Saturday, June 29, 2019

Tertullian on the Physical Resurrection and 1 Corinthians 15:50


Commenting on how Tertullian understood Paul’s words in 1 Cor 15:50 (" . . .  flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God . . . ") with belief in the physical nature of the resurrection, Anglican Dennis Okholm wrote:

At this point one might ask how these early Christian thinkers can affirm a bodily resurrection when the Apostle Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 15:50 that “flesh and blood” do not inherit eternal life. There is consensus among many of these that Paul was not speaking of bodily flesh but of the works of the flesh. Tertullian puts it well: “For not that is condemned in which evil is done, but only the evil which is done in it. To administer poison is a crime, but the cup in which it is given is not guilty. So the body is the vessel of the works of the flesh, whilst the soul which is within it mixes the poison of a wicked act” (Against Marcion, 5.10). As he says elsewhere, “Flesh and blood are excluded from the kingdom of God in respect of their sin, not of their substance” (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 46). (Dennis Okholm, “The Dead Are Raised—But How and Why? Conversations with the Church’s Fathers and Mothers of the First Five Centuries” in Alonzo L. Gaskill and Robert L. Millet, eds. Life Beyond the Grave: Christian Interfaith Perspectives [Salt Lake City/Provo: Deseret Book/BYU Religious Studies Center, 2019], ,27-51, here, p. 43)


Blog Archive