I Corinthians 15

Landon: I love Paul. I know a lot of folks don't, but I love Paul. Yes, Paul is on the way, and that's a good thing.

What has consumed my brain has not been the nature of Paul's rhetoric, but the notion of Paul's silence on the issue of the empty tomb and what that does to inform his thematic elaboration (look at that 50 cent phrase!).

Rhetorically, Paul is a master. There is no doubt that he will carry us in terms of structure, but the issue plaguing my mind is what to do with his words regarding resurrection. How does he understand that? What is he doing with the image?

The pieces I've been reading (found under the "Contemporary Commentary, Studies and Exegesis" section of this page and this page) do a good job of surveying the issue. And it has gone a long way towards helping me figure out how to preach something that, prima facie, I find scientifically absurd.

Particularly helpful has been Williams Loader's thoughts on vv.19-26. Loader argues (effectively, I think) that while there is no uniform biblical voice on resurrection, there are constants among the variables. He lists the constants as "belief in the resurrection" and "God being all in all." What folks say about resurrection is different from passage to passage, but there is always an affirmation of it and it always culminates with God. Says Loader:

Whatever we cannot know about the future, we can be sure of one detail: in the end, God.

I love that: "in the end, God."

I just got an email from a parishioner reflecting on this series. Here is their understanding of this subject:

I've studied (and continue to do so) the origins/meanings of apocalyptic literature, I try and convey to my Sunday School class that this is poetic, fantastical language to try to convey a "God-presence" to a world in turmoil. It is not hidden codes or supermarket tabloid predictions.

We discuss that the Scriptures are written like this: Try and write down what the birth of your child meant to you. Or try and write down what the love between you and your wife means to you. It's hard. You can only do it through fantastic metaphor and it still probably falls short from what you were trying to say.

I think I'm going to take the tact of "try and write down what the love between you and your wife means to you." In the end, I think that that angle may be more helpful for my folks than anything.

Now, what specific verses to use...

Rocky: Don't fret, my friend: Paul is on the way.

One of the first things I've got my hands on to study this passage is a great article from the journal Word and World called "Firstfruits and Death's Defeat: Metaphor in Paul's Rhetorical Strategy in I Cor 15:20-28," written by Andy Johnson. It's a wonderful exploration of the function of the firstfruits metaphor in Paul's rhetoric. A few gems:

"The rhetorical problem Paul faces is constructing the middle term between Christ's resurrection and a future embodied resurrection that will compel the 'some' [who say there is no resurrection] to transfer the adherence they grant to the thesis that Christ is raised to the conclusion that there will be a future bodily resurrection. In other words, he must reconstruct what is, at present, reality for them by offering the 'some' a bridge between their narrative world and his own."

Yes. A metaphor needs to help us transfer our adherence to one proposition to an adherence to another, larger proposition (and here we are dealing with propositions, aren't we?). A metaphor is a bridge between one narrative world and another. The issue is transferring our granting of one proposition (Jesus is raised) to another proposition (so will we be raised) so that our manner of living will be altered.

So is the firstfruits metaphor capable of doing that in our context(s)? It's an agrarian metaphor, one that speaks of the promise of crops not yet harvested; if it won't work for us, what will? Do we have a metaphor that, for us, will do the same thing? Perhaps the metaphor of a "sneak preview," a movie trailer or the first single released on a cd. Do these things speak to the promise of things to come in the same way that Paul wants to say that Jesus' resurrection speaks to the promise of our own resurrection yet to come?