1 Corinthians 15

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John H:

There was an excellent post on the BHT earlier today that did engage with 1 Corinthians 15 in some detail.

In particular, the writer, Joel Hunter, makes the point that Paul addressed the resurrection-doubters at Corinth as believers, not as apostates. He warned them that their faith would be in vain if Jesus hadn't risen from the dead, he made it very clear that the resurrection is a non-negotiable in the Christian faith, but he didn't actually denounce them as apostates.

Indeed, Wright's phrase, "very, very muddled", would be a good description of the Corinthian church on all sorts of levels, but at all times Paul insists on addressing them as "the saints at Corinth", not the "so-called saints whose errors in life and doctrine show they're not actually Christians at all, as I was careful to make very clear to that journalist from the Rome Gazette".

I'd be interested in any responses to that interpretation of 1 Cor 15.

http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2006/04/resurrection-not-essential-more-of.html

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Evan May has already posted a piece on Hunter. I’ll just comment on John’s summary. There are several things that go seriously askew here:

1. 1 Corinthians is not a private letter to a friend. Rather, it has a general audience.

As such, Paul would be in no position to making any hard assumptions about the state of grace, or lack thereof, of any particular member of the audience. He doesn’t specifically know who-all is going to be on the receiving end of this communiqué.

2.There were also a number of different factions in the Corinthian church. So Paul is fighting on more than one front.

3.In a letter addressed to a general audience, Paul will, of practical necessity, presume or impute a general viewpoint to the audience, so as to supply a point of reference, without which he cannot address the pastoral crisis.

4.This presumption will be based on his general knowledge of the Corinthian congregation, but it’s also something of a literary artifice necessitated by addressing a doctrinal crisis at a distance.

5.For purposes of argument, if nothing more, Paul assumes that the Corinthians did, indeed, affirm the bodily resurrection of Christ, and he takes that presupposition as common ground to reason from the resurrection of Christ to the resurrection of Christians.

So his argument does not assume that the Corinthians denied the bodily resurrection of Christ. To the contrary, his argument proceeds on precisely the opposite assumption.

6.In addition, his argument would lack traction unless the Corinthians who doubted or denied the resurrection of the just nevertheless affirmed the resurrection of Christ.

So, as a matter of fact, and not merely ad arguendo, he takes for granted their assent to the bodily resurrection of Christ, and uses that as logical leverage to trace out their operating assumption through to its logical conclusion.

Therefore, the starting point for the Corinthians is exactly the opposite of Borg’s position.

7.This is hardly surprising. After all, the resurrection of Christ as a fixture of the Apostolic kerygma. Every Christian would be acquainted with that doctrine.

However, the precise fate of those who died in Christ would not come up as a matter of course.

8.As propos (7), the resurrection of Christ is an article of saving faith (Rom 10:9).

And the physicality of the Resurrection is emphatically affirmed in Luke 24 and John 20-21.

9.At the risk of stating the obvious, the Corinthians didn’t have the benefit of 1 Cor 15 until Paul wrote 1 Cor 15.

By contrast, Borg does enjoy the full benefit of 1 Cor 15—not to mention Lk 24 and Jn 20-21.

So, once again, Borg’s situation is disanalogous to that of the Corinthians. Even if, for the sake of argument, we said their scepticism regarding the resurrection of the just was excusable before Paul penned 1 Cor 15, it hardly follows that one is entitled to the same scepticism in the teeth of 1 Cor 15 and other like passages.