Notes

¹

The question why Paul, after having up to 1 Cor 15:43 (incl.) conducted his whole argument on the basis of a comparison between the body of sin and the body of the resurrection, substitutes from 1 Cor 15:44 on for the body of sin the normal body of creation is an interesting one, though very difficult to answer. The answer should not be sought in the direction of ascribing to him the view that the creation-body and the body of sin are qualitatively identical, in other words that the evil predicates of φθορά, ἀτιμία, ἀσθενεία, enumerated in 1 Cor 15:22 belong to the body in virtue of creation. Paul teaches too plainly elsewhere that these things came into the world through sin. The proper solution seems to be as follows: the Apostle was intent upon showing that in the plan of God from the outset provision was made for a higher kind of body (as pertaining to a higher state of existence generally). From the abnormal body of sin no inference could be drawn as to that effect. The abnormal and the eschatological are not so logically correlated that the one can be postulated from the other. But the world of creation and the world to come are thus correlated, the one pointing forward to the other; on the principle of typology the first Adam prefigures the last Adam, the psychical body the pneumatic body (cp. Rom. 5:14). The statement of 1 Cor 15:44b is not meant as an apodictic assertion, but as an argument: if there exists one kind of body, there exists the other kind also. This explains why the quotation (Gen. 2:7), which relates proximately to the psychical state only, is yet treated by Paul as proving both, and as therefore warranting the subjoined proposition: “the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” The quotation proves this, because the “psychical” as such is typical of the pneumatic, the first creation of the second, the world that now is (if conceived without sin) of the aeon to come. This exegesis also disposes of the view that Paul meant to include vs. 1 Cor 15:45c in the quotation, the latter being taken from Gen. 1:27 (man’s creation in the image of God). On such a supposition Paul’s manner of handling the record would have to rest on the Philonic (and older) speculation of a two-fold creation, first of the ideal, then of the empirical man. According to this speculation the ideal man is created first, the empirical man afterwards, since Gen. 1 comes before Gen. 2. But Paul affirms the very opposite: not the pneumatic is first, the psychical is first. If there is reference at all in 1 Cor 15:46 to this Philonic philosophoumenon, it must be by way of pointed correction. Paul would mean to substitute for the sequence of the idealistic philosophy the sequence of historic unfolding; the categories of his thought are Jewish, not Hellenic: he reasons in forms of time, not of space.

The question why Paul, after having up to 1 Cor 15:43 (incl.) conducted his whole argument on the basis of a comparison between the body of sin and the body of the resurrection, substitutes from 1 Cor 15:44 on for the body of sin the normal body of creation is an interesting one, though very difficult to answer. The answer should not be sought in the direction of ascribing to him the view that the creation-body and the body of sin are qualitatively identical, in other words that the evil predicates of φθορά, ἀτιμία, ἀσθενεία, enumerated in 1 Cor 15:22 belong to the body in virtue of creation. Paul teaches too plainly elsewhere that these things came into the world through sin. The proper solution seems to be as follows: the Apostle was intent upon showing that in the plan of God from the outset provision was made for a higher kind of body (as pertaining to a higher state of existence generally). From the abnormal body of sin no inference could be drawn as to that effect. The abnormal and the eschatological are not so logically correlated that the one can be postulated from the other. But the world of creation and the world to come are thus correlated, the one pointing forward to the other; on the principle of typology the first Adam prefigures the last Adam, the psychical body the pneumatic body (cp. Rom. 5:14). The statement of 1 Cor 15:44b is not meant as an apodictic assertion, but as an argument: if there exists one kind of body, there exists the other kind also. This explains why the quotation (Gen. 2:7), which relates proximately to the psychical state only, is yet treated by Paul as proving both, and as therefore warranting the subjoined proposition: “the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” The quotation proves this, because the “psychical” as such is typical of the pneumatic, the first creation of the second, the world that now is (if conceived without sin) of the aeon to come. This exegesis also disposes of the view that Paul meant to include vs. 1 Cor 15:45c in the quotation, the latter being taken from Gen. 1:27 (man’s creation in the image of God). On such a supposition Paul’s manner of handling the record would have to rest on the Philonic (and older) speculation of a two-fold creation, first of the ideal, then of the empirical man. According to this speculation the ideal man is created first, the empirical man afterwards, since Gen. 1 comes before Gen. 2. But Paul affirms the very opposite: not the pneumatic is first, the psychical is first. If there is reference at all in 1 Cor 15:46 to this Philonic philosophoumenon, it must be by way of pointed correction. Paul would mean to substitute for the sequence of the idealistic philosophy the sequence of historic unfolding; the categories of his thought are Jewish, not Hellenic: he reasons in forms of time, not of space.

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