Stanley
Porter wrote the following about 2 Cor 5:1-10, arguing (correctly) that Paul is
not teaching one goes to heaven (in a disembodied state) at death, instead, he
is speaking of his hope of the future bodily resurrection:
2
Corinthians 5.1-10. This passage, 2 Cor. 5.1-10, can be divided into a number of
subsections, but each approaches the human situation from a similar
perspective. In the first, 2 Cor. 5.1-5, Paul draws a number of contrasts
between the earthly life, which he depicts as a tent or earthly clothing, and
an external house in heaven that is not made by hands. The major debate here is
between whether this section argues for a disembodied intermediate state after
death and before the resurrection, one which Paul wishes to avoid, or whether
the ‘building from God’ in v. 1 is a resurrection body that believers inhabit
upon death until the parousia. Both positions have had a number of influential
and important exegetes who have defended them. The important interpretive issue
is how the term ‘naked’ is understood in v. 3. The latter position seems most
likely. Harris gives five lines of support for the position: (1) when v. 1 refers
to ‘having’ a building from God, it refers to believers possessing this body at
the time of death, when the earthly tent is destroyed; (2) Paul’s use of ‘put
on over’ in v. 2 (επενδυσασθαι) refers to putting on the resurrection body without shedding the
earthly body; (3) vv. 6 and 8, like vv. 1-4, speak of present and future
conditions; (4) in v. 8, the contrast is between earthly existence and
spiritual existence, with the latter required to be with the Lord (not a
disembodied state) and (5) there is no interruption between the two states
suggested (M. Harris, Raised Immortal:
Resurrection and Immortality in the New Testament [Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 1983], 98-101). The term ‘naked’ in this view means that at death the
believer is clothed with the resurrection body, not left bodiless. (Stanley E.
Porter, “Was Early Christianity a Millenarian Movement?” in Stanley E. Porter,
Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs, Faith
in the Millennium [Roehampton Papers 7; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 2001], 234-59, here, pp. 254-55)
