CLICK HERE FOR INDEX TO THIS SERIES ON ST PAUL

The editor of Catholica headlined today's email "Treasure This...": Today Dr Ian Elmer seeks to cut to the heart of St Paul's theology — what's this "I believe in Jesus" game ultimately really all about? Ian enttled the essay "Who will be saved?" but he's really delving deeper than that in an endeavour to give insight into Paul's thinking as to how we (collectively and individually) will be "saved". As Ian says: "resurrection and salvation are linked in Paul's writings, and one cannot consider one without the other". But what does "resurrection" and "salvation" actually mean when we strip away the ecclesial cliches that have come to bury the real meaning?

An emphasis on resurrection or salvation?

For the most part, Paul's first letter to the Corinthian communities deals with local and internal problems that arose as a result of some misunderstanding of Paul's teachings (Horrell, 1996: 126-198). The structure of the letter falls into two distinct sections — chapters 1-6 and 7-16 — each answering questions sent to him via the agency of two of the community leaders in Corinth, Chloe and Stephanus.

In 1 Corinthians 1-6, Paul is dealing with struggles within the Corinthian community, reported by Chloe's people, where members were divided over issues such as wisdom, particularly as exhibited by their leaders. Ironically, the Corinthians' concept of wisdom allows immorality and frivolous lawsuits to penetrate their ranks (1 Cor 5-6). Paul is at pains to show how God's wisdom, revealed by the Spirit, is paradoxically opposed to the Corinthians' conception of wisdom and leadership (1 Cor 1:26-2:13) (Clark 1993: 41-57; Clark 2000: 174-185).

From chapter 7 onwards, Paul turns to a number of other, disparate issues, about which the Corinthians had probably written in the letter carried by Stephanus — marriage and virginity (7:1-40), idol foods (8:1-11:1), women's head covering (11:2-16), communal meals and the Lord's supper (11:17-34), and the proper manifestations of spiritual gifts (12:1-14:40).

This section concludes with a discussion regarding the resurrection (15:1-58). which may prove an interesting subject for discussion this week — given the current prevalence of differing views regarding resurrection and salvation. The two subjects, resurrection and salvation, are linked in Paul's writings, and one cannot consider one without the other.

In Corinth, there appear to be Christians who were denying the future resurrection from the dead, or that said resurrection was anything other than a spiritual existence. Paul, quite rightly, sees that such views compromise the whole, thrust of the Gospel.

Jesus as Template…

If we are to understand what Paul thought about resurrection, salvation and life after death, we must first turn to what he thought about Christ. As we noted in an earlier commentary on Philippians 2:6-11 — commonly called the "Kenosis Hymn" or the "Carmen Christi" — Paul presents Jesus as the New Adam, the template for the men and women of the new creation, whose self-emptying would be rewarded by resurrection and exaltation.

At the outset of that hymn, Paul exhorts the Philippians to have the "same mind" as Christ "who while he was in the form of God did not consider divinity something to be grasped" (Phil 2:6). Instead, Jesus (and by following his example, we must) "empty" himself (ourselves) so as to be filled with God. There is here, for Paul, a familiar and important stereological corollary. This sort of transformation can never be achieved by being Law-observant. Following laws is a way of earning redemption — buying our way to freedom — which is what the word means (redeeming the watch we have in hock at Cash Converters).

Part of Jesus' majesty, his divinity if you will, was found in his complete kenosis, his total self-emptying so as to be filled utterly with God. He was the perfect empty vessel or unformed potter's clay. And, thus, his resurrection meant a complete transformation.

Paul is adamant that resurrection is not resuscitation. The resurrection of Jesus did not mean that Jesus' mortal life had been prolonged. His life after resurrection was not merely a continuation of his previous existence. Paul speaks of the risen Jesus as living "according to the spirit". Paul claims that while we once knew Christ in the flesh (kata sarka), we do so no longer (2 Cor 5:16) and, from the soteriological point of view, "therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come" (5:17).

Of course, Paul is not claiming that the resurrected Christ is merely a spiritual being. Jesus' resurrection was that of a human being, not just some disembodied spirit (1 Cor 15:13). It is remarkable that all the early Christian texts (and not just Gospels) known to us signal that the ultimate hope of the earliest Christians was the resurrection of the body.

Paul, writing to Corinth, is forced to defend this hope in the wake of some who denied the future resurrection (1 Cor 15:12) — it was for this reason that Paul cites the names of the first recipients of post-resurrection Christophanies (1 Cor 15:6-9). Paul was himself one of these witnesses and, therefore, offers to his readers direct testimony of the corporeality of Jesus' resurrection.

The view that resurrection was a corporeal reality was held consistently in the Pauline tradition — most likely as a result of Paul's own claims vis-à-vis his experience of the resurrected Lord.

Later in the Deutero-Pauline letters, two named individuals in 2 Timothy (2:18) say the resurrection has already happened. But they stand out by their strangeness. Moreover, their "heresy" bears witness to the fact that Pauline Christianity did indeed hope for a bodily resurrection in conformity with the bodily resurrection of Jesus. This hope was the bedrock on which the Paul preached his Law-free gospel to the Gentiles.

Who Will Be Resurrected and Saved?

For Paul, salvation meant that the Christian would be raised as a "new creation" with a resurrection body that was immortal and incorruptible (1 Cor 15:42-44; cf. Rom 8:11), to live forever with the Lord (1 Thess 4:17) in a new world order that was free from suffering, sin and death (1 Cor 15:54-57; cf. Rom 8:18). But what would it mean for those who had not put their faith in Christ, or even those whose faith in Christ was not the same as Paul's? Would they be resurrected? Paul's answer seems to be rather ambiguous.

On the one hand, Paul was pretty savage when it came to dealing with his Judaising opponents who were, as he would later claim in 2 Corinthians, involved in the ministry that brings death (3:8). Paul argues that his opponents' ministry derives its authority or competency from the letter that kills (3:6), that is, the letter of the Mosaic Law, which brings only death (3:6) and condemnation (3:9). The same is true for unbelievers as well; both believers and unbelievers will have to face God's judgement, wrath and destruction (5:10; cf. 1 Cor 3:12-15; 4:4-5; Rom 2:5-11; 1 Thess 1:10; 5:9).

By contrast, Paul and his co-workers rely for their authority on the Spirit that "gives life" (3:6), and brings "righteousness" (3:9) and "freedom" (3:17) (Furnish, 1984: 228-229). Through the saving work of Christ, people who respond to Paul's call are "redeemed" from their sin, for "in Christ, God is reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor 5:19).

However, there are other passages in which Paul speaks with greater magnanimity and a wider vision of salvation. We have noted before that Paul saw salvation in terms of a radical egalitarianism and proclaimed a new "ekklesia" of God where there would no longer be any distinctions between "Jew and Greek, Slave and Free, Man and Woman" (Gal 3:28; Col 3:11; cf. Rom 10:12).

To pursue the issue further, in both 1 Corinthians (15:22) and Romans (11:32), Paul declares that it is God's purpose to show mercy to all. More remarkably, in Romans 8:18-39 Paul expresses his belief that the scope of redemption encompasses much more than the relatively small number of people who, in Paul's time, had become believers.

Paul felt it necessary that people should respond to his Gospel (2 Cor 5:20) but, ultimately, God would draw all people to himself (Rom 9:16; 11:29-36). Salvation is a divine initiative, and it is extended to all peoples regardless of creed, colour or culture.

Some scholars argue that Paul was a universalist who preached that all would be saved by God despite their own choices and actions (Horrell, 2000: 65-69). But it is probably better to title him an "inclusivist" who basically held that the fruits of Jesus' mission were universally applicable to all.

Still, Paul seems to have believed that God's saving purpose was ultimately unstoppable. As one of his later followers would confidently proclaim, God "will have all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4).

Legalism, Salvation, and Resurrection...

Ephrem the Syrian

For Paul, and for us, salvation and life after death is tied inexorably to the coming of Christ. The masterfully artistic, fourth-century, Church Father, Ephrem the Syrian, captured this well in his Christological poetry, of which the following is one of my favourite "grabs":

Divinity flew down and descended
to raise and draw up humanity.
The Son has made beautiful the servant's deformity,
And he has become a god, just as he desired.

In this stanza, the "he" seems to apply to both the Son and the servant, both the Christ and humanity. This reflects the Judeo-Christian interpretation of the Fall, whereby the man and woman in the garden sought to "be like gods" (Gen 3:5) — a view that Paul revisits in his Kenosis Hymn, where Jesus is the new Adam who does not "grasp" at divinity (Phil 2:6).

Jesus, who modelled God-ness, observed the Law only in as much as it served the common good — while he was "in the flesh", as Paul puts it (2 Cor 5:16). But Paul also saw and ultimately experienced that Law could be restrictive and death-dealing and, therefore, incompatible with the salvation wrought by Jesus. We now know Jesus via the "spirit", Paul argues. The freedom and liberation Jesus brought is freedom from "legalistic asceticism", freedom to live by the "spirit" and not be the "flesh".

By the same token, to proclaim resurrection from the dead is to proclaim an inclusivist view of the faith that reckons on the universal application of Jesus' salvific ministry, since the transformative character of Jesus' death and resurrection has universal effect.

Salvation cannot be earned by being Law observant. God's salvation is offered to all, and it is not about individuals being rewarded for their good deeds.

Paul would argue that we can only find salvation when we "empty" ourselves of the illusion that we can earn our salvation, and go naked and vulnerable into the world where there are no distinctions between "Jew and Greek, Slave and Free, Man and Woman" (Gal 3:28; Col 3:11; cf. Rom 10:12) — to which we might also add, Catholic and Protestant, Christian and Muslim, Theist and Atheist. Only by such self-emptying can we "put on Christ" (Rom 13:14), cultivate the "same minds" as Christ (Phil 2:5) and, ultimately, be raised with him and exalted to God's right hand.

CLICK HERE FOR INDEX TO THIS SERIES ON ST PAUL

Bibliography and Further Reading:
For those who are looking for resources on Paul that are both reliable and readable, I can recommend the following:
Clark, A. (1993), Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth: A Socio-Historical and Exegetical Study of 1 Corinthians 1-6. AGJU; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993.
Clark A. (2000), Serve the Community of the Church: Christians as Leaders and Ministers. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
Furnish, V. P. (1984), II Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. AB 32A; New York: Doubleday, 1984.
Horrell, D. G. (1996), The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement. SNTW; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
Horrell, D. G. (2000), An Introduction to the Study of Paul. CBSS; London & New York: Continuum.
Photo Credits:
The headline image of St Paul has been sourced from an icon which you will find at: www.airmaria.com. Clicking on the other images will take you to the original source.

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©2009 Ian Elmer

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