(1Cor 15:12.16-20)

6th Sunday in O.T. (year C)

1Corinthians 15:12 Now if it is preached that Christ rose from the dead, how can some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

1Corinthians 15:16 For if the dead rise not, neither is Christ risen;

1Corinthians 15:17 But if Christ be not risen, your faith is vain, and ye are yet in your sins.

1Corinthians 15:18 And they also that are dead in Christ are lost.

1Corinthians 15:19 If then we have had hope in Christ only in this life, we are more to be pitied than all men.

Some Corinthians held Greek ideas concerning the immortality of the soul, namely that after death the soul separated from the body to be absorbed into the divine or to continue a tenuous existence in Ades, since for the Greeks physical resurrection was impossible. Paul has already said that Jesus Christ not only rose from the dead, he was also seen risen. There were many people who had the grace to see him. Yet, some in Corinth taught that there is no resurrection of the dead. On the one hand there is the whole gospel that is founded on the resurrection of Jesus, and on the other hand it is stated that the dead do not rise. This is not a contradiction on a marginal point of faith; it is a contradiction on the focal point of faith, indeed on faith itself, since our faith is the resurrection of Jesus Christ; together with his incarnation, passion and death. Either Christ is risen and the dead also rise, or the dead do not rise and Christ is not risen either.

Paul does not start from the resurrection of Jesus to refute the error of the Corinthians: he starts from the error of the Corinthians to draw all the consequences of their assertion and thus confront them with another truth that they would have to confess if their assertion were true: "if Christ has not risen, vain is your faith; you are still in your sins.

If Christ is not risen, besides having a vain faith, there is also a miserable state in which man finds himself: he is still in his sins. If Christ did not rise again for our justification, neither did he die for our sins, he just died. No resurrection implies no atonement. Jesus' unopened tomb would indicate that he too remained in the grip of death and that, consequently, the forgiveness of sins and the justification we sought in him are illusory: we are still in our bondage. We enter here into relativism and religious indifferentism. If sin is not taken away through our justification, there is no difference between the Christian and all other men in the world. The difference would only be one of form, but not of substance. We and others are all in our sins, and in them we live, but also die.

Another consequence: 'Even those who sleep in Christ have therefore perished. Not only we who are alive, are in our sins; also those who died believing and hoping in Christ, perished because Christ, not being the true Messiah, could not obtain remission of sins through faith in Him, and therefore passed into the next world with all their sins, which lead to perdition. From this last deduction, one thing becomes clear: faith in Christ (if he is not resurrected) is of no use to us, either in this life or the next. It does not serve us because it does not deliver us from death, it does not free us from sin, it does not obtain redemption, it does not bring us into the joy of heaven.

"If we have hoped in Christ for this life only, we are the most miserable of all men." A hope in Christ for this life only is not only vain, it is also deleterious; indeed it is an anti-human hope. Because of this faith, we must give up many things, which others enjoy, and endure all manner of travails and persecutions - sometimes even shedding our own blood. What then is the use of hoping in Christ in this life, without the hope of eternal life? What is the use of forcing oneself to sacrifice, to mortify oneself, to carry the cross every day, if all this ends in eternal death, since there would be no hope beyond death for those who have put their trust in Christ?

We are only to be pitied. We have renounced this world in the light of another world, but if Christ is not resurrected we have lost the pleasure of both worlds. Greater foolishness than this could not exist for a man. For this Christians would be to be pitied more than all men, for they are fools more than all men, and they are fools because they go after a faith which at its core is false, since they themselves, that is, those who profess it, would affirm that it is false, founded on a truth that does not exist.

How desirable it would be for Christians today to learn from Paul to draw the consequences of every statement they make concerning our most holy Faith! If they did this, they would understand that certain things cannot be affirmed; but if they are affirmed, it is right to draw conclusions and act accordingly. On many matters of faith today one could make the same argument as Paul. The results would be truly astonishing. But this is not done, and so man continues to live in his delusion. He thinks he has said it all, while in reality he does nothing but live by falsehood, deception and all kinds of other lies about the Lord, not only to his own detriment, but to the detriment of every man, Christian and non-Christian alike.

The strength of faith is in its arguments, in its deductions, in the consequences that must necessarily be drawn from a statement, whether true or false is of little importance, as long as one draws conclusions and knows how to deduce everything. All this ability is wisdom of the Holy Spirit and is given to those who love the truth, seek the truth, desire the truth; it is given to all those who love God and man; who do not want to be false witnesses of God; who do not want to be deceivers of their brothers.

We must always pray to the Lord to give us an open, wise, intelligent mind to immediately perceive the deadly trap that is hidden and concealed behind every statement that is in the guise of faith, while in reality it is pure lie, pure fantasy, pure imagination that has as its point of origin the heart of man and certainly not the heart of God. Reason is a precious asset of man. He must also know how to use it and use it well to discover the true and false of his statements; he must know how to use it to grasp the nuances of true and false that may be hidden in a word; he must know how to use it to arrive through a series of deductions and arguments at the truth itself. Faith needs reason, it needs it; not in order to demonstrate faith, which is based on proclamation alone, but because the truth of faith also possesses a rational path that must be developed. 

 Argentino Quintavalle, author of the books 

- Revelation - exegetical commentary 

- The Apostle Paul and the Judaizers - Law or Gospel?

Jesus Christ true God and true Man in the Trinitarian mystery

The prophetic discourse of Jesus (Matthew 24-25)

All generations will call me blessed

 Catholics and Protestants compared - In defence of the faith

(Buyable on Amazon)