1 Corinthians 15 - Introduction

Butler's Comments

Chapter Fifteen
THE PROBLEM OF THE RESURRECTION

(1 Corinthians 15:1-58)

IDEAS TO INVESTIGATE:

1.

In accordance with what scripture did Christ die and arise from the dead?

2.

When did the resurrected Christ appear to five hundred brethren at once?

3.

Is it the death of Christ, or the resurrection of Christ, that takes away sin?

4.

Are there different orders of being resurrected from the dead?

5.

What is being baptized on behalf of the dead?

6.

What kind of body will believers have after the resurrection?

APPLICATIONS:

1.

The gospel gives salvation only to those who hold it fastGod's offer of salvation is free, but conditioned on loyalty.

2.

The facts of the gospel are important firsteven before what we feel about it, or before its usefulness.

3.

The terms in which the gospel is to be preached are objective, not subjective. It is history not autonomous human decisiveness.

4.

Proof of the historicity of Christ's resurrection follows all the canons of legal, scientific evidencecan you name them?

5.

There is significance to Paul's listing of himself as a witness to the bodily resurrection of Christwhat is it? Does it convince you? Would it convince others? A Jew?

6.

What do you think of the moral honesty of those who deny the bodily resurrection of Christ and still want to practice Christianity? Would you?

7.

What kind of life would you live if you did not believe in the bodily resurrection of the dead? Why?

8.

Would you like to be baptized for someone who is dead? Would you be able to trust a God who allowed righteousness by proxy?

9.

How often is the resurrection of Christ preached and taught at your congregation?

10.

Do you see liberalism and modernism (now, it is neo-orthodoxy) as corrupting good morals?

11.

Are you resigned to the fact, as nature teaches, that there is no new life unless death comes first? Has it been easy to be reconciled to the inevitability of death?

12.

What kind of body do you think you will have in eternity?

13.

Do you expect to recognize in eternity people you have known here? Why? How?

14.

What of this life are you expecting to take with you to heaven?

APPREHENSIONS:

1.

What was the form of the apostolic gospel proclamation?

2.

Why does Paul say Christ died, was buried and arose, all according to the scriptures? What scriptures?

3.

What evidence is offered by those who deny the resurrection of Christ? How do they explain the gospel accounts of it?

4.

How many enemies of early Christianity became advocates of it? Why?

5.

Why are we still in our sins if Christ has not been raised from the dead?

6.

Why are men to be pitied if they have hoped in Christ only for this life?

7.

Isn-'t there some value in practicing Christianity even if Christ was never raised from the dead?

8.

Why is Christ firstfruit of the dead? Which dead?

9.

What is baptism for the dead? Is it practiced todayby whom?

10.

Why are people who are sinning not in their right minds?

11.

Why do men say, How are the dead raised?

12.

What is the answer?

13.

What is the difference between the first Adam and the last Adam?

14.

Why can-'t flesh and blood inherit the kingdom of God?

15.

What difference does believing in the resurrection make in how we feel about Christian works?

Special Study
ON CLOUD NINE

Man, you are really out there on cloud nine! This is one of the favorite slanguage expressions used by some to categorize ideas which they believe to be unrealistic, unreasonable and irrational. Over the years liberal theologians and liberal preachers have built up and bowled over their straw-men of conservative-Christianity. They have relegated all fundamental, historical views of the Bible, God, Christ, man, conversion and the church to cloud nine. Conservative Christianity, they say, is too much concerned with doctrines to be realistic or relevant.
We believe that the opposite is true. We believe that liberalism (even in its latest formNeo-orthodoxy) is out there on cloud nine. We believe that history, reason, experience and revelation all combine to prove that liberal theology is unrealistic and irrelevant.

Both the apostles Peter and Jude state unequivocally that any theology which denies that the written record contained in the Bible is a God-breathed, historically infallible, revelation of the supernatural redemption in Christ is cloud nineism. Any such theology is like a cloud without water. it is unrealistic and irrelevant. 2 Peter 2:17-21, These are springs without water, and mists driven by a storm; for whom the blackness of darkness hath been reserved. For, uttering great swelling words of vanity, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by lasciviousness, those who are just escaping from them that live in error; promising them liberty, while they themselves are bondservants of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he also brought into bondage. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the last state is become worse with them than the first. For it were better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered unto them. Jude 1:11-13, Woe unto them! for they went in the way of Cain, and ran riotously in the error of Balaam for hire, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah. These are they who are hidden rocks in your love-feasts when they feast with you, shepherds that without fear feed themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds, autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the root; wild waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the blackness of darkness hath been reserved for ever.

It is unrealistic to attempt a complete rebuttal of liberalism in so brief an essay. Nevertheless, the following outline will hopefully produce enough light to show the irrelevancies and irreparable weaknesses of an unrealistic liberal theology.

Antecedents of Liberalism

1. Rationalism: Rationalism had its modern birth as reaction against the extreme dogmatism, anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. This philosophical revolution brought about the Renaissance with its extreme swing to rationalism and freedom from all authority. This resulted in the autonomous man. Man's ability to reason became the sole criteria of judging a thing to be true or valuable. All that is non-conceptual, or empirically non-repeatable is untrue, according to rationalism.

2. Materialism or Empiricism: Materialism or Empiricism says that all we can know is sensory knowledge or all that, is, is matter. It denies the supernatural. it denies miracles and arbitrarily assigns them to the realm of superstition; it denies spirit. Man becomes a creature and captive of environmental influences and may be conditioned or manipulated by empirical stimuli. This philosophy is far from being dead. Behavioristic psychology is founded upon it. It is being taught in the majority of our state colleges and universities.

3. Evolutionism: All life originated by chemical processes. that which is organic came from inorganic. This is the only recourse for man in explaining his being and the universe when he refuses to have God in his knowledgehe can only worship the creature and the created if he rejects the Creator. Evolution is irrational, unscientific, unrealistic. It creates hundreds of unanswerable questions, problems and inconsistencies. Evolution solves no real problems and answers no real questions! Evolutionism did not start with Charles Darwin. It started as far back as the ancient Greeks, Aristotle, Democritus and perhaps even earlier (cf. Romans 1:1-32).

4. Scientism: It seemed that science was always proved right and religion wrong. The idea began to arise that science could solve all of man's problems, that it was only ignorance and inertia, particularly the ignorance and inertia of the Churches, which were holding back the forward march of science, the new savior.[1]

[1] A Layman's Guide to Protestant Theology, by Wm. Hordern, p. 47.

This is scientism, the worship of science. Science became the sacred cow! Natural law (which is only man's description of what he has observed) became God!
Nietzsche, the German philosopher, said, God is dead! With such a philosophical annihilation of God came the death of all moral standards and out of Nietzsche's teachings came Nazi Germany under his most infamous discipleAdolf Hitler.
5. Humanism: Scientific Humanism is the doctrine that men, through the use of intelligence, directing the institutions of democratic government, can create for themselves, without aid from super natural powers, a rational civilization in which each person enjoys security and finds cultural outlets for whatever normal human capacities and creative energies he possesses.[2] Without a supernatural standard just who is going to decide what are the normal human capacities and the creative energies, who is going to decide what security is and who is going to decide between cultural outlets and non-cultural outlets? With only relativistic standards society must ultimately either become completely subjected to dictatorship of the most powerful or it must end in chaotic anarchism.

[2] Living Issues of Philosophy, by H. H. Titus, p. 216.

Humanism is an unrealistic optimism in man's ability to provide for himself all that is needed to have a life that is consistent with his being. All this actually results in determinism and mechanistic materialism or anarchism, and neither determinism nor anarchism is freedom!
6. Subjectivism: Some humanistic theologians found such strict materialistic and animalistic views to be inconsistent with man's real nature. Materialism led only to an incoherent, unrealistic outlook and practice of life. So the theologians, acceding to the so-called scientific destruction of the historical accuracy of the Bible, attempted to base religion on subjective feeling alone. value and truth was to be felt and not arrived at from the facts.

They said science knows that the Bible is untrue, but that has nothing to do with truth. for truth or value has to be felt! And although the Bible is inaccurate and full of superstition, God can speak to us through it.
In Schleiermacher religion found an answer to many of the problems of his age. For one thing religion was made independent of philosophy and science. Religion, based on the individual's personal experience, had a realm of its own; it was its own proof; it bore its own validity. Furthermore, the center of religion is shifted from the Bible to the heart of the believer. Biblical criticism cannot harm Christianity, for the heart of the Bible message is that which it speaks to the individual, and it speaks even more clearly because the critics have enabled us to understand it.[3] Could there be any philosophy more unrealistic, unscientific, unreasonable?!

[3] Hordern, op. cit., p. 59.

And so, modern liberalism in the form of existential neo-orthodoxy, seeking to reconcile lies as truth, seeking to get answers from a book they admit is full of error, is more unrealistic and incoherent than all its predecessors!

Results

1. Agnosticism: Unbeliefno eternal verities or values. Truth is becoming. man is making truth as he experiments. Truth is created pragmatically. That is, if an action works it is true; if not, false.

But again, who's to be the judge as to its workability? What's workable for one may not be for all, or, what's workable today may not be tomorrow.
If man is the result of accidental inorganic chemical clashes, if God is dead, if there is no truth except what is rational and empirical, then there is nothing eternal and nothing valuable but animalistic satisfaction of the flesh!
2. Socialism: The governments of men become the Beneficent Father. the Savior of the race. Men's philosophies (outlook on life) permeate every avenue of their existence. Religious philosophy and political philosophy cannot be separated. You cannot compartmentalize life! All that you think affects your whole life. Religious liberalism has brought on political liberalism and socialism. It has placed worshipful emphasis on material results in the assumption that a particular standard of living brings salvation and governmental paternalism brings the kingdom of God upon earth. Statement after statement by the liberals to this effect may be found in the little book, so vehemently denounced by the religious liberals themselves, None Dare Call It Treason.

All the evils of immorality, greed, kick-back, favoritism, paternalism, waste, exploitation in big government are a direct result of the religious philosophy of liberalism which says man himself and his material well-being. is heaven: the philosophical or political method of bringing this about is their God.
3. Immorality: If there are no eternal values, no God, no hereafter, how can there be any morality? All good is relative only to individual desires or the desires of one who can, by force, control thoughts and deeds through fear or brain-washing. This is why we have sun, suds and sex on the Florida beaches. This is why we have cheating on television quiz shows. This is why we have more divorce and adultery than ever before. A liberalism which says there is no God, no true Bible, no heaven, no hell, that a great society may be built without them is cloud nineism! Such a philosophy is unrealistic, irresponsible, demonical!

4. War: The liberal theological schools of Germany taught philosophies which spawned Marx, Lenin, Hitler and many of the present and past leaders of American education and politics. When there is no God and when the Bible is renounced as merely the invention of ignorant, fallible men, then all values are relative. The values of a man like Hitler become relative to building the Third Reich. Marx's values were relative to the glorification of the State. Liberal theology breeds greed, lust for power, prejudice, exploitation of humanity, and war.

5. Eclecticism: Syncretism in religion, ecumenism of the World Council of Churches, one world governmentalism is another result. Liberalism reduces Christ to a mere human in whom may be found the highest human attainment of what is good and right. Christ becomes a mere teacher of ethics. simply another religious philosopher or prophet like Mohammed, Buddha, or Confucius. Such a religious philosophy absorbs all which is supposed to be good and valuable from each of the great world religions. How can truth, absolute truth (that is what Christianity claims to be), absorb that which is not true either historically or pragmatically? Christianity and all other religions are diametrically opposed.

It is totally unrealistic to build one's religious beliefs and philosophy of life upon a conglomeration of teachings which are contradictory! Pessimism or a schizophrenic fear and anxiety follows from such a mixed up religion.
This pessimism and anxiety is not only evident by the living of many people today, but it is stated in our songs, art, literature, and contemporary philosophers.
History and reason demonstrate that liberalism, anti-supernaturalism and unbelief are responsible for our sensual, schizophrenic, suicidal society!
Peace, joy and fruitfulness which are absolutely necessary for a balanced life are all based upon trust and faith and a coherent philosophy of life. The only coherent philosophy of life is one that is centered on and saturated with the love of God demonstrated in history in Christ (God Incarnate) and experienced by a personal fellowship with the Holy Spirit as He lives in men through His Word!
Yes, liberal theology is unrealistic. It is worse than that! It is ungodly, impotent and damning!

Answers

1. Know the truth: Every Christian must know why and what he believes. The study of evidences for belief in Christ must not be reserved for only a few of the so-called theologians. The apostles and Christians of the first century made this the bed-rock basis of all they believed, taught and practiced. Every sermon recorded in Acts is built upon historical evidence for the deity of Jesus Christ.

All of life's motivations have their origins in either truth or lie. If we desire to move men to live true to God's purpose for them we must know God's truth and why it is true, and be able to present it to others. Parents should be teaching their children NOW why they believe. Men and women should be steeping their own minds and hearts in evidences for belief.
2. Preach the truth: Let the church and Christians be more concerned with revealed truth than with programs. Let the church be more concerned with regenerating the hearts of individuals by the power of the Holy Spirit through His Word rather than with social reform or raising living standards, and the slums will disappear. Let the church and Christian people have the courage to preach the truth with their lives. Let them live up to what they teach in their Sunday School classes on Sunday, letting Christ live His life in them, and racial injustice will cease.

3. Pray daily: We do not really believe in prayer per se as the psychologists do for a release but we believe in the Lord Jesus who promised to answer prayer. But we really do not act like we believe in the Lord who promised or we would pray more! It is the Lord's will that truth be victorious over lie. liberalism is a lie, pray that it may be defeated on every hand.

4. Send laborers: Support colleges and churches which train men and women to declare the truth. I never cease to be amazed at parents who look down their noses at the Bible Colleges. They act as if life consists in just a living. And of course, in order to learn how to make a living one must go to a college where atheistic, Communistic, immoral teachers teach infidelic philosophies. God have mercy upon us.

5. Warn people: Romans 16:1-27 tells us to mark those who cause divisions and disputings among us. The Scriptures are emphatic in their exhortations to warn people, to point out by name and doctrine those who are contrary to revealed truth. John says that the only way we know the Spirit of Truth and the spirit of error is to compare all that is taught with what the apostles recorded in the New Testament.

LIBERALISM IS CLOUD NINEISM. IT IS UNREALISTIC IN:

1. Its approach to or view of God. Nature proves God exists. Men must deny reason to deny the facts connected with the revelation of God in Christ.

2. Its view of man. Man is more than flesh and bone. Man is a spirit. he is a person. But not if the liberal view is to be accepted.

3. Its view of sin. Sin is more than the unfortunate conditioning of an unfortunate environment. Sin is of the will, and of the heart regardless of ones environment.

4. Its view or approach to salvation. It has no supernatural power. Why strive for social improvement if there are no eternal verities, no Almighty Judge, etc.

5. It is even unrealistic in its view of social reform: Without divine power of regeneration there is no lasting social reform.

Any religion that does not answer the human predicament is worse than useless. Death, and the sin which causes it, is the human predicament. There have been many religious and metaphysical theories for its cure, but only one way of fact! This was when God entered history, time, and space, and said, This is what I have done with sin and with death. I punish sin upon the cross in My Son. I conquer death in the resurrection of My Son from the tomb.

Purposes

(Why bother with a polemic against Liberalism?)

1. Men are lost in it. There is futility and hopelessness in this life without Christ. There is no hope of eternal life in a Christless Liberalism.

2. Men and women are seeking to be loosed from its tyranny. Many people thirst for the historical Christianity. People are beginning to awake to the tyranny and hopelessness of Liberalism. Many unbelievers use the unrealistic and contradictory nature of Liberal Christianity to scoff at all religion. They do not know there is a real Christianity of fact and life in the Holy Spirit.

3. We have the power. What has been said before is sufficient to show that the battle is basically a battle of ideas. What we believe will ultimately control and direct what we do. Paul says, For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds); casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ; (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). Peter points out that through a knowledge of Christ we have granted unto us the divine power of God which gives us all things that pertain to and are relevant for life and godliness, (2 Peter 1:3-4).

Christianity is more than a way of life. It is the only coherent, consistent, realistic and relevant life possible! The divinely inspired Christianity of the New Testament in all its pristine purity is intensely practical. It is intensely relevant and contemporary to all men in every situation and forevermore. But it is all of this only if it is historically and infallibly true. It is true! Its truth makes all other philosophies of life inconsistent, irrelevant, powerless and untrue. The most insane, incoherent, schizophrenic existence that man can bring upon himself is to attempt to live a coherent life which is based upon an incoherent philosophy. Any philosophy of the universe and man's purpose and destiny which is bereft of divinely revealed truth is powerless and insane. Paul says that the power and relevance of Christianity is due to its divine truthfulness and this divine truthfulness was demonstrated when God intervened in time and space and history and by the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ showing that the supernatural is just as real, if not more real, than the natural. Hear, then, the conclusion: Wherefore my beloved brethren be ye stedfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord for ye know that your labors are not in vain in the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Special Study
THE EXISTENTIAL / NEO-ORTHODOX PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

An attempt will be made, in this comparatively brief study, to focus on the Neo-Orthodox / Existential philosophy of history. To this end we shall endeavor to show a few of the antecedent influences leading to this particular view of history; a definition of this philosophy of history; results of this philosophy of history. Basic to an understanding of any aspect of the Existential theology (if indeed it may be called a theology) is recognition of its reactionism toward a religion that presents itself to man's reason for verification. The Crisis theology is also a reaction against what its adherents call, immanentism. To them the orthodox theology of a God revealing Himself in the realm of the phenomenal (ordinary history) means an immanentistic, pantheistic theology and restricts God. It claims to be an enemy of rationalism but in our opinion it enthrones rationalism more authoritatively than any of the rationalists and restricts God as orthodoxy could never do. Their constant demand is for a wholly Other Godbeyond the realm of reasonableness and human history and in so doing they make man's emotions the exclusive point of contact with a God that, by their own declaration, cannot be contacted.
By their arbitrary, authoritarian and dogmatic postulate that a revelation from God is not verifiable by the logical processes of man they have enthroned their inability to know which is really enthroning rationalism. Basically, Existentialism is nothing more than a modified agnosticism all dressed up in the robes of religious terminology.
We hope, in all fairness, that we have represented their position correctly. With our background of orthodoxy and ordinary view of history it has not been easy to follow their thinking to clear conclusions.

Antecedents

The antecedents of the existential philosophy of history may be traced back with certainty to Immanuel Kant and other rationalistic philosophers, and perhaps even further back into the age of Platonism. But we shall not go beyond Kant. We feel rather reluctant to criticize Kant; considering our very brief acquaintance with his work, but it is necessary to do so to see his influences upon modern theological trends, We therefore accept the interpretations of other writers concerning his epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions. The educational background of Barth (German school of rationalism) and the ethnic relationship of Barth and Kant (both German) lead us to believe that Kant had a strong influence upon Barth's theology.
There is no doubt that Kant's ideas concerning the way man arrives at and interprets his natural experiences contain some truth. But when it comes to the metaphysical (that which is beyond the natural) Kant becomes an agnostic. He maintains that metaphysical knowledge about the general characteristics of reality is impossible to attain. If we seek inside ourselves for what is the Cause (caps mine) of, or the basis of, our mental machinery of forms and categories, we are unable to discover anything. Similarly, when we try to move beyond the phenomenal world (ordinary history), to the realm of things-in-themselves (brute fact), we are again unable to discover the Cause.

Kant believes that the difficulty which prevents us from developing any metaphysical knowledge is that we have no way of determining if our mental apparatus is applicable to anything beyond the world of possible experience, the phenomenal world. We possess no concepts, no forms of intuition, no logical schema, that we have any reason to believe apply to the Self, or to the -things-in-themselves-', the real objects that may exist beyond the world of appearance.[4] Thus Immanuel Kant arbitrarily decides that God, if there is a God, could not reveal Himself to man for man has no way of categorizing or understanding that which is beyond the phenomenal (brute fact). Either this or Kant believes that God has not the ability to communicate the noumenal (that is, non-empirical world) through the phenomenal.

[4] Philosophy Made Simple, Popkin & Stroll, Doubleday & Co., Inc., p. 97.

Kant further posited that our logical forms and our categories are organizing principles. which allow us to acquire a priori knowledge about the world of appearance, but ... cannot be extended to tell us about a possible transempirical world, unless we could discover some means of determining whether the metaphysical realm can and must be thought of in the same way as the phenomenal one.[5] In other words, our own reason becomes the criteria of judgment as to whether God is able to reveal Himself to man in man's own categories or not.

[5] Ibid., p. 98.

There is that element of truth within Kant's philosophy that ought to be appreciated. It is true in a certain sense that man could not know God by reason alone nor through his experience with the world about him. But that does not preclude the possibility of God revealing Himself to man in man's categories to a degree sufficient for man to accept by faith what is unknowable but revealed. It appears that Kant has written revelation off as impossible simply by making his own reason the judge. And thus Kant gives to the existentialists the first faint echoes of the necessity for the wholly Other God and the autonomous man.
Dialecticism is the other important antecedent with the Crisis theologians. This form of rationalism had its beginnings in Plato but Hegel is responsible for organizing the dialectical philosophy into its influential position among philosophers. The dialectic proceeds: All change, especially historical change, takes places in accordance with the law of the dialectic: a thesis is produced, it develops an opposition (its antithesis), a conflict between them ensues, and the conflict is resolved into a synthesis which include both thesis and antithesis. Hegel believed that in discovering the dialectic he had discovered a necessary law of nature.[6] Men and nations are merely pawns of historical necessityit is really the dialectic which controls the course of events. Hegel's philosophy is very near pure pantheism. His Absolute Mind (God) becomes the real universe, manifesting itself outwardly as world history, and inwardly as the rational dialectical process, marching toward full self-realization.

[6] Ibid., p. 65.

For Hegel the historical process proceeds from level to level through the dialectic movement from thesis to antithesis to synthesis. All change, all thinking and all life proceed from affirmation to denial, or from claim to counter claim to a new integration which later develops a new opposition. Development takes place in Waltz-timeOne, two, three; one, two, three.
Hegel holds that fundamental principles of law, morality, and social institutions of art, religion, and philosophy are connecting stages in the logical evolution of the rational will. The dialectical movement of progress through conflict runs through everything he wrote. This dialectical movement is observable in things and in thought, in the human mind and in all history. His idea of conflict is very apparently carried over into the existential ideas of negation and crisis. To Hegel, the Absolute was the sum total of all things in their developmentit was reason itself, it was Mind, and it was the metaphysical definition of God.

Kierkegaard, father of existentialism, was influenced by the Kantian epistemology and the Hegelian dialectic. Kierkegaard vehemently opposes Hegel's System and pretends to set off his forms of dialecticism in sharp distinction from those of Hegel. But SK is a dialecticist, nevertheless. Both Hegel and SK deny that all facts are under the control of the logic of an antecedent God. With respect to the theologian's (SK'S) concept of God as an eternal and unchanging Being, we can see that it would be logically impossible for God to be part of the historical world. By definition, no historical or temporal properties apply to God. If one believed that God existed in time, that God was able to act in human historical situations, one would be believing something that is logically absurd.[7][7] Ibid., p. 188.

God cannot make Himself known. Man cannot reach God from any point in history. Yet man must contact God. Thus we have the dialectical conflict and we must take the irrational leap trying to reach the synthesis. The Unknown is a torment to manyet it is also an incitement. God is the wholly Unknown, yet Reason may prepare for His coming.[8] As one writer has said, Kierkegaard has improved on Kant's concept of correlativity and Hegel's concept of mediation (both assumed that phenomenal logic and fact are independent of God) by making timeless logic more timeless, by making brute fact more brute, and by developing new speeds for the shuttle train service (SK'S Inwardness and Leap) between them,[9] (parentheses mine). Both SK and Hegel reject the Christian concept of a self-sufficient Godboth reject the idea of the counsel of God, according to which history is simply, what it is. Such concepts to them destroy true inwardness and require men to accept that which is alien to them because it is above them. History as the Christian knows it petrifies subjectivity according to these theologians. Objective proof is taken to be an enemy of true faith because it claims to deal with certainties and finished quantities. But the true subjective thinker, the dialecticist, is constantly occupied in strivingseeking the conflict or arriving at the Crisis. Finality at any point must at all costs be avoided. Dialecticism is irrationalistic in its assumption of brute fact and rationalistic in its virtual ascription of legislative power to the human mind over the whole field of possibility (dialectical process),[10] (parentheses mine).

[8] The New Modernism, by C Van Til, Presbyterian & Reformed Pub. Co., Phila., Penna., p. 61.

[9] Ibid., p. 62

[10] Ibid., p. 64.

In his commentary on Romans, Barth simply carries on where Kierkegaard left off in the dialectic. According to Barth, every attempt to come to God directly by means of ordinary history must be condemned. The relation of man to God must be dialectical subjectivity. Truth is to be found by inwardness. Unable to find universality (reality) by means of external history, Barth's Individual finds it in himself by means of inwardness. The Individual is said to be dependent on nothing outside himself. The Individual which disowns all rationality and universality outside himself claims to have these qualities within himself. Barth says on one hand that faith cannot hold on to any content that comes to it from without itself and thus shows his irrationality. But when on the other hand he says, faith is, as it were, creative of divinity, then he is relegating to man the ability to conjure up his God dialectically, and he shows his rationalism. This coincides with Kierkegaard's idea that truth exists solely in the subjective, personal certainty of the believer.
Thus the Crisis theologians have built their theology upon two assumptions of humanistic philosophy. First, the wholly Other God, the Unknowable realm of brute fact which is beyond rationality. Secondly, the autonomous Individual who finds truth subjectivelywho comes to true inwardness and self-realization through the rational, dialectical process which leads to the conflict and the leap. These assumptions directly affect the New-orthodox/ Existential philosophy history.

Philosophy of History

Some philosophies of History:

Providential view of History: The Hebraic /Christian view History and civilization are viewed as under the control and moving toward the purpose of the Divine Being, God.
Theory of world cycles: Seneca - believed that human life is periodically destroyed and that each new cycle begins with a golden age of innocence and simplicity. The arts, inventions and later the luxuries lead to vice and deterioration. Fate or, the fixed order of the universe, must be accepted with resignation.
Corrupting influence of Civilization: Rousseau - human nature is good, yet men and human society are evil. Mankind deteriorates as civilization advances. The soul of man is corrupted as the science and the arts become more perfect. Misery has increased as man has departed from the simpler, primitive conditions.

History as the expression of reason or spirit: Hegel - worked out an elaborate metaphysics of history in terms of monistic idealism. He believed that reality is spirit manifesting itself in nature, in human history and in the actions of man. History is the development of spirit which expresses itself through successive stages. When spirit reaches the stage of rational freedom, it is fully conscious. World history does not belong to the realm of matter but to the realm of spirit. Whereas the essence of matter is gravity, the essence of spirit is rational freedom. Reason in history, rather than providential interventions marks the transition from Augustine to Hegel.[11]

[11] Living Issues in Philosophy, H.H. Titus 2nd ed., American Book Co., 1953, pp. 457-459.

There are other philosophies of history which may have affected the Neo-orthodox philosophy of history:

Historical nihilists: Those who deny that there is any meaning, pattern or purpose in history.
Historical skeptics: Those who assert that we do not know whether or not there is a pattern or purpose in history.

Historical subjectivists: Those who claim that any pattern which seems to be present in historical development is not actually present in history but is merely a creation of human minds or imaginations.[12]

[12] Ibid., p. 456.

The foregoing philosophies of history are introduced merely to show that the Neo-orthodox concept of history is absolutely foreign to the Christian or Biblical concept of history. As we shall see the Neo-orthodox philosophy of history is more anti-historical, Kantian-critical, Hegelian-pantheistic than anything else. Barth's usage of the idea of what he calls primal history has its origin in Kant. Barth's ideas of the Individual and of primal history are inseparable. The Individual, according to Barth, has true universality within himself. That is, he is not dependent upon anything external. God, therefore, does not speak to the Individual directly through history. If God is to appear to man in history (and He must, for even Barth is able to see that man cannot save himself), it must be in another sort of history. This other sort of history is called primal history.
Kant's critical system begins with the assumption of the non-createdness of man. The Self is wholly free or autonomous. Human thought is creative in character. The world of history becomes the training ground of the Self. In history the Self attempts to make a never-ending progress toward its self-chosen or created Ideal. Of course, Kant is not speaking here of the empirical-self. The empirical-self must be thought of as subject to nature and history. BUT THEN, THE EMPIRICAL-SELF IS NOT THE REAL SELF, according to Kant. The Autonomous-self is the real self. And to be the real self, it must be free.

It is with this notion of the homo noumenon that Kant approaches historic Christianity. Naturally he cannot accept historic Christianity as finalif he did the idea of the homo noumenon progressing toward its self-chosen Ideal would be lost. In historic Christianity it is God who creates nature and history; in Kant's critical philosophy it is the autonomous man that creates both. Kant accepts the accounts of historical Christianity as being merely figurative, symbolic pictures made by the free moral Self. Christ is merely the archetype of man's disposition in all its ideal purity.[13] Christ, for Kant, is not simply the revelation of God Incarnate affecting the empirical self of man. He is the Ideal which reason sets before itself. For Kant, no historical revelation, whether by word (Scripture) or by fact (Christ), can be taken at face value. Revelation is basically no more than a figure of speech by which reason (the autonomous man) goads itself toward its self-chosen Ideal. Because of the limits of the reach of reason, reason therefore must resort to what Kant calls the schematism of analogy. It is this schematism of analogy that Kant finds in Scripture. Now it is quite incomprehensible how mankind should have set such a perfect Ideal for itself as Christtherefore it is quite proper for the Bible to speak analogically of this Ideal as coming down to man.

[13] The New Modernism, by C. Van Til, p. 85.

We must look briefly at the philosophies of Franz Overbeck concerning history, for Barth urges his followers to listen to what Overbeck has to say on the idea of primal history. Overbeck sees the realm of primal history as the realm of origins. It is the realm where the Individual is confronted with pure contingency (that is, where no distinctions are discernable between the universal and the particular). When the subject operates (through the subjective leap) in the field of primal history, he is said to stand outside of empirical history and to be functioning in the realm of pure contingency. Ordinary, empirical history is the realm of relativities and correlativities. If we are to have contact with the Absolute (God) it must be in non-historical or super-historical dimension. The true man in man is, according to Overbeck, above the passage of time and unaffected by an empirical historic Christianity. The true man (the real man, the soul) is, like Plato's man, a member of an ideal world. True Christianity, says Overbeck, appears in the realm of primal history. To seek true Christianity in the realm of empirical history is to make it subject to the manipulations of men, for in the realm of empirical history man is supreme. Here he makes his distinctions and differentiations relative to himself. It is the territory which he may call his own. He is lord in this realm because in it he merely deals with himself. All historical interpretation must be subjective because the relations of things as they appear to us in time (ordinary history) concern that side of things which belong to us and which are, in fact, our own creation. It is only when we turn to primal history that man can really meet God, These men simply deny that God influences the history of the world, as we know it, at all.
Empirical history, says Overbeck, tells no consistent tale. It is full of sound and fury without intelligible meaning. The world simply is what it is without any reason in it that we can see. But man as a living organism is always subject to the ambiguities of the temporal, while man as the subject of thought (the real man) is able to transcend time itself and thus the ambiguities disappear. Man just thinks all the ambiguities of history away through the subjective process. To bring Christianity into alliance with empirical history is, to Overbeck, to admit that it is of this world and that it partakes of the ambiguities of this world. If history as a whole tells no intelligible tale, it follows that there can be no special turning-points in it that have particular meaning. Thus in Overbeck's system there is no sense in asking about the origin of temporal history or about the end of history, or about the Christ of history. For him, in history, nothing is ever finished.
Now let us see how these agnostic and rationalistic ideas are further developed in Barth. Barth's conception of primal history is very similar to that of Overbeck. Both negatively criticize ordinary, empirical history and follow with a gospel of hope through primal history. But Barth gives far greater emphasis to the positive element than Overbeck did. as a traffic director he beckons vigorously, lest men go down the road of historical relativity.[14] Barth says of temporal history that for all its competence it is not history, but photographed and analyzed chaos. To think of Christianity or salvation as apprehensible within historical relativities (ordinary history) would inevitably bring Christianity or truth to an ultimate death. In history we can never expect to meet God. At least, we shall never meet a God who is really other than ourselves. Barth argues that to think of God as creating the world in time is to reduce God's transcendence to the level of a mere link in the chain of immanent causes.

[14] Ibid., p. 89.

The gospel is not merely other and higher than history; it is the contradiction of history.[15] The righteousness manifested to the world in Christ-Ideal is timeless and transcendental and unambiguous; the history of relativitiesof the worldis ambiguous. The Christ-Ideal through whom sin is removed from the world has no historical existence. Within history, Jesus as the Christ can be understood only as Myth, or as Kant would say, schematic analogy.

[15] Ibid., p. 90.

It is just here that Barth's dialecticism begins to show itself. He believes that it is the idea of pure contingency (primal history) as the correlative to the idea of absolutely comprehensive rationality (empirical history) that must do the saving work.[16] In other words, there is no way to God from history by way of negation, and, on the other hand, the only way to God is the way of negation. The very meaninglessness of history constitutes its meaning. By the contradictory and ambiguous character of history, the Individual is driven to despair; just because he is driven to despair; he sees the exit, or, ... minus times minus equals plus, and we have the Crisis. He beholds the marvelous fact that the contradictory (the nature of ordinary or phenomenal history) which held him encased in the mazes of correlativity is the power by which he breaks through to the realm of the incommensurable.[17] Notice where the power is said to reside! The power unto salvation is in man's capacities to discern and reason (apart from a revelation of God). When the Individual has sensed the true meaninglessness of history and sought with passion the God of pure negation, he has also found the positive relation of God to the world.

[16] Ibid., p. 92.

[17] Ibid., p. 94.

When we have stressed the meaninglessness of history with all our power, we begin to understand that the positive relation between God and man, which is the absolutely paradoxical, exists. It is hopeless to reach the Christ by ordinary history. But we reach Him easily when, by faith(??), we are ready to leap into the void. The true Christ, the Christ not subject to history, the Christ of paradox, is seen with the eye of faith alone. and faith deals with that which is beyond all the differentiations of history.[18]

[18] Ibid., p. 95.

The value of history lies beyond history, in primal history. It lies in the CRISIS within which all history stands, in the sickness unto death. In primal history our relationship with Christ becomes contemporary. It is a relationship or contact with Him which lies beyond the scope of man's empirical self. Thus fundamentalists need not defend the historicity of the gospel narrative, and critics accomplish nothing by trying to destroy it; by faith we are always contemporary (face to face) with the Christ-Ideal by living within the Moment.
According to Barth, there may or may not have been a resurrection of Jesus in empirical or ordinary history. But he is not concerned with this primarily. It is the true resurrection (in the realm of primal history) that we must see. The true resurrection must be found in the subjective Moment. It is in the Momentthe subjective leap which Barth equates with faiththat we become contemporary with Christ's resurrection. As Van Til says, by faith the believer (according to Barth) enters as it were into an airplane and by means of it transcends the mediation of history. But anyone, wherever he may be, can take to the air in this wholly subjective airplane. If no one is dependent upon any historically mediated gospel content, all men are equally unable and equally able to come to Christ in the airship Subjectivity.
The oracles of God are the comprehensible signs of the incomprehensible truth that, though the world is incapable of redemption, yet there is a redemption for the world.[19] Any man anywhere may hear these oracles through the Moment (subjective leap). These oracles of God are not dependent upon objective testimonial reporting. The truth reached through the leap can neither be taught nor handed down by testimony. The past is, as it were, dead, and has no message for us, for the meaning of every epoch in history is directly related (or contemporary) to God.

[19] Ibid., p. 102.

Notice how Barth's philosophy of history contradicts orthodoxy's concepts of history. According to Orthodoxy, nature and history reveal the mind of God; for Barth nature and history are the results of the creative mind of man. For Orthodoxy God reveals Himself directly in history; for Barth, history is primarily the revelation of the ambiguities of mankind. Orthodoxy believes the Scriptures contain the direct revelation of God and His will made known to sinners; for Barth, the Scriptures contain a necessarily mythological statement of the ideas of primal history. For the believer in historic Christianity, Adam was the first historical man who first truly knew and loved God and then forsook Him; for Barth, Adam is an idea by which every man may picture to himself his existence as it comes into being through the Moment. For Orthodoxy redemption was accomplished by Christ in history; for Barth, redemption is not a matter accomplished for man in history, but by man in utter freedom from history.

Barth's adoption of the Kantian and Hegelian philosophies did not lead him to a really transcendent, wholly-Other God, but instead, his dialectical theology inevitably led him to a religion which was immanentistic and a God which was merely the self-chosen Ideal of the would-be autonomous man.
Barth contends that all history is, strictly speaking, no more than a promise. The apostles were no closer to the fulfillment of revelation than the prophets. The witnesses of the resurrection still deal with the promise only. To be a true witness of the resurrection is not to preach matters of historical tradition, but to point beyond history to primal history. A true faith will not build its house upon the quicksands of ordinary history. Since there is no objective revelation within phenomenal history, Barth contends, there is no historical subject that might receive such a revelation. The empirical man is not the real man. Barth contends whole heartedly for the distinction between the empirical, temporary self and the real Individual, the man within man. This is the Self that believes and obeys the revelation of God (which is reached in the Crisisthe Moment) and consequently this Self cannot be a historical self. Barth does not deny, of course, that there is such a thing as an empirical self. What he contends is that this empirical self or historical-consciousness has nothing to do with the Word of God. The empirical self turns about in this world of surface phenomena (relative History) as a rat in a maze.
Here is how Van Til explains Barth's dialectical philosophy of history:

It is in the realm of primal history that the dialectical union between God and man takes place. Revelation is primal history. this means that history (ordinary history) is not revelation. Primal history is a dimension that lies as it were between super-history and ordinary or surface history, while yet it impinges on both. Revelation is super-history in the sense that there is eternal happening in God Himself. On the other hand, revelation is also ordinary history. Yet it is neither in super-history nor in ordinary history that God meets man. It is in the tension between the two that revelation takes place, and it is this tension that constitutes the realm of primal history. It is here that God meets man in person. Ordinary history points to primal history and primal history constitutes the meaning of ordinary history. Primal history is the realm of meaning inasmuch as it is the realm of the Logos (what Barth does with John 1:1-18 must be neat). This realm is free from ordinary historical continuity; its unity is that of contemporaneity. It is history but it works directly on men of nearest and farthest times. Men become partners in primal history and, when they are such, they are members of the Church of Christ. [20]

[20] Cornelius Van Til, The New Modernism (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1947), pp. 154-155.

And so the great rationalism of Barth stands out prominently in all that he says. Barth's Individual is after all saved by a revelation that is exclusively internal and subjective in character. His wholly-Other God proves not to be so wholly-Other as he would have us believe, but is contingent with the consciousness of the autonomous man.
That Barth's successors maintain the same philosophy of history, may be established by a few quotations from Reinhold Niebuhr.

Theological literalism also corrupts the difficult eschatological symbols of the Christian faith. In these the fulfillment of life is rightly presented, not as a negation but as a transfiguration of historical reality. If they are regarded as descriptions of a particular end in time, the real point of the eschatological symbol is lost. It ceases to symbolize both the end and the fulfillment of time, or to point to both the limit and the significance of historical development as the bearer of the meaning of life.
In the same manner a symbolic historical event, such as the fall of man, loses its real meaning when taken as literal history. It symbolizes an inevitable and yet not a natural corruption of human freedom. It must not, therefore, be regarded either as a specific event with which evil begins in history nor yet as a symbol of the modern conception of evil as the lag of nature and finiteness.
In a similar fashion the affirmation of the Christian faith that the climax of the divine self-revelation is reached in a particular person and a particular drama of his life, in which these particular events become revelatory of the meaning of the whole of life, is falsely rationalized so that the Jesus of history who is known as the Christ by faith is interpreted as an inhuman and incredible personality with alleged powers of omniscience within the conditions of finiteness. In this way the ultimate truth about God and His relation to men, which can be appropriated only in repentance and faith, is made into a fact of history.
These errors of a literalistic orthodoxy tend to obscure the real issues between Christianity and modern culture as surely as the premature capitulation of liberal Christianity to modern culture. The Christian truth is presented as a dated bit of religious fantasy which is credible only to the credulous and which may be easily dismissed by modern man.[21]

[21] Faith and History, by Reinhold Niebuhr, Scribners, 1949, pp. 33, 34.

The points of reference for the structure of the meaning of history in the Christian faith are obviously not found by an empirical analysis of the observable structures and coherences of history, They (the points of reference) are revelations apprehended by faith, of the character and purposes of God. The experience of faith by which they are apprehended is an experience at the ultimate limits of human knowledge; and it requires a condition of repentance which is a possibility for the individual, but only indirectly for nations and collectivies.[22]

[22] Ibid., p. 136,

Niebuhr ridicules the faith that seeks to be founded upon the testimony of revelatory facts within ordinary history. He says of the resurrection that it was not empirical fact, but the subjective interpretation of the meaning behind the death of Jesus (cf. page 147-148 of Faith and History by Niebuhr). He says of the orthodox faith that it is a faith not quite sure of itself, and ... always hopes to suppress its skepticism by establishing the revelatory depth of a fact through its miraculous character. this type of miracle is in opposition to true faith.[23]

[23] Ibid., pp. 147-148.

Some Results of the Existential Philosophy of History

This rationalistic theology has devastating effect on all aspects of historic Christianity. Hear what it has to say concerning the Christian hope!
The question of hope naturally involves our concept of the future and so the whole question of time and its meaning and the outcome of history is affected. Universalism finds its most striking expression in Barth's discussion of the Christian hope. Barth couches his theology in orthodox terms when he contends that our hope is to be fixed not on some Platonic idea but on solid historical fact. BUT WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED THAT BARTH CALLS A GENUINE HISTORICAL FACT? This is the all-important question. Time and place are a matter of perfect indifference. Of what these eyes see it can really be equally well said that it was, is and will be, never and nowhere, and that it was, is and will be, always everywhere possible.[24] Indeed a fact of history is, according to Barth, not genuinely such unless it is everywhere and always possible. It is this sort of fact that is everywhere and always happening. This is to say, the resurrection of Christ stands, in Barth's case, for the Idea of the general progress of the human race toward Ideal perfectionthe resurrection is everywhere and always happening.

[24] The New Modernism, p. 339.

Barth claims that fundamentalism has, by means of its doctrine of the direct revelation of God in the Incarnation of Jesus, limited God. We have bound God to His own revelation; He is no longer free, or wholly-Other. Barth speaks of God as being contingently present with man and it is only when God is thought of as contingently present with us that God Himself may become true history in us and with us. BUT DOES THIS FREE GOD OR DOES IT LIMIT HIM MORE THAN THE ORTHODOX THEOLOGY? To Barth we do not really exist except to the extent that we are contemporaneous with God. With such a philosophy as this it must also be true that God does not really exist except to the extent that He is contemporaneous with us. God is not ObjectHe is Subject. A real historical fact, according to Barth, therefore takes place only as an event, as a process of contingent contemporaneity of God with man and of man with God and that, subjectively.

Barth argues that history as such is dumb; it speaks with a chaos of voices mutually contradictory of one another. The space / time world is a world of no meaningful significance. Kant reduced the teachings of historic Christianity one by one to the level of illustrations of eternal truths, truths of reason. Barth does virtually the same thing. If there is to be a genuine resurrection, a resurrection that shall be everywhere and always possible to all men, there must be a burial in which the God of orthodoxy is buried. THERE MUST BE NO ANTECEDENT BEING OF ANY SORT IN THE THEOLOGY OF CRISIS! A fact, to be a real fact for Barth as for Kant, must be ultimately constructed by the autonomous mind. Only then can it ever be reconstructed, ever re-experienced by the dialectic. Thus the antecedent God must be buried.
The resurrection as a genuine historical fact then is, according to Barth, a process and such a process as includes the whole race. Moreover, the process is only beginning. It has not been finished at any point, nor will it be finished at any point in the future. It must always be a contemporaneous fact. For Barth, any fact that may possibly be finished at some future time on the calendar is no true historical fact. It would be a fact that could be fully revealed without being at the same time fully hidden. This simply destroys the Christian hope of the Second Coming. The existentialist can never say Maranatha as we say it.
Does not Barth wed the very rationalism and scientism that he professes to divorce? Scientism will recognize no facts as facts unless they are universally verifiable, unless they can be tested by experience at any time. Barth holds that facts are not allowed as facts unless so pronounced by would-be autonomous man after the principle of an exhaustive, rational, dialectical process.
In all his irrationalism and subjectivism, Barth, like his philosopher predecessors, has but cleared the ground for a rationalism in which all difference between God and man is finally removed. Barth's theology leaves us without hope and without God.
The existential theology has come full circle in Reinhold Niebuhr and Rudolph Bultmann from its original reaction against rationalism and liberalism to a liberalism all its own. It is clearest, perhaps, in Bultmann's demythologization of the Scriptures. In view of the pervading spirit of scientific realism of our age, it becomes necessary for us, says Bultmann, to interpret the Christian message in terms that are relevant. All pre-scientific myths must be cut away such as the myth of the pre-existent Lord, the myths of heaven, hell, angels, miracles, virgin birth and the empty tomb and resurrection.

The death of Jesus of Nazareth, according to Bultmann, is not to be understood as the expiatory death of a substitute. That an incarnate divine being should cancel out the sins of men through his blood is, to Bultmann, primitive mythology. However, one can believe in the cross of Christ, says Bultmann. Its decisive, history-shaping significance is made apparent by the fact that it is effectual as an eschatological event; that is, it is not an event of the past, to which one looks back, but it is an eschatological event in time and beyond time, so far as it is understood in its significance, and insofar as it is always present for faith.[25]

[25] Dare We Follow Bultmann? by J. Schneider, in Christianity Today, June 5, 1961.

Bultmann also denies that the resurrection of Christ is an actual event. For Bultmann the existentialist interpretation of the New Testament is entirely independent of historical factuality. One must make a sharp distinction between historical facts and historic encounter. The Christian kerygma of God's salvation in Jesus Christ has nothing to do with facts which may have happened in Palestine between A.D. 1 and 30. The kerygmatic Christ calls men here and now to the decision of faith. Faith is not to be understood as faith in the personal Saviour but means emancipation from the past and to come to true self-realization, true individuality.

The existentialism of Bultmann is nothing more than a modern variation of that anthropocentrism which, beginning with the Enlightenment, has continued to plague theology, and according to which the standard of validity is seen in existential significance.[26] In other words, Bultmann is merely a modern extension of the Kantian, Hegelian, Kierkegaardian and Barthian enthroning of the Individual or autonomous man.

[26] Dare We Follow Bultmann? by W. Kunneth, in Christianity Today, October 13, 1961.

To Bultmann the cross of Jesus is merely a sign for the fact that it is worthwhile to bear one's own suffering willingly. The resurrection is merely the knowledge of the meaning of the cross. For him the Second Coming of Christ is rationally inconceivable.

For Bultmann the name Jesus Christ represents not a personal living reality of God's saving revelation in the sphere of history but merely a concept, an ideogram, a symbol or a principle for the event of contemporary preaching.[27]

[27] Ibid.

Bultmann's theology is no theology at all, but rather a philosophical wisdom in Christian garb. His revelation of God becomes a synonymous concept for the attainment of a new self-consciousness or understanding; but in no way does it mean the reality of an actual intervention of God in the historical world of space and time.
He strips the New Testament of all its power and authority and then sets out to transform society with the real Jesus, the demythologized New Testament. His philosophy, like the philosophies of his predecessors, is able to offer only the ego-centric, autonomous, empirical-Self which may, through the subjective leap become contingent with the Christ-Ideal. This is essentially the same thing that Liberalism offered and which the world found hopeless and powerless to transform men. The existential philosophy is doomed to failure for it lacks the only enduring and all-sufficient foundation, Jesus Christ, who is both historic man and at the same time the resurrected and transcendent Lord. It lacks that which is basically fundamental to a transforming powertrust in a Divine Personality who reveals Himself to man within the historic relativities of man's dimensions. It lacks also that other essential element of transforming powerauthority resident and available in a Personality higher and wiser than man himself.
In their efforts to overcome the rationalism of 19th century European theologians with irrationalism, the existentialists have become neorationalists rather than neo-orthodox. They do not openly deny the existence of God. They simply swing the pendulum of theology to the opposite extreme of rationality and irrationally demand a wholly-Other God who, because He must remain non-phenomenal to remain free, cannot reveal Himself in phenomenal history. Therefore the real man must contact God through an irrational leapwholly subjective faith. Man's contact with God therefore must stand dependent upon man's inherent capabilities. So we have the autonomous man creating faith through the dialectical process moving toward his self-chosen Ideal.

Jesus of Nazareth was not God Incarnate for these theologians, but a symbolical picture, a schematic analogy, of the self-chosen Ideal. The existential theology is as much of the spirit of anti-Christ as modernism, liberalism, agnosticism or the Gnosticism which was contemporary with John, who wrote, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God and this is the spirit of the anti-christ, whereof ye have heard that it cometh; and now it is in the world already (1 John 4:1-3).

The existential theology is in direct contradiction to the New Testament witness concerning the Incarnation. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth (John 1:14). Any sensible exegesis of this passage will not allow for the existential philosophy of history.

The existential theologians, by implication, call the New Testament writers liars. That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life. declare we unto you. (1 John 1:1; 1 John 1:3).

Hopelessness is the progenitor of pessimism, epicureanism, materialism and all manner of sin while it goes about paralyzing any kind of transforming and enduring faith. Existentialism is father and mother of HOPELESSNESS!

Applebury's Comments

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Analysis

A.

As Paul comes to the resurrection, the last of the problems to be discussed in the epistle, he makes known to the brethren the gospel which he preached to them (1 Corinthians 15:1-11).

1.

He points out the relation of the Corinthians to this gospel (1 Corinthians 15:1-2).

a)

They had received the gospel which he preached.

b)

They were standing in this gospel.

c)

They were being saved by it.

(1)

The process of salvation was going on.

(2)

Paul indicates that their being saved depended on holding fast by means of the word which he preached.

(3)

This was true, unless they had believed in vainsome were saying there was no resurrection.

2.

He points out the basic issues of the gospel he preached (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

a)

He delivered to them as a matter of first importance that which he also received.

b) He indicated what these basic issues were:

(1)

That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.

(2)

That He was buried.

(3)

That He has been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

3.

He lists the appearances of Christ in proof of His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:5-8).

a)

He appeared to Cephas.

b)

Then to the twelve.

c)

He appeared to above five hundred brethren at once.

d)

Then He appeared to James.

e)

Then to all the apostles.

f)

Last of all, as to the child untimely born, He appeared to Paul.

4.

He gives an explanation of his apostleship which was based on Christ's appearance to him (1 Corinthians 15:8-11).

a)

His last appearance was to Paul, the child untimely born.

b)

He was unworthy to be called an apostle because he persecuted the church: I am the least of the apostles.

c)

He shows how God's grace worked through him.

(1)

He said, By the grace of God I am what I am.

(2)

God's bestowed grace was not found vain.

(a)

He labored more abundantly than they all.

(b)

But this was God's grace working through him.

d)

The other apostles and Paul preached this same gospel and the Corinthians believed it.

B.

Paul explains the bearing of Christ's resurrection on the subject of the resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:12-34).

1.

He bases his first argument on the assumption of the Corinthians that there is no such thing as a resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:12-19).

a)

Question: If Christ is preached that He has been raised from the deadas Paul had just shownhow could some of them say that there was no resurrection of the dead?

b)

Consequence of denying the resurrection: If there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ has not been raised.

c)

Result of denying that Christ has been raised (1 Corinthians 15:14-19).

(1)

The preaching of the apostles is vain.

(2)

The faith of the brethren is vain.

(3)

The apostles are found to be false witnesses of God.

(4)

The faith of the brethren is vain and they are still in their sins.

(5)

Those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

(6)

The apostles, who have only hoped in Christ in this life, are of all men most pitiable.

2.

He bases his second argument on the fact of Christ's resurrection from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:20-23).

a)

Christ has been raised as firstfruits of them that are dead (1 Corinthians 15:20-23).

(1)

The argument of firstfruits.

(2)

The source of death and resurrection:

(a)

Death came by Adam.

(b)

Resurrection came by Christ.

(3)

The order in which this occurs: Christ as the firstfruits, then those who are Christ's at His coming.

b)

He shows what will occur at the end when Christ comes (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).

(1)

The kingdom to be delivered to the Father.

(2)

All enemies, including death, to be conquered.

(3)

The Son to be subject to the Father.

3.

He bases his third argument on the relation of baptism to the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:29-34).

a)

Why be baptized if there is no resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:29-30) ?

b)

Why should Paul risk his life daily if there is no resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:31-32)?

c)

A word that should move them to shame (1 Corinthians 15:33-34).

C.

Paul answers some problems involved in the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:35-58).

1.

A two-fold question: How are the dead raised, and what kind of a body will they have (1 Corinthians 15:35-50)?

a)

Paul answers the questions by a series of illustrations that help to understand the problems (1 Corinthians 15:35-41).

(1)

A seed dies that a new plant might grow from it.

(2)

Each kind of seed produces an appropriate plant as God pleased.

(3)

There are various kinds of flesh, that of men, animals, birds, fish. This implies that the resurrection body will be suited to the resurrection state.

(4)

Celestial bodies and terrestrial bodiessun, moon, and starsdiffer in glory. This implies that the resurrection body will have a glory suited to the heavenly state.

2.

An explanation of the resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:42-50).

a)

Burial and resurrection are likened to sowing: perishable and imperishable; dishonor and glory; physical and spiritual.

b)

Argument for a spiritual body: If there is a physical body, there is a spiritual one.

(1)

Shown by comparison of Adam and Christ.

(2)

As we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall bear the image of the man of heaven.

c)

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; perishable cannot inherit imperishable. What then?

3.

The secret revealed (1 Corinthians 15:51-57).

a)

A change will take place.

b)

When the last trumpet sounds the dead will be raised and all will be changed.

c)

This will mean victory over death through our Lord Jesus Christ.

4.

An exhortation to be steadfast since the resurrection will prove that the Christian's work is not in vain in the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Questions

1.

Why did Paul begin the discussion of the resurrection of the dead by referring to the gospel which he had preached?

2.

What are the facts of the gospel which Paul preached?

3.

Why did he remind them that he had accepted the fact of the resurrection?

4.

Why remind them that they also had accepted it?

5.

Why did he add, if ye hold fast?

6.

By what were they to hold fast?

7.

What did he mean by believed in vain?

8.

Why did Christ die?

9.

In what Scriptures do we find the facts of the death and resurrection of Christ?

10.

What evidence is presented in the New Testament to prove the fact of the resurrection of Christ?

11.

What is the significance of the fact that five hundred saw Him at one time?

12.

Why did Paul mention Cephas as a witness of the resurrection?

13. In what sense is the twelve used here?
14.

What is the value of the testimony of James?

15.

What is the value of the testimony of Thomas who was present when Christ appeared to all the apostles?

16.

Why did Paul mention the fact that Christ appeared to him last of all?

17.

How is the importance of this fact indicated in the book of Acts?

18.

What does the expression, child untimely born, mean?

19.

Who may have applied it to Paul? Why?

20.

Why did Paul call himself the least of the apostles?

21.

To what did Paul attribute the fact that he had labored more than all the apostles?

22.

What glaring inconsistency did Paul see in the thinking of the Corinthians?

23.

What were some of the consequences of denying that Christ had been raised?

24.

To whom does the expression, of all men most pitiable, refer?

25.

What is the meaning of firstfruits?

26.

What did Paul imply as to the resurrection by this term?

27.

Why does Paul say that death came by man?

28.

What will Christ do for all men in the resurrection?

29.

Does this imply universal salvation?

30.

What did Jesus say about the resurrection of the good and the bad?

31.

How does Paul describe the resurrection in First Thessalonians?

32.

What is meant by the statement that Christ will deliver the kingdom to God?

33.

When did the reign of Christ begin?

34.

In the expression, baptized for the dead, what are some of the possible meanings of the preposition translated for?

35.

What are the arguments against the assumption that this is vicarious baptism?

36.

What bearing does baptism have on the doctrine of the resurrection?

37.

What rule of interpretation must be observed in treating obscure passages?

38.

What are the views on Paul's remark about fighting beasts at Ephesus?

39.

Why did Paul shame the people at Corinth?

40.

What are the two questions which the Corinthians asked about the resurrection?

41.

What was the view of the Sadducees on the resurrection?

42.

What was taught in Greek philosophy about escape from the body?

43.

What is the Christian view about absence from the body?

44.

How did Paul show that the resurrection body must be different from the earthly body?

45.

What will the resurrection body be like?

46.

Why is Jesus called the last Adam?

47.

Why can-'t flesh and blood inherit the kingdom of God?

48.

What will happen to those who are alive when Christ comes?

49.

Why does Paul stress the fact that all shall be changed?

50.

What did Paul ask the brethren to do in view of this assurance of the resurrection?

For Discussion

1.

Would it be worthwhile to be a Christian if there were no hope of the resurrection?

2.

What place should the doctrine of the resurrection have in the thinking of Christian people.

3.

Should we leave the subject of the resurrection to Easter Sunday?