God the Son, Mentor's Guide, MG10

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G O D T H E S O N

The central text in defense of the resurrection of the body, and the certainty of the resurrection of Christ is Paul’s remarkable and sustained argument recorded in 1 Corinthians 15. P. S. Johnston offers us a clear and thorough summary of the significance of this citation in an article on death and resurrection in the Christian faith: For Paul, the resurrection of Christ is the foundation of Christian life in the present and of hope for the future, as he explains at length in 1 Corinthians 15. He first establishes the historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection by noting his subsequent appearance to hundreds of disciples and ultimately to Paul himself (vv. 1–10). He then notes the universality of early Christian resurrection belief and the absurdity of non-belief for Christian faith (vv. 11–19). If Jesus did not rise, he was just another failed Jewish messiah. But if he did, then God’s new kingdom has dawned. Next Paul reworks typical Jewish motifs into a distinctly Christian perspective. Death came through Adam, resurrection through Christ, who now reigns in heaven having defeated his enemies (a distinguishing feature of the Messiah, though the enemies were normally identified as political; vv. 20–28). This should profoundly affect the way believers live (vv. 29–35). Paul then describes both the continuity and the difference between the present and future bodies using several analogies (vv. 35–49), and summarizes this discussion with two adjectives which are difficult to translate concisely and have often been misunderstood (v. 42). The contrast is not between physical/material and disembodied/immaterial, but between different bodies, the present one psychikon , i.e. animated by soul, the future one pneumatikon , i.e. animated by spirit. The perishable flesh-and-blood body is transformed into an imperishable immortal body, and so death itself is swallowed up (vv. 50–55). Christ’s resurrection is thus the prototype of Christian experience [emphasis mine]. ~ P.S. Johnston. “Death and Resurrection.” New Dictionary of Biblical Theology . T. D. Alexander, ed. (electronic ed.). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001. It is of extreme importance that the students gain a mastery of the outline and contents of the 1 Corinthians 15 passage, as it provides one of the clearest, most thorough, and most convincing analyses of the role and place of the resurrection in Christian faith and doctrine.

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