Main news for 9 August 2026

For Paul, Christ's resurrection from the dead is the cornerstone of Christianity as a whole. Indeed, Christianity in every age has been founded precisely on faith in the resurrection of every person from the dead, and on the belief that this process began with the Savior's resurrection. And the point is not merely that without life after death, a person's earthly life proves largely meaningless.

In ancient times, belief in the immortality of the soul and in recompense after death was characteristic of the Egyptians, to some extent of the Greeks, and of certain other peoples. But the Bible speaks of something else. It is not saying that some part of the human person, however important, is preserved after death and that this allows a person to go on living, remembering and remaining conscious of themselves. The Bible speaks of something greater: it speaks of resurrection, of the whole person returning to life—and to a full life, not the partial and limited life that the soul alone would inevitably have. For all its importance, the soul is only a part of the human person, not the entire person.

But for human resurrection to become possible, the world had to change. Death and the evil that gave rise to it had to be driven out of the world they entered after the Fall. The world had to become God's Kingdom once again, as it had been on the first day of creation: on that first day there was neither darkness nor evil in the world; it was entirely permeated by the light of God's presence, which made it the Kingdom of the living and utterly real God. This is exactly how God wants to see the world, and He will accept nothing less. According to His design, the human person must become an inhabitant of this world and attain in it a fullness of life that is unimaginable today.

Christ's resurrection from the dead became the center of this process. Human salvation consists in joining the universal resurrection; otherwise, a person will have to forget about the Kingdom. The apostle understands all this perfectly and never tires of reminding others, for to remain outside what is happening means losing everything. Christianity itself then loses all meaning, turning into a religion, a doctrine—in short, into something that cannot by itself bring anyone into the life of the Kingdom. And to live on talk about a Kingdom toward which one is not journeying truly means being the most pitiable of all people.

Co1 15:13-14

NOTES

Continuing the discussion of the Resurrection, Paul connects the general resurrection at the end of time with the resurrection of the Savior Himself...

Continuing the discussion of the Resurrection, Paul connects the general resurrection at the end of time with the resurrection of the Savior Himself. He says: how can you claim that there will be no resurrection from the dead when before your eyes you have a clear example proving the opposite - the resurrection of the Savior Himself (vv. 12-16)?

At first glance, such doubts in a Christian setting may seem completely impossible. But if we suppose that there were many recent converts to Christ from paganism in the Corinthian church, the situation becomes more understandable. In the pagan world, ideas about the immortality of the soul were much more widespread than ideas about resurrection. In Paul's time most religious pagans believed in life after death, but the afterlife was no longer associated for them with the world of shadows, where all go regardless of how they lived on earth, but with the immortality of the soul, in which the person is preserved fully or almost fully, so that after death the soul can experience delight or suffering depending on what kind of life its owner led in the world of the living.

Meanwhile, the Bible says little or almost nothing about this kind of afterlife, or about the immortality of the soul, focusing all attention on Judgment and on the general resurrection at the end of time. But the apostle does not draw his readers' attention to this divergence. He speaks of something else: to abandon the traditional Jewish ideas of Judgment and the general resurrection, replacing them with some pagan teaching about the immortality of the soul, means also abandoning the Kingdom brought into the world by the Savior (v. 17). If the immortality of the soul alone is enough, if the pagans are right, then the world will forever remain as it is, and those seeking a better life and higher justice will receive what they long for in their turn, after death. Then there is no Kingdom, and no need for one. But that is no longer Christianity. Jesus came into the world to give those who seek the Kingdom its full reality, not some after-death bliss that becomes an eternal refuge for a soul fleeing the world. And if there is no living in the Kingdom and no seeking it, then there is no point in following Christ. He will give those who follow Him nothing that could make them happy within the limits of our untransformed world lying in evil (vv. 18-19). He can give the faithful only the Kingdom. And only in all its fullness. And not someday after death, but here and now.

Somehow, in everyday usage the word faith has come to mean the opinion that God exists...

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