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Notes from this session can be downloaded as a .pdf or rtf file. A list of all available downloadable files can found on the download page. These are notes from the video series: Jesus' Resurrection. Then and Now. N. T. Wright. Tabgha Foundation, Minneapolis. Available from CARES (Center for Advanced Religious External Studies), P.O. Box 863, Forest, VA, 24551. 800-665-2149.
1.3. 1 Corinthians 15: Introduction 1.4. The Climax of the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15: 1-11) 1.5. The Two Marks in the God’s Victory over Death (1 Corinthians 15:20-28) 1.6. Transformed Physicality (1 Corinthians 15:29-58) 2.1. We Are People of the New Creation, Looking Forward to the Completion of the New Creation 2.3. What We Do Now Does Make a Difference and Will Be Lasting 2.4. Our Lives are Part of the Story of God’s Covenantal Plan for Creation 2.5. The Transformation Which God will Effect in the End Should Infect Us Now 2.6. A Bit of the Past, a Bit of the Future Coming Together in the Present
1.1. Paul’s Letters Paul’s letters are the earliest written record we have of Jesus’ life and resurrection, written in the 50’s Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written from the 60’s to the 90’s.
1.2. Paul’s “Gospel” Paul’s narrative of the “good news” – Paul’s “gospel,” has always included the Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection of Jesus The Resurrection is not “bolted on” in Paul’s theology, but rather “woven in through the fabric of his thought.” We can see this, for example, in:
1.3. 1 Corinthians 15: Introduction Paul’s main exposition of his views on the Resurrection Why did Paul write this?
1.4. The Climax of the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15: 1-11) Paul starts 1 Corinthians 15 by reviewing his “gospel:” The Messiah died for our sins, was buried and was raised “according to the scriptures” – that is, these events were the culmination and climax of the whole story the scriptures had been telling He marshals evidence: 500 eyewitnesses He stresses his “seeing” of the risen Jesus as “last of all”
1.5. The Two Marks in the God’s Victory over Death (1 Corinthians 15:20-28) This is the “big story.” The enemy is death itself. The victory of God over the forces of evil, over death, has split into two:
“Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of the end,” and the resurrection of all believers is (one feature of) the final end of the ‘end’.” [Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions] We now live between these two marks. “The world as a whole has entered the last days, in which Jesus rules as Messiah and Lord. These days will continue until all that opposes or threatens his rule has been dealt with. Finally, death itself – the ultimately dehumanizing and anticreation power – will be destroyed, and God will be all in all.” [Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions]
1.6. Transformed Physicality (1 Corinthians 15:29-58) What is this new resurrected body? “The resurrection body possesses both continuity and discontinuity with the existing body.”
The resurrection body should be thought of as a “transformation of the existing body into a new mode of physicality.” [Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions] – “transformed physicality.” Main difference between the present body and our resurrected body is that the first body is a “soul” body; the resurrected body is a “spirit” body. That is, the difference is a difference in what “animates” the body, what holds the body in being.
1.7. What We Do Now Matters Because of the Continuity of This Life with the Next (1 Corinthians 15:58) 1 Cor. 15:58: “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (NRSV) The point of this:
1.8. Summary Paul holds to a robustly bodily view of the resurrection. It is a very Jewish view that involves a bodily resurrection, and clearly implies an empty tomb.
2. Discussion 2.1. We Are People of the New Creation, Looking Forward to the Completion of the New Creation Our culture lives in the “story” that world history reached its climax in the 18th century Enlightenment. But as Christians, we know the climax of history was Jesus’ Resurrection The “story” we must live in is that:
Paul was telling stories and acting symbolically
Living within this story today will require:
to reconstruct the imaginative (not imaginary) sense of the world necessary to grasp the truth
2.2. The Present Body and the Resurrected Body: Seed and Corn; Tent and Temple. The Present Body as Shadow of Our Future Self. The corn and seed analogy
The Tent and the Temple
Those sick are often described as “shadows” of their former self.
2.3. What We Do Now Does Make a Difference and Will Be Lasting What we do in this life, in this body:
will not be meaningless. We are not “simply oiling the wheels of a machine that will one day go off a cliff” 1 Cor. 3:10-13: Paul talks of laying a foundation and building on it with gold and silver and precious stones (a temple image).
2.4. Our Lives are Part of the Story of God’s Covenantal Plan for Creation We must live with integrity because the story in which we as Christians live is the story that includes God’s story with God’s Creation, with Israel, with Jesus. And as part of that story, we are making a new story for those after us
2.5. The Transformation Which God will Effect in the End Should Infect Us Now Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world [age], but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (NRSV) Means:
2.6. A Bit of the Past, a Bit of the Future Coming Together in the Present The Resurrection includes
Because we live between the past of Jesus’ resurrection, and the future of our own resurrection (God final victory over death) we should live as “Exodus People; we have left Egypt behind. We no longer belong to the land of slavery.
Our life is already somehow bound up in the Christ who has died and who has risen
This is what sacraments are all about, bringing to us in the present a bit of the future and a bit of the past
3. Conclusion “We lives in this odd interval in God’s purpose in history, between the resurrection of Jesus in the past, and our own future resurrection, and God’s remaking of the whole world in the future, and these two together hold us in a newly storied world, in a new imaginative world, in which we can live and work as Christians and in which we know that what we do in the present is not in vain, is not going to be thrown away. We are building, hopefully with gold and silver and precious stones, and when the day appears, then that work will appear with it.”
Primary Reference
Further Reading
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