Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Stanley Porter on 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 being about the Resurrection, not Disembodied Existence in Heaven


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)