God's Problem (33 page)
Authors: Bart D. Ehrman
We have already seen some of Paul’s views of suffering. To an extent, he agreed with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible that suffering comes as a punishment for sin. That is why Christ had to die on the cross: sin brings a penalty, and Christ paid the penalty owed by others. Christ obviously was not paying the penalty for sins that he himself had committed: he was perfect and without sin. The reason he was crucified was that the Law of God indicates that anyone who “hangs on a tree is cursed” (Gal. 3:13; quoting Deut. 21:23). By taking the curse of the Law upon himself, Jesus was able to remove the curse from others who believed in him. And so Paul also agreed with those biblical authors who saw suffering as redemptive. For Paul, Christ’s death brings the ultimate redemption; through his death and resurrection, people who are cursed through their sins can be delivered from their sins. Jesus paid the price for others.
But there is more to Paul’s thought than this. To understand Paul fully, it is important to recognize that at heart he was an apocalypticist.
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In fact, Paul was probably an apocalypticist even before he was a follower of Jesus. It was Paul’s apocalyptic assumptions about the
world that most affected his theology. To make sense of his theology—a theology rooted in the idea of suffering—we have to understand what it meant for him to be an apocalypticist. And for that we need some historical background.
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Paul as a Pharisee
Paul does not tell us a great deal about his life before he became a follower of Jesus; but he does tell us a few things, in a couple of passages from his letters (Gal. 1–2; Phil. 2). He tells us that he was a very righteous Jew, trained in the traditions of the Pharisees, and that he was an avid persecutor of the followers of Jesus. His conversion, then, was from being an opponent of the early church to becoming one of its greatest advocates, missionaries, and theologians.
What did it mean for Paul to be an upright Pharisee? Sometimes people—even trained scholars—speak almost glibly about the Jewish party known as the Pharisees, as if we knew all about them and what they stood for. The reality is that we do not know much about the Pharisees from Jesus’ or Paul’s day, since our sources of information are for the most part later—in most instances, well over a century later.
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We have the writings of only one Jewish Pharisee produced before the catastrophic destruction of Jerusalem in 70
CE
; strikingly enough, these are the writings of Paul, written
after
he had converted to faith in Christ. One thing we do know with relative certainty is that Pharisees, unlike other Jewish groups and people (like the Sadducees), were firm believers in the future resurrection of the dead. This shows that Pharisees were by and large apocalypticists, thinking that at the end of the age people would be raised from the dead to face judgment and to be rewarded if they had sided with God or to be punished if they had sided with the forces of evil. This appears, then, to have been Paul’s belief
before
his conversion to being a follower of Jesus.
This raises an interesting question. What is the significance of Jesus’ resurrection? I find that when I ask my students this question,
they rarely have very good ideas about it, even though they firmly believe that Jesus was raised. But what does it mean, I ask? What’s the
significance
of the resurrection? Some students have a fairly vague idea that somehow the resurrection showed that Jesus was the messiah (to which I point out that there were no Jews prior to Christianity who believed that the messiah was supposed to die and be raised from the dead); others have an even vaguer idea that somehow the resurrection showed that Jesus was righteous before God (you can’t keep a good man down).
I think a more precise answer is possible. What would it mean for a Jewish apocalypticist to come to believe that someone had been raised from the dead? Remember, apocalypticists maintained that this world was controlled by cosmic forces of evil, which, for some mysterious reason, had been given virtually free rein to wreak havoc on earth; but apocalypticists also believed that God was soon to intervene in this course of affairs and vindicate his good name by overthrowing the forces of evil to set up his good kingdom here on earth. At the very end of this age—before the coming of the new age—there would be a resurrection of the dead to face judgment.
If that was Paul’s belief as a Pharisee—a Jewish apocalypticist—what was he to think if he came to believe that someone had
already
been raised from the dead? If the resurrection was to come at the end of this age, then the theological conclusion would be both certain and significant. If someone has been raised, then the resurrection has started! We are living at the very end of time. This age is nearly over, the new age is ready to appear. The end has begun.
Paul’s Teaching of the Resurrection
And that is exactly what Paul did think. The resurrection of Jesus for Paul was not merely God’s vindication of a good man. It was the clear sign that the expected, imminent end of history as we know it had come, and that humankind was living in the very last days. This wicked age with all its pain and misery was nearly over; its
days were numbered; the perfect Kingdom of God, in which there would be no more agony, suffering, and death, was soon to appear.
That this is what Paul thought is clear from his own writings, especially in the one chapter (1 Cor. 15) that he devotes almost exclusively to the question of the resurrection, both of Jesus and of his followers.
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Paul begins this chapter by emphasizing the teaching that was the core of his gospel message:
For I handed over to you as of first importance that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried; and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve. (1 Cor. 15:3–5)
Paul goes on to indicate that after Jesus’ resurrection, he appeared to a large number of people:
Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, from whom many are still alive until now, though some have fallen asleep; then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Cor. 15:6–8)
A lot of readers of 1 Corinthians have mistakenly thought that by giving this list of people who saw the resurrected Jesus, Paul is trying to convince the Corinthians that the resurrection of Jesus really took place. But that’s not the case at all. Paul is
reminding
them of what they already know and believe (see verses 1–2: “I am reminding you, brothers, of the gospel that I preached to you, which you also received and in which you stand”). Why then does he stress that Jesus appeared to all these people after his death—including to five hundred people at one time (an incident not mentioned in the Gospels of the New Testament), some of whom are still alive to testify? It is because Paul wants to remind his followers that Jesus
actually, really, physically was raised from the dead. Paul needs to stress this point because there are some people in the congregation in Corinth who deny that there is going to be a future, physical resurrection of all who have previously died (verse 12).
There were Christians in the Corinthian church who had come to believe that they were already experiencing the full benefits of salvation, that they had experienced some kind of spiritual resurrection, and that in some way they were already ruling with Christ now, in the present. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 wants to stress that the doctrine of the resurrection had to do with an actual, physical resurrection. Jesus was not simply raised spiritually. He had a kind of body when he was raised. It could be seen—and was seen, by lots of people. Since Jesus was the first to be raised, everyone else would be raised like him, in physical bodies.
That’s why Paul calls Jesus the “first fruits” of the resurrection (verse 20). This is an agricultural image: the first fruits were the crops brought in on the first day of the harvest. Farmers would celebrate the event, in anticipation of going out and gathering in the rest of their crops. And when would the rest of the harvest be gathered in? Right away—not in some distant future. By calling Jesus the first fruits, Paul was indicating that the rest of the resurrection was imminent; it was to happen right away. The resurrection of believers was not a past, spiritual event; it was a future, physical event. The proof was in the resurrection of Jesus himself. He was physically raised from the dead, and others would be as well.
The fact that the resurrection was a physical, not just a spiritual, event was what showed Paul the resurrection of the dead had not yet occurred. No one else had yet experienced a transformation of the body the way Jesus had. A large number of interpreters have misread 1 Corinthians 15 because of what Paul says in verse 50: “I tell you this, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor will the perishable inherit the imperishable.” Because of this verse, these (mis)interpreters insist that Jesus was not bodily raised from the dead, because flesh-and-blood bodies, alleg
edly, do not enter into the kingdom. On this basis they say that Jesus was raised spiritually, not physically.
But that is completely missing the point Paul is making. For Paul, it is decidedly a physical body that enters into the kingdom. But it is not a normal physical body. It is a body that has been transformed and made immortal. That’s why people could see Jesus after his resurrection. It actually was his body. But it was a transformed body. Paul likens it to a tree: it is an acorn that goes into the ground, but it is an oak tree that emerges from the ground. The resurrection is like that. Bodies go into the ground as mortal, weak, and sickly; they come up out of the ground completely transformed (verses 36–41). The bodies that will emerge at the resurrection will be glorious bodies, like the resurrected body of Jesus. They will be intimately connected with the bodies that go into the ground (i.e., that are buried). The oak grows out of an acorn, not out of nothing. But the raised bodies will be transformed in marvelous and spectacular ways: what grows from the ground is not a giant acorn but an oak tree.
As a Jewish apocalypticist, Paul believed that this physical world we dwell in is controlled by evil forces, and that our bodies are themselves subject to these forces. That is why we get sick, that is why we age, that is why we die. But God will intervene and overthrow these forces. And when that happens our bodies will be transformed, no longer subject to the ravages of disease, aging, and death. We will have eternal bodies and dwell with God forever. For Paul, this was an event that was very soon to take place. In fact, just as Jesus had predicted to his disciples that “some of those standing here will not taste death before they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power,” so too Paul predicted that the end of the age, the resurrection of the dead and the transformation of bodies, would happen while some—himself included—were still alive to see it happen.
See, I tell you a mystery. Not everyone will fall asleep [i.e., die], but all will be changed, in a moment of time, in the twinkling of
an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised as imperishable; and we also will be changed. For this perishable body must be clothed in imperishability and this mortal body must be clothed in immortality. (1 Cor. 15:51–53)
This resurrection of the dead, in which our weak, mortal, suffering bodies are transformed and re-created so as no longer to be subject to the ravages of pain and death, will mark the end of history as we know it:
When this perishable body is clothed with imperishability and this mortal body is clothed with immortality, then will this word that is written come to pass:
“Death is swallowed up in
victory.
Where is your
victory, O Death?
And where is your sting, O Death?” (1 Cor. 15:54–55)
For Paul, the solution to the pain and suffering of the world comes at the end of the age, when all are transformed and brought into the glorious Kingdom of God in which there will be no more misery, anguish, or death. This is a future event, but it is imminent. The evidence? Jesus has been raised from the dead, so the resurrection has already begun.
Paul and the Imminence of the End
Throughout his writings Paul presupposes that the end of the age has begun with the resurrection of Jesus, and that it is soon to be brought to a climax. This climax will involve Jesus himself returning from heaven, inaugurating the resurrection of the dead. Nowhere is this taught more clearly than in the earliest surviving letter
from Paul’s hand, the book of 1 Thessalonians.
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In part, Paul wrote this letter because members of the church he had founded in the city of Thessalonica were growing confused. At the time of their conversion, Paul had taught them that the end was coming right away with the return of Jesus from heaven in judgment on the earth. But it never came. Meanwhile, some people in the congregation had died, and those who were left were upset: did this mean that those who had died would miss out on the glorious rewards to be bestowed when Christ returned in glory? Paul’s letter assures them that all is going according to plan and that “the dead in Christ” have not lost out on the eternal rewards. Indeed, they will be the first to be rewarded at Christ’s return. This is stated clearly in Paul’s most graphic comments about what will happen at the end of this age:
