(2) Is St. Paiil's tearhitu; consistent with itself f — It is urged by Teichniann (on. cit.) that St. Paul's view in 1 Thess. is purely .Judaic {echl Judisclie). It is true that he says nothing in 1 Thess. of the ' change ' which is so prominent in the teaching of 1 Co 15, but this is no proof that it did not then form p.irt of his expectation. 1 Co 15 is described b3' the same writer as 'a compromise'; and strongly con- trasted with 2 Co 5, a contra.st which must now be examined, (a) In 2 Co 5- the resurrection body is described as ' our habitation which is from heaven,' an expression which is not strictly consistent with the resurrection or retention of the former body as in I Co 15. But the inconsistency is no more than is allowable in speaking of a really indescribable event. The notion of a previously prepared body brought to the soul to be animated by it surely could not have definitely presented itself to the apostle's mind without being at once discarded. And it is further to be observed that vv.'-^ have verbal coincidences with Mk 14", wliich, althou"h a partly inaccurate statement of Christ's words, may very well have been known to St. Paul and have inlfuenced his choice of expressions, {h) 2 Co fi' hts been heii to imply that St. Paul expected
the resurrection body immediately upon his death. But this is not proved by his use of the present tense {Ixofiev), which only expresses the certainty of his hope. Nor is it proved by ^di- (taraXufls, for iir need not here, as in some cases, be rendered ' whenever,' but may retain its strictlj' conditional force, and so express the doubt which St. Paul still felt as to whether his ' earthly house ' will really be dissolved by death, or be changed at the Lord a coming without dissolution. Nor, again, does his expectation of being with the Lord as soon as he leaves the body (5'') imply that his resurrection would then take place (if indeed the term 'resur- rection ' be applicable to such a view, which is hardly the case), for, in another Epistle in which he expresses the same expectation of being im- mediately with Christ in case of death (Ph 1^), he makes it perfectly clear that the change of the body of bumiliation into the body of glory does not occur unlU the Second Coming (Ph 3-"'-). It may be repliei that the change described in Ph 3-°'- refers only to those who shall be alive at the Coming, amon^ whom St. Paul has again begun to include himself (cf. I'h l'-"). But this can hardly be pressed in face of his delinite expectation for liimself of resurrection from the dead in Pli 3". We therefore conclude that he expects to be with the Lord before the Parousia in a disembodied state. Teichmann's arguments are largely based on a detached note on 2 Co 5 in Schmiedel's Hand-Commentar, pp. 200-202, and on Schmiedel's exegesis generally. It should be added as a supplementary considera- tion that tlie supposed abandonment by St. Paul of belief in an intermediate state would present a serious difficulty in view of the miracles of raising the dead recorded in NT. It is surely inconceiv- able that a soul already invested with a glorified body should be recalled to exchange it for an earthly one.
(3) r/te two resurrections. — We have already seen under OT that this expectation belongs to the earlier stages of the doctrine. First came the hope of resurrection for righteous Israelites, and it was only by degrees that the expectation was extended to wicked Israelites, and afterwards to the Gentiles. In Lk 14''' we have perhaps some sanction given to a distinction between the resur- rection of the righteous and tliat of the wicked, and in Lk 20^' tliey that are accounted wortliy to attain that world and the ' resurrection from the dead' are spoken of as (all of them) '.sons of God.' The conclusion to be drawn is, not that Christ taught that only the righteous will be raised, but that their resurrection is to be thought of aa separate from tliat of the wicked. This distinction seems to be confirmed by Jn 5'-", and to be followed by St. Paul in Ac 24^^ With this clue we can scarcely fail to see the same thought in 1 Th 4", where the resurrection of the dead in Christ is spoken of quite without reference to any general resurrection, though this must not be inferred from the word ' fust.' This word is correlative to 'then' (fTTfiTo), which introduces as the second event the ' rapture ' of the living. Again, in 1 Co IS^- " there seems to be a distinction between the phrases 'they that are Christ's' and 'the end,' which latter expression may cover the general resurrection and the judgment. Lightfoot (on Ph 3") distinguishes firmly between i) i^avaarairit i) iK KKpu}!), dcdaracris iK v(KpCiv on the one side, and 7) dvdcTTocris tC)v ftKoHv on the other ; the former two phrases being equivalent to avairraffis fwi)!, and the latter phrase to drdaToffii Kpl<rews, Jn a-'". And indeed it would he hard to explain St. Paul's words, Ph 3" ' if bj' any means I may attain,' if we suj^iiose that what he desired to attain to was merely that resurrection which is certain for all. The only other explanation of such an ospiratiu'i