Tag Archives: First Corinthians

Baptism For The Dead?

Posted on by
Reply
The earliest known indoor font and baptistery is from a house church located at Dura-Europos in modern-day Syria. It seems to have occupied an ordinary house that was converted for worship between AD 233 and 256.
The church was uncovered by a team of archaeologists during two excavation campaigns in the city from 1931-32. The frescos were removed after their discovery and are preserved at Yale University Art Gallery.



Otherwise, what do those who are baptized for the sake of the dead? If those who are really dead are not raised, why at all are they baptized for their sake? And why are we in danger at every hour? I die every day. (1 Cor. 15:29-30)

St. Paul refers to the living being baptized for the sake of the dead, a practice otherwise unknown in the early church. But it seems to be a practice that the Corinthians were familiar with. “Why be baptized for the dead if Christ is not raised from the dead?” The apostle refers to the liturgical practice of the Corinthians to underscore the point he has been making in the epistle: Christ was raised form the dead. Why else are we in church or doing anything as members of the Church? Nothing we do makes sense if Christ is not risen from the dead.

Sin has brought death into the world and we are baptized in the hope that our dead bodies will be raised again in the resurrection. If there is no resurrection, our baptism is meaningless and our bodies remain as dead as they are now.

St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistles to the Corinthians 40.2

The apostle might be referring to the baptism of those in bed and about to die or new-born infants about to die. Why baptize the dying and those as-good-as-dead if there is no Resurrection of the body?

But he seems to be referring not to deathbed baptisms but to people who are being baptized for vicariously for the deceased. People in the city of Corinth were generally concerned about the fate of the dead. Perhaps the living Corinthian Christians were baptized on behalf of their friends and neighbors–as well as their family members–who had not had the opportunity to become Christians during their lifetimes. If baptism was critical for sharing the Resurrection, how else could the living best serve the deceased?

Wherever the Gospel was preached, the new converts were always concerned about the fates of the non-Christian ancestors. Pagan Greeks came to see the poets and philosophers as the equivalent of the prophets in ancient Israel, so their ancestors had some access to the Good News just as ancient Jews did. In Gaul, it was common to bless pagan graves with holy water, baptizing the dead who were buried there. In other places, the prayers for the dead–especially on All Souls’ Day–were the most important prayers a new Christian could offer.

Prayers for the dead. Baptism on behalf of the dead. Blessing the pagan graves. These were all ways the living Christians showed their love and concern for their non-Christian dead relatives, trying to include the dead in the Kingdom of God. No one is ever saved alone. Salvation is, by definition, a communal event.

If Christ Has Not Been Raised

Posted on by
Reply
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

Posted on by
Reply
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.