Paul’s Argument
Some of the Corinthian Christians denied the resurrection of the dead, and Paul advances three arguments to convince them that the dead will be raised: (1) “If there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been raised,” but Christ is raised (1 Cor 15:13, 20). (2) If the dead are not raised, why are men being baptized for the dead (ib 15:29)? (3) Why should the apostle himself wage his spiritual warfare (ib 15:30)? The first argument rests upon the central fact of Christianity, and the other two are appeals to the consistency of the Corinthians, and of Paul himself. Whatever “baptism for the dead” meant, it was, in Paul’s opinion, as real, valid and legitimate a premise from which to conclude that the dead would rise as his own sufferings. The natural meaning of the words is obvious. Men in Corinth, and possibly elsewhere, were being continually baptized on behalf of others who were at the time dead, with a view to benefiting them in the resurrection, but if there be no resurrection, what shall they thus accomplish, and why do they do it? “The only legitimate reference is to a practice … of survivors allowing themselves to be baptized on behalf of (believing?) friends who had died without baptism” (Alford in loc).
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The Difficulty
But why is all this ingenuity expended to evade the natural meaning? Because (1) such a custom would be a superstition involving the principle of opus operatum; and (2) Paul could not share or even tolerate a contemporary idea which is now regarded as superstition. To reply (with Alford) that Paul does not approve the custom will not serve the purpose, for he would scarcely base so great an argument, even as an argumentum ad hominem, on a practice which he regarded as wholly false and superstitious. The retort of those who denied the resurrection would be too obvious. But why should it be necessary to suppose that Paul rose above all the limitations of his age? The idea that symbolic acts had a vicarious significance had sunk deeply into the Jewish mind, and it would not be surprising if it took more than twenty years for the leaven of the gospel to work all the Jew out of Paul. At least it serves the apostle’s credit ill to make his argument meaningless or absurd in order to save him from sharing at all in the inadequate conceptions of his age. He made for himself no claim of infallibility. (Thomas Rees, “Baptism for the Dead,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. James Orr et al., 5 vols. [Chicago: The Howard Severance Company, 1915], 1:399, emphasis added)
