Introduction
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series we demonstrated that the “heavens and earth” which pass away in the New Testament (Psalm 102; Hebrews 1 & 12; 2 Peter 3; Revelation 20–21) consistently refer to the old-covenant order established at Sinai, not to the physical creation of Genesis 1. Tim Martin and Covenant Creation advocates reject that conclusion. They insist that the old-covenant world must begin in Genesis 1–3 itself.
One of their key supporting arguments is Matthew 23:35. Jesus held the Jews of His generation guilty of “all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah.” Because the judgment reaches all the way back to Abel, they claim the covenantal world under judgment must itself begin with Abel—and therefore with the “creation” of Genesis 1. On this basis Genesis 1–3 is re-read as the inauguration of a non-physical old-covenant order rather than the physical creation of the universe.
This is a non-sequitur. Jesus is speaking of corporate and representative guilt—the generation that rejected Him was filling up the long measure of their fathers’ sins by completing the ancient pattern of murdering the righteous that began with Abel. That does not mean the old-covenant “heavens and earth” (the covenantal order judged and removed in AD 70) began with Abel or in Genesis 1–3. The fact that blood-guilt reaches back to Abel does not determine the starting point of the old-covenant world itself. Nothing in Matthew 23:35, Hebrews 11, 1 Corinthians 15, Romans 5, or the broader testimony of Scripture requires or even suggests that Genesis 1–3 is non-physical or that the formal old covenant began with Adam.
What Covenant Creation Claims
In Beyond Creation Science and subsequent teaching, Martin, Vaughn, and those following them insist that preterists already understand “this generation,” the Great Tribulation, and the passing of heaven and earth covenantally. Therefore, they argue, consistency demands that “the beginning of the world” and the blood-guilt that stretches back to Abel must also be understood in the same covenantal sense. If the AD 70 judgments go all the way back to Abel, the old covenant cannot start merely at Sinai or Abraham; it must begin at the very beginning of the biblical story.
This confuses the scope of blood-guilt for the persecution of the righteous with the chronological beginning of the old-covenant world that is removed in AD 70.
The Correct Reading of Matthew 23:35
Jesus is speaking to the scribes and Pharisees:
“Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers… Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify… so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.” (Matthew 23:32–36)
The issue is corporate and representative guilt. That generation was filling up the measure of their fathers’ sins by continuing and completing the long pattern of rejecting and murdering God’s righteous messengers. Abel is the first recorded righteous victim in Scripture; Zechariah stands near the end of the record. (Whether the Zechariah in view is the son of Jehoiada in 2 Chronicles 24—the majority view that fits the Hebrew canon order—the prophet son of Berechiah, or, as some early traditions suggest, the father of John the Baptist, the point remains the same: Jesus is sweeping the entire biblical record of righteous blood from its beginning to its close.)
Jesus identifies these leaders as children of the devil (John 8:44) and a brood of vipers (Matthew 23:33). Cain “was of the evil one and murdered his brother” (1 John 3:12). The devil is “a murderer from the beginning.” The first-century leaders stand in that same spiritual lineage. Moses’ writings open with the prophecy of enmity between the serpent’s seed and the woman’s Seed (Genesis 3:15). Cain’s murder of Abel is the first historical outworking of that conflict. The Pharisees, as the serpent’s seed, fulfill the bruising of the heel of the woman’s Seed at the cross. Because they knowingly complete the ancient pattern that Moses recorded, the cumulative blood-guilt that began with what their father the devil did through Cain is justly charged to them.
Their possession of the Scriptures intensifies the responsibility. Jesus Himself said the writings of Moses condemn them (John 5:45–47). They knew the history of Cain and Abel. They knew the history of the prophets. More than that, they knew from those same writings of Moses that their father the Devil would bruise the heel of the Messiah—and they were about to do exactly what their father desired of them. Greater light brought greater guilt.
Covenant Creation often presses a further claim: that because biblical eschatology is covenantal, the protology (Genesis 1–3) must also be purely covenantal and non-physical. In other words, “creation” language throughout Scripture is said to be typological of the old-covenant world that ended in AD 70, so Genesis itself must be read the same way. This is an over-extension. Scripture can (and does) use creation language both literally for the physical world God made and figuratively for political or covenantal orders (Isaiah 13, 34; Haggai 2; etc.). The presence of figurative uses does not erase the literal foundation. Jesus grounds marriage “from the beginning of creation” (Mark 10:6) in the actual male-and-female order of Genesis 1–2, not in a non-physical covenant charter. Paul does the same in 1 Corinthians 15. Recognizing covenantal applications of “heavens and earth” language does not require reinterpreting the opening chapters of the Bible as the inauguration of the Mosaic administration.
Hebrews 11, 1 Corinthians 15, and the Corporate Body
Hebrews 11 is especially damaging to the Covenant Creation thesis. The chapter opens with Abel as a real historical man of faith:
“By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.” (Hebrews 11:4)
The rest of the chapter continues in the same vein. Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the judges, the prophets, and the martyrs are all presented as actual people who lived in successive historical periods, under different administrations, yet all walking by the same faith and looking toward the same ultimate promise. Hebrews does not treat them as symbols inside a single non-physical “covenant creation” that began in Genesis 1–3. It treats them as real saints living in real history.
Then comes the climactic statement:
“And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” (Hebrews 11:39–40)
The Old Testament saints were not perfected in isolation. Their full entrance into the promised inheritance waited for the new-covenant consummation. At the same time, the living New Testament saints could not be perfected apart from those earlier faithful ones. The one people of God spans the ages.
This connects directly to 1 Corinthians 15. Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. He was raised “out from among the dead ones”—the Old Testament saints the Corinthian deniers were rejecting a resurrection for. Christ is the firstfruits of the harvest that includes both the Old Testament dead ones and those who belong to Him at His coming. In the corporate resurrection, the body of Christ includes Abel and all the righteous who had God as their Father. They are raised and perfected together into the one new-covenant body.
When the risen Jesus later says to Saul, “Why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4), He is identifying Himself so closely with His people that to attack them is to attack Him. That body reaches back to include Abel. Persecuting the righteous has always been an assault on those who belong to God—and therefore, in the fullness of revelation, an assault on Christ Himself.
Adam as Corporate Head — But Not the Mosaic Old Covenant
As full preterists we affirm that Paul develops Adam as a real historical individual who is also the federal / corporate head of the body of sin and spiritual death. “In Adam all die.” Death reigned from Adam. The one man’s disobedience constituted the many as sinners (Romans 5:12–21; 1 Corinthians 15:21–22). That Adamic corporate reality is the order of sin and death that stands over against the new order of life in Christ.
However, that Adamic body / order of sin and spiritual death is not identical to the old-covenant Law that Covenant Creation claims began in Genesis 1–3.Scripture itself distinguishes them:
Death reigned from Adam to Moses (Romans 5:14). The reign of death is already in place before the Law is given.
The Law was added 430 years after the Abrahamic promise (Galatians 3:17). It did not create the Adamic order of death; it was introduced into a situation in which death was already reigning.
The Law came in so that the trespass might increase (Romans 5:20). It diagnosed, exposed, and intensified the problem that originated with Adam; it did not originate the problem.
The “first covenant” language of Hebrews refers specifically to the Mosaic administration given when God took Israel by the hand out of Egypt (Hebrews 8:9; 9:1, 15–18).
Covenant Creation collapses these distinctions. It treats the Adamic order of sin and death as essentially the same thing as the old-covenant Law, and therefore concludes that the “old covenant / old creation” began in Genesis 1–3. That is the move we reject.
The clearer position is:
- Adam is the historical and corporate head of the order of sin and spiritual death that affects all humanity.
- That Adamic order of death is broader and earlier than the Mosaic covenant.
- The Mosaic Law was a specific, temporary administration given to Israel within the period of death’s reign. It was the formal covenant order centered on temple, priesthood, and Torah that was “ready to vanish away.”
- What passed away in AD 70 is that Mosaic old-covenant order. The deeper Adamic problem of sin and death is resolved in Christ, the last Adam, for all who are in Him.
- The corporate body of Christ includes the Old Testament faithful (Abel onward) who are perfected together with the New Testament saints, but this does not turn Genesis 1–3 into the creation of the Mosaic covenant.
1 Corinthians 15 Appeals to Physical Creation, Not “Covenant Creation”
A further and decisive point arises from the very chapter Covenant Creation often uses. When Paul explains the nature of the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15:35–49, he deliberately draws his illustrations from the ordinary, physical creation that everyone already understands:
A seed is sown and dies, and a plant comes up (verses 36–38).
There are different kinds of flesh—men, animals, birds, fish (verse 39).
There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, sun, moon, and stars, each with its own glory (verses 40–41).
Paul is not appealing to some specialized “covenant creation” concept of Genesis 1–3. He is appealing to the common-sense, physical realities of the world God made—the very realities described in the opening chapters of Genesis. We all know what a real seed is, how it is sown into the ground, and how a living plant emerges. We all know the difference between the flesh of a man and the flesh of a fish, or between the glory of the sun and the glory of a star. Paul uses these everyday physical facts as analogies for the transformation of the corporate body from the natural (Adamic / old-covenant order of death) into the spiritual (new-covenant life in Christ).
If Genesis 1–3 were merely the symbolic charter of a non-physical old-covenant world, Paul’s argument would lose its force. The illustrations only work because the creation language of Genesis refers to the real, physical world everyone experiences.
David Green has summarized the point with particular clarity in responding to others holding to Tim’s view on social media platforms:
“Moses interpreted the seventh day (Gen. 2:2-3) literally in Exodus 20:8-11.
Jesus interpreted the marriage of Adam and Eve (Gen. 2:22-24) literally in Matthew 19:4-5.
Peter interpreted the earth being created out of water and in water (Gen. 1:9-10) literally in 2 Peter 3:5.
In 1 Corinthians 15:36-41, Paul listed literal created things, taken from Genesis 1, as an analogy of the resurrection of the dead:
Seeds (Gen. 1:11-12, the 3rd day)
Men (Gen. 1:26-29, 6th day)
Beasts (Gen. 1:24-25, 6th day)
Fishes (Gen. 1:20-22, 5th day)
Birds (Gen. 1:20-22, 5th day)
Sun (Gen. 1:14-16, 4th day)
Moon (Gen. 1:14-16, 4th day)
Stars (Gen. 1:14-16, 4th day)
These are biblical interpretations of Genesis 1, not just Genesis-language used in prophecy. It is no surprise that the literal things of Genesis were later adapted as metaphors (the marriage of Christ and the church, the Sabbath-rest in Christ, the creation of a covenant-world, etc.) by later authors, because the literal historical elements of Genesis were themselves typological/metaphorical (like the historical allegory of Abraham and his sons). The prophets did the same thing with the literal shadow-ordinances of the Law, which were in themselves solid material metaphors of the spiritual—spiritual sacrifices, spiritual altar, spiritual temple, spiritual city, etc.”
This is decisive. Scripture itself treats the elements of Genesis 1 as literal created realities and then, later, employs those same realities as types and metaphors. The two moves are complementary, not contradictory. Covenant Creation collapses the distinction and reads the later metaphorical use back into Genesis itself as its primary meaning. Paul, however, is doing the opposite: he starts with the literal created order everyone already knows and uses it as an analogy for the resurrection transformation.
Covenant Creationism employs the same flawed logic and hermeneutic that Dispensationalism uses—only in reverse. Dispensationalists object when the New Testament spiritualizes the physical Old Testament promises of land, city, temple, priesthood, and sacrifices. They insist that those promises are “everlasting” and therefore must ultimately return to a literal, physical fulfillment in a future millennial kingdom. In their system, once something begins as physical, its final realization can never remain spiritual.
Futurists in general make the identical mistake when they argue that because the Bible begins with a physical creation in Genesis 1, the “heavens and earth” that pass away in Revelation 20:11 and 21:1 must be a physical de-creation and re-creation of the planet. Covenant Creation tries to exploit this futurist error by presenting a false dilemma: either “physical to physical” (the futurist view) or their own “spiritual to spiritual” reading of both Genesis and Revelation.
Full Preterism has always rejected that false choice. We have consistently interpreted the movement from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 20:11 and 21:1 as physical to spiritual. The physical creation and the physical types of the Old Covenant pointed forward to the spiritual realities fulfilled in Christ and His Church. We have never seen any exegetical evidence that requires forcing the heavens and earth of Genesis 1:1 into the New Testament de-creation texts (Hebrews 1:10-12; 12:26-28; 2 Peter 3; Revelation 20:11; 21:1). As demonstrated in Parts 1 and 2 of this series, those passages consistently refer to the old-covenant order established at Sinai and removed in AD 70.
A Note on Engagement
In a recent lecture Tim Martin criticized Max King’s silence on 1 Corinthians 15:39-41, suggesting that only covenant creationism can adequately handle the Genesis allusions in those verses. The implication is that the broader full-preterist community has left the passage unaddressed. That is not the case. David Green’s chapter in House Divided already offered a detailed corporate-body reading of the entire section more than a decade ago.
It is also worth recalling that David Green and I formally challenged Tim Martin and Jeff Vaughn to a written book debate on these very issues. Jeff agreed to the propositions (with a minor tweak he wanted to make). Tim never engaged the written email format discussing the project, offering only a video response that did not address the challenge itself. The written debate thus far has never materialized. The present article is offered as a public contribution to the discussion that the formal exchange might have clarified.
The Seed Analogy (1 Cor. 15:35-50)
(The following is David Green’s detailed treatment from House Divided, retained in full, pp. 217-222 with footnotes.). Paul’s illustrations from nature in verses 36-41 are problematic if they are interpreted as arguments that are aimed at someone who denies the very possibility of resurrection. How does the fact that sheep differ from sparrows serve in any way to validate the doctrine of resurrection for someone who does not believe in the very concept of resurrection? How does it serve to make the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead imaginable or feasible (345)? It doesn’t.[1]
The difficulty with Paul’s words concerning the bodies/fleshes/glories of creation vanishes only when we let it sink into our minds that Paul was reasoning with people who already believed in the eschatological, body-resurrection of Christians. The resurrection-of-the-dead deniers would have already agreed that a seed rising up to become a plant illustrates the truth of resurrection. And that is why Paul used the analogy. The fact of resurrection was common ground between Paul and the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers.
Paul therefore made reference to the universal death and change of seeds,[2] not to demonstrate the already-agreed-upon fact of resurrection, but to demonstrate the following four things that those who were in error at Corinth were denying:
The necessity of the death of the pre-resurrection body (1 Cor. 15:36)
The differentness of the pre- and post-resurrection bodies (1 Cor. 15:37)
The necessity of the change of the pre-resurrection body (1 Cor. 15:38a)
The universality of the pre-resurrection body and the post-resurrection body (1 Cor. 15:38b)
After establishing these premises through the common-ground analogy of the “resurrection” of seeds, Paul went on to reference the whole of the material universe, because insofar as it is filled with innumerable, different bodies—just like the multitudes of different kinds of seeds and plants in verse 38b—it confirms the universality of the two different bodies (the existence of which Paul established in the seed analogy itself).
The universal diversity of the Genesis creation served as an analogy of the cosmos-changing work of the gospel. As the whole Genesis creation is filled with differing bodies (fleshes, glories), so the whole “creation” (the body) of God’s chosen ones in Adam, living and dead, “from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other,” was going to put off the old “body” of Sin and Death (the Adamic, mortal, corruptible, dishonorable, weak, and natural “old man”), and was going to be “clothed” with the wholly other “body of Christ” (the immortal, incorruptible, glorious, powerful, and spiritual new Man; the Christological “new creation”) (Matt. 24:31; 1 Cor. 15:42-44).
The resurrection-of-the-dead deniers thought that the eschatological church was an altogether separate entity from the Adamic, old covenant world. They thought that the body of Christ essentially appeared out of nowhere, as it were, absolutely disconnected from the world that preceded it. They thought the eschatological church was buried the spiritual body and that it was going to be raised the same spiritual body on the Last Day.
The reality though was that the eschatological church was itself in the mortal, corruptible, dishonorable, weak, and natural “body” of the pre-Christ saints. It was still bearing “the image of the earthy” (1 Cor. 15:49), not in a biological sense, but in a cosmic-covenantal sense. God’s old covenant ministration of Death and Condemnation still stood, and God’s church was still an organic part of that world-order. It was therefore still in the body of Sin and Death, and was putting that body to death through the Spirit.
The pre-Christian, Adamic saints existed in a state of “mortality” in that they did not yet have consummated eternal life, redemption, and face-to-face union with God (Rom. 8:23; 1 Cor. 13:12; 1 Jn. 2:25; Rev. 22:4). They were in a state of “corruptibility”[3] in that they did not yet have the incorruptible, “eternal righteousness” of Christ (Dan. 9:24). They were in a state of “dishonor” in that they were not yet clothed with the glory of the new covenant in Christ’s justifying blood (Rom. 4:24; 2 Cor. 3:7-18). They were in a state of “weakness” in that, as long as the condemning old covenant world remained standing, they had not yet inherited eternal life (cf. 1 Cor. 6:14; Heb. 7:6; 1 Jn. 2:25). They were “natural” in that they had not yet been made the spiritual dwelling of the triune God (Jn. 14:23).³
Before Christ, the saints bore the image of Adam, the disobedient one. They were unable to attain to heavenly life (1 Cor. 15:45, 48-49). Their sins had grounded them in the mundane, the worldly, the carnal, the “corruptible.” Their worship of God consisted in earthly types, shadows, and copies of the heavenly. Their fellowship with God was not face to face, but was through the agency of sinful, earthly mediators. Their sacrifices were reminders of sin. They were separated from the Father. They were under the reign of Sin and Death.
Through its body-burial and body-death with Christ, the church was putting to death that old, corruptible “world” or “body” or “creation” or “man” through the sin-killing Spirit on behalf of the dead. In the consummation of the Spirit’s work in the church, the body of God’s people, living and dead (“all Israel”), was going to be redeemed, changed, and gathered together into the eternal, spiritual kingdom of Christ.
This is the “knowledge of God” of which the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers were woefully ignorant. Because they thought that the eschatological church, to the exclusion of “the dead,” was “the body [of Christ] that shall be,” they could not grasp “how” the saints of old could be resurrected with the church. Here is an expanded paraphrase of their objection in verse 35:
“We, the eschatological church, are the blood-bought body that has been sown (planted, buried) with Christ through the Holy Spirit in order that we might be raised with Him to inherit the kingdom of God. The saints of old lived and died before Christ arrived. They have not been sown (planted/buried) with Him, as we have. There is no resurrection outside of Christ’s body, and we are His body. Therefore, the dead have no part in the resurrection body. How then are the dead being raised with us? If your doctrine is true Paul, then answer this question: With what body are the dead being raised?”[4]
Paul’s answer (verses 36-37):
“The dead are being raised through the burial and death of the body of Sin, of which we are still a part (since the old covenant world has not yet vanished). The dead, therefore, are being raised through our (the last-days, first-fruit church’s) dying to Sin (the burial and death of the Adamic ‘body’ with Christ) on their behalf, and they will therefore be ‘changed’ with us into the resurrected, spiritual body of Christ in the new covenant world.
“Look at your own experience for confirmation of this truth. When you yourselves are planting a seed (as God has planted us with Christ) you are not planting the tree that will be. Likewise, God did not plant the ‘spiritual body’ of the age to come in order that the same ‘spiritual body’ will emerge. That is not God’s purpose. The Christological resurrection-body is not what has been sown/buried. It is not we alone who shall be raised. Rather, it is the Adamic ‘natural body’ that has been ‘sown’ with Christ, through the Spirit in us, so that the ‘natural body’ (the dead together with the last-days-of-the-Adamic-ages church—the whole Adamic ‘man’) is now being raised up and
‘changed’/‘transformed’ into the spiritual body of Christ.”²
The objection of the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers was not biological; it was theological. Though they understood that the eschatological church had been “buried” with Christ through the Sin-killing work of the Holy Spirit in order that the church would be raised up on the Last Day, they erroneously thought that the church had been buried so that the church alone would be raised up on the Last Day. Thus Paul’s corrections in verse 44 (KJV):
. . . [T]here is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.
That is, there was not a spiritual body only, as the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers supposed.And in verse 46:
Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.
The spiritual body did not appear out of nowhere, as the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers imagined. Rather, the pre-existing “natural body” was being raised up and transformed into the “spiritual body.”
The reality that the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers did not apprehend was that the eschatological church was in a state of Adamic body union (solidarity, interdependence) with “the dead,” and it therefore stood in need of a universal body-change. The church was not merely the new man and the spiritual body. It was the dying old man; the dying body of Sin and Death.
It was not the case that the Old Testament saints would be replaced by the body of Christ. Instead, the body of Sin had to die through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and be raised, and be changed by the same Spirit (Heb. 11:40). The church could not be saved by itself. The church was bearing the image of “the first man” and was in process of being transformed, on behalf of the dead and with the dead, into the image of “the Christ” (Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 15:45-49; 2 Cor. 3:18).
Without the death and universal change of “the body” through the power of the eschatological Spirit, not so much as one Christian could be made alive in the Father. The resurrection in Christ was to be cosmos-wide, or not at all. The whole world of God’s people had to be transformed.
The eschatological church thus stood in need of the consummated world-change from the “flesh-and-blood” world-body of “corruption” (sub-divine righteousness) to the “spiritual,” Christological body of incorruptible and eternal righteousness in the new covenant world (1 Cor. 15:50). If that change did not take place when the temple fell in AD 70, then Christ was never raised from the dead, the gospel was a lie, and all Christians were and are without hope. Either the eschatological church and “the dead” were changed and God became All Things in “all,” or Christ was never raised, and the church remains in her sins, and the world-body of the hand-made temple of God maintains its standing before God today.
Conclusion
Matthew 23:35, Hebrews 11, 1 Corinthians 15, and Romans 5 do not prove that Genesis 1–3 is about the creation of a non-physical old-covenant world, nor do they prove that the old covenant began with Adam. They prove that the generation that rejected the Messiah filled up the long measure of hostility that began with Cain (of the evil one) murdering Abel—a pattern Moses recorded and that the serpent’s seed brought to its climax by bruising the heel of Christ. Their knowledge of those very Scriptures condemned them. They knew from Moses that their father the Devil would bruise the heel of the Messiah, and they were about to do exactly what their father desired.
Jesus and all the righteous have God as their Father. The Pharisees belong to the story that connects them with the Devil as a murderer as their father. The body of Christ includes Abel and the Old Testament faithful, who are perfected together with the living saints. Adam is the corporate head of the body of sin and spiritual death, yet that Adamic order is not the Mosaic old covenant itself. And when Paul illustrates the resurrection transformation, he does so by appealing to the physical creation everyone already knows—seeds, plants, flesh, and stars—not to a re-imagined “covenant creation” of Genesis 1–3.
A consistent full-preterist reading retains the historical, physical force of Genesis while affirming that the old-covenant order centered on temple, Torah, and the Jewish theocracy ended in AD 70. We reject both the futurist error of “physical to physical” and Covenant Creation’s opposite error of “spiritual to spiritual.” Scripture moves from the literal, physical realities of Genesis to their spiritual fulfillment in Christ. Covenant Creation’s use of Abel is an unnecessary and textually unsupported addition. The blood of Abel still speaks—but it speaks of judgment on the generation that completed the ancient pattern, not of a redefined Genesis.
[1] If the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers already believed in the historic, physical resurrection of Christ, as Strimple admits (309, 333), why would Paul have needed to convince them of the “feasibility,” “imaginability,” and “thinkability” of the very concept of physical resurrection, as Strimple says elsewhere (quoting Berkouwer) (341)? How could it be that the resurrectionof-the-dead deniers were unable to accept the feasibility of a concept (1 Cor. 15:35) to which they already held as the gospel truth (1 Cor. 15:11)?
[2] The necessary “death” of seeds, by the way, demonstrates that physical corruption and physical death existed before Adam sinned. The earth, by God’s decree, brought forth seed-yielding plants on the third day of creation (Gen. 1:11-13), and Adam was placed in the Garden to dress and keep the plants (Gen. 2:15). Therefore the cycle of literal seed-death and seed-resurrection/ change was already in process before Sin entered the world through the disobedience of Adam. In the same way, God’s decree to the animals and to man that both “be fruitful and multiply” implied the cycle of biological birth, biological reproduction, and biological death; and that cycle was instituted before Adam sinned (Gen. 1:22, 28). Biological death did not enter the world through Sin. It was already in the world. It was alienation from God and slavery to Sin (Sin-consciousness, spiritual Death) that entered the world through Sin.
[3] The terms “mortal” and “corruptible” do not describe the quality or duration of Adam’s physicality or the quality or duration of his soul. They describe the quality and duration of his sub-divine righteousness and works.
[4] Strimple favorably quotes Robert Gundry as saying, “Paul uses soma precisely because the physicality of the resurrection is central to his soteriology.” In reality, Paul used soma precisely because the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers used the word soma in their objection (1 Cor. 15:35). The meaning of the word cannot be deduced from the fact that Paul repeated it.