Gordon Fee on 1 Cor 15.12-19

In reading Gordon Fee's commentary on 1 Corinthians, I have this excellent summary about theh indispensability of Christ's resurrection for Christian faith:

“Both this final sentence and the whole argument of this paragraph are especially troublesome to those within the Christian faith who have done what is here only hypothetical for the Corinthians – denied Christ’s resurrection and thus ours as well. There seems to be little hope of getting around Paul’s argument, that to deny Christ’s resurrection is tantamount to a denial of Christian existence altogether. Yet many do so – to make the faith more palatable to ‘modern man,’ we are told. But that will scarcely do. What modern man accepts in its place is no longer the Christian faith, and those who reject the actuality of the resurrection of Christ need to face the consequences of such rejection, that they are bearing false witness against God himself. Like the Corinthians they will have believed in vain since faith is finally predicated on whether or not Paul is right on this issue” (p. 745).

Grace as Event

Today I gave my final lecture at HTC. It was on 1 Corinthians 15. I've read over this passage many times, but in my preparation I was struck by Paul's usage of "grace" in 15.10, "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them-- though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me" (1 Co 15:10 NRSV). Paul says that because he was so unworthy and so unexpected a candidate to become an apostle, he responded to "grace" with a more concerted ministerial effort than his contemporaries. And yet that response Paul again attributes to God's grace. In effect, Paul says that he encountered God's grace, a grace that demanded his response, and now he attributes that very response to God's grace working through him as well! Thus, God's grace works in an initial call and produces the neccesary effects in its subject. This signifies that Bultmann was right when had a section in his NT Theology entitled: "Grace as Event".