Yesterday, I was finishing off a sermon in the second half of 1 Corinthians 15. In it, Paul is addressing two key questions that he notes in v35: someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? What kind of body will they have when they come?’ Paul’s immediate response in v36 – ‘you fool!’ – makes clear this is not an honest question, but a sceptical one stated incredulously. The word ‘fool’ can mean ignorant or unenlightened. In other words, don’t be thick! It’s something closer to a statement along the following lines: ‘how on earth can the dead be raised?’ and ‘what sort of mad and unrealistic body must one have if raised from the dead?’
I was struck by the way Paul goes on to answer these objections. I won’t go into any great detail, but he makes three broad movements in his argument:
- Obviously if there is a God who made a universe full of living creatures, and he managed to fling stars and planets into space, he’s capable of giving us new bodies (vv36-41)
- Obviously resurrection bodies are going to be significantly different to our existing bodies: they’re resurrection bodies and we’re being made like Jesus! (vv42-49)
- Obviously if you’re going to inherit eternal life you are going to need a body that is eternal and imperishable (vv50-58)
What struck me about Paul’s argument throughout is that if you accept the basic premise, the conclusion necessarily follows. Not just if you look carefully enough, but utterly obviously so. In my summation of his argument above, I use the word ‘obviously’ because it does seem to be how Paul kicks off his answer (cf. v36 ‘you fool!’ i.e. ‘you ignoramus!’). He labours the fact that if you accept this one thing, the resurrection is just obvious. It’s hard to avoid his ‘duh!’ tone.
I think this is worth hearing at our particular cultural moment. Much as I appreciate the boosterish posts talking about the turning tide, the prominent voices considering Christianity and the Gen Z renewed interest, we must still contend with the fact that – for the overwhelming majority of people of my generation (millennials) who are currently grasping the levers of power and coming into the ascendency – ours was the first generation in the UK to have absolutely no involvement with church whatsoever, limited engagement with religious thought and whose de facto position has (and remains) secularist atheism. Even if the tide is beginning to turn, it’s still essentially a high tide of non-religious automatically assumed atheism that thinks anything tinged with the supernatural is frankly weird and more than a little stupid. To speak about the resurrection is considered little different to medieval alchemy seeking the elixir of immortality and the ability to turn lead into gold. That is to say, a bit nuts.
As a result, I think Christians have often felt on the back foot discussing the supernatural. We hem and haw whenever it comes up. We cringe as we admit sheepishly we do, actually, kind of believe that stuff. If we are more bold and willing to own and defend it, we often do so as interlopers breaking a consensus with information unlikely to be well received. And we aren’t wrong to think that when we do it because that is essentially the case. But it can make us more than a little tentative.
Yet, I look at the argument of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 and am deeply encouraged. If I believe there is a God who is there, who created the universe – and I think we have some pretty strong and as yet to be assailed arguments on the front – the concept of a future resurrection suddenly looks much more reasonable. If we think the creation of an entire universe by a transcendent being makes more sense than ‘it popped into existence by itself’ (and, when we think of it in those terms, it seems to obviously be the more credible option), a general resurrection of the dead within that created universe suddenly look less weird and, frankly, a breeze by comparison.
Similarly, Paul’s answer to the sneery, ‘what sort of ridiculous body will anybody have if there’s a resurrection?’ operates a similar way. Of course, if there’s going to be a resurrection, the bodies will be quite different. That’s pretty obvious when you give it a second’s thought. Similarly, if you accept that there is eternal life to gained, of course you need a different kind of body – an eternal, imperishable body – if you are going to inherit it. That much is both obvious and a necessary consequence of receiving eternal life.
Now, you might reject the premises. You may deny a creator God exists. That is your prerogative. But from a Christian perspective, I think the arguments for the existence of God are far easier and much more compelling than any argument I might make for a general resurrection in isolation (notwithstanding the crossover arguments that are also very strong for the resurrection of Jesus himself). But if we feel on stronger ground defending the existence of God – and I think we should – if the premise is accepted, any claim of the impossibility of a general resurrection melts away. If you accept particularly the cosmological and the teleological arguments for God’s existence – and they are pretty strong – a general resurrection is no hurdle at all after that. And, of course, if that creator God exists, the concept of spending eternity with him is no longer very farfetched (why would he create us otherwise?) And if that’s true, then needing a body in which we will spend eternity with him makes perfect sense.
But I was similarly struck by the force of Paul’s arguments. Very much along the lines of ‘it’s just obvious, innit!’ Which, actually, yes. Yes it is. Certainly, if you accept the premise (which the Corinthians to whom he writes did). But even if you don’t, I think the premises of Paul’s argument are much easier to prove than the conclusion. But the conclusion isn’t so seemingly absurd if the premise is true. And I think that should really make us quite bold. If those premises are as evident as Paul seems to think they are – and I think atheistic arguments against them are painfully weak – suddenly the seemingly wilder conclusions about resurrection don’t look like supernatural hokum, but seem incredibly plausible.
I think we should take great encouragement in that.