Tag Archives: Apostle Paul

If Christ Has Not Been Raised

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Christ tramples down Death, pulling the human race–personified by Adam and Eve–up with himself from darkness and alienation from the Father into the glorious light of the glory of God. Even the icons of the Nativity of Christ anticipate the proclamation that “Christ is risen!”


If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless since you are still in your sins. Then even those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we only hope in Christ during this life, we are the most pitiful of all people. (1 Cor. 15:17-19)

The Christians in Corinth who thought they were the spiritual “elite,” the super-deluxe Christians who were extra spiritual and could speak tongues etc., apparently said there was no physical resurrection from the dead. They claimed to be the proof that all the benefits of the General Resurrection were already available and that nothing more could be added to what they had already received and demonstrated by their spiritual gifts. They seem to have thought that they would live to see the Second Coming and that others who died before that had totally perished.

The apostle disagreed with them. He taught that if there was no physical resurrection coming at the end of time, then the Christians were the most pitiful of all people because they spent their lives preparing for/expecting something that was not going to ever happen. If there is no General Resurrection coming at the end of time, that also means that St. Paul and the other apostles are liars and have offended God by preaching something that was not true. It also means that the Christians who have already died will never rise again. As St. John Chrysostom and others preached, the Christian faith is meaningless without the resurrection.

Therefore Christ is not to be hoped for in this life only, in which the bad can do more than the good and those who can do more evil are happier and those who lead a more criminal life live more prosperously.

Maximus of Turin, Sermon 96

If the dead will not be raised at the end of time, that means that Christ was not raised and if Christ was not raised, then then “new life” that the Corinthian elite claimed to be demonstrating is impossible. The elite in Corinth can’t have it both ways–either there is no resurrection coming and therefore their experiences are delusions or their experiences are legitimate and there will be a General Resurrection at the end of time.

Christ’s Resurrection and the General Resurrection of the dead go hand in hand. Neither exists without the other. Christ’s Resurrection is not complete until the entire human race is raised from the dead. The human race cannot be raised if Christ was not raised. Resurrection is the single most important proclamation of the Church; everything else is simply trying to make sense of the Resurrection. All theology is simply a struggle to understand the Resurrection and its implications.

Even the proclamation of the Incarnation is a result of attempting to understand the Resurrection. How could Christ be raised? Only God could overcome death. How could God die and enter Hades? Only if God had become human. Everything the Church says and does is built on the Resurrection.

Read previous posts about how celebrations of the Nativity anticipate the Resurrection here and here.

Then He Appeared to More Than 500

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Christ appears to the Twelve and displays his wounds after the Resurrection as St. Thomas makes a prostration before him. (6th cent. mosaic from Ravenna, Italy.)



Christ died for our sins… was buried and raised on the third day according to the Scriptures and appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve; and then he appeared at one time to more than five hundred brothers and sisters… then he appeared to James, indeed to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me…. (1 Cor. 15:3-8)

St. Paul quotes a brief statement of belief–a creed–which underscores that Christ died, was buried, and rose from the dead. To underscore the reality of the Resurrection, the apostle reminds the Corinthians of the people who saw Christ after the Resurrection.

We would have no idea of these people who had seen Christ after the Resurrection if St. Paul had not mentioned them here; none of these appearances are mentioned in the Gospels or other New Testament texts except the appearances to “the twelve” and St. Paul’s description of his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. We have no record of a private appearance to Peter, who is referred to by his Aramaic nickname, Cephas. We have no record of a private appearance to the Apostle James. We have no record of a crowd of 500 people seeing the risen Christ. But we take the word of St. Paul that all these appearances happened.

Christian folktales developed as people told these stories and filled in some of the details. Most of these details simply underscore what we already know from the gospels: Peter is charged with looking after the other apostles, James is charged to look after the Jerusalem community, the 500–perhaps in Galilee, gathered by the apostles after the women at the tomb were told to send the apostles back to the countryside where Christ would meet them–were witnesses as the crowds who heard the Sermon on the Mount or were fed by the five loaves and two fish.

There are other stories of Christ meeting people after his Resurrection. Although there is no written record of these meetings in the New Testament, there is no reason to doubt that these meetings occurred; these meetings are just as likely as the meetings we would be unaware of if they had not been mentioned by St. Paul.

One of these other meetings that was not recorded in writing was said to have been when Christ met his Most Pure Mother on the morning of the Resurrection. Christ is said to have reassured his mother that it was truly him, not a phantasm or ghost. He also underscored the importance of St. Peter in the community.

Many of these appearances of Christ after the Resurrection–including those we know about in the New Testament, especially to St. Mary Magdalen and the other Myrhhbearing Women–became important to the Church as various people claimed to be apostles and began preaching messages that did not agree with what the core community believed. Fundamental to understanding who was an apostle was the question: Did this person meet Jesus after the Resurrection? Without such a meeting, the person’s claim to apostleship was unlikely to be recognized.

Read more about the importance of these post-Resurrection appearances in determining whether someone was an apostle or not here.

Keep Quiet?

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This fresco in the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom (St. Sophia) in Kiev shows the apostles receiving Holy Communion from Christ. Although visitors and non-believers could attend Christian dinners and other activities, they were not allowed to attend the Eucharist. Only believers who had been properly instructed and baptized could attend the Eucharist because non-believers would not understand what was going on.


If the whole church comes together and everyone is speaking in tongues, and if then outsiders and unbelievers come in, won’t they say that you are all crazy? If, however, you are all prophesying …. the visitors will fall on their faces and worship God saying, “God is really in your midst!” (1 Cor. 14:23-25)

St. Paul is still dealing with the troublemakers at Corinth who boast that they are the spiritual elite because they can speak in tongues. The apostle points out that anyone visiting the Christian dinners will think the Christians are all crazy if they are all babbling in some way that no one can understand. But if they hear people prophesying, i.e. preaching well, that is more likely to bring them to conversion.

The unbelievers will think the Christians are just crazy people if they hear the Christians babbling on and on in tongues because they won’t understand anything that the tongue-speakers are saying.

This is the same reason that non-believers were not allowed to attend the celebration of the Eucharist: because they won’t understand what the Christians are saying, even if the Christians are saying words in a language that the non-Christians speak. Unless a person has been properly instructed and baptized before coming to the Eucharist for the first time, nothing they hear or see will make sense. The words “Body of Christ” and “Blood of Christ” will sound like cannibalism. The love of each Christian for the “brothers” and “sisters” will sound like incest. The exchange of a Kiss of Peace will underscore the appearance of incest because only family members were allowed to kiss each other.

None of these words and behaviors make sense without prior instruction, i.e. catechism. Therefore non-believers should be kept out of the celebrations of the Eucharist. (Besides, non-believers might be there as spies for the government, in order to arrest the Christians they see at the Eucharist.)

Addendum, based on a thoughtful question (see “replies” below):

How does this carry over into our contemporary situation? I think the question of who understands what is very complicated now. We live in the remnants of Christendom and presume people have a grasp of basic Christianity but I think that is not true—-many people have no understanding of even the most basic Christian teachings and no familiarity with even the most fundamental Biblical stories. We must redouble and even triple our efforts to teach and proclaim the whole Gospel, from its beginning in Genesis to its conclusion in the Apocalypse. I think we should refer to the great apologists of the second and third centuries: what did they think was of first importance in explaining to the non-Christian world and how did they proclaim it in a way the world could understand?

We have to have a better grasp of contemporary culture as well as contemporary language to do this. But we should not wait until we have the “perfect” message to share. We must begin now and do the best we can with what we have. What we cannot do is sit on our hands and expect someone else to do all the work!