Fr. Stephen De Young: And we’ll go ahead and get started. And when we get started in just a moment, we’re going to be picking up in St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. Chapter 15, beginning with verse 20, is where we’re picking up from last time.

So just quickly to kind of get us caught up to where we were as we talked about last time here at Chapter 15, St. Paul is sort of starting a new section of his first epistle to the Corinthians. And this section in particular is focused on the resurrection: the resurrection of Christ and the general resurrection at Christ’s glorious appearing, as we’ll see as we get further into the chapter this time. So, although it serves as the culmination really of St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, I’m not going to now go through the whole epistle. But we went through the first 19 verses last time of chapter 15. And in those early verses, St. Paul set out the fact that he is here talking about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, specifically the Gospel of Jesus Christ as he preached and proclaimed it while he was in the city of Corinth. He is reminding them of what it was that he taught them while he was there. And so he briefly outlined that in sort of an almost credal fashion as we saw and discussed last time. And he went on then to give a list of witnesses, both himself and the other apostles, and also 500 people at once who had seen Christ after his resurrection.

And they were all witnesses specifically to the resurrection part of the gospel. We talked last time about how the word evangelion that we translate as “gospel” is a word for the proclamation of a victory, often a military victory, sometimes a political victory. But this is the proclamation of Christ’s victory. And that victory of Christ culminated in a certain sense in his resurrection from the dead. And so that resurrection is going to be now the focus of the remainder of the chapter and how that relates to our own resurrection.

St. Paul then went on to introduce that topic that I was just mentioning by telling us that there were some apparently within the community at Corinth who had rejected the idea of the bodily resurrection for humans, for us, for our community. And so, St. Paul sort of introduced the topic by pointing out that if the resurrection of the dead is an impossibility or laughable or just something that we don’t believe is real, then that would mean that Christ himself didn’t rise from the dead bodily either. And that without that portion of Christ’s victory, that the whole gospel really falls apart, the whole proclamation as preached by St. Paul to them sort of becomes pointless and of no effect.

And so now St. Paul, having said that, having given that kind of jarring introduction, is going to move on to speak more specifically about, first of all, Christ’s resurrection. Now, one note sort of before we start, because this isn’t going to be obvious as we read through the text in English, but this is very important in terms of understanding what St. Paul is doing, because when we’re reading it in English, of course, we don’t see the original Greek behind it necessarily. And so, St. Paul, when he talks about Christ being raised from the dead or Christ rising from the dead, he’s using a particular verb, egeiro, in Greek. And when he talks about the Resurrection, he’s using the word that may be more familiar to us at least as Orthodox Christians. And that’s anastasis. The anastasis is what we have written at the top of our resurrection icons. It’s a word that’s used in referring to the Resurrection. And those two words, while they have similar meanings, are not directly related to each other in Greek in the way that raise and resurrection are in English. And so, St. Paul is doing something very deliberate in the way he chooses those words when he talks about the Resurrection, when he talks about the anastasis, the rising up, literally the standing up. Stasis, of course, means to stand. So when he talks about that, he’s referring to a whole tradition within the Hebrew Scriptures, within the Old Testament, where that word is used to describe God’s rising up, God arising. There are several of these verses that are probably familiar to us, at least in the Orthodox Church liturgically. “Arise O Lord and judge the earth, for you will inherit from all the nations” is Psalm 82, 81 in the Greek verse six. And the verb there for arise is anasti, It’s related to anastasis. And we use in many of our prokeimena, especially those used at Orthros on Sundays, they begin with “arise”. And that call on God to arise is referring to a particular event, the anastsis, the rising up of God, which was a way of referring to that day on which Yahweh, the God of Israel, would return to judge the earth, to set the world right to restore justice on earth. And so it is a call for him to rise and to come and to do this, to reestablish justice.

And so this was seen as sort of an eschatological apocalyptic event from the perspective of the Hebrew Scriptures, from the perspective of the Old Testament. This was something that they were hoping for, something that was in the future. And for St. Paul, this is something that began to be fulfilled at the time that Christ rose from the dead. It’s going to have its ultimate fulfillment at his glorious appearing, which we often refer to as his return. In case I haven’t said it recently, the reason I prefer to use St. Paul’s language of his glorious appearing is that return kind of gives the impression that Jesus went off somewhere and is now gone, like he ascended to heaven and now he’s gone and then, well, someday he’ll come back.

The reality, of course, is, as we confess in most liturgies, Christ is in our midst. He hasn’t gone off somewhere, but he is not seen and touched by us in the same way that he was by his apostles before his ascension. And so that day when he appears, the word that you may have heard parousia, that’s used in the New Testament by the Fathers to refer to Christ’s glorious appearing, really parousia means his presence. So just that he would be present again in a more full and more direct way, accessible to us in that sort of direct, immediate way that he was accessible to the apostles when he stood among them after his resurrection.

So St. Paul sees that as having begun. So when he refers to Christ rising from the dead, he’s talking about the actual action, the fact that Christ awoke in the tomb and stood up and left the tomb. When he refers to the Resurrection and attaches that to Christ’s rising on the third day, he’s referring to this event, this eschatological event that has already begun, that is sort of set in motion the last days, set in motion our salvation. And so that’s why he sees it sort of part and parcel of the whole idea of Christ’s victory. That Christ’s victory was the beginning now, that victory was sort of the turning point in this great cosmic war where now victory is assured. It’s sort of the D-Day, right? It’s the beginning of the end, or at least the end of the beginning now. And this is why we’re now in the last days, in this final period of time before Christ appears and establishes justice on Earth permanently.

So that background kind of laid, because that terminology of the resurrection in Christ’s rising, St. Paul is going to use that and what we’re going to read tonight. So I wanted to sort of clarify that before we get started reading. So that sort of groundwork laid, we’ll go ahead now and pick up in St. Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 20, St. Paul says:

But now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

So the language here reflects sort of what I was just talking about, right? Christ has risen, it’s happened, and he’s the firstfruits now. He is the first one to rise from the dead. He’s still arguing for this connection that we talked about last time between Christ’s resurrection and our own, Christ’s rising from the dead and our own.

So the firstfruits. Of course. Are critically important from the perspective of everyone who is reading this. Biblically, of course, the firstfruits of everything. Whether it was the firstfruits of your herds in terms of the mating and reproduction of your herd animals, or whether it was the first of your crops which budded and blossomed forth and grew, those firstfruits always belong to God and were taken and offered to Him in sacrifice. And of course, that’s also true of the first-born son, not just of every animal, but of every human. After the Passover got established the ordinance that the first male who opens the womb belongs to God and is sacred and is holy, he didn’t, of course, want human sacrifice of firstborn sons, unlike some of the pagan gods who did want and expect that. But an animal was offered in the child’s place, but the child was still dedicated and holy to God. And that, of course, found its fulfillment in what we celebrate at the Feast of the Presentation every February, when St. Joseph and the Theotokos brought Christ to the temple, to be presented there, and St. Joseph brought the sacrificial offering to dedicate him to God.

So, the firstfruits was sort of the guarantee if when the time came when your crops should be starting to bud and blossom forth and nothing much blossomed or what blossomed forth was sick or of poor quality, this would be a bad sign in terms of what your crop was going to be like that year. Alternatively, if you had this abundant blossoming forth or if your herds were reproducing in vast numbers, this would then be a positive sign. So, St. Paul is not only saying that there’s this connection between Christ rising from the dead and the fact that we will someday rise from the dead, he’s saying that Christ rising from the dead and that there are these witnesses who sought and have testified to it, is the guarantee to us, is the sign to us for certain that we will one day rise from the dead.

Verse 21:

For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead.

Now, St. Paul had said that Christ was the firstfruits of those who had fallen asleep, meaning he is the first one to rise from the dead. He is the first one to leave the realm of death and return to the realm of the living. And so that’s why St. Paul can now immediately turn to the idea that death has this dominion over humanity. So the first man, Adam, through his disobedience, death comes into the world. Humanity becomes mortal through what he did. And so also through Christ, then, comes the resurrection of the dead, comes the restoration of the dead. Again, it’s resurrection. It’s referring to that day when things are set right. And so, the resurrection of the dead then represents this restoration to the way things should be. And so, just as through the one man, death came and death had dominion, now Christ has defeated that dominion and then the first one. But the rest of humanity will now be freed from death also. And he serves as the guarantee.

St. Paul goes on:

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ, all shall be made alive.

You notice it’s “all” in both cases. And this isn’t something that we need to try to weasel around, right? As I mentioned last time, in response to a question, we’re going to see, as St. Paul goes on here, that there are sort of three enemies of humanity, three obstacles to our salvation, all three of which Christ is victorious over.

And so, one of them is death. And St. Paul means exactly what he says here. Through the disobedience of Adam, our first Father, through that disobedience, all of us have become subject to death. And so every human being dies, not just the bad people, even the saints, with a couple of exceptions: Enoch, the prophet Elijah, have fallen asleep in the Lord and have been therefore in need of resurrection. And in the same way, and St. Paul means this too, every single human being who has ever lived will be made alive physically. The resurrection of the dead on the last day, Christ’s glorious appearing is to everyone; every human being will rise from the dead bodily. And this is the clear teaching throughout the Scriptures, very clearly throughout the New Testament. Now, this doesn’t mean, and St. Paul isn’t saying here and won’t say here, that this means that every single human being is going to find eternal life in the kingdom. But it does mean that everyone will be raised because Christ’s redemption from the power of death. Christ’s defeat of death is total; it is complete.

And so this is how we need to understand all of the sort of universal sounding statements that we hear at Pascha, how there’s not a single dead remaining in the tombs, how everyone has been raised to life. This is absolutely true. This is absolutely true. But death is not the only enemy of humanity. And we’re going to see that there are other issues at play in our lives, other enemies whom we faced. Christ has defeated all of them. But the way in which that affects each of us as people is different. But in the case of death, Christ has overcome it for everyone. The power of death has been removed. Verse 23:

But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterwards those who are Christ’s at His coming.

He says Christ is the firstfruits. He rises first at his coming, at his Parousia, at his appearing, then all of us. Verse 24:

Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.

So, there is this second stage of our salvation. But notice what St. Paul says here. There are some people, for the most part persuaded by Origen, who want to project this event when Christ hands over the kingdom to the Father. They want to project that past Christ’s return, if they even speak of Christ’s return, really, they want to project that out into the future and argue that, well, there’s going to be this stage at which everyone will rise from the dead, everyone will be judged by Christ, which is clearly St. Paul’s teaching also, though that’s not his focus right here. They say, “Well then some will go to punishment and some to life in the kingdom.” But then they want to argue that this event, now that St. Paul is talking about, where all of where everything is handed over to the Father, well, that includes everybody, that includes the ones who are being punished also.

But St. Paul here is very clearly tying this event, the handing over of the kingdom to the Father, to the bodily resurrection. He’s just narrated this for us. Christ has risen from the dead. At his appearing, we also will rise from the dead. All of humanity, everyone descended from Adam will rise from the dead. And at that point Christ will turn over the kingdom to His Father. He will not turn over all people to His Father. He will turn over the kingdom to His Father. So, he has here delineated that there is some portion of humanity which is going to be given over to the Father, even though all will be raised, and that this is an event that happens then.

So this is what is sometimes called a two-stage eschatology or a two-stage idea of the destiny of human beings. The first stage is the reality that we all die in this world, we all die physically. Our souls are separated from our bodies, our lives depart and are either hidden in Christ, as St. Paul says, or they go into Hades, into Sheol, into the grave. That’s stage one. Stage two is what St. Paul just described, that time when Christ appears, when we’re raised from the dead bodily and the kingdom is given over to the Father. So we need to understand that St. Paul here, contra Origen and those who would want to follow his ideas, is emphasizing precisely the bodily resurrection and that the bodily resurrection of humanity is the turning point, is the pivot point in terms of our destiny. And that what comes after the bodily resurrection, whether it’s the entrance into the kingdom or whether it’s condemnation, either of those, is then eternal. There is no other phase that St. Paul is here talking about that comes after that. And notice that St. Paul goes on after talking about delivering the kingdom to the Father. He says that when that happens, “Christ will put an end to all rule and all authority and power.”

He goes on in verse 25 to say:

For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet.

So, St. Paul has now introduced another group of enemies. He’s introduced another group of enemies. He has been speaking about death as the enemy. Now he’s talking about rule and authority and powers as another enemy, as another obstacle, as another enemy of Christ, an enemy of humanity, who Christ is going to put under his feet. And so, we see again, this is another second image of this two-stage eschatology of this age in which we live these last days, and then the age to come. In this age, Paul affirms here, he says Christ must rule, Christ is ruling, Christ is reigning. When we celebrate Christ’s Ascension, all too often we just focus on the element of, “Well, Christ has gone up into heaven.” I’ve heard of some, not Orthodox, worship services in some other Christian groups where they release balloons on Ascension Day in order to celebrate it, just focusing on this idea of Christ going up into the air. At one point, a rather well-known evangelical blogger talked about how she sort of had separation issues every Ascension Day because it was sort of, “Oh, why did Jesus leave us and abandon us?”

This is all a misunderstanding, of course, of what is happening in Christ’s ascension. The focus of what’s happening in Christ’s ascension is not just him going up into the sky, it’s that Christ is being enthroned at the right hand of God the Father, that Christ is taking his seat to rule and reign over the Earth. And this is why right before he, ascends in St. Matthew’s Gospel, at the very end, he says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go make disciples of all nations.”

So, St. Paul here affirms Christ is reigning and ruling already, but we are not at the point where all of his enemies have been put under his feet. So he is currently ruling in the midst of his enemies. So who are these “authorities and powers and rules”, as it’s translated here in English, that St. Paul’s is talking about? Well, he’s already been talking about this, as we’ve seen earlier in his First Epistle to the Corinthians. Because he’s already talked about the demonic powers who the members of the community at Corinth, the members of the Christian community who had come out of paganism, these demonic powers who they had worshiped, who they had served, who had enslaved them through that worship, through sin, through their sexual immorality, they had taken control of them through the power of sin. And so, yes, Christ is in authority, Christ is ruling over the world. But these demonic powers are still at large and are still at work in the world. They’ve lost. But just like when D-Day was lost, the Nazis didn’t just throw down their guns and all surrender. So also, the demonic powers have not just all decided to pack it in and go home.

In fact, the image we’re given by St. Peter and in St. John’s Apocalypse is actually that knowing that they have only this short time left, knowing that they’ve been defeated and they’re going to lose utterly at Christ’s appearing, they have become even more hostile and more desperate and more violent, prowling around like a roaring lion seeking to devour us. So in some ways their defeat has actually made them a more serious foe.

And this is of course what from the very beginning of the Scriptures, from the very beginning of Genesis, we see is the goal of the demonic powers. Whether it be the devil, whether it be the angels who sinned, with the line of Cain leading up to Noah’s flood, whether it be the angelic beings to whom God assigned governing the nations, and who fell and who became these demonic gods of the nations. All of them have the same goal. And that goal is the destruction of humanity, God’s creation.

I like the simple way St. Andrew of Caesarea put it in his commentary on Revelation chapter twelve, in which Saint Andrew of Caesarea says that all the fathers teach that after the creation of humanity, the devil fell through envy. This is what the teaching of the Scriptures and the fathers is regarding the devil and the demons and their fall. That the devil, when he saw humanity, and knowing what the destiny of humanity was, the destiny of humanity, what we call theosis, that humanity was destined through the incarnation of Christ to be united to God himself. And that this was not something as we’ll see, this gets dealt with very specifically in St. Paul’s epistle to the Hebrews that Christ was not incarnated as an angel but as the seed of Abraham. That’s going to be dealt with very specifically. So the devil, seeing this, became jealous. He knew obviously he was not going to defeat the God who created him, but he decided he could try to destroy the creation of the God who created him, his fellow creature, who God loved and who made him jealous. And so this is the pattern that’s set by the devil. This is the pattern that’s followed by all of the other angelic beings who fell and became the demonic powers. And so this is their motive, is that destruction.

And so, they now have lost the power and authority that they had. But that makes them no less desperate to try to destroy as many humans as they possibly can in their spite and in their rage and in their jealousy. So, St. Paul here is describing that. There is this phase now where Christ has defeated them. He’s defeated them in the cross. St. Paul will talk about it in his Epistle to the Colossians in detail, but he’s defeated them at the cross, he’s defeated them in the resurrection they’ve been judged. Psalm 82, 81 in the Greek numbering, describes Christ coming to judge those hostile powers. And it’s that judgment of them that then ends with verse six. “Arise, O God, and judge the earth, for You will inherit from all the nations.” This is why St. Paul has brought the gospel to Corinth in the first place. This is why it applies to them. St. Paul is coming to them and saying, the most high God, Yahweh, the God of Israel, who created you, created the whole world, and also created those things you’ve been worshiping, those corrupt things that have enslaved you and led you into sin and towards self-destruction. He has come in the person of Jesus Christ, and he has defeated them. So now you’re free. You’re free from the power of those beings. You’re free now to serve the living God. That’s the Gospel that he’s come and proclaim to them because of the victory that Christ has won. And so he’s urging them that just as when God defeated the gods of Egypt at the Passover, which is what God says he’s doing at the Passover, he’s rendering judgment on the gods of Egypt. Just as when he defeated those gods and freed his people afterwards, some of those people of Israel decided they’d rather go back to Egypt and be slaves again. He’s been urging all through his first epistle to the Corinthians that these Corinthian Christians not fall back into that old slavery to sin and to death, into these demonic powers that had held them for so long. That they not slip back into it. Because Christ having defeated them, the only way they can come under their power again, the only way they can go down that road that leads to destruction again, is if they do it voluntarily, is if they choose to ally themselves with those being so.

This is St. Paul’s second image of these two phases. In this phase, Christ has defeated them, but they’re still roaming the earth, they’re still afflicting the Christian community. They’re using their agents, they’re using the people who still worship them, the Romans chiefly, to come and persecute the Christian believers, to try to destroy them, to try to kill them. But that period also St. Paul here is saying has an end for these last days. But the day will come when Christ appears that they’ll be defeated utterly; that that will be over, and they too will receive their final and eternal punishment.