The Resurrection of the Body (2 of 2)

A serious full preterist argument here runs through a different and more careful reading of Paul's own vocabulary, and it should be heard at full strength rather than dismissed. Paul's contrast in 1 Corinthians 15:44 is between psychikon — natural, soul-animated — and pneumatikon — spiritual, Spirit-animated. This is a contrast of governing principle, the full preterist argues, not a claim about physical composition. And Paul elsewhere uses exactly this resurrection vocabulary to describe something that has already happened to believers, in the past tense: "our old man was crucified with him" (Romans 6:6, NET). God, Paul says elsewhere, "raised us up together with him and seated us together with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:5–6, NET) — completed action, already true of every believer, in the same resurrection language 1 Corinthians 15 uses. Jesus Himself, in John's Gospel, distinguishes two resurrections and speaks of the first one in the present tense: "the time is coming — and is now here — when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live" (John 5:25, NET). That is a resurrection of dead souls into new spiritual life, already arriving in His own ministry, not a future event involving bodies climbing out of graves. On this reading, the full harvest Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15 was never meant to be understood as literal bodies leaving the ground. It was always the covenantal, spiritual transformation of God's people, complete and fully realized by AD 70. That is the same "already" language Paul uses everywhere else in his letters for this same reality, read with consistency rather than switched off arbitrarily in one chapter alone.

Here is what genuinely divides the two readings. The full preterist case is right that Paul uses resurrection language for something already accomplished — union with Christ in His death and risen life is a real, present spiritual fact, not a metaphor waiting on a future event to become true. The partial preterist case presses back on whether 1 Corinthians 15 lets that reading absorb the entire chapter, pointing to Paul's own anchor: "The first man is from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven... And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, let us also bear the image of the man of heaven" (1 Corinthians 15:47–49, NET) — a phrase full preterism has to show means something categorically different for believers than it already, verifiably meant for the specific, physical, touchable Jesus of Nazareth.

There is also a second piece of evidence a reader will want to weigh directly rather than take on either side's word for. Paul, writing to Timothy, names two men for teaching a resurrection-already-occurred position and calls it a departure from the truth that was wrecking real people's faith: "Hymenaeus and Philetus are in this group. They have strayed from the truth by saying that the resurrection has already occurred, and they are undermining some people's faith" (2 Timothy 2:17–18, NET). A full preterist reading of this text has to explain how what Paul condemns there differs from what full preterism itself teaches about the resurrection today — and serious full preterist scholars have offered answers, typically distinguishing Hymenaeus and Philetus's apparent denial of any future resurrection at all from full preterism's own claim that a real, if non-physical, resurrection did occur corporately in AD 70. Whether that distinction holds is, again, yours to weigh.