1 Corinthians 15:45

puts into words of Scripture the law of development affirmed, thereby showing its agreement with the plan of creation and its realisation in the two successive heads of the race. Into his citation of Genesis 2:7 (LXX) P. introduces πρῶτος and duplicates ἄνθρωπος by Ἀδάμ (ha'adâm), to prepare for his antithetical addition ὁ ἔσχατος Ἀδὰμ εἰς πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν. On the principle of 1 Corinthians 15:44 b, the Adam created as ψυχὴ was the crude beginning of humanity (the pred. ψυχὴ ζῶσα is shared by A. with the animals, Genesis 1:20; Genesis 1:24) a “first” requiring a “last” as his complement and explanation. The two types differ here not as the sin-committing and sin-abolishing (Romans 5:12 ff.), but as the rudimentary and finished man respectively, with their physique to match. Αδὰμ is repeated in the second clause by way of maintaining the humanity of Christ and His genetic relation to the protoplast (cf. Luke 1:23-38), essential as the ground of our bodily relationship to Him (1 Corinthians 15:48 f.; cf. Hebrews 2:14 ff.). The time of Christ's γενέσθαι εἰς πν. ζωοπ., in view of the context and esp. of 1 Corinthians 15:42 ff., can only be His resurrection from the grave (Est., Gr [2544], Mr [2545], Hn [2546], Hf [2547], El [2548]), which supplies the hinge of Paul's whole argument (cf. Romans 1:4; Romans 6:4 ff; Romans 10:9, etc.); not the incarnation (Thp [2549], Bz [2550], Baur, Ed [2551]), for His pre-resurrection body was a σῶμα ψυχικόν (Romans 8:3, etc.; 2 Corinthians 13:4; Philippians 2:7, etc.). By rising from the dead, Christ ἐγενήθη εἰς πνεῦμα He entered on the spiritual and ultimate form of human existence; and at the same time, ἐγενήθη εἰς πν. ζωοποιοῦν He entered this state so as to communicate it to His fellows: cf. 1 Corinthians 15:20-23; Colossians 1:18; Revelation 1:5; also Romans 8:10 f., 2 Corinthians 4:14; John 6:33; John 11:25; John 14:19, etc. The action of Jesus in “breathing” upon His disciples while He said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22 f.), symbolised the vitalising relationship which at this epoch He assumed towards mankind; this act raised to a higher potency the original “breathing” of God by which man “became a living soul”. “Spirit is life-power, having the ground of its vitality in itself, while the soul has only a subject and conditioned life; spirit vitalises that which is outside of itself, soul leads its individual life within the sphere marked out by its environment” (Hf [2552]); cf. John 3:34; John 4:14; John 5:25 f.; Hebrews 7:25. ὁ ἔσχατος ἄνθρωπος recalls the Rabbinical title, ha'adâm ha'acharôn, given to the Messiah (Neve Shalom, ix. 9): Christ is not, however, the later or second, but the last, the final Adam. The two Adams of Philo, based on the duplicate narrative of Genesis 1:2 the ideal “man after the image of God” and the actual “man of the dust of the earth” with which Pfleiderer and others identify Paul's πρῶτος and ἔσχατος, χοϊκὸς and ἐπουράνιος Ἀδάμ, are not to be found here. For (a) Philo's first is Paul's last; (b) both Paul's Adams are equally concrete; (c) the resurrection of Christ distinguishes their respective periods, a crisis the conception of which is foreign to Philo's theology; (d) moreover, Genesis 1:26 is referred in 1 Corinthians 11:7 above to the historical, not the ideal, First Man.

[2544] Greek, or Grotius' Annotationes in N.T.

[2545] Meyer's Critical and Exegetical Commentary (Eng. Trans.).

[2546] C. F. G. Heinrici's Erklärung der Korintherbriefe (1880), or 1 Korinther in Meyer's krit.-exegetisches Kommentar (1896).

[2547] J. C. K. von Hofmann's Die heilige Schrift N.T. untersucht, ii. 2 (2te Auflage, 1874).

[2548] C. J. Ellicott's St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians.

[2549] Theophylact, Greek Commentator.

[2550] Beza's Nov. Testamentum: Interpretatio et Annotationes (Cantab., 1642).

[2551] T. C. Edwards' Commentary on the First Ep. to the Corinthians. 2

[2552] J. C. K. von Hofmann's Die heilige Schrift N.T. untersucht, ii. 2 (2te Auflage, 1874).