1 Corinthians 15:36-38

'You foolish one. What you yourself sow is not made alive except it die. And what you sow, you do not sow the body which shall be, but a bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other kind. But God gives it a body even as it pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own.'

Paul, now calling them foolish for being so undiscerning about what God can do, replies by pointing to nature. As nature reveals, for seed that is sown death is not the end, rather it is the precursor of life. Men do not sow the full body of what shall be, but merely the bare grain. And from that small beginning comes the full growth of whatever crop it is. Nobody looking at the acorn would imagine that within it was a mighty oak. So God takes each seed and produces from it its own body, and there are many varieties. The thought is that in the case of human beings who are raised from the dead a new body will be produced, resulting from the seed of the old which has died. This is intended only to be an illustration, not a scientific explanation. It is simply saying that God does not need much of the old with which to create a new spiritual body which shares the essence of the old, and that death is therefore not necessarily final but can be the precursor of new life.

‘You foolish one.' In the Old Testament those who fail to take God into account are regularly called ‘fools' or ‘foolish'. Compare Psalms 14:1; Psalms 53:1; Psalms 74:18.