a resurrection of
the body, at the end of the age.

Paul and the other missionaries continued to teach this Jewish
doctrine, but were not at once able to convince their Greek hearers
that immortality must necessarily be reached through a resurrection of
the body. Presumably the Greeks felt that immortality was sufficient,
and a future reunion between an immortal soul and a resuscitated body
was as undesirable as improbable. Paul in 1 Corinthians insists on the
Jewish doctrine, but he makes the concession to the Greeks that the
resurrection will not be of flesh and blood but of a "spiritual" body,
that is to say, a body consisting of the most attenuated form of {91}
matter. It will be the same body, but it will be changed.

This modified form of Jewish thought was supported by an appeal to the
case of Jesus, who had already risen from the dead. The appeal was
really far more effective than the rest of Paul's argument, which was
not calculated to convince the doubtful, and it has the especial
importance for the historian that it proves that Paul did not think the
risen Jesus had a body of flesh and blood, and believed that in this he
was in agreement with all the early witnesses.

Nevertheless, the belief of the Church soon affirmed what remained its
unchanged faith until the nineteenth century--the resurrection of the
flesh, both of the Lord in the past, and of the Christian in the
future. This was the triumph of Jewish thought, and is an exception to
the general rule that Christianity became steadily more Hellenic.

The reason why Jewish thought triumphed is difficult to ascertain. Few
hypotheses as to a future life have less intrinsic probability than
that ultimately reached, which postulates an immortal soul living
discarnate until the resurrection day, when it will be reunited to its
own resuscitated body, and both will be rewarded or punished by the
final judgement of God. Nevertheless this hypothesis supplanted all
others.

Two causes may be suggested. The pressure of the Docetic controversy,
which insisted that Jesus had never been a real man of flesh and blood,
but a {92} spirit appearing in human form, made the Church attach
greater weight to the reality of his flesh and blood, even after the
resurrection. Hence arose the narratives of the appearances of the
risen Jesus in Luke and John, emphasising this point. That they there
are secondary seems to be proved by the evidence of 1 Cor. xv. Hence,