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Paul’s Logic of Resurrection

in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19

PAULINE EPISTLES
DR. ROBERT CARA
SUMMER 2018
(UNABRIDGED)

MATT MARINO
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There are many things that puzzle the modern reader about Paul’s letters. One of
them is his logic. Now by “logic” I do not simply mean the form of argumentation, but also
the rationale that lies beneath the surface. Paul had a gospel logic. Not that his letters were
systematic theology textbooks in the modern sense, but there was a relentless connection
always being made between doctrine and life. A classic example of this is found in First
Corinthians 15, and especially in that tightly packed argument made in verse 12 through 19.
Granting that the First Corinthian letter is a response to questions and concerns raised by a
church to the Apostle, this does not prevent us from noting extended arguments with
massive implications for the gospel and Christian worldview. The context may be
situational, and yet the character of this portion is nevertheless doctrinal.
What I intend to show is this: In the mind of Paul, the resurrection in general, and
Christ’s resurrection in particular, is the ground of our resurrection and all of our hope.
Stated negatively, what Paul is saying in 15:12-19 amounts to this: Take away the resurrection
in general and you have taken away both Christ’s resurrection and our whole eternal life. To
demonstrate this we will proceed in the following order: (1) the context of Paul’s argument
in the text; (2) Paul’s redemptive-historical logic, or how the Old Testament saints expected the
resurrection; (3) Paul’s formal logic, or how the resurrection is essential to Christian belief; and
(4) Paul’s gospel logic, or how the resurrection is essential to Christian hope.

The Context of Paul’s Argument in 1 Corinthians 15

What was the exact nature of the error in Paul’s crosshairs? One thing is undisputed.
There is some kind of general category of resurrection being denied. There is no article in
verse 12b connected to ὅτι ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν οὐκ ἔστιν, though an English article still has
to be supplied in the translation as follows: that the dead are not raised. νεκρῶν is in the
genitive plural (so it is not one man’s resurrection), and ἔστιν is third person singular because
it is the verb of being for the singular resurrection (ἀνάστασις). Thus we have a singular
resurrection for a group of dead men. That can still leave us with two choices. Either the
general resurrection of the dead at the end of time was being denied, or else what we might
call the “universal” of resurrection—the very idea and essence of it—was being denied.
Whether these need to be divorced to begin with is another matter.
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The concluding force of it is this: “If the dead are never raised” or “If there is no such
thing as resurrection” or “If the resurrection is impossible” or “If the whole idea of a
resurrection is ruled out.” This general sense of resurrection covers both the possibility of
the resurrection as well as the prospects of the concrete, eschatological resurrection.
Our question gets thicker at the level of the nature of this resurrection. There are
really two main options. Following Ridderbos, we might call them materialistic and
spiritualistic. As the author rules on the subject: “Paul is not dealing with a materialistic, but
with a spiritualistic conception of the resurrection. Over against this idea, according to
which the resurrection has taken place already in this life (cf. v. 19) and thus in this body,
Paul,”1 essentially aims the rest of the chapter at establishing the true manner of the
resurrection and thus its necessity. Does this not give us some clue as to those two
individuals named Hymenaeus and Philetus, who were teaching “that the resurrection has
already happened” (2 Tim 2:18). Is this the same error as the one that had invaded Corinth?
Whatever we decide, we at least have a category in the New Testament for this kind of an
error.
To Ridderbos, “It was not the resurrection of Christ that was denied, nor that
believers shared in it, but it was said that the latter is to be understood in an exclusively
spiritual sense, and to consist in the perfection to be attained already in this life, whereupon
no resurrection of the body need follow.”2 For Wright it was not about what need follow, but
rather what could not follow: “This must mean that they were denying a future bodily
resurrection, and the strong probability is that they were doing so on the standard pagan
grounds,” refering to it as a “proto-gnostic belief.”3 On this view we do not have to choose
between spiritualism and naturalism, for Hymanaeus and Philetus could have denied the
future hope and offered consolation with a spiritual presence.
That verses 12 through 19 are part of a larger argument is evidenced by several
factors. First there is the opening word.4 Fee remarks that, “An adversative ‘but’ contrasts

1 Ridderbos, 546.
2 Ridderbos, 539.
3 Wright, RSG, 316.

4 But is the opening word in correct English grammar, but in the Greek δὲ is postpositive: e. g. Εἰ δὲ
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the preceding argument, ‘It is preached that Christ is raised from the dead’ (vv. 1-11), with
their present position, ‘Some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead.’”5 So there is a
“preceding argument” of a different kind, but in another sense the two diverse forms of
argument comprise a single, unified argument for the place of the resurrection in the
Christian gospel. The second factor suggesting a wider argument is that referent Some. More
obscurely we might locate the “Some of you,” as Fee does, in 4:18 and 9:3, so that the
Corinthians who had bought into this denial of the resurrection were either the same party
that opposed Paul in other matters, or were at least cross-pollinating this error with those
other errors.
Note also the diverse forms of argumentation in Chapter 15. Paul utilizes Scripture,
tradition, and reason to make his case. As to Scripture, he conceives of the resurrection of
Christ “in accordance with the Scriptures” (15:4). Since the Corinthian letters are among the
earliest of New Testament books, it is unlikely that this is another one of those allusions to
Apostolic writings as Scripture. Rather this refers to the Old Testament. As to tradition, Paul
says, “I delivered to you … what I also received” (15:3) and then closes the section off with,
“Whether then it was I or they, so we preached and so you believed” (15:11). The referent
“they” here is the other Apostles. They now formed a tradition. This particular tradition
may have been recent6 and small,7 but since the canon was not yet closed, their unified
testimony was all important. As to reason, he appeals to deductive logic in the text itself,
though he provides an invitation for the reader to use their own inductive reasoning: “Then
he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive,
though some have fallen asleep” (15:6). To his immediate audience, there is an implicit dare

5 Fee, 740.
6As to the proximity of the tradition to the events themselves, William Lane Craig makes a compelling case
that, “Paul probably received this tradition no later than his visit to Jerusalem in A.D. 36 (Gal 1:18), if not
earlier in Damascus. It thus goes back to within the first five years after Jesus’ death” — Reasonable Faith, 273.
7 As to the brevity of the list of witnesses, W. J. Sparrow-Simpson takes issue with scholars who claim it was
Paul’s “intention to give a most detailed account … If there is one thing more than another which the narrative
in 1 Cor. xv. manifests, it is the intention of the Apostle to give the briefest summary” — Our Lord’s Resurrection,
94-95. This shows that certain things were taken for granted by his audience.
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to come down to Jerusalem to see for themselves; and at the very least they could interview
a large group of people.8

Paul’s RH Logic — How the Old Testament Saints Expected the Resurrection
It is often supposed that the people of ancient Israel had no doctrine of the
resurrection. Perhaps one developed in or following the Bablylon Captivity as a result of
foreign religious influence. Then perhaps the rest attached itself to the first century church
as a result of the Eastern mystery religions. In meeting this challenge, we may break down
the Old Testament witness to the resurrection into four basic categories: (1) explicit
statements, (2) anticipatory actions, (3) unwitting prophecies, and (4) types and shadows
interpreted as such by the New Testament. This is important to do for integrity of Paul’s
overall argument in First Corinthians 15; for he says not merely that Christ died, but that he
was raised “in accordance with the Scriptures” (v. 4). Now which Scriptures does he mean
but those of the Hebrew canon? It is imperative, therefore, that our Old Testament contain
at least a robust typology of this central miracle.
First, there are at least four explicit statements about the resurrection in the Old
Testament. All three are in the Prophets: “Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You
who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth
will give birth to the dead” (Isa 26:19); “Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from
your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know
that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my
people” (Ezk 37:12-13); “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan 12:2). These
passages are so plain that the only recourse left for the critic is to point out that these are of
a very late date.9 The resurrection hope in Hosea 13:14 has New Testament endoresment
from Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:54-57: “O Sheol, where is your sting?” It may be argued that the
vindicative expectation of Job is also explicit: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at
the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my

8 Even the great liberal scholar C. H. Dodd viewed these words by Paul as such an invitation: cf. Craig, 282.
9 Such late dates are, by and large, driven by anti-supernatural presuppositions. Compelling rationale for the
traditionally ascribed dates may be found in BTIOT: VanGemeren, 251; McKelvey, 305-07; Belcher, 495-96.
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flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not
another. My heart faints within me!” (19:25-27) Early references may also exist in
Deuteronomy 32:39, 1 Samuel 2:6, and Psalm 49:14-15.
Secondly, there are anticipatory actions that suggest an expectation of
resurrection. Two events in the life of Abraham, one dramatic and the other very mundane,
are resurrection testimonies. About the willingness to sacrifice Isaac, we are told some of
what Abraham was thinking: “He considered that God was able even to raise him from the
dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back” (Heb 11:19). In this
Abraham both was and received a resurrection sign. Boice and Hughes comment on the
purchase of a burial plot for Sarah that he was funding yet another act of faith, as this place
was in the heart of the Promise Land, and from it he expected to see his wife again.10
Wenkel argues that, “For the author of Hebrews, the narratives of Genesis 17-18
demonstrate that Abraham himself is the ‘first shadow’ of the resurrection from the dead.”11
How can this be maintained? The author points to Abraham’s “renewed procreative
capacity”12 in God’s fulfilled promise. “Both Romans 4:19 and Hebrews 11:1 point to
Abraham’s body being dead.”
Joseph also testified to his hope in the resurrection by instructing that his bones be
brought back to the Promise Land in the fulness of time. What is the punchline to Hebrews
11? It is that “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having
seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that their were strangers
and exiles on the earth” (v. 13). What else does this mean but that all these acts of faith were
resurrection-anticipating-actions?
Thirdly, there are unwitting prophecies. That adjective is appropriate because
Peter says: “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that
was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of
Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent
glories” (1 Pet 1:10-11). David is said to speak of the resurrection in Psalm 16:8-11 by Peter in

10 cf. Boice, Genesis: Volume 2, 714-15; Hughes, Genesis, 308-13.

11 Wenkel, 51.
12 Wenkel, 52.
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his Pentecost sermon (Acts 2:25-28). Now did the Psalmist intend to speak of Christ’s
resurrection? Divine intention supercedes, without eradicating, human intention here.
Elsewhere Job cries, “Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until
your wrath be past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me! If a man dies,
shall he live again? All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should
come” (14:13-14). And it may have been disingenuous repentance offered by Israel, but “on
the third day he will raise us up” (Hos 6:2). The prophesies of the new creation would have
implied the hope of a future life for their first audience: cf. Isa 43:18-21, 65:17, 66:22.
Fourthly, there are those types and shadows of the resurrection that the Jews
would have, in time, learned to see as signposts to the life to come. Beale suggests an early,
albeit obscure, double-hint in Genesis 3.13 Perhaps the constant phrase that the dying
faithful one was “gathered to his people” (Gen. 25:8; cf. 49:29) was anticipatory. Jesus’ words
give us more than a hint of a central type: “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights
in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth” (Mat 12:40). Whether Paul knew about this saying of Jesus or not,
starting from the presupposition that the whole Bible has one divine Author, this verse by
itself, is sufficient to justify Paul’s claim that the resurrection was “according to the
Scriptures.” Lunn argues that central to the Jonah sign is the concept of rising up out of the
water.14 The sea was a place of judgment.15
In setting forth four views of the ancient Jewish view of Sheol, Alexander shows that
differing expectations of the righteous and the wicked argue a connection between moral
consequences and the quality of one’s eternal life.16 He argues from Genesis 2-3 that death is
not natural, but punitive17; and from Psalm 49 that there was reward for the righteous.18

13 Beale, 228.
14 Lunn, 527.
15 The Apostles understood the salvation of Noah (1 Pet 3:20-21) and the Israelites (1 Cor 10:1-2) to be through
waters that are likened to baptism, and yet are substantially a judgment. Through both waters, the saved party
was spoken of as having arisen upward—cf. Rom 6:3-5.
16 Alexander, 41.
17 Alexander, 42.
18 Alexander, 44.
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Consequently if all must go to Sheol, but the eternal state of the righteous in markedly
better, something like the resurrection must be true.
Although it does not prove the full antiquity of the Jewish view, there is a significant
perspective in the Babylonian Talmud, that, “There is not a single precept in the Torah
whose reward is [stated] at its side which is not dependent on the resurrection of the
dead.”19 And how else does a simple Jewish woman like Martha confess, “I know that he will
rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (Jn 11:24). It may be that Paul was capitalizing
on the knowledge that the Jewish Christians in Corinth could offer their brethren.

Paul’s Formal Logic — or How the Resurrection is Essential to Christian Belief

Many shudder at the thought of logic being used in Scripture. For instance, Godet
rightly countered the anti-supernaturalism of those who divorced Christ’s resurrection from
ours in this text, yet was equally strict against those who appealed to “the laws of logic” for
the connection Paul made. In his mind, this makes the resurrection in general an abstract
category.20 Aside from showing Godet’s misunderstanding of logic, this suspicion would
make our Lord’s reply to the Sadducees very puzzling (cf. Mat 22:23-33). Jesus corrected their
general disbelief in the resurrection with the even more overarching categories of divine life
and power. It was of these ultimate causes of the resurrection, in the Scriptures, that the
Sadduccees were ignorant. That being said, Paul’s starting point of the bare possibility-
impossibility of the resurrection does not reduce the resurrection to an “abstraction.”
Before examining the form of Paul’s argument, we must understand what is behind
the premises. It is one thing to analyze whether an argument is consistent with itself (valid).
We must also discern whether each of its statements are true about the world (sound). We
must grasp the reason behind Paul’s reasoning. Let me offer four such reasons for the
resurrection that Paul is really fighting for by implication.
(1) The resurrection is first of all a real event. This is how Paul treats it at the
beginning of the chapter: “that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the
Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more

19 Beale, 234.
20 Godet, 771-72
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than five hundred brothers at one time” (vv. 4-6). So clear is the meaning of the tradition
handed down that critical writers like Luedemann21 expend much effort breaking apart
15:1-11 for potentially diverse sources. This is in keeping with the idea that the summary of
the resurrection developed in the early decades, according to the “faith needs” of the early
church. Now of course there was at least one kind of source besides Paul. That is after all
what Paul claims: that he “received” it. All that this means is that it was received from the
Jerusalem Apostles, which is not exclusive of his own encounter with the risen Christ.22 Real
must at least imply the possibility of historical verification. It does not require such
verification, but neither can it exclude it. This is why Barth’s realm of Geschichte23 is not
really an improvement upon the liberal notion. In his “meta-history” the theologian is not
asking us merely to believe in spite of not seeing, as Jesus tells Thomas (Jn 20:29); but he is
rather asking us not to bother about placing our hands anywhere near the wounds, as
Thomas did to Jesus and for which he was never reprimanded.
(2) The resurrection is second of all the conquest of death. Machen especially beat this
drum against liberalism’s translation of the resurrection into a purely “spiritual”
phenomenon. In fact Machen’s argument is a good combination of our first two points.
Christianity is nothing without the real event and apart from the apostolic doctrine (news)
about that event.24 Theological liberalism had given birth to the kind of skeptic to the
resurrection who set forth a Jesus whom his disciples took to be only “spiritually risen” or
“risen in their hearts” or “hopes.” While others, like Brown, do not reduce the whole
resurrection to a phantom, and yet understand Paul’s reasoning in 15:44 to preclude a “flesh

21 Luedemann, 33-38.
22It should be pointed out that even the texts that speak of Paul’s direct encounter with the risen Lord have a
context that is easy to explain. In no way are such texts to be taken as some “alternative” claim that Paul’s
testimony is independent from theirs. This is a “both / and” scenario. The reason why Paul, in Galatians 1:11-17
and 1 Corinthians 9:1-2, strenuously argues his own direct witness is that he is meeting the charge of some who
denied his apostolic status. But when the question is the resurrection per se (and not Paul’s credentials) he is
more than happy to share the stage and appeal to the tradition. Machen makes this same point: 124-25.
23Technically this German word means something like “event, struggle, story, or history,” though in the
Barthian lexicon it came take on the flavor of something like “meta-history” to distinguish it from that kind of
normal history which is empirical and thus verifiable.
24 Machen, 13, 17, 22-25, 35.
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and blood” resurrection.25 In other words they rest their case for a merely spiritual
resurrection on supposed exegetical grounds. But since the human being is a spirit-body
unity, it follows that the whole is being redeemed. Christology as a whole is at stake, since
the Word assumes precisely what he intends to redeem and restore.
(3) The resurrection is third of all connected to justification and the forgiveness of sins. Note
that Paul says that “you are still in your sins” (v. 17) if Christ has not been raised. Is this only
in a distant sense: in other words, since we will all die, never to rise, that any forgiveness of
sins is to that extent worthless? We may think this if the New Testament had nothing else to
say about the forensic character of the resurrection. However Paul says elswhere that Christ
“was raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25). The basic reason for this is that the biblical
worldview sees death as a cursed state. That implies a guilty state. So the New Testament
speaks of a state called “dead in our sins” (Eph 2:1, 5, Col 2:13, cf. Jn 8:21, 24).
(4) The resurrection is fourth of all the eschatological firstfruit of the new humanity and
new world. Beale goes as far to say that resurrection is “equivalent to eschatological new
creation.”26 Jesus is called “the firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18). So there is no question
that the new creation starts with him. Wright sees both the cross and resurrection as the
deliverance from the present evil age, leaning on Galatians 1:4-5. So the force of First
Corinthians 15:17 is that “if the Messiah has not been raised … the great deliverance has not
yet occured; but Paul’s whole worldview is based on the belief that it has.”27 More than
deliverance, Wright also sees a vindication of the original creation in this argument. For
“Paul is after all a creational theologian.”28 Taking the thought of Beale and Wright together,
the resurrection of Christ is the hinge that encompasses both redemption and restoration.
It completes the one and initiates the other.
These formed Paul’s “hidden premises,” we might say, and that which motivates his
polemical strategy in 15:12-19. What rises to the surface of his logic is a Christ-event
sufficient to justify the Christian faith. Calvin explains that, “he cannot be the author of

25 Brown, 85.
26 Beale, 227.
27 Wright, RSG, 220.
28 Wright, PFG, 71
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salvation to others, who has been altogether vanquished by death.”29 So whether viewed
from the side of what was psychologically possible in the disciples or from the side of
objective salvation, the resurrection is the sine qua non both of the gospel and the origin of
the church.
We are now ready to approach the argument of the text itself. There is not much
doubt among the recent commentaries on the similarity between Paul’s argument in 15:12-19
and several of the rules of inference in a textbook on logic. The use of the “inferential
participle”30 ἄρα shows a more formal argument. Another “exegetical payoff ” of this focus is
that it lends more evidence to the position about Chapters 1 and 2 of this letter. It has been
argued by more experiential traditions of Christendom that when Paul resolved to “nothing
but Christ and him crucified” (2:2) that what he was resisting was precisely philosophical
thought per se. Some have even suggested that in Corinth he had “learned his lesson” from
the small number of converts at Mars Hill (cf. Acts 17:32-34).31 Carson and Stott are among
those that rightly dimiss this.32 My only offering to that discussion is that 15:12-19 comes to
their aid. Paul is not shy about utilizing the most rigorous tools of reason to fight the good
fight of faith.
However one understands the logical form and literary structure of 15:12-19, it is
difficult to derive any conclusion without getting a sense of its component parts. Prior
discerns seven of what he calls “essentials” of the Christian message that would be lost if one
takes the position that Paul was refuting. These can be summarized as follows: i. Christ has
not been raised (13, 16). ii. Our preaching is in vain (14). iii. Your faith is in vain (14). iv. We
are misrepresenting God (15). v. You are still in your sins (17). vi. Those who have fallen
asleep in Christ have perished (18). vii. We are of all men most to be pitied (19).33

29 Calvin, 19.
30 Morris, 210.
31 Ramsay’s St. Paul first popularized this notion, according to Stott.
32 Carson, The Cross & Christian Ministry, 34-35; Stott, Acts, 283, 289-90.
33 Prior, 263-65.
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To the eyes of a beginning apologist it may seem as if Paul is utilizing something like
a hypothetical syllogism (e. g. A ⊃ B, B ⊃ C, ∴ A ⊃ C). However, he would be assuming the
punchline in his second premise and draw things out more, as in the following:

If there is no resurrection, then Christ is not risen.

If Christ is not risen, then you will not be raised (i. e. your faith is in vain).
Therefore, if there is no resurrection, then your faith is in vain.

Indeed this is the overall point of the passage. However Paul’s ordinary Greek sentence
structure is more terse. What that amounts to in his logic is more like another rule of
inference called modus tollens (e. g. A ⊃ B, ~B, ∴ ~A), which is a kind of hypothetical form.
Understood in this way, we have something closer to the exact text:

If there is no resurrection, then Christ is not risen.

Christ is risen.
Therefore, there is a resurrection.34

Now just because Paul is not providing us with a textbook example of his logic does not
mean there is not a discernible structure. Fee even draws out three chiastic patterns that
serve this hypothetical reasoning,35 the literary and logical forms existing in a symbiotic
relationship. It is most likely however that the logical form is negative.
Vern Poythress categorizes Paul’s form here as a reductio ad absurdum in his text on
Logic.36 This is that indirect form of argument that attempts to draw out the contradiction
inherent in the position of one’s opponent. Wright takes this same view, so that Paul is
“showing that those who deny the future resurrection are cutting off the branch they are

34This is not technically how a modus tollens would be stated; but I have stated premise 2 and the conclusion in
the obverse to make for better English grammar. It should technically be represented by “(1) If there is no
resurrection, then Christ is not risen; (2) It is not the case that Christ is not risen; (3) Therefore, it is not the
case that there is no resurrection.”
35 Fee, 739-40.
36 Poythress, 320.
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sitting on.”37 That may be the case, but it would only be effective to persuade the
resurrection-denying party if they granted that Christ’s bodily resurrection was necessary in
any event. Perhaps they were ready to deny that. On the other hand, as a reductio ad
absurdum, it would have been quite effective to awaken those Corinthians who believed both
(a) that Christ rose bodily and (b) that the future state implies some bodily existence.
This reminds us that an orthodox mind is often maintained (and heterodox
commitments avoided) by simply having the terrible implications worked out for us. In
other words the argument here is a model for pastoring and preaching. Prior comments on
the imperative that Paul assumes: “to push people to see the logic of their beliefs, whether
those beliefs are orthodox or heretical.”38 This is true of the sheep as well as of the false
shepherd: “These men must be made to see the logical consequences of the position they
have taken up,”39 Morris says. We might remember that the Apostle had a category for
salvaging even the would-be heretic by gentler persuasion (cf. 2 Tim 2:24-26).
There is one more kind of argument that Paul makes that I have not yet addressed.
It also falls under the category of reason, but it is a moral reasoning. He says, “We are even
found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ,
whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised” (v. 15). This would be the
worst kind of false witness; namely to lie about God. Morris adds that, “Testified of God is
literally ‘testified against God’.”40 Elsewhere it is specifically argued and matter of factly
stated that “God raised him” (Acts 13:30, cf. 2:22, 24, 3:15, 26, 4:10, 5:30, 10:40, 13:33, 34, 17:31,
Rom 4:24, 6:4, 8:11, 1 Cor 6:14, 2 Cor 4:14, Gal 1:1, Eph 1:17, 20, 1 Thess 1:10, Heb 13:20, 1 Pet
1:21).
Even granting the moral argument used here concerning false witness, it is important
that we catch Paul’s larger point. It is not simply that the resurrection had better be true
because we have been going around saying that it is: playing the fool ourselves and casting
God as a failure! It would not minimize this point in the least to suggest that Paul fought for

37 Wright, RSG, 332.

38 Prior, 262.
39 Morris, 211.
40 Morris, 211.
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coherence in his gospel message. This is the main thing Paul is doing: setting forth the
consistency of the Christian gospel so that it may be reasonably believed.

Paul’s Gospel Logic — or How the Resurrection is Essential to Christian Hope

What we have seen so far is that Paul’s logic is not some unnatural appendage to the
basic needs of the churches to which he writes. It is doctrinal and therefore it is holistic. It
is related to every other point of doctrine and all of life. “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from
the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel” (2 Tim 2:8). In one concise
statement to Timothy he holds out the resurrection in biblical, systematic, and practical
theological terms.
The fundamental ground of Paul’s logic is theological: “the organic union between
Christ and believers, between his resurrection and theirs.”41 Now here is where theological
tradition matters for Bible reading. If our theology has no place for salvation being an
objective work of God and a unity between the Persons of the Trinity, then it will be easy to
miss the import of those biblical passages that treat the resurrection that has happened to
us (past) and is happening to us (present). We may believe in its future dimension, and we
may believe in the past dimension of Christ’s own historical resurrection. To cut right to the
point, doctrines of salvation that are weak on our federal union with Adam and Christ will
obscure the full doctrine of the resurrection. The flow of Chapter 15 coming out of our
passage is the perfect exhibition as to why this is.

Fee understands verses 12 through 28 being the “logical” portion of Paul’s argument:
verses 12-19 being the more straight forward logical form, and yet verses 20-28 extending
that logic into the future of the final resurrection to everlasting life and the final death of
death.42 The past and present logic is necessary to the future logic, which is only another
way to say that the basic objects Christian belief are foundational to real Christian hope. As
Calvin paraphrases the Apostle’s train of thought, “Christ did not die, or rise again for

41 Waters, 239.
42 Fee, 737-38.
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himself, but for us: hence his resurrection is the foundation of ours, and what was
accomplished in him, must be fulfilled in us also.”43
Pannenberg brought back the historical question in theological circles after a period
of the “Easter faith” treated along Bultmann’s existential lines or Barth’s notion of Geschichte.
Yet Pannenberg did this by rooting verification for the event in the eschatological
resurrection of all believers.44 Ever since then, there has been such a supply of popular
apologetics books and programs that have majored on the historical evidence for the
resurrection. This is not a bad thing—unless we begin to treat the resurrection as a sign for
the unbeliever to enter the front door, but which does little else. The ultimate consequence
of reducing the resurrection to a centerpiece of apologetics is that we may find ourselves
recapitulating the Corinthian error. We may firmly believe that Jesus rose from the grave in
verifiable history and yet fall short of the expectation of rising ourselves. In the name of a
good argument to skeptics, we may neglect to take the good news to ourselves!
Paul is not missing the heart even in this logical section. Those who have “fallen
asleep in Christ” (v. 18) would be without hope apart from this totalizing resurrection. It is
not an argument that is at stake, but hope itself. In this verse 18 there is a clue as to how
Paul understands resurrection within the larger context of what we would call our overall
soteriology. Our union with Christ is linked to death and resurrection by Paul in Romans 6.
Those who are Christians—whether fallen asleep or currently alive reading Paul’s words—
are identified as “in Christ.” This means that the Christian is not only united to Christ as to
his person, but united to Christ in his whole work.
Perhaps the most loaded word in our text is the word κενὴ (v. 14) which can mean
“vain,” “hollow,” “empty” or “void.” Given the way that Paul is arguing in the chapter as a
whole, it seems best to understand this in the more picturesque sense of an empty void and
not simply as a futile vanity.45 Certainly our gospel would be both without the resurrection.
But it is the place of the resurrection in that gospel that is on display. So the resurrection is
functioning (to use a modern analogy) like a center of gravity in a solar system. Pluck away

43 Calvin, 17-18.
44 For instance, Pannenberg refers to the Gospel accounts as “heavily colored by legendary elements”; 89.

45The word ματαία is used in verse 17 bringing in this other idea of “futility,” which has more the sense of the
effectiveness of an argument—namely, ineffective, weak, or unproductive.
 16

the sun and the gravity is lost. Without the bodily resurrection of Christ, guaranteeing ours,
the cross, justification, sanctification, and glorification are all lost with it.
Verse 19 gives us a clear contrast to end the thought: hope versus pity. The hope is
subjective and the pity objective. What I mean by that is that we possess the hope and that
we are the objects of the pity of others. Now both cannot be true. Either our hope
transcends this life or else this life is a dead end. In a kind of reversal of Pascal’s Wager, the
Apostle makes it clear that if the resurrection is not true, then Christians will live the most
pathetic of all wasted lives. He uses a universal and superlative to do this: (1) of all people; (2)
most to be pitied. This is an emphatic way to position Christianity as the worst bet of all—if,
that is, the resurrection is not true. It is all or nothing.
 17

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