Sermon Tone Analysis

1 Corinthians 15:20-32

This is probably on everybody's list of really strange passages that just make you scratch your head.

And be comforted if that's you because I'm going to give a statistic in a moment here that will tell you very clearly that you're not alone.

Scholars have really wrestled very hard—very frequently—with this passage.

You're not going to believe the statistic I give you, but I'm actually going to get you access to the materials that will show you that no, it's not an exaggeration as to how many views there are of this passage.

Article resource: James E. Patrick, “Living Rewards for Dead Apostles: ‘Baptised for the Dead’ in 1 Corinthians 15.29,” New Test.

Stud.

52 (2006): 71–85.

Now Patrick himself notes in this article that there are over 40 views as to what this verse means, and he cites articles that add to that number.

The 40 are the ones that he has counted himself.

Those 40 are documented in a series of five articles that push the number beyond 40, but the 40 that Patrick is thinking of are documented in a series of five articles by Bernard Foschini in Catholic Biblical Quarterly, beginning in 1950 and extending into 1951.

So Foschini wrote a series of five articles that totaled well over a hundred pages just on this verse and how it has been understood historically—its interpretive history.

So the challenge for us isn't that there's nothing to say.

The challenge is winnowing the wheat from the chaff, as far as plausibility.

There's no shortage of guesses or speculation as to what in the world is going on here.

History of Scholarship

Literal Baptism??

Is the baptism spoken of literal baptism?

In other words is this water baptism or is this metaphorical?

You’ve got to think about both.

You’ve got to ask that.

Who are “the dead”??

In the baptism for the dead, are the dead martyrs from the church at Corinth? Are they martyrs from elsewhere outside the church?

Are the dead literally dead people, or is this some kind of metaphorical death that's being referred to?

Why are they doing this?

If this is actual water baptism and if it's really dead people in view that living people are being baptized on behalf of, why are they doing this?

So why are they doing this?

Is this penance for the Purgatorial relief of the dead?

In other words, are people being baptized for the benefit of the dead, like to get the dead out of Purgatory or so that the dead can still be saved, or is it purely memorial and doesn't really do anything for the dead?

“It's just a memorial.”

What about that option?

Does the phrase merely refer to the ritual washing of dead bodies?

People have proposed that, therefore, it has nothing to do with a sacramental view of baptism or even believers’ baptism.

If we have water baptism that isn't for the benefit of the dead, then the benefit must be for the person being baptized, right?

That would seem reasonable.

So what is that?

Is it some kind of symbolic identification with the persecuted dead person to hasten the second coming, maybe, or for some other purpose?

I'm going to give a brief overview of issues that give us an idea of what I think are the most necessary components that need to be really be thought about when it comes to this, because obviously we're not going to go through all 40 views in one sitting.

So let's just start with defining some terms.

Baptism

The first term to define is “baptism.”

What are we talking about here?

Now Patrick, in his article, notes that Foschini divided the options on this term to three alternative explanations: metaphorical baptism, literal baptism that had nothing to do with some sacramental effect, and then sacramental baptism.

Sacramental baptism (for those who might not be familiar with that kind of terminology) is that it has something to do with the dispensing of grace, whether it's saving grace or something else.

There are those who connect those ideas with baptism and those who don't, but it’s water baptism in either respect.

So you’ve got two “brands” of water baptism and then the metaphorical, so that's what Foschini did.

He winnowed the options down to those three and then he discussed them.

Now Foschini is writing in Catholic Biblical Quarterly.

Where do you think he's going to land?

Foschini landed on the sacramental view, reasoning that in every other passage where Paul speaks of baptism it is in reference to sacramental baptism.

I don't agree with that—the “every other passage” idea.

I would say 1 Corinthians 12:13, for instance, is not water baptism.

13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

That's what most theologians call “Spirit baptism”—a reference to being put into the body of Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:29 is referencing a water baptism practice, so I'm buying that part of it.

That seems to me the most natural reading, and Patrick follows the same trajectory.

He writes:

In my proposed explanation, the baptism being carried out is the standard Christian sacramental baptism of new believers, consistent with Paul’s use of the word elsewhere.

So Patrick is connecting it to believers’ baptism.

He uses the sacramental terminology, but he's not talking about what Foschini was talking about.

And I tend to not use sacramental terminology because I think it's confusing, and honestly, I think it adds to what baptism is.

“the dead”

Next term: “the dead.”

Who are the dead?

Now this seems to clearly point to people who are actually dead.

They've literally died.

That just seems to me to be the most natural reading of the passage.

Patrick, again, looks at this the same way.

He says:

While Paul does use the word ‘dead’ metaphorically elsewhere…

For instance, Rom 8.10:

10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

So Paul does use reference “death” and “dead” metaphorically elsewhere, but despite that he's using the literal meaning, not only here in 1st Corinthians 15, but even in the second half of verse 29.

It's linked directly to the first half because of the language: “If the dead are not raised at all, why are they baptized for them?”

So it's pretty obvious that the dead there are in connection with the talk of resurrection, which in First Corinthians 15 is quite bodily.

He's talking about dead people.

That doesn't seem too difficult.

Now again, that immediate context undermines the metaphorical interpretations that other scholars have offered.

Some of those go all the way back into Early Church Fathers.

They tried to argue for a metaphorical view.

Again, I'm not buying it.

Lots of people don't buy it.

So I'd agree that Paul is talking about people who are actually dead.

Who are they?

Third, what about the identity of the dead?

Well, who are they?

This is an issue that requires a little bit of thought.

This question (who are the dead?) gives rise to a couple of sub-questions.

Were the dead (whoever they were) previously baptized?

See, that's a sub-question because you might be thinking, “Wow, maybe living people are being baptized in view of this dead person that wasn't baptized before they died and maybe the Corinthians are thinking that baptism helps them in some way in the afterlife.

So maybe that's why they're doing it.”

So that's a sub-question.

Related to that, were these dead (whoever they were) believers or unbelievers when they died?

And you can see where this is going—where this would sort of drift into a sacramental idea of baptism.

If you held that view of baptism and you knew somebody, whether they had professed faith in Christ or not, and they die and you're thinking, “Oh, well, I better go get baptized for them to help them out on the other side.”

Now Patrick directs our attention on these questions (both the question of who they are and then these sub-questions) to the work of Jeremias, a very famous New Testament scholar.

“necroi” and “ho nekroi”.

He is a Second Temple Jewish scholar who noticed that in this chapter there is a consistent distinction between nekroi, which is the Greek plural term for dead… There's a distinction between necroi and ho nekroi.

That would be the same word with a definite article in front of it.

So Jeremias said that it's kind of interesting that in this chapter, the word nekroi (“dead” with or without the definite article—the word “the”)…that seems to matter.

Patrick quotes Jeremias' conclusion that nekroi without an article denoted dead people in general, whereas with the article ho nekroi denoted deceased Christians.