Speaking of resurrection, Paul is not speaking at all about the immortality of the soul or some other partial immortality. In fact, by that time there was nothing new in the idea of the immortality of the soul: the Egyptians spoke of it, the Greeks spoke of it, the Indians spoke of it in their own somewhat different way, and among other peoples too, even if there was no developed teaching about the immortality of the soul, there was nevertheless a certain vague idea that a person does not die entirely and completely, and that the world of shadows may not be the only possible lot of those who have left the world of the living.

But in every such idea there was always the idea of some residual existence of the person. Death was imagined as an inevitable catastrophe for man in his present state, the loss of part of the human person, in which, however, its core is preserved, so that the person loses neither memory nor self-consciousness.

This is what distinguished all ancient ideas about the immortality of the soul from earlier ideas about the world of shadows: there, in the world of shadows, a person precisely lost memory of earthly life, and self-consciousness barely smoldered in him. Ideas about an immortal personal principle were connected with the hope of the continuation of life after the death of the body, of an immortality that might be reduced but was still immortality, and a personal immortality at that, in which a person, though deprived of the body, still remains himself in the main.

Paul, however, has something greater in mind. He is speaking not about preserving something from the human person so that this remnant may live forever, but precisely about full life, life in the body, the life to which man was called from the very beginning, since God created man in the unity of spirit and nature, soul and body.

More than that: the matter is not simply the preservation of man, but also his transformation, the qualitative change of human nature under the influence of the breath of the Kingdom as the person is ever more included in its life. Here the matter is no longer the afterlife, but the fullness of life, compared with which our present existence is fit to be called pre-life. And the beginning of movement toward this fullness is connected with a person's entry into the Church and with the first experience of the Kingdom that a Christian receives at the moment of this entry.

But the beginning is not yet the end, and the Christian's path is not limited to the earthly stage alone. In fact, with regard to the Kingdom one can hardly speak of the afterlife in the pre-Christian sense of the word, since it includes the life and path of the Christian as a whole, at all its stages, both the present one and all subsequent ones. This single life is what the apostle has in mind when he speaks of the natural, or "soulish," body and the spiritual body. The fullness of life, natural and spiritual, not the immortality of the soul, is what awaits us at the end of the path. The path of which the apostle does not tire of reminding the addressees of his letter.

As he concludes the discussion of transformation and resurrection, Paul draws a clear line between those who have chosen the Kingdom and those who have not (vv. 51-52). By "we" the apostle here undoubtedly means Christians, and by Christians he means the Church, which for him is nothing other than a community of people living in the Kingdom. It is no surprise that in this case Paul speaks not of death but of change or transformation: for those who have already chosen the Kingdom now, the last day will be something expected and more or less predictable, as it is for anyone who, after a long journey, has finally reached the intended and long-desired goal. Of course, the goal may turn out not to be exactly as those walking from far away imagined it, but in any case they will not be mistaken or disappointed in what matters most.

It is different for those who, for one reason or another, did not choose the Kingdom during their earthly journey. In itself this is not fatal, since a choice can be made even at the very last moment, and if it is sincere and the reasons for the earlier delay are weighty enough, the one who makes the choice will receive the Kingdom, like the workers of the eleventh hour in the Savior's parable. But for them the last day will be precisely the day of Judgment in the full sense of the word, because for them it will not be the completion of a path begun in advance, but the unexpected beginning of an entirely new life, and therefore one previously unknown to them. It is no accident that Paul speaks of them specifically in terms of resurrection, not of change or transformation: those who have become partakers of the Kingdom thereby already become, to a certain degree, partakers of the process that is completed at the end of time in the universal resurrection and transformation of human nature.

In a certain sense one could say that those who live in the Kingdom, even in the measure of fullness possible in our world, which has not yet been fully transformed, are already rising even now, though their resurrection will be completed at the end of time with the Savior's return. As for everyone else, for them everything will begin and end then, on the last day, though of course until the Last Judgment their destiny in eternity remains undefined. Only after each person's destiny has been determined and the process of universal transformation has been completed will the victory over death be complete (vv. 54-55). And that victory, in turn, will open the way to the fullness of that life and that breath of God with which the Kingdom is permeated.

Continuing the discussion of the general resurrection, Paul, as if arguing with some unknown opponent, places special emphasis on the fact that resurrection is impossible without a qualitative change in human nature, which in biblical language is called transfiguration. Apparently, many of the recent converts to Christ from paganism still viewed resurrection in a pagan way, and they had a quite reasonable question: would resurrection be something unnatural, a kind of backward movement, as if, for example, a river suddenly flowed back toward its source instead of toward its mouth (v. 35)?

Answering this question, the apostle points out that death is not the end of the path and the beginning of degradation, but only one stage of the spiritual movement that ends in the complete transfiguration of a person who follows Christ and has joined himself to the life of the Kingdom (vv. 36-38). The whole world created by God has to do with what is called "glory," by which the Bible means the presence of God, though each creature has its own measure of this "glory" (vv. 39-41). Everything can be transfigured and will be transfigured at the end of time, and the measure of glory will determine the place and quality of each creature of God in the new, transfigured world. But for the human person there is a special path in the Kingdom. Human transfiguration presupposes passing through death and overcoming it (vv. 42-44).

The human path in this respect is like the earthly path of the Savior Himself, who also passed through death so that the Kingdom could enter our still untransfigured world. Speaking of a "natural body," the apostle evidently means the untransfigured human nature damaged by sin, which lives mainly a natural, creaturely life that pushes the life of the spirit into the background. But this human condition is temporary, for from the beginning God created the human person in order to give him the Kingdom in all its fullness. The fall delayed and slowed the resolution of this task, but did not cancel it, and a person's earthly path has meaning only when it is directed toward the Kingdom and ends in it (vv. 45-49). And the transfiguration of human nature is a necessary stage of this path, for nature, including human nature, in its present state is not suited for the Kingdom and will not enter it (v. 50). The Kingdom is not some special Christian form of postmortem existence, as some Christians in Corinth probably thought, but the fullness of life opened to a person at the end of the path after transfiguration and renewal. It is a life accessible to everyone already in this transfiguring, though not yet fully transfigured, world.