March 13, 2025

17. Eschatology in 1 Corinthians

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1 Corinthians 1:7-8; 3:12-13; 4:5; 5:5; 6:2-3, 9-10, 14; 11:26; 15:3-8, 12-14, 20-28, 35, 58; 16:22

Eschatology: belief about the last things or end times.

1 Cor 1:7-8 There is an end: the Day of our Lord Jesus Christ

1 Cor 3:12-13 The day of judgment and reward

1 Cor 4:5 When the Lord comes, the truth will come out.

1 Cor 5:5 Salvation will be complete on the Day of the Lord.

1 Cor 6:2-3 The saints will judge the world and angels.

1 Cor 6:9-10 Sin can keep us out of God’s Kingdom.

1 Cor 6:14 As He raised the Lord, God will raise us by His power.

1 Cor 11:26 Communion memorializes the Lord’s death until he comes.

1 Cor 16:22 Maranatha: Our Lord, come!

The Corinthian Christians struggled to accept Paul’s teaching about resurrection (1 Cor 15:12, 35).

Afterlife Option 1: Non-Existence

“I, Nicomedes, am happy. I was not, and I became, I am not, and nothing hurts me.”1 (Epigrammata Graeca 595)

“I was not and I came to be; I am not; I don’t care”2 (Inscriptiones Graecae2190)

“I was not, I was, I remember, I am not, I do not care.”2 (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum530)

“I was not, I was, I am not, I don’t desire (to be)”2 (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum3463)

“I believed in overdoing nothing. I came and went away blameless. I observed everything human, but did not pry into what is forbidden, or seek to know whether I existed before or whether I ever shall again.”2 (Epigrammata Graeca 615)

Afterlife Option 2: Ascending to Heaven or Joining the Stars

Ascended among the blessed: “The good and discreet Aelianus was given this tomb by his father in concern for his mortal body; but his heart, which is immortal, has leapt up among the blessed; for the soul lives forever, it is what gives life, and it has come down from God. Stay your tears, my father, and you, mother, stay my brothers from weeping. The body is the soul’s tunic: but you must respect the god in me.”3 (Epigrammata Graeca 651)

Ascension: “The precinct of heavenly Zeus keeps me, whom Apollo…changed; for he took me immortal from the fire.”4 (Inscriptiones Graecae1.142.3-4)

Ascension not Hades: “Cease to lament the will of the gods, lest piety, ignorant that I have been received into the heavenly abode, grieve and offend the divine powers with sorrow. I will not sadly pass into the gloomy waves of Tartarus, nor will I be ferried across the waters of Acheron as a shadow, nor will I strike a dark-colored boat with an oar, nor will I fear you, Charon, with your terrible gaze. Nor will aged Minos pass judgment on me, nor will I wander through dark places or be confined by waters. Rise, and tell my mother, so that she may not weep for me night and day, like the grieving Attic mother for Itys. For holy Venus has ordered that I not know the halls of silence, but has lifted me to the bright temples of the heavens.”5 (Carmina Latina Epigraphica 16-28)

In the 7th circle: “Stand before the tomb and behold young Choro, unwedded daughter of Diognetus. Hades has set her in the seventh circle.”6 (Abhandlungen der Akademie 46)

Went to the stars: “As she approached the altar and was paying her vows, she went, respected by all, to the stars. Thus without enduring sickness she joined the demigods.”3 (Inscriptiones Graecae2.472.12-13)

Become an evening star: “Mother, do not weep for me. What is the use? You ought rather to reverence me, for I have become an evening star, among the gods.”7 (Inscriptiones Graecae 7.123.5-6)

Afterlife Option 3: Pluto (Hades) Myth

Homer described the dead: “[T]he ghost of stricken Patroclus drifted up. . .He was like the man to the life, every feature, the same tall build and the fine eyes and voice and the very robes that used to clothe his body. Hovering at his head the phantom rose and spoke: “Sleeping, Achilles? You’ve forgotten me, my friend. You never neglected me in life, only now in death. Bury me, quickly—let me pass the Gates of Hades. They hold me off at a distance, all the souls, the shades of the burn-out, breathless dead, never to let me cross the river, mingle with them. . .They leave me to wander up and down, abandoned, lost at the House of Death with the all-embracing gates. Oh give me your hand—I beg you with my tears! Never, never again shall I return from Hades once you have give me the soothing rites of fire.” …In the same breath he stretched his loving arms but could not seize him, no, the ghost slipped underground like a wisp of smoke . . .with a high thin cry. And Achilles sprang up with a start and staring wide, drove his fists together and cried in desolation, “Ah god! So even in Death’s strong house there is something left, a ghost, a phantom—true, but no real breath of life.”8 (Homer, Iliad 76-91, 117-123)

Lucian of Samosata explained the Hades myth: “The general herd, whom philosophers call the laity, trust Homer and Hesiod and the other mythmakers in these matters, and take their poetry for a law unto themselves. So they suppose that there is a place deep under the earth called Hades, which is large and roomy and murky and sunless; I don’t know how they imagine it to be lighted up so that everything in it can be seen. The king of the abyss is a brother of Zeus named Pluto…He himself has been allotted the sovereignty of the dead, whom he receives, takes in charge, and retains in close custody, permitting nobody whatsoever to go back up above, except, in all time, a very few for most important reasons. His country is surrounded by great rivers, fearful even in name; for they are called “Wailing,” “Burning Fire,” and the like. But the principal feature is Lake Acheron, which lies in front and first receives visitors; it cannot be crossed or passed without the ferryman…[B]y the descent and the portal…stands the king’s nephew, Aeacus, who is commander of the guard; and beside him is a three-headed dog, very long-fanged, who gives a friendly, peaceable glance to those who come in, but howls at those who try to run away and frightens them with his great mouth. After passing the lake on going in, one comes next to a great meadow overgrown with asphodel, and to a spring that is inimical to memory; in fact, they call it “Oblivion” for that reason. …Pluto and Persephone, as these people said, are the rulers and…receive the good, just men who have lived virtuously, and when many have been collected, send them off, as if to a colony, to the Elysian Fields to take part in the best life. But if they come upon any rascals, turning them over to the Furies, they send them to the Place of the Wicked, to be punished in proportion to their wickedness. There—ah! what punishment do they not undergo? They are racked, burned, devoured by vultures, turned upon a wheel; they roll stones uphill; and as for Tantalus, he stands on the very brink of the lake with a parched throat, like to die, poor fellow, for thirst! But those of the middle way in life, and they are many, wander about in the meadow without their bodies, in the form of shadows that vanish like smoke in your fingers. They get their nourishment, naturally, from the libations that are poured in our world and the burnt-offerings at the tomb; so that if anyone has not left a friend or kinsman behind him on earth, he goes about his business there as an unfed corpse, in a state of famine. So thoroughly are people taken in by all this that when one of the family dies, immediately they bring an obol and put it in his mouth, to pay the ferryman for setting him over.”9 (Lucian of Samosata, On Funerals 2-10)

Gone to Hades: “I have gone to the ghastly city of Hades”10 (Epigrammata Graeca4)

Gone to Tartarus: “Hermes, messenger of Persephone, why do you send him before us to Hades’ Tartarus, where there is no laughter?”10 (Epigrammata Graeca1-2)

Gone to Elysium: “The tomb keeps only the name of Micca; her soul is with the pious, it is among the Elysian fields.”11 (Epigrammata Graeca 1-2)

Gone to Elysian fields: “You did not die, Prōtē, but moved to a better place, and you dwell in the blessed islands, far from all evils, rejoicing in the flowers of the Elysian fields. No winter afflicts you, nor heat, nor disease troubles you, neither thirst nor hunger touches you, but you no longer even long for the life of men. For you live without reproach in the pure rays of Olympus, truly close by. P. Aelius Abascanthus, father of Ailia Prōtē. She lived for 7 years, 11 months, and 27 days.” (Inscriptionem Graecae 1973)

Afterlife Option 4: Reincarnation

Myth of Er from Plato: “He [Er] said that when his soul departed, it made a journey in the company of many, and they came to a certain demonic place, where there were two openings in the earth next to one another, and, again, two in the heaven, above and opposite the others. Between them sat judges who, when they had passed judgment, told the just to continue their journey to the right and upward, through the heaven; and they attached signs of the judgments in front of them. The unjust they told to continue their journey to the left and down, and they had behind them signs of everything they had done. …As to the other two openings, souls out of the earth, full of dirt and dust, came up from one of them; and down from the other came other souls, pure from heaven. And the souls that were ever arriving looked as though they had come from a long journey: and they went away with delight to the meadow…And they told their stories to one another, the ones lamenting and crying, remembering how much and what sort of things they had suffered and seen in the journey under the earth—the journey lasts a thousand years—and those from heaven, in their turn, told of the inconceivable beauty of the experiences and the sights there. …When we were near the mouth about to go up and had suffered everything else, we suddenly saw…tyrants, but there were also some private men, of those who had committed great faults. They supposed they were ready to go up, but the mouth did not admit them; it roared when one of those whose badness is incurable or who had not paid a sufficient penalty attempted to go up. There were men at that place…who took hold of some and led them away…threw them down and stripped off their skin. They dragged them along the wayside, carding them like wool on thorns…these men would be led away and thrown into Tararus. … When each group had spent seven days in the plain, on the eighth they were made to depart from there and continue their journey. In four days they arrived at a place from which they could see a straight light, like a column, stretched from above through all of heaven and earth, most of all resembling the rainbow but brighter and purer. …for this light is that which binds heaven, like the undergirders of triremes, thus holding the entire revolution together. From the extremities stretched the spindle of Necessity, by which all the revolutions are turned. …Now when they arrived…[a] certain spokesman first marsalled them at regular distances from each other; then, he took lots…Let him who gets the first lot make the first choice of a life to which he will be bound by necessity. …When he had said this, he cast the lots among them all, and each picked up the one that fell next to him…After this, in turn, he set the patterns of the lives on the ground before them; there were far more than there were souls present. There were all sorts; lives of all animals, and, in particular, all the varieties of human lives. … For the most part the choice was made according to the habituation of their former life. He said he saw a soul that once belonged to Orpheus choosing a life of a swan, out of hatred for womankind; due to his death at their hands, he wasn’t willing to be born, generated in a woman. He saw Thamyras’ soul choosing the life of a nightingale. And he also saw a swan changing to the choice of a human life; other musical animals did the same thing. The soul that got the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion; …And after him was the soul of Agamemnon; it too hated humankind as a result of its sufferings and therefore changed to the life of an eagle. …And by chance Odysseus’ soul had drawn the last lot of all and went to choose; from memory of its former labors it had recovered from love of honor; it went around for a long time looking for the life of a private man who minds his own business; and with effort it found one lying somewhere, neglected by the others. …When all the souls had chosen lives, in the same order as the lots they had drawn they went forward…all made their way through terrible stifling heat to the plain of Lethe. …Now it was a necessity for all to drink a certain measure of water, but those who were not saved by prudence drank more than the measure. As he drank, each forgot everything. And when they had gone to sleep and it was midnight, there came thunder and an earthquake; and they were suddenly carried from there, each in a different way, up to their birth, shooting like stars.”12 (Plato, The Republic614b-620d)

Bernabe and Cristobal on Orphic golden tablets: “[I]n the scheme described in the tablets, the soul, which is active, finds itself faced by a test it must overcome. This is the behavior demanded from the soul in the moment of its transition to the other world: that it should not take the wrong path. Everything depends on it, and on the fact that it remembers what it must do…If it does what it should do, it will be successful. If it makes a mistake, it will be reincarnated.”13

The Resurrection of Christ

Paul leaned on received tradition, eyewitnesses, and personal experience to establish certainty about Christ’s resurrection (1 Cor 15:3-8).

In Greek mythology, there were several accounts of returning to life.

Aeschylus (458 bc) has Apollo say: “Fetters he can undo: there is a cure for that affliction, and many a device for getting him released. But when once a man has died, and the dust has sucked up his blood, there is no rising again.”14 (Aeschylus, Eumenides 645-648)

Pausanias relates a standard myth that Asclepius raised the dead: “Presently it was reported over every land and sea that Asclepius was discovering everything he wished to heal the sick, and that he was raising dead men to life.”15 (Pausanias, Description of Greece26.6)

Diodorus explains how Asclepius brought people back to life: “And so far did he advance along the road of fame that, to the amazement of all, he healed many sick whose lives had been despaired of, and for this reason it was believed that he had brought back to life many who had died. Consequently, the myth goes on to say, Hades brough accusation against Asclepius, charging him before Zeus of acting to the detriment of his own province, for, he said, the number of the dead was steadily diminishing, now that men were being healed by Asclepius.”16 (Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History 71.2-3)

Orpheus Myth from Virgil: “And now, as he [Orpheus] retraced his steps, he had avoided all mischance, and the regained Eurydice was nearing the upper world, following behind—for that condition had Proserpine [Persephone] imposed—when a sudden frenzy seized Orpheus, unwary in his love…He halted, and on the very verge of light, unmindful, alas, and vanquished in purpose, on Eurydice, now regained looked back! In that instant all his toil was spilt like water…She cried: ‘What madness, Orpheus, what dreadful madness has brought disaster alike upon you and me, poor soul? …And now farewell! I am borne away, covered in night’s vast pall.…’ She spoke, and straightway from his sight, like smoke mingling with thin air, vanished afar and saw him not again, as he vainly clutched at the shadows with so much left unsaid.…”17 (Virgil, Georgics 453-527) (see also Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.1-85)

Euripides’s Myth of Alcestis: “Adetus’s wife Alcestis died and he grieved for her. Heracles: “I must save the woman who has just died and show my gratitude to Admetus by restoring Alcestic once more to this house. I shall go and look out for the black-robed lord of the dead, Death (Θάνατον) himself, and I think I shall find him drinking from the offerings near the tomb. And if once I rush from ambush and catch him in my side-crushing grip, no one shall take him from me until he releases the woman to me. But if I fail to catch this quarry and he does not come to the blood offering, I shall go down to the sunless house of Persephone and her lord in the world below and shall ask for Alcestis, and I think I shall bring her up and put her in the hands of my friend. He welcomed me into his house and did not drive me away, thought he had suffered grievous misfortune. In his nobility he concealed it, out of respect for me.”18 (Euripides, Alcestis 840-858)

1 Cor 15:12-14 Paul linked together belief in our future resurrection with Christ’s resurrection.

Dale Martin: “Thus the idea of the resurrection of the body would indeed have struck some Greeks as ridiculous or incomprehensible. Specifically, the notion would have offended the educated-those exposed, at least minimally, to philosophical arguments and assumptions. Of course, due to the uniformity of higher education in the Greco-Roman world, all people so educated could be expected to hold similar views, at least on basic points, regardless of which philosophical school commanded their allegiance or lack thereof. And in the early Roman Empire one of those basic points was that, whatever one believed about life after death, promises of resurrected bodies were not to be given any credence. Such gullibility was reserved for the uneducated—that is, the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Empire.”19

Dale Martin: “The Strong, influenced by popular philosophy to deprecate the body, opposed the idea of a resurrected body. Indeed, they heard Paul’s language about “resurrection of the dead” (nekros) as referring to the resuscitation of a “corpse,” the normal meaning of the term nekros, and they found such a view philosophically ridiculous.”20

Paul’s Mini-Apocalypse (1 Cor 15:20-28)

Christ returns (the day of our Lord Jesus).

Christ raises the faithful from the dead.

Christ reigns until he puts all his enemies under his feet.

Finally, he hands over the Kingdom to God.

Application

Because of resurrection, the Corinthians should be steadfast and excel in the work of the Lord (1 Cor 15:58).

The resurrection of the body means that our work is not in vain.

Bibliography

Aeschylus. Agamenmnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides. Translated by Alan H. Sommerstein. Vol. 2. Loeb Classical Library, edited by Jeffrey Henderson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Cristóbal, Alberto Bernabé and Ana Isabel Jiménez San. Instruction for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, edited by D. Frankfurter H. S. Versnel, and J. Hahn, vol. 162. Ledien: Brill, 2008.

Euripides. Cyclops, Alcestis, Medea. Translated by David Kovacs. Vol. 1. Loeb Classical Library, edited by Jeffrey Henderson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2001.

Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. Penguin Classica. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1998.

Lattimore, Richmond. Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1962.

Lucian. Anacharsis, Menippus, on Funerals, a Professor of Public Speaking, Alexander the False Prophet, Essays in Portraiture, Essays in Portraiture Defended, the Goddesse of Surrye. Translated by A. M. Harmon. Vol. 4. Loeb Classical Library, edited by T. E. Page. London, England: William Heinemann, 1925.

Martin, Dale B. The Corinthian Body. New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1995.

Pausanias. Description of Greece. Translated by W. H. S. Jones. Vol. 1. Loeb Classical Library. London, England: William Heinemann, 1918.

Plato. The Republic of Plato. Translated by Allan Bloom. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2016.

Sicily, Diodorus of. The Library of History Iv.59-Viii. Translated by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 3. Loeb Classical Library, edited by G. P. Goold. London, England: William Heinemann, 1939.

Virgil. Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid 1-6. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Vol. 1. Loeb Classical Library, edited by Jeffrey Henderson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Wiegand, Theodor. “Sechster Vorläufiger Bericht Über Die Von Den Königlichen Museen in Milet Und Diyma Unternommenen Ausgrabungen.” In Abhandlungen Der Königlichen Preussischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften. Edited by Georg Reimer. Philosophisch-Historische Classe. Berlin: Verlag der Königlichen Akademie dier Wissenschaften, 1908.

Richmond Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1962), 84.
Lattimore, 84.
Lattimore, 34.
Lattimore, 50.
Lattimore, 39-40. Translation from ChatGPT.
Lattimore, 34. Theodor Wiegand, “Sechster Vorläufiger Bericht Über Die Von Den Königlichen Museen in Milet Und Diyma Unternommenen Ausgrabungen,” in Abhandlungen Der Königlichen Preussischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, ed. Georg Reimer, Philosophisch-Historische Classe (Berlin: Verlag der Königlichen Akademie dier Wissenschaften, 1908), 46. Available at https://archive.org/details/abhandlungenderk1908akaduoft/page/n509/mode/2up?view=theater.
Lattimore, 35.
Homer, The Iliad, trans. Robert Fagles, Penguin Classica (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1998), 561-62.
Lucian, Anacharsis, Menippus, on Funerals, a Professor of Public Speaking, Alexander the False Prophet, Essays in Portraiture, Essays in Portraiture Defended, the Goddesse of Surrye, trans. A. M. Harmon, vol. 4, Loeb Classical Library, ed. T. E. Page (London, England: William Heinemann, 1925), 113-19.
Lattimore, 87.
Lattimore, 36.
Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2016), 297-303.
Alberto Bernabé and Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal, Instruction for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. D. Frankfurter H. S. Versnel, and J. Hahn, vol. 162 (Ledien: Brill, 2008), 54.
Aeschylus, Agamenmnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides, trans. Alan H. Sommerstein, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library, ed. Jeffrey Henderson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 437.
Pausanias, Description of Greece, trans. W. H. S. Jones, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library (London, England: William Heinemann, 1918), 387.
Diodorus of Sicily, The Library of History Iv.59-Viii, trans. C. H. Oldfather, vol. 3, Loeb Classical Library, ed. G. P. Goold (London, England: William Heinemann, 1939), 43.
Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid 1-6, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library, ed. Jeffrey Henderson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 253-55.
Euripides, Cyclops, Alcestis, Medea, trans. David Kovacs, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library, ed. Jeffrey Henderson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2001), 239-41.
Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1995), 114.
Martin, 107-08.

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