I’ve been trying to show that Paul thought eternal life would be lived not in some kind of bodiless spiritual existence, but in the physical body.  How is *that* supposed to work?  And didn’t he say that “flesh and blood” would NOT inherit the kingdom (1 Cor. 15:50)?  Here I explain how Paul understood it was all to happen.  I pick up with the last bit of my last post, taken from Heaven and Hell (Simon & Schuster, 2020). ******************************   The future resurrected body Paul imagines will be utterly and completely transformed.  It will be a different kind of body.  Paul argues that the human body that goes into the ground is like a “bare kernel” of some kind of grain that grows into a plant.  What grows is intimately tied to and related to what went into the ground; but it is also vastly different.  When you plant an acorn it doesn’t grow into a forty-foot acorn, but into an oak tree. So too the human.  When the body comes out of the [...]

What did Paul actually teach would happen after death?  It was not that after you died your soul would go to heaven or hell.  Paul taught a future physical resurrection of your *body*, to have eternal life here on earth.  I started explaining that in my previous post.  I continue here: Paul’s argument for a coming resurrection of the dead.  Again, this is taken from my discussion in Heaven and Hell (Simon & Schuster, 2020).   ***************************** Paul’s Teaching of the Resurrection To make his case (for a physical resurrection of all people at the end of time), Paul begins the chapter (1 Corinthians 15)  by summarizing what the Corinthians came to believe when they first joined the Christian community, that Christ died for sins and was raised from the dead, and after his resurrection he was seen not only by his disciples but by a large number of people, including 500 at one time and, finally, by Paul himself (1 Corinthians 15:1-8).  All these people actually saw Jesus.  That’s because he was physically raised. [...]

One of the most important issues for the apostle Paul is the future resurrection of the dead.  It is also one of the must misunderstood topics among readers of Paul today, who often claim that Paul had just the *opposite* view to the one he had.  And that’s because they completely misconstrue his understanding of Jesus’ own resurrection.  If I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it 834,000 times: “Paul thought Jesus was raised spiritually, not bodily.”   Wrong, wrong, wrong. It will take a while to explain.  I deal with the matter in my book Heaven and Hell (Simon & Schuster, 2020).  Here is the first bit of what I say there.   ******************************  The Glorious Transformation of the Resurrected Body Undoubtedly the most important passage for Paul’s view of the future resurrection is 1 Corinthians 15.   The chapter, in fact, is often called “the resurrection chapter.”  It is also one of the most misread passages in all of the New Testament.  Many casual readers have thought Paul wrote it in order to prove that Jesus [...]