Excerpt from The Place of the Resurrection Appearances of Jesus

Christ, for the whole argument of St. Paul is based on the fact that there was a general consent on that subject. It has sometimes been thought that this implies that the Corinthians had no hope of any future life be yond death. But this view is an unjustified conclusion from 1 Cor. Xv. 17-19. St. Paul is here arguing that there must be a resurrection, because a future life is impossible without one, and that the hope of the Chris tian to share in the life of Christ necessitates that 'he should rise from the dead just as Christ did. Moreover, the idea that there was no future life is as wholly foreign to the point of view of the Mystery Religions of the Corinthian world, as it was to that of Jewish theology. The ques tion was not whether there would be a future life, but whether a future life must be attained by means of a resurrection, and St. Paul's argument is that in the first place the past resurrection of Christ is positive evidence for the future resurrection of Christians, and in the second place that the conception of a resurrection is central and essential in Christianity, which offers no hope of a future life for the dead apart from a resur rection. Cf. Also Lake's estimate of the significance to be attached to the elements of Christian faith held in common by Paul and his readers and therefore presupposed in his Epistles, ibid., pp. 115, 132 f., 233 n., 277, 424, 437. And Exit. 1909, i, p. 506.

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