Similar to the Catholic view of devout, baptized believers as those who have been saved, are being saved, and will be saved, Paul claims in 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and 2 Corinthians that devoted Christians are being transformed before Christ’s return and will experience a final transformation after. This paper will show the relationship between the two types of transformation yet will conclude with a necessary question.
To begin, Paul is initially motivated to discuss the meaning of transformation after he learns that the Thessalonian Christians were struggling with how to explain the spiritual and physical fate of those who had died versus those were still alive (1 Thess 4:13; Sanders 33). In short, Paul explains that in addition to their salvation through Jesus Christ, they will all experience their own resurrection — a transformation, that is — while having already overcome physical and spiritual death (4:13-18; Sanders 33, 34).
However, while the Thessalonians’ concerns may have been allayed some, the Corinthians have their own challenges with their newfound salvation, including how to reconcile the Hellenistic interpretation of resurrection-based events with Christ’s resurrection and its possibly eschatological significance (Soards 79). Being that Greeks and pagans had understood the body to be inferior to the soul (Schreiner and Perrin 301), 1 Corinthians 15 largely sets the record straight about Christ’s resurrection and why the Corinthians will experience a resurrection as well when Christ returns.
Specifically, after Paul restates the purpose of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and that there is plenty of eyewitness evidence for the resurrection (15:1-11; Schreiner and Perrin 301), he then addresses the Corinthians’ denial of a future resurrection and how their relationship with Christ involves both pre-transformational and post-transformational states of being, The pre-transformation state entails believers who have a mortal body, yet their spiritual transformation occurs as they continue to be devoted to Christ (Gilman 267; Schreiner and Perrin 302).
Then, the post transformation state is when believers receive a glorified, immortal body that finally conquers mortality and forever rids humankind from sin (Gillman 267). In addition, just as Paul in 1 Thess indicates the final transformation that all believers will experience, he essentially reiterates the same declaration to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:51-52; Gillman 275).
Yet the conversation about transformation does not stop there and thus leads to Paul’s follow-up letter, 2 Corinthians. Here, Paul further explains the differences between having an outer nature and inner nature (4:18), and that the inner nature, in particular, is a work-in-progress as a ‘new creation’ in Christ (Sanders 39). Paul sums this up well in 3:18: “All of us….are being transformed in the same image from glory to glory…” In fact, as Kruse points out, Paul even uses the verb metamorphoumetha to emphasize that the spiritual transformation within the mortal body is a progressive one (136).
Paul then loops in his thoughts on progressive transformation with the final transformation that will occur when “death is swallowed up in victory (1 Cor. 15:33; Sanders 36). In his second letter, Paul refers to ‘earthly dwelling’ (a tent) as the mortal body, and the resurrection of the body as being clothed in an immortality that swallows up mortality (5:4). As Sanders explains, and which he draws from Paul’s distinction between the role of the soul versus the body, Paul does not see the soul as something that escapes the body and becomes a forever, free-floating entity; rather it experiences another “transformation, achieved by covering mortality with immortality” (36).
Although Paul does indeed make important distinctions between transformational states before and after Christ’s return, there is at least one important question to answer. While Paul communicates both to the Thessalonians and the Corinthians that the final resurrection will occur during Christ’s return, his metaphor involving the ‘earthly tent’ seems to suggest a more immediate resurrection of the body after a believer dies. Or better yet, have deceased believers already experienced bodily resurrection, or are perhaps in an “intermediate state” while waiting for the Parousia (156)? And while the final state appears to be a permanent one, the time between death and the final resurrection needs further clarification.
Works Cited
Gillman, John. “Signals of Transformation in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 2, Apr. 1985, pp. 263–81.
Kruse, Colin G. 2 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary. IVP Academic, 2015.
Sanders, E.P. Paul: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Schreiner, Thomas R., and Perrin, Nicholas. 1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary. IVP Academic, 2018.
Soards, Marion L. The Apostle Paul: An Introduction to his Writings and Teaching. Paulist Press, 1986