Thursday, April 27, 2023

Sang-Won (Aaron) Son on 1 Corinthians 15:42-49 and Differing "degrees of glory of the body"

  

After further defending the resurrection of the dead by mentioning the practice of baptism for the dead (15:29-34), Paul begins another major section of the chapter with hypothetical questions (15:35): “But someone may ask, ‘how are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?’” Verses 36 through 57 are basically Paul’s answers to these questions. Paul’s answer involves (1) the analogy of nature (15:36-41), (2) a transitional summary statement that leads into the Adam-Christ typology (15:42-44), and (3) the Adam-Christ typology (15:45-59).

 

The analogy of nature is drawn from plants (15:37-38), animals (15:39), and planets (15:40-41). By this analogy Paul basically argues 91) that there is a difference between what is sown in the ground (seed) and what is raised from it (plant), (2) that God gives a different kind of body to different types of species as He chooses, and (3) that there are different kinds of bodies and degrees of glory of the body. (Sang-Won (Aaron) Son, Corporate Elements in Pauline Anthropology: A Study of Selected Terms, Idioms, and Concepts in the Light of Paul’s Usage and Background [Rome: Pontificio Instituto Biblico, 2001], 47-48, emphasis in bold added)