, then, at least here in chapter 15, is not so much writing to persuade, as he is to describe the character of life that the resurrection now entails. He is so committed the resurrection and all its attending consequences, that he causes his reader to imagine its falsehood to demonstrate its unavoidable claims upon man. In other words, we may say that Paul makes the logic and obligations of this life to hinge upon the veracity of Jesus’ resurrection. This is an important distinction, for though the resurrection certainly defines the character of the world to come, Paul’s larger point is that its fact or fiction orders life now. How so? Because, if true, the resurrection of Jesus Christ confirms that life now proceeds upon very different assumptions and expectations than are often conceded in moral and practical reason. At the present, sins and idolatries are often justified, and even prescribed for worldly promotion. One, it is said, must do this or that to get ahead; but against this, the resurrection discloses that the present order is actually responsible to righteousness and life as it is displayed in the resurrected Son of God.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ, then, is the positive evidence of an entirely different order, which demonstrably contests the assumptions and false affections of the present. If Christ Jesus is not raised, then life (it may be said) proceeds upon the ethics and principles of preceding ages and their philosophies, when there yet lacked the resurrection’s affirmation that righteousness is, in fact, enjoined to life. If Jesus Christ is not raised, even hedonism could find a seat at wisdom’s table (1 Corinthians 15:32). However, Paul’s point is that the resurrection relegates all of these to an indefensible past—all because the resurrection confirms the truth of the gospel. This includes the Sinai Covenant for Israel1This is, essentially, part of what Paul argues in his epistles to both the Galatians and Colossians. Note a place like Galatians 3:18, “For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.” Colossians 2:20 makes a related point. The resurrection is so radical in its reordering of life away from that of Adam and his resources as to render former arrangements irrelevant in the present age. and the Greek conceptions of wisdom; dharma’s definition is corrected; karma is a deceit.
This demonstrates how bound up together life and practice—resurrection and ethics—is for Paul and the gospel that he preached; and so, but makes his point in a very unusual way. He writes to believers, “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” We might say that Paul conceives of a theoretical fiction to highlight the warrant and triumph of faith in Jesus Christ. The resurrection becomes the single fact that falsifies all other contesting “truths.”
It is the resurrection, then, which is the sufficient revelation against all personal and petty religions. Paul says so much as this when addressing the Athenians, as read in Acts 17:29-31:
Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.
Here, Paul makes the resurrection the principle upon which idolatry is forever condemned. In no way does Paul vindicate past idolatries; but rather, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is become the sufficient condemnation of all false images, as well as the ethics and morality employed to justify their construction and worship. The living Jesus is the image of God (Hebrews 3:1-3, 2 Corinthians 4:4).
Notes & References
| ↑1 | This is, essentially, part of what Paul argues in his epistles to both the Galatians and Colossians. Note a place like Galatians 3:18, “For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.” Colossians 2:20 makes a related point. The resurrection is so radical in its reordering of life away from that of Adam and his resources as to render former arrangements irrelevant in the present age. |
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