The resurrection Paul proclaims in 1 Corinthians 15 is not the mere transferal to an ethereal or spiritual state….The resurrection Paul proclaims in this chapter is the conquest of bodily death. It is the final triumph of God.

In the canonical gospels, as virtually all scholars concur, the resurrection of Christ, and the hope of resurrection for followers of Christ, is a concrete and physical reality involving the body of flesh and bones. In Luke’s Gospel, for example, the resurrection narrative begins with the disciples’ discovery that Jesus was no longer in the tomb (24:1–12; cf. 24:23–24). At the climax of the narrative, Jesus shows himself alive to the Twelve and the other disciples, inviting them to “touch me and see, because a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39). In John’s Gospel, Jesus invites doubting Thomas to probe the scars in his hands and side (John 20:24–29). The speeches of the apostles in Acts similarly stress that the flesh of Jesus was raised without undergoing decay (2:25–31; 13:34–37), and that the risen Jesus ate and drank with his disciples (10:40–42; cf. 1:3–4). In the gospels and Acts, Jesus’s bodily resurrection from the tomb fulfills the creator God’s promised conquest of death, bringing the hope of bodily resurrection for all who believe (John 5:24–29; 6:39–40, 44, 54; Acts 4:1–2; 23:7–10; 24:14–15; 26:6–8; 26:22–23).

In the scriptural interpretation of the ancient church from the first century onward, the resurrection hope expounded in 1 Cor 15 was understood, in congruity with the gospels and Acts, in terms of a resurrection of the flesh, identifying the resurrected body of this passage with the earthly, fleshly body raised to life and transformed to be imperishable. To be sure, “Gnostic” interpreters such as the Valentinians and Ophites, who believed that the material world and the physical body were inherently evil, read this chapter in ways that excluded a literal resurrection of the body (Gos. Phil. 56.26–57.22; Irenaeus, Haer. 1.30.13). And the Alexandrian exegete Origen, influenced by Gnostic thought, apparently interpreted 1 Cor 15 as involving a resurrection of a heavenly or spiritual body composed of ethereal matter, distinct from the earthly body of flesh (Sel. Ps. 11.384 [on Ps 1:5]; Comm. Matt. 17.29–30; Princ. 2.10–11; Cels. 5.18–23). However, Gnostic readings of this chapter were rejected within the ancient church, and Origen’s teaching on the resurrection was condemned as heretical by the Fifth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople II). Patristic interpretation, from Clement of Rome in the first century to Augustine in the fifth, unanimously interpreted 1 Cor 15, in agreement with the canonical gospels, in terms of a physical resurrection of the body of flesh and bones. This reading was in agreement with the generally received ancient Christian doctrine of resurrection as the reconstitution and glorious transformation of the present mortal body, a transformation involving “enhancement of what is, not metamorphosis into what is not.” M. E. Dahl described this orthodox conception as involving the claim that “the resurrection body is this body restored and improved in a miraculous manner.” The church’s historic creeds gave expression to this hope in the most striking way by affirming “the resurrection of the flesh.” Throughout almost two millennia, exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15 was carried out in the context of this conviction—shared alike by Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant interpreters—that the resurrection hope of the faithful that Paul expounds in this chapter is a resurrection of the flesh.

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