whole, and it becomes intelligible, not outwardly, but inwardly, as a unity. We might even say that this central significance of the ideas expressed in the chapter extends beyond the limits of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Here Paul discloses generally his focus, his background, and his assumptions with a definiteness he but seldom uses elsewhere, and with a particularity which he has not done in his other Epistles as known to us. The Epistles to the Romans, the Philippians, and the Colossians cannot even be understood, unless we keep in mind the sharp accentuation which their contents receive in the light of 1 Cor. 15, where Paul develops what elsewhere he only indicates and outlines, and which first imparts a specific and unmistakable colour to his ideas in general. How vitally important is the chapter, if this be the case, for understanding the testimony of the New Testament generally, I need not emphasize. That it is both right and necessary to subject it to an unusually detailed treatment seems to me to be obvious.
According to the usual conception, 1 Cor. 15 is the last fragment in the great conglomerate of exhortations, rebukes, and doctrinal pronouncements, partly spontaneous, partly prompted by inquiries from the Corinthian community, which, arranged externally according to the needs and inspirations of the moment, constitute together the so-called First Epistle to the Corinthians. After Paul has replied to the manifold questions of the Corinthian community, which provoked his intervention, he comes at length to dwell upon the controversies agitating Corinth with respect to the resurrection, and thus to the resurrection itself. “Without internal or external connexion with what has been said before, the treatment of a new theme then follows” (Lietzmann). Such is the usual interpretation. It has the appearance of being self-evident. The haphazard character of the series of subjects dealt with in 1 Cor. 1–14 is not to be disputed, nor is the lack of connexion by which 1 Cor. 15, with its new theme, is at first joined to this series. But the question arises: first, whether Paul’s reflections upon the subjects dealt with in 1 Cor. 1–14 are as disparate as these subjects themselves, or rather whether a thread cannot be discovered which binds them internally into a whole; and, secondly, whether 1 Cor. 15 is merely to be comprehended as one theme by the side of many others, or rather whether the thread hitherto followed does not at this point become visible, so that this theme, however much externally it is one theme by the side of many others, fails to be recognized at the same time as the Theme of the Epistle. It goes without saying that these questions are of fundamental importance to the interpretation of 1 Cor. 15. If they are to be answered in the affirmative, we have before us in 1 Cor. 1–14, in fact the authentic commentary upon 1 Cor. 15. Consequently, in any attempt to answer them a detailed analysis of 1 Cor. 1–14 is indispensable.
“Though Christ offers us in the Gospel,” says Calvin (Instit. ii. 9, 3), “a present plenitude of spiritual blessings, yet the enjoyment of them always lies hid under the custody of hope till we are divested of our corruptible body and transfigured into the glory of Him who is our first-fruits, our forerunner. In the meantime, the Spirit commands us to rely on the promises. Nor, indeed, have we otherwise any enjoyment of Christ any further than we embrace Him, as He is garbed in His promises. By which it comes to pass that He Himself now dwells in our hearts and yet we live like pilgrims at a distance from Him, because we walk by faith and not by sight.”
JOHN CALVIN.
The translator desires to acknowledge the valuable assistance which the Rev. R. Birch Hoyle has rendered in checking and revising this English version of The Resurrection of the Dead.
CONTENTS
I.THE TREND OF 1 CORINTHIANS 1–14
III.EXPLANATION OF 1 CORINTHIANS 15
1.THE RESURRECTION GOSPEL AS THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH
2.THE RESURRECTION AS THE MEANING OF FAITH
3.THE RESURRECTION AS TRUTH
4.THE RESURRECTION AS REALITY
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD
THE TREND OF FIRST CORINTHIANS 1–14
§ 1
IN Corinth, Paul had to deal with an active and alert Church of a peculiar intellectual complexion. It was one of the first and probably the most important of the Christian Churches established upon pronounced Greek soil. Here the new religious matter, brought by the apostolic preaching, must have been accepted with passion, and, although not immediately assimilated, was yet absorbed in large understood-misunderstood lumps, and made available for that Church’s own needs. The preponderantly proletarian composition of the Church was no obstacle to its participation in a philosophic-theological, cultic and ethical interest, of the intensity of which we can scarcely form an approximate idea. The force with which religious vitality was flowing through the new river-bed we may again divine from the opening words of the Epistle, where Paul testified that the Corinthian Christians have been enriched by God’s grace (1:5) in all utterance and all knowledge, in gifts and extraordinary capacities of every kind. But then a corrective is gently applied. The testimony of Christ is indeed confirmed in them (1:7), a standard planted in a captured position; but their own confirming, in contrast to their enrichment, is placed in the future (1:8): it is because God is faithful that Paul really gives thanks in these opening words (1:9; cf. 1:4). Clearly, Paul’s intention is to bring them to their senses, to provoke reflection, a reflection which is designed to lift the eyes above the subjective gifts of the Corinthian Christians to the Giver of all these good things: utterance and knowledge and spiritual gifts are to him manifestly no ends in themselves, religious vitality itself no guarantee for Christian severity that, blameless, awaits the end (1:7–8).
The idea that Paul wants to explain and bring home to the Church founded by his gospel finds direct expression in the long, coherent section, (1:10–4:21), which was evoked by the existence and activity of three, perhaps four, different religious groups, schools, or movements (schisms) constituting the Corinthian Christians. In his observations upon this fact, Paul makes hardly more than a few allusions to the actual character of the ideas represented by these movements; although one of the schools of thought expressly carried on its agitation under the flag of his own name, and although under the name of Apollos, and probably also under that of Peter, ideas were put forward which could not fail to challenge him most sharply. It was far from his thoughts to rush in helpfully to the assistance of this, his own party, in its controversies with others; or to intervene as arbitrator and peacemaker between it and those which called themselves after Apollos and Peter (1:12). In his view, the question as to which amongst these groups was relatively most right, and the other question as to how the disputants could be reconciled, were manifestly quite secondary in comparison with the need for making all of them realize that it was not meet that the testimony of Christ set up among them, in contrast to the phenomena of the variegated religious fair, in the midst of which the Church life of the Corinthian Christians was lived, should be made into a cause, an idea, a programme, an occasion for intellectual exuberance and spiritual heroics, as this obviously is the essence of all religious movements and schools of thought, however excellent their intentions and deep rooted their foundations. The main defect of Corinthian conditions, from this point of view, Paul sees to consist in the boldness, assurance, and enthusiasm with which they believe, not in God,
