6.2 — The Resurrection of the Body (3 of 3)

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 was invited to touch, who ate broiled fish in front of frightened disciples in answer to their fear that He was a ghost — 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.

The partial preterist case adds John 5, where the same Jesus who speaks of an hour that is already here, in which the dead hear and live (5:25), goes on to speak of an hour still coming in which those in the tombs will hear his voice and come out (5:28–29); a partial preterist reads two different hours, a full preterist one. On 1 Corinthians 15:50, partial preterists read "flesh and blood" as perishable flesh and blood, where the full preterist reading given above takes it as a change of covenantal condition.

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. Some full preterists reply that Paul wrote before AD 70, that the resurrection was still ahead of him and of these men, and that they erred about timing, saying it had already occurred when it had not, so the rebuke does not touch a position held after AD 70. A partial preterist replies that Paul condemns "the resurrection is past" as a category and that the timing does not rescue the doctrine. 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 — the body Thomas was invited to touch 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 the covenantal transformation of God's people, completed at AD 70, and no future bodily rising is still owed you; on this reading a believer who dies is with Christ (2 Corinthians 5:8; Philippians 1:23).