Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians was horrified at the Church there
doubting that the body of the dead person could be resurrected. It is argued
today that the Corinthians were not saying that Jesus didn't come back. That is
a desperate view for if you think the dead don't rise, you include Jesus. And
why did Paul say that he and his followers were sad cases and useless if Jesus
has not come back from the dead? One problem they had was the kind of body the
dead would have. Paul, oddly enough should have encountered that question years
before so the timing is odd. He comes up with an "answer". Another discrepancy
is why Peter and the other apostles had not met and dealt with such a problem
already. It is impossible to avoid the notion that the apostles barring Paul
were like todays Episcopal priests - they work in secular jobs and religion is
only an extra they take up when they feel like it.
Paul writes the following in 1 Corinthians 15.
50 I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot
inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be
changed—
52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For
the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be
changed.
53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and
the mortal with immortality.
54 When the perishable has been clothed with
the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is
written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
55
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
NIV
Look at verses 50 and 51. The emphasis that people need to listen to his
declaration, suggest he is speaking of something that was never heard of before.
A mystery in the original Greek means that this is a secret being disclosed
to the initiated. The word was picked out of the Greek mystery schools and
fraternities. That stresses further that this is a new revelation.
Was the secret that we will not all die? No. Christianity always taught that
there would be Christians alive for the second coming of Jesus. The secret was
the change.
Alarm bells are ringing.
Years after Jesus is gone, and without the other apostles authorising it,
Paul is revealing a new doctrine.
He does not say the risen Jesus expressly told him. That is an extraordinary
omission. I know Paul said his teaching came from the risen Jesus, but in major
things he would need to say something like, "Jesus himself told me...". He would
have to for a doctrine of tremendous magnitude.
So according to Paul, the dead or living person that goes to Heaven is
dramatically changed. By extension, a bodily resurrection is not a mere
resuscitation but salvation of the body. Strangely he does not outline that this
means eternal health and eternal life. That is what people want to hear. A new
doctrine may be announced here but he wants the clarifications to wait.
By the way, Jesus is a model for that transformation for he went to Heaven
too. The transformation doctrine then is about Jesus, and those who are dead and
who will be alive when he returns to bring Heaven with him.
Paul demolishes the gospels if they claim that Jesus had a spirit-like but
real body that could materialise and de-materialise and so on. That would be an
anachronism for they pose as giving information that was present long before
Paul came along. I will just mention the suggestion of some that the gospels are
not saying that Jesus was inherently transformed into a miraculous bodily
entity. Miracle intervention from outside could get him through walls etc though
his body is essentially normal. I would argue that a gospel that fails to come
up with a decent view of the resurrection is not a gospel at all. The notion
that we are redeemed body and soul to enjoy eternal and physical existence
forever is a core concept in modern Christianity.
If the gospels are truthful when they say Jesus continued friendship with his
disciples after death, he even supposedly cooked for them, surely they would
have known from him and from observation what kind of body he had.
The reality is that a Jesus who comes back from the dead with odd abilities
is going to be understood as a ghost yarn. Where is the expected reaction from
the pagans and Jews? You would imagine them saying, "Why care if Jesus was
stolen from the grave or not? A ghost that seems to be a man is hardly worth our
attention. We have ghost stories around every corner." Judaism, in particular,
would have been handed a smoking gun by Paul. It was not used. How odd!
I have deliberately passed over Paul's statement that flesh and blood cannot inherit God's kingdom. The reason that even without that statement, Paul's theology wrecks the credibility of Christianity and Jesus.