148 



REV J 0. F. MUERAY, D.D., ON 



luninaiy instruction, unless it is necessary for the elucidation of 

 some point of present interest. It is fortunate for our present 

 purpose that questions were raised in Corinth touching the general 

 resurrection of the dead, which led St. Paul to recall the evidence 

 for the Eesurrection of our Lord. 



There is, we must remember, no suggestion that anyone in 

 Corinth challenged the fact of that Eesm'rection: but, as in St. 

 Paul's view, the doctrine of the general resm-rection was deter- 

 mined and defined du'ectly by our Lord's, he took occasion to 

 recall their attention to it. and to summarise concisely the 

 evidence to which he had from the first appealed in support of it. 



I have given reasons elsewhere"^ for behe^ing that the hst of 

 v.itnesses, which he recites goes back in substance to the very 

 beginning of the liistoiy of the Church. AYe must not forget 

 that he had himself been in close contact with two of the most 

 important witnesses whom he names within three years of his 

 Conversion. He tells us, indeed, nothing about the nature of the 

 appearances attested by these witnesses, but he regards his own 

 experience on the way to Damascus, in spite of some abnormal 

 features, as the same in kind as thehs, and he uses the list as a 

 whole as the basis of an argument on behalf not merely of per- 

 sonal immortality, but of a resurrection of the dead, which is in 

 some sense corporeal. 



On this point I have elsewhere t called attention to Professor 

 Kirsopp Lake's acute analysis of St. Paul's argument in his book 

 on the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

 He points out that St. Paul's conviction that flesh and blood 

 cannot inherit the Kingdom of God " is proof positive that he did 

 not believe that the Body of the Pvisen Lord was of flesh and 

 blood: and from a comparison of the passages in which St. Paul 

 describes the resun^ection bodies of Christians, and the transform- 

 -iTion of those who will be alive at the ' ' Parousia ' ' he concludes 

 as follows : 



" The evidence points to his belief in a kind of transubstantia- 

 tion of the body from flesh and blood into spirit, and in this sense 

 he not merely held the doctrine of the resurrection of the body as 

 distinguished' from the resurrection of the flesh, but in so far as 

 the flesh was changed into spirit, he may even be said to have 

 held the doctrine of the resui-rection of the flesh, if ' resurrection ' 

 be taken to include this process of change." 



\nd ag^in : • i • v 



" The result, then, of an examination of the passages in which 

 >t. Paul speaks of the nature of the resurrection body of 

 Christians points to the fact that he believed that at the resurrec- 



^Camhridae Theological Essays, p. 329 f. 

 ^Church Quarterly Review, April, 1916, p. S3. 



