The following exegetical outline forms the basis of interpretation for the passages that are used in this paper:

The historical background of the subject of the resurrection has two separate contexts. One of the contexts is from the Jewish beliefs and the other is from the Gentile beliefs about the resurrection of the body.

One subset of Jews who held that only the books of the Law of Moses were inspired, while another subset held that the prophets were inspired writings as well. The doctrine of the resurrection was revealed progressively, through the prophets, so those who held to only the first five books did not accept the doctrine of the resurrection. This was such a live issue that when Jesus showed the doctrine of the immortality of the soul to be inherent in the Law itself, thereby refuting the Sadducees, even the Pharisees respected Him for it.

It's unclear from the text exactly what the occasion of the dissertation might have been. Perhaps there were those who held to Christianity and Platonism and Paul was correcting their syncretism. On the other hand, Paul may be answering the Jewish converts of the Sadducean party who denied the doctrine of the resurrection. The audience of the book of Corinthians was the believers in the city of Corinth, probably mostly Gentile converts to the faith, so they are to be considered as the most likely target for the argument.

The following sections contain a detailed exegesis of the 1 Cor. 15:35-49 passages.

In the passage, Paul twice uses the gnomic present, which is timeless when it is used in a doctrinal proposition. Thus, the use of the present tense does not refer to an ongoing resurrection.

In verses 36-41, Paul sets up a series of contrasts in the animal, vegetable, and mineral realms. Each of these would be familiar to Paul’s audience from their daily life. Paul draws contrasts between each of these sorts of material objects to show that there is a present-day variance between these things. If there’s a present day variance, we should likewise expect a variance between our present bodies and our resurrection bodies.

Paul shows that there's a dramatic change coming. The assumptions of the critic about what the Christian position is on the resurrection are themselves a strawman. The body we have now is going to be raised after we are dead, but it will not be eternally corruptible. However, the body has to first die before it can be raised.

Paul does not deal in this section of Scripture with the intermediate state. Paul is dealing with the resurrection of the body, not the state of the soul between death and resurrection. There is nothing in this passage which supports soul sleep, nor anything which directly contradicts soul sleep..

The use of the word, "fool" would seem, at least on the surface, to contradict Christ's prohibition against such language. The adjective afrone is a nominative used as a vocative, which is a frequent use of this case. Hence, the term is not an address, but an exclamation, "Thou fool!" The propletptic position of su sharpens Paul’s point.

The use of this simple agricultural analogy would have been well known to Paul's audience. They certainly would have been capable of understanding a seed planted in the ground and should have been able to make the connection to the planting of the body of a dead person. Making an analogical connection to the familiar is a great device for connecting with the audience of Paul's letter. There’s also a certain mystery about how a seed becomes a plant which exists, for most people, to this very day.

The phrase, "except it die", is a condition of the third class, possibility assumed. This is the answer to the "how" question posed in the previous verse. The "how" is that the body must first die in order to rise. Just as the seed dies in forming the plant, the present body will die before the resurrection body can be formed.

The goal of the analogy Paul is using is this. Without the seed, there is no plant. The plant grows out of the seed. The seed is not discarded, but becomes the plant with added nutrients. In a similar way, without the death of the body there will be no resurrection. The body is to be resurrected from the old body. The old body is not discarded, but becomes the new body with the added attributes of immortality.

Jesus used a similar analogy for a slightly different purpose in John 12:24 where he said that "unless a seed fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Christ's analogy is a prediction of His death and the salvation of sinners that followed, and Paul's analogy is centered around the promise of the future resurrection. Both use the same imagery. Both the analogy of Jesus and the analogy of Paul draw from the same life experience base of the listeners.

The phrase, ou to soma to genesomenon, is the articular future participle of ginomai, literally means "not the body that will become".

The types of flesh are the same list enumerated in the book of Genesis. In Gen. 1:24-25, God creates beasts. In Gen. 1:26-28. God creates man. The order of the list is reversed between Genesis and this passage. However, this shows the basic divisions between the four groups of flesh. Adam and Eve are in a solitary class whereas all the other classes are compounds.

The continuity here is the "it", the body. The body is sown in corruption. The body is raised in incorruption. Corruption is the steady decay of the processes of the body. Incorruption is the notion that there will be no more corruption. We will not be subject to death and decay any longer.

In incorruption, is a late eord from a privative and phtheriro, to corrupt and can be found in the LXX, Plutarch, Philo, etc. The body has undergone a complete change as compared to the body of flesh.

The contrast here is between dishonor and glory. Death is the ultimate dishonor to a person. The person has no control over their body at all in death. Others wash and cloth it. Death is evidence of the fallen world where sin and death reign. The resurrection is the reversal of that. The glory of God is manifested in reversing sin and death. If man is not raised from the dead, then Satan has won an eternal victory in the garden in that Satan has managed to do something in killing man that God is unable to reverse. Thank God, that’s not the case. Death is not victorious over believers in Christ.

Again, the contrast is between the weakness of the body before the resurrection and the power of the body afterwards. The body is so weak before the resurrection that it can’t avoid death. After the resurrection, death has no power over the body. It is powerful against death.

How does Paul use pnuematikos in other places? Is this a body that is essentially physical, or is it a body that merely appears to be physical when required? In 1 Cor. 10:4 Paul refers to the rock that followed the Israelites around in the wilderness as a "spiritual" rock, using the same Greek work as in this passage. Yet, from reading the passages about the rock in Exodus it's clear that this was a real material rock. The rock had spiritual attributes and yet was still a physical rock. The adjectival use of pneumatikos is the key here. "Spiritually animated" might be another way of expressing the same concept.

The contrast here is between Adam and Christ. As the Father of our physical existence, Adam is The reason man fell into sin, and death is due to Adam who was our federal head since in Adam we all sinned. The reversal of that decline is due to Jesus who secured for us freedom from sin and death by His obedience. Christ undoes the damage of Adam. This verse does not mean that Christ is now a spirit as some have claimed.

Adam was from the earth. Jesus is from Heaven. The things of this earth are temporary. The things from Heaven are eternal.

Since we are to be raised by the eternal God, we will become inhabitants of eternity. We will no longer die, since the inhabitants of Heaven don’t die. Our headship is no longer Adam, but Christ. Our citizenship is from Heaven.

It’s worth noting that the RSV and TEV footnotes show "let us wear" instead of we shall also bear. Robertson refers to this as volative aorist active subjunctive and explains the difference between the two readings as possibly the failure of the scribes to distinguish between a long o and a short o.

Our new image will be of Christ and the Heavenly. No longer will sin, sickness and death reign over us. We inherit our physical forms (images) from our earthly parents, all the way back to Adam. We will inherit our new image from Jesus, who is the firstborn from the dead.

Just as Adam was the first of all the old generation of men. Christ is the first of all of the new generation of men. Adam was formed out of the dust of the earth. Christ came down from Heaven.

In these passages, Paul teaches the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh. Paul explicitly denies that the body will be left in the ground, but strongly affirms that the body will be raised.

Paul does this by setting up a series of contrasts between the various sorts of bodies (animal, vegetable and mineral) that his audience would be well familiar with. Paul then proceeds to draw an analogy between the contrasts people are familiar with and the resurrection, which they are not familiar with. After all, if there’s variation between the bodies that we see presently, shouldn’t there be variation between the body we have now and the transformed body of the resurrection.

An important issue in the discussion is that of continuity and discontinuity. Paul shows that there’s both continuity and discontinuity between the body that is planted and the one that is raised. The body that is planted is the one that is raised, but it’s also transformed to be immortal.

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Geisler, Normal. Feinberg, Paul. Introduction to Philosophy. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1980).

Grosheide, F. W. The New International Commentary on the New Testament: Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1953).

Robertso, A. T. Word Pictures in the New Testament. . (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1931).