NOTES for Co1 15:20-21

On the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Catholic Church reads passages of Scripture that speak of the Virgin’s role in the metahistory of humanity’s salvation (in the Book of Revelation), of how insignificant death is in the face of the Resurrection (1 Cor 15:20-26), and of the human glorification of the Mother of the Lord (Lk 1:39-56). The Virgin’s hymn in the Gospel of Luke shows that her glory is the Lord’s glory in her, through her glorification of God.

Continuing the discussion of the general resurrection, Paul evidently does not separate it from the history of the Kingdom gradually unfolding in our transfiguring, but not yet fully transfigured, world. And for the apostle, only resurrection, and by no means the immortality of the soul, is the true victory over death.

In fact, for him the whole history of the Kingdom turns out to be a sequence of stages following one another on the way to this victory. The main victory has already been won: Christ has risen from the dead, and His resurrection becomes the pledge of the Kingdom's final triumph at the end of time (v. 20). He is the first, but others will follow Him. The pivotal confrontation of the present age, in the apostle's thought, is the confrontation between Christ and the Kingdom with its fullness of life, and the death that entered the world after the fall - a death that cannot be defeated by hoping only in the immortality of the soul (vv. 21-22). But resurrection is a process requiring time, time that can also be measured by the clocks of our transfiguring, though not yet fully transfigured, world. This is not surprising: the Kingdom is not alien to our world; it enters it in order to transform it completely, and the history of the Kingdom cannot unfold apart from the history still continuing by inertia in our world, although its meaning and driving force were exhausted with the Savior's coming.

According to the evangelist's testimony, the process of the general resurrection began at the moment of the Savior's death on the cross (Matt. 27:50-53), and it will be completed, according to Paul, on the day of His return (v. 23). On that day the Church will reveal to the world its fullness as the fullness of the body of Christ, of which the apostle spoke. Those who sought the Kingdom and found it in the present age will be able to enjoy fully that fullness of life which today, even after touching the Kingdom, we experience only in part.

For those who sought nothing, that day will become the day of the last Judgment, at which their destiny in eternity will be decided (vv. 24-25). Without such a judgment, the completion of the present historical stage is impossible, just as without it the full and final triumph of Christ and the Kingdom over the death that entered the world with the fall is impossible (vv. 26-28). Only such a prospect gives meaning to Christianity and Christian life; otherwise it is not worth beginning at all, for if the world will forever remain as it is now, then it is better, following the well-known saying, "to eat, drink, and be merry while we are alive" (vv. 29-33). Christianity is not a religion but life in the Kingdom, and therefore following Christ makes sense only for the one to whom this Kingdom is more important than anything he has or can find in our still untransformed world.

Christ’s resurrection is the beginning of a new, risen humanity; it is in this sense that the Apostle Paul calls Him the firstfruits of those who have died. The union of Christians with Christ is like the mysterious bond of all people with Adam: we all sinned in Adam, and therefore death reigns over all people (cf. Rom 5:12–14). Adam was the first human being to die and thus opened the age of death; Jesus was the first human being to rise and thus opened the messianic age of resurrection.

A question immediately arises here: “Why, then, do Christians continue to die, and why has no one except Christ Himself yet risen as He did, in a new body, never to die again?” The Apostle’s answer is remarkable because the entire interval between Christ’s resurrection and the resurrection of those who are in Christ is contained in the one short word “then” (1 Cor 15:23).

For God, “one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2 Pet 3:8). We do not know how long the history of the world will last from Christ’s resurrection until His second coming; nearly two thousand years have already passed. Yet this entire age is no more than a brief interval in God’s design for the world and humanity. Scripture calls it the “last days” (cf. Heb 1:1–2; 2 Pet 3:3).

At the end of the passage is a thought that, nineteen centuries later, one of Dostoevsky’s characters would express in different words: “If there is no God and no immortality, then everything is permitted.” The words “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Cor 15:32) are a quotation from Isaiah’s prophecy (Isa 22:13). They are spoken by people feasting and making merry in besieged and perishing Jerusalem. There is no hope in that merriment, but we have hope: Christ.

The Apostle Paul warns us against a very serious danger: confusing different things. He says that when the Corinthians gather, “it is not the Lord's supper that you eat.” How, then, should it be eaten? What is wrong in the Corinthian community, and what does it have to do with us? It is perfectly clear that today, however much one might wish to, it is impossible to come to church for a meal: the Eucharist in its present form cannot serve as breakfast or lunch. Does that mean that everything is all right with us? I am afraid not. The problem is that a person comes to church not to meet God. What takes the place of that meeting is no longer so important. Today it is usually human fellowship. We feel our loneliness acutely, and in church we have the opportunity to spend time with people while expecting understanding, since people in church are indeed usually more kindly disposed than those in the street or on the subway. And so we come to socialize, to talk, to pass the time... The Church becomes a social club for us. And that is not eating the Lord's supper.