6.2 — The Resurrection of the Body (2 of 2)

Engaging the dispensationalist case directly. After Thomas's hands in the wounds and a piece of broiled fish eaten in front of frightened witnesses, you might be wondering what dispensationalism could possibly still be disputing here. Less than it might seem, and more than it might seem, both at once. Notice how much common ground actually sits underneath this doctrine. Both the dispensationalist and partial preterist readings affirm a genuinely future, genuinely bodily resurrection, patterned on Christ's own risen body — the disagreement here is not about whether the resurrection is physical, but about staging. Dispensationalism reads 1 Corinthians 15:51-52's "mystery" — a truth Paul says was "hidden" and only now disclosed — as evidence that the church's own resurrection and rapture is a distinct event from Israel's, tucked, on this reading, inside a larger, staged sequence tied to a future literal millennium. The partial preterist disagreement is narrower than it might first appear: it grants that Paul is describing something genuinely new here, and departs from the dispensationalist reading only in how it understands the timeline surrounding the thousand years of Revelation 20, addressed directly in the previous section. Strip away the staging question, and dispensationalism's confidence that your own body, not merely your soul, will be raised imperishable is a conviction the partial preterist case shares completely.

The full preterist case, at its strongest. A serious full preterist argument does not deny the reality of the risen Christ's body. It runs through a more careful reading of Paul's own vocabulary in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul's contrast between the psychikon body and the pneumatikon body — natural versus spiritual — is a contrast of governing principle, the argument goes, not a claim about physical composition. And Paul elsewhere uses this same resurrection vocabulary for something already accomplished, in language every bit as forceful: "We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin" (Romans 6:6, NET). That is past tense, accomplished action. More directly still: God "raised us up together with him and seated us together with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:6, NET). That is already true of every believer, described in exactly the resurrection-and-enthronement language 1 Corinthians 15 uses for what dispensationalists and partial preterists alike insist is still future. Jesus Himself distinguishes two resurrections and describes the first as already arriving within His ministry: "a 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, not bodies climbing out of graves. On this reading, the harvest Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15 was never bodies leaving the ground. It was the covenantal, spiritual transformation of God's people, complete by AD 70, read with the same consistency Paul's "already" language receives everywhere else, rather than switched off arbitrarily in this one chapter.

Weighing the two cases directly. You might be thinking, reading Romans 6 and Ephesians 2 laid out that plainly, that partial preterism has been quietly inconsistent — taking Paul's "already" language literally everywhere except the one chapter where taking it literally would cost the most. That reaction deserves to be taken at face value before it gets answered. The full preterist case is right that Paul genuinely, repeatedly uses resurrection language for something already, presently accomplished. Union with Christ in His death and risen life is a real, present, spiritual fact for every believer right now, not a metaphor marking time until some future event makes it true.

The partial preterist case presses on whether 1 Corinthians 15 lets that reading absorb the entire chapter. In the very passage under dispute, Paul distinguishes the pneumatikon body from the psychikon one by pointing at a specific, witnessed case: "So also it is written, 'The first man, Adam, became a living person'; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit... 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 15:45, 47–49, NET). "The man of heaven" whose image believers will bear is, on this reading, the specific, physical, historically resurrected Jesus whom Thomas touched, who ate broiled fish in front of frightened disciples for the stated purpose of proving He was not a disembodied spirit — and a full preterist reader owes some account of whether bearing His image means the same thing for ordinary believers that it already, verifiably meant for Christ Himself, or something categorically different. Serious full preterist writers have offered that account, typically distinguishing the corporate, covenantal resurrection they locate at AD 70 from the individual, physical pattern Christ's own body demonstrated. Whether that distinction holds together is yours to weigh.

There is also a second piece of evidence worth reading in full rather than taking on either side's summary. Paul, writing to his protégé Timothy, names two specific men for teaching a resurrection-already-occurred position: "But avoid profane chatter, because those occupied with it will stray further and further into ungodliness, and their message will spread its infection like gangrene. 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 2:16–18, NET). A partial preterist reading takes this as Paul naming, by name, the specific claim full preterism makes today. A full preterist reading typically answers that Hymenaeus and Philetus denied any future resurrection at all — including the corporate, covenantal one full preterism itself affirms happened in AD 70 — and that Paul's rebuke does not touch a position that affirms a real resurrection, only one that denies any resurrection whatsoever. Which reading of the two men's actual error is more faithful to Paul's own words is a judgment call this book leaves with you.

What follows if each is right. If dispensationalism is right here, the body you are living in right now will one day be raised, physically, the way Christ's was — Thomas's hands in the wounds is a preview of your own future, still ahead of you. If partial preterism is right, the same is true, though the timing and staging of that rising is bound up with the second coming's own disputed timeline rather than settled independently of it. If full preterism is right, "resurrection" names a spiritual transformation already complete in every believer since AD 70, and no future bodily rising is still owed you — which means the aging body you read this sentence in is not, on that reading, waiting for anything further to happen to it at all.