Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [256]
In I Corinthians, Paul discussed the issue of the final disposition of the body before he discussed the issue of resurrection and transformation itself. In this passage he may also have been responding to the Greek notion that the body decays while the soul lives on. A. J. Wedderburn has astutely observed that the issue in I Corinthians 6 is the normal conception of the afterlife in a Greek environment.47 It is in this context that Paul took up the issue of the body:
“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. (1 Cor 6:12-14)
The Greeks believed that the body was destined for destruction. But Paul did not follow through with a Platonic analysis of the immortality of the soul.48 Instead, he stayed in the apocalyptic-mystical world of Judaism, defending and sharpening that notion in view of the Greek assumptions about the continuity of life after death. Paul immediately suggested that the body will survive death, for it belongs to the Lord. God will raise it in glory and perfection by means of the spirit, just as he raised up the body of Jesus, who is even now in his spiritual state.
This kind of talk will demand a clarification in a Greco-Roman context. But, as Paul was still discussing various moral issues within the community, he postponed his discussion until later in the letter, to 1 Corinthians 15. There Paul summed up his entire religious experience in an apocalyptic vision of the resurrection of believers. Paul began with a description of his previous preaching and suggested that if his listeners gave up belief in the resurrection then they believed in Christ in vain:
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ-whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Cor 15:12-19)
Paul claimed to have given them, indeed emphasized as the first importance, the true teaching, as he had himself received it. And that teaching was simply that Christ died for sins in accordance with Scripture, that he was entombed and rose three days later, all in accordance with Scripture. There is no doubt that this is the earliest Christian teaching with regard to the resurrection: It is part of the primitive kerygma or proclamation of the church.
MARTYRDOM AND TRANSFORMATION
For Paul the identification with Jesus mystically made everyone a martyr and, logically, made everyone qualified for the resurrection rewards of a martyr. Those who believe in Christ are worthy of the same rewards as the martyrs, who can expect not just a bodily existence at the final end of history, but who can also expect the further reward of the martyred few (“those who lead many to knowledge”) as heavenly angels (stars) for having enlightened the world:
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested