1 Corinthians 15:44

“It is sown a psychical body, it is raised a spiritual body; there is a psychical body, and there is a spiritual body.”

The terms animated or animal body are the only ones in our language by which we can render the term reproduced in our translation by the Anglicized Greek term. The meaning of the epithet is clear; it denotes a body, not of the same substance as the soul itself, otherwise it would not be a body, but formed by and for a soul, destined to serve as an organ to that breath of life called ψυχή, which presided over its development. Neither, consequently, is the spiritual body a body of a spiritual nature, it would still less be a body in that case, but a body formed by and for a principle of life which is a spirit, and fully appropriated to its service. As the soul does not create the substance of the animal body, but finds it already prepared in a previously existing organism, so the spirit does not create the spiritual body, which would exclude all continuity between it and the earthly body, but it takes hold of a germ released from the present body, and causes it to open, not to resume, as in the generation of plants and animals, the cycle of its former existence, but to begin a mode of existence infinitely superior to the old one. The law of the beings belonging to nature is to revolve uniformly in the same circle; the privilege of spiritual being is to surmount this iron circle and to rise from the natural phase, which for it is only the means, to a higher sphere which is its end. This contrast arises from the wholly different mode of being possessed by the soul and the spirit. The soul is only a breath of life endowed with a certain measure of power, capable of taking hold of a material substance, subjecting it to itself, converting it into its agent, and using this organ for a fixed time up to the moment when it will no longer lend itself to such use. The characteristic of the spirit is that it possesses a life which is constantly being renewed, while acting and communicating itself (John 4:14). In a new order of things, after extracting from the body an organ adapted to its nature, it will perpetually renew its strength and glory. Such a body will never be to the principle of its life what the earthly body so often is to the inhabiting soul, a burden and a hindrance; it will be the docile instrument of the spirit, fulfilling its wishes and thoughts with inexhaustible power of action, as we even now see the artist using his hand or his voice with marvellous freedom, and thus foreshadowing the perfect spiritualization of the body. If any one should deny the capacity of matter thus to yield to the action of the spirit, I should ask him to tell me what matter is; then, by way of showing what spiritualized matter may be, I should invite him to consider the human eye, that living mirror in which all the emotions of the soul are expressed in a way so living and powerful. These are simple foreshadowings of the glory of a resurrection body. We cannot go further; a spiritual body is one of those things “which eye hath not seen, which have not entered into the mind of man, and which God reserves for them whom He loves.”

The spirit, the future body's principle of life, is not directly the Spirit of God, it is spirit as the higher element of the human personality, but acting in its union with the Divine Spirit. We have already seen (1 Corinthians 14:14) that the apostle ascribes to man, not only a ψυχή, soul, but also a πνεῦμα, spirit, which is the soul's organ in perceiving the Divine world.

The second part of 1 Corinthians 15:44 presents three rather important variants. The Alexandrine and Greco-Latin documents read εἰ, if, before the first ἔστι; then they place the καί, also, after the second; finally, they omit the word σῶμα, body, in the second proposition: “If there is a psychical body, there is also a spiritual.” The T. R. omits the εἰ, if; it places the καί, and, before ἔστι; and it reads σῶμα (body) in the second proposition: “There is a psychical body, and there is a spiritual body.” It is impossible for me to share the preference of modern commentators (de Wette and Hofmann excepted) for the first of these two readings. The apostle had just expressed a paradoxical idea; the term spiritual body seemed even to be a contradictio in adjecto. Hence it is that, according to the reading of the T. R., he stops expressly to affirm the reality of this notion: “I do not use the expression at random: there is truly a psychical body..., a spiritual.” Of this forcible affirmation, the Alexandrine and Western copyists have wished to make a demonstration. They have added εἰ, if, thus making the existence of the psychical body a premiss from which to infer logically the existence of a spiritual body. Then they have transposed the καί, also, to make it the correlative of the εἰ, if, and thereby to emphasize the correctness of the conclusion which is certainly false, for it does not appear how it follows from the fact that a soul can have a body, that a spirit should have one. Meyer seeks to justify this argument logically; but he does not succeed. Holsten appeals to this understood idea: The soul and spirit are only the two modes of existence belonging to one and the same vital principle; whence it follows that if the soul needs a body in order to act, it is so also with the spirit. But if substantially the soul and spirit are one and the same thing, Paul would here prove the same by the same. Beet adduces this law: God ever wills what is perfect; hence it follows that His work proceeding from the imperfect, which is its beginning, must reach the goal which is the perfect. But how can we infer from this the necessity of a spiritual body? If, as was no doubt thought by the opponents of the resurrection, the purely spiritual state is superior to the spiritual state united to the bodily, the law referred to recoiled against the thesis of a resurrection. But, according to the true reading, that of the Byzantines, there is no argument at all. As Hofmann says, the apostle's purpose is simply to state the contrast between the two kinds of bodies. This is exactly what the Byzantine reading does. No doubt it might be denied that the εἰ, if, of the Alex. must be taken in the sense of a proof. But if Paul had meant to make a simple comparison, he would have said καθώς or ὥσπερ.

In regard to the repetition or omission of the word σῶμα, body, in the second proposition, it seems to me that the omission would weaken the force of the paradox which the apostle wishes to affirm, while the exact repetition of the same terms renders the expression of it more striking. In support of this affirmation of two kinds of bodies, Paul produces a saying from Scripture.