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Resurrection: An Interpretation of the Basic Nucleus of the Christian Faith
early layer of sources that is already connected to developed reflection. His existential experience of encountering Jesus as the living Christ (Messiah) is the beginning of faith for Paul and the source of confidence in Jesus’s new presence. In 1 Corinthians 15:8, Paul considers himself to be the last of those who believed in Jesus’s unique mission by virtue of a direct encounter without human testimony. He thereby demarcates the group of the first witnesses—among whom he includes himself even though he was not one of Jesus’s disciples.17 He asks: “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” (1 Cor 9:1). When interpreting the formula about the good news of the resurrection in 1 Thessalonians 5:9–10, I previously called attention to the fact that the term “resurrection” was associated with apocalyptic images that the apostle Paul invariably had in view, especially in his earliest letters. It follows from this that Jesus’s resurrection was originally viewed as the beginning and the basis of the universal resurrection at the end of “the age”—today, we would say “our history”—and later, when the universal resurrection had not happened, as its guarantee. “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died” (1 Cor 15:20). About a generation later, we read: “He is the beginning, the first born from the dead” (Col 1:18b). Thus, Jesus’s resurrection is not an isolated wonder—a miracle—but an event that concerns everyone. As a suggestion about this fundamental interpretation, we could now say that the resurrected Jesus is not only a guarantee that true humanity will ultimately prevail in history; his resurrection also confirms that every individual human life is personally related to this destiny, as the apocalyptic vision of the resurrection and the last judgement of many or all people at the end of the ages concretely conveys. This is the conclusion that the apostle Paul drew from the Easter proclamation; this was the oral gospel. In 1 Corinthians 15:35–50, it is said that the bodies of resurrected people will have a “spiritual” nature. This does not mean that a resurrected person will turn into an aura. In this case, the phrase “heavenly” or “spiritual body” means that, first and foremost, it will be a body ruled by the Holy Spirit. Paul assumes that in an eschatological sense—as rising to eternal life—resurrection entails a transformation of the perishable body, not an unembodied existence (1 Cor 15:51–53). That is, the body (the face, the extended hand) is the bearer of relationships. That is precisely why the apostle Paul—and all good Christians to this very day—believe in “the resurrection of the body 17
The requirement for being an apostle that is stipulated in Acts 1:21–22 is virtually unrealizable from the perspective of the extant texts. The witness of an encounter with the resurrected Jesus had to be Jesus‘s disciple from the time of his baptism by John the Baptist, but according to the Gospels, Jesus did not call his first disciples until after that. Either information about the time of the mutual beginnings of Jesus and John is preserved here, or it is simply the case that the witness had to be Jesus’s disciple during his earthly ministry.
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