1 Corinthians addresses the hope and unity foundational to Pauline Eschatology. First Corinthians 15:20-28 points readers directly to this unity and hope. It does so defensively and rhetorically, at least initially. In his first letter to the Corinthians the Apostle Paul is teacher, authority, and example to a struggling assembly of believers who have embraced several variants of Gnostic heresy and/or their larger Greco-Roman culture. He wastes little time with pleasantries, choosing instead to direct the majority of his focus upon the delivery of often unsympathetic didactic material meant to immediately amend and reinforce proper doctrine, belief and practice.
The community’s health and unity is the catalyst behind all the apostle writes in this letter. Contrary to premature conclusions produced by a cursory reading of the letter, his is not an egotistical pedagogy built exclusively around lofty personal religious accomplishments and/or an observably strong apostolic personality. The apostle’s diatribe, rather, leads his readers through an amorous pastoral process (contextually speaking) which is indeed characterized by a preliminary correction of a variety of doctrinal and practical concerns, but does not end there. He then proceeds toward the communally unifying hope in a final resurrection in Christ, and finally to the Father God – who will be all in all for Paul as well as all other believers. The letter desperately calls for communal identity and unity within a proper understanding and embrace of Pauline resurrection. The apostle is forced to defend – perhaps even articulate for the very first time – his own concept of a realized eschatology over and against a Corinthian eschaton that could be characterized as ‘over-realized’ eschatology. The Apostle Paul believes resurrection to be a single event not only initiated by Christ’s permanent defeat of death, but also consisting of a final and future fulfillment. Members of the Corinthian assembly understand resurrection as an already complete – and thus presently realizable – experience; they have already been resurrected, or perfected. The Pauline hope and unification is therefore non-existent, and the Corinthian assembly continues on laden in practical error and spiritual immaturity. Paul finds it necessary to intervene for the sake of the community. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15.20-28, pairs Christian identity and unity with the proper belief in the resurrection with the hope of steering the struggling Christian church back toward the correct direction. More later …
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