“With What Kind of Body Will They Come?

”
Metamorphosis and the Concept of Change:
From Platonic Thinking to Paul´s Notion of the
Resurrection of the Dead
Metamorphosis and the Concept of Change
VIGDIS SONGE-MØLLER 1

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“How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”
These two questions, which Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:35 puts into the
mouth of an imagined – and foolish – “someone”, are questions that
readers of the chapter still pose, even though we have studied Paul´s
answers to – or perhaps rejection of – those foolish questions. In the rest
of the chapter, where Paul, rather enigmatically, tells the Corinthians
how they should think about the resurrection of the dead, he stresses
that in the resurrection we will all be changed (ἀλλαγησόμεθα; 1 Cor
15:51), not gradually, but instantly (ἐν ἀτόμῳ; 1 Cor 15:52), not partly,
but totally: we will become what we today are not: the perishable shall
be imperishable, and the mortal shall be immortal (1 Cor 15:53). Paul´s
notion of the resurrection of the dead, in other words, involves a
change from one state of being to a radically different state of being.
However, not only Paul, but also the imagined fool from Corinth, pre-
supposes that there is some kind of continuity in this radical transfor-
mation, insofar as they both posit an underlying subject: Whereas the
fool asks “With what kind of body will they come?”, Paul answers “We
will all be changed”. Why is the first question foolish, while Paul´s
answer is not? Or to put the question differently: how is the paradigm
that underlies Paul´s answer different from the paradigm that underlies
the imagined foolish questions? How are we to understand Paul´s no-
tion of metamorphosis, i.e. his notion of the resurrection of the dead? In
order to give an answer to those questions, foolish or not, I shall first go
back to the way in which the concept of change emerged as a funda-
mental philosophical problem in ancient Greece.

_____________
1 Vigdis Songe-Møller is professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of
Bergen, Norway.
110 Vigdis Songe-Møller

The Paradox of Change and the Instant

in Platonic Philosophy

If there were no continuity in the process of change, the thing, or per-

son, that changes, would just disappear, and one could not talk of
change. The concept of change can be looked upon as no less than a
paradox: change presupposes its own opposite: “no-change”, or same-
ness. This paradox, or the discovery of this paradox, can be traced back
to the beginning of Greek philosophy: unlike his predecessors, Par-
menides did not search for the origin or the end of all things, but prob-
lematized these very phenomena, and more generally: all kinds of
change. Parmenides´ reflections on the paradox of change can be said
to have determined the course of Greek philosophy and to some degree
the later course of Western philosophy, as well.
The paradox of change, as Parmenides formulated it, has as its pre-
supposition a conviction of a certain relationship between human ra-
tionality and reality. This relationship was also first stated by Par-
menides: “… the same thing can be thought and can exist”.2 If a
phenomenon cannot be explained rationally, it cannot exist. Or to put it
differently: reality and human rationality obey the same rules. This
way of thinking has radical consequences when it comes to under-
standing change: according to Parmenides, change is such a phenome-
non that cannot be explained by human reason.
Parmenides´ argument, which leads him to the conclusion that
change does not exist, is dependent on a radical distinction between
being and non-being, formulated as an alternative: “Is or is not”3. Rea-
son cannot tolerate both at once, which would involve a contradiction,
and since it is impossible to “know that which does not exist”4, the
choice is easy: Is. For Parmenides this is a basic truth, which determines
his ontology: “there is Being, but nothing is not”5. Since the phenome-
non of change involves a passage from non-being to being – or vice
versa – change cannot exist. This is a radical conclusion, which contra-
dicts our most basic experience of life and nature, which involves con-

_____________

2 Parmenides, fragment 28 B 3. The number of the fragment is according to Hermann

Diels and Walther Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin: Weidmann, 1951).
The translation is Leonardo Tarán´s, in L. Tarán, Parmenides. A Text with Translation,
Commentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton / New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1965).
3 Parmenides, 28 B 8.16.
4 Parmenides, 28 B 2,7.
5 Parmenides, 28 B 6,1-2.
 Metamorphosis and the Concept of Change 111

stant change: birth, growth, decay and death. Reason forces Par-
menides to deny the existence of these phenomena.
The problem of change haunted Greek philosophy after Par-
menides. It was perceived as no less than a scandal that such a basic
phenomenon, which one experiences all the time – one hardly experi-
ences anything else - could not be explained rationally. Plato, the spiri-
tual heir of Parmenides, can be said to have been obsessed with change,
for the very reason that he could not properly explain it. For him,
change belonged to the illusionary world of the senses and of the body,
which was conceived of as a mere copy of the real – and therefore ra-
tional - unchanging and eternal world, to which our soul belongs. But
for Plato, unlike for Parmenides, change remained a problem; he did
not simply reject it as nonexistent.
In his dialogue Parmenides, Plato comes closer than elsewhere to a
way of dealing with the irrational phenomenon of change. Here Plato
situates change by invoking what he calls a “very strange thing”, a
“queer creature”, a “non-place” (ἄτοπον), namely the instant: “… this
queer creature, the instant (τὸ ἐξαίφνης), lurks between motion and
rest – being in no time at all – and to it and from it the moving thing
changes to resting and the resting thing changes to moving.”6 A pas-
sage from one state to another can only occur instantly, at a moment
outside not only place but also time, a moment which is not a part of
the world of the senses, but neither of the ideal world of reason. The
instant, which according to Plato is the source of change, is placed be-
yond both. As a non-place it is an abyss, lacking a form, and as not
belonging to any time the instant has neither a before nor an after. It is
not what we call “now”, or the present. In a way the instant does not
exist, it just happens. Or rather: change happens, as an inexplicable
event.
The word ἐξαίφνης is used by Plato in other dialogues, as well. In
Symposium it is used twice in order to signify a sudden, and fundamen-
tal, change from one state of mind to another, where the new state of
mind enables the person to see the world and life from a totally differ-
ent perspective. Before I go into Plato´s use of ἐξαίφνης in Symposium,
however, I shall – in the light of Plato´s reflections on change in Par-
menides - look at Paul´s notion of the resurrection of the dead in his first
letter to the Corinthians. I do not intend to speculate about a possible
influence of Plato on Paul, but I hope to show that Plato´s way of deal-

_____________
6 Plato, Parmenides 156 d-e. The English translation is that of Mary Louise Gill and
Paul Ryan, in Plato, Complete Works, edited, with introduction and notes, by John M.
Cooper (Indianapolis / Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1971).
112 Vigdis Songe-Møller

ing with the phenomenon of change may shed some light on some of
Paul´s utterances on the resurrection of the dead.

“… We Will All Be Changed - in a Moment”

(1 Cor 15:51-52)

Paul´s central focus in 1 Corinthians 15 is the belief in the resurrected

Christ, and the consequence of this belief: the resurrection of the dead.
All and everything is dependent upon this paradigmatic event: the
resurrection of Christ. This is stated clearly by Paul several times, for
instance in 15:16-19: “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not
been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile;
you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in
Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be
pitied more than all men.”7
Although Christ’s resurrection is a necessary condition for the res-
urrection of the dead on the last day, it is not a sufficient one: the belief
in the resurrection of Christ is the other necessary condition. In other
words: the transformation of the resurrected body - the transformation
of a mortal body into an immortal, spiritual body – presupposes not
only the transformation of the resurrected Christ, but also a rather dif-
ferent, but related, transformation: the transformation which occurs
when a person gains belief in the resurrected Christ. Both these two
kinds of transformations involve, I suppose, the whole person, but dif-
ferent aspects of the person are stressed in the two cases: whereas in his
description of the resurrection of the dead Paul focuses on the trans-
formation of the body, he focuses on the transformation of the mind in
his description of the consequence of converting to the belief in the
resurrected Christ. The transformation of the mind is no less radical
than the transformation of the body: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,
he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor 5:17).
Paul uses similar metaphors when he describes the transformation of
the body (in death) and the transformation of the mind (in life), for
instance the metaphor of putting on new clothes: “For the trumpet will
sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the
mortal with immortality” (1 Cor 15:52-53). And: “You were taught,
with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is
being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude
_____________
7 Quotes from the NT are taken from the New International Version.
 Metamorphosis and the Concept of Change 113

of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true
righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:22-24)8 I shall treat this metamor-
phosis of the mind (of the living) as a parallel to the metamorphosis of
the body (of the dead). Let me first look closer at the phenomenon of
the resurrection of the dead.
Paul introduces his teaching on the resurrection of the dead as a
metamorphosis of the body in a somewhat puzzling way, by posing the
two questions I started with, put in the mouth of an imagined “some-
one”: “But someone may ask: How are the dead raised? With what
kind of body will they come?” (1 Cor 15:35). I shall focus on the last of
these two questions. Who is this imagined someone (τις) among the
Corinthians, from whom Paul expects, at least rhetorically, such a ques-
tion? A person whose views accord with Platonic or Aristotelian think-
ing would not be likely to pose it, unless in irony or mockery.9 For such
a person there could be no question about an eternal, heavenly bodily
existence. Within Platonic and Aristotelian thinking, a body, as such,
undergoes change, which includes decay and death. An atomist or a
Stoic might, at least theoretically, ask such a question, but it could also
be the case that Paul, as a method for explaining his thoughts on the
resurrection of the dead, has in mind a person who was not necessarily
trained in philosophy, but who was brought up with traditional Greek
mythology. I shall venture on an interpretation that understands the
foolish “someone” not necessarily as an unlearned Corinthian, but at
least as one who was familiar with traditional Greek mythology.10

_____________
8 See also Col. 3:9-10: “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self
with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in know-
ledge in the image of its Creator.”
9 This question has by most scholars been interpreted as a reflection of the mockery
and sarcasm of the Corinthians who opposed the idea of the resurrection of the
dead, and to whom Paul refers in 1 Cor 15:12. This is, however, not a necessary in-
terpretation, and I will explore the possibility that Paul, as a method for explaining
his ideas of the resurrection, makes up a question that he thinks someone among the
Corinthians may honestly ask. For a short summery – and critique - of the different
theories about the Corinthian opponents to Paul´s teaching of the resurrection of the
dead, see Jeffrey R. Asher, Polarity and Change in 1 Corinthians 15. A Study of Meta-
physics, Rhetoric, and Resurrection (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), chapter III, 1.2:
“The Problem With Theories Regarding Opponents as an Interpretative Context of 1
Corinthians 15”, pp. 36–48.
10 Most scholars seem to agree that the members of the Corinthian community were
divided into wealthy persons on the one hand and artisans and perhaps slaves on
the other, and also that the number of wealthy members was relatively small. It is
not likely that either the artisans or the slaves in Corinth at the time of Paul had any
philosophical education. Therefore, only a discourse that includes popular mytho-
logical views will be understood by everyone. I therefore find it plausible that Paul,
in his exposition of the resurrection of the dead, in the form of an answer to an im-
114 Vigdis Songe-Møller

The Greeks were familiar with the conception that eternal existence
includes bodily existence. Or perhaps rather: that there are bodies
which live forever and which are not a part of nature’s cycle of birth,
growth, decay and death, namely the bodies belonging to gods and to
very special humans, whom the gods decided to give the status of im-
mortals.11 A transformation of mortals into immortals actually required
a bodily transformation, a transformation from a mortal human body to
an immortal divine body. The Pythagorian/Platonic dualism between
body and soul is not present in Greek mythological thinking. Rather,
there is another dualism, namely between two kinds of bodies: human
and divine. An unlearned person, who was familiar with Greek my-
thology, might very well respond to Paul´s prophesy of the resurrec-
tion of the dead with the question: “With what kind of bodies will they
come?”
In his book A Radical Jew, Daniel Boyarin, basing himself on a paper
by Patricia Cox Miller,12 suggests that the distinction “between the sub-
bodies of human beings and the super-bodies of the gods” in Greek
mythology explains “Christian imagining of the transformed body of
the perfected Christian”, as we find it in 1 Corinthians 15.13 For Boyarin
this means, I suppose, that the “combination of Platonic dualism and
an anthropology that does not regard the body as ´problematic because
of its sheer materiality as part of the physical world´”,14 was already
prepared for in Greek mythological thought. This is, as far as I can see,
_____________
agined fool, will draw, not only on philosophical theories, but also on common my-
thological knowledge. After all, an aim of the letter as a whole seems to be to bring
unity to the community and to reconcile factionalism (cf. Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul
and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Compo-
sition of 1 Corinthians (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991)).
This aim can only be reached if Paul manages to talk to all of the members. Moreo-
ver, Paul´s rebuke in chapter 8 at those who sacrifice to idols makes it likely that the
strong influence that rituals (which were based on traditional mythology) had on
common people, was a serious worry to Paul. For a discussion on the social status of
the members of the Corinthian community, see Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body
(New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 70-76.
11 In Greek mythology, Achilles and Heracles are among the most well known mortals
to whom the gods accorded immortality. For a discussion of resurrection and eternal
existence within ancient Greek mythology, see Dag Øistein Endsjø, “Oppstandelse
og evig liv i det gamle Hellas”, pp. 49–62 in Kropp og oppstandelse, edited by Troels
Engberg-Pedersen and Ingvild Sælid Gilhus (Oslo: Pax Forlag, 2001).
12 Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew. Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley/Los An-
geles/London: University of California Press, 1994); Patricia Cox Miller, “Dreaming
the Body: An Aesthetics of Asceticism”, in Asceticism, edited by Vincent L. Wimbush
and Richard Valantasis (New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 281-
300.
13 Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 62.
14 Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 64. Boyarin´s quote is from P. Cox Miller.
 Metamorphosis and the Concept of Change 115

only partly true. Boyarin argues for a special kind of hierarchical dual-
ism that permeates Paul´s writings: “There is flesh and spirit. The spirit
is higher and more important, but the flesh is not to be disregarded
either.”15 The “body itself”, Boyarin claims, “becomes for him [Paul] a
dualist term”16, insofar as the spiritual body is radically different from
the fleshy, mortal body. The dualism between mortal and immortal
bodies within Greek mythology is, however, of another kind than the
bodily dualism of Paul.
The distinction between “the sub-bodies of human beings and the
super-bodies of the [Greek] gods” is taken from Jean-Pierre Vernant.
He calls the divine bodies “sur-corps” since, although they are bodies,
they are not burdened with the very qualities that were regarded as
characteristic of a body: change, decay and death. And while human
bodies are marked “with the seal of limitation, deficiency, and incom-
pleteness”17, divine bodies are not. Whereas mortals eat in order to
stave off bodily decay from one day till the other, and have intercourse
in order to continue their race, the gods were known to eat, drink and
have sex for pleasure.18 In other words: unlike the Pauline divine body,
the bodies of Greek gods were desiring bodies.19 When Paul expects
“someone” in his Corinthian congregation to ask the question “With
what kind of body will they rise?”, he may envisage that this “some-
one” would like to get a more detailed description of the resurrected
body: Will it be like the bodies of the gods, whose lives were full of
bodily pleasures? Will it, for instance, be a beautiful body like that of
Aphrodite, whom all the male gods desired, or will it be an extremely
strong body like that of Ares? Are those the kinds of questions that
Paul expects from someone in his Corinthian congregation and to
which he cries out: “You fool!”? (1 Cor 15:36).
Paul´s answer to this foolish question must have puzzled the mem-
bers of the Corinthian communities, both learned and unlearned: “You
fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies” (1 Cor 15:36).

_____________
15 Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 64.
16 Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 62.
17 Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Mortals and Immortals: The Body of the Divine”, in Jean Pierre Ver-
nant, Mortals and Immortals. Collected Essays, edited by Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1991), p. 31.
18 For a discussion of this point, see my book Philosophy Without Women. The Birth of
Sexism in Western Thought (London: Continuum, 2003), chapter 2: “Thought and Sex-
uality: A Troubled Relationship”.
19 Several of Paul´s statements, for instance “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and
drink, for tomorrow we die’" (1 Cor 15:32) and “flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God” (1 Cor 15:50) suggest this: that heavenly body is not burdened
with bodily desires, such as desires for sex, food and drink.
116 Vigdis Songe-Møller

What does it mean that the seed which is sown, must die in order to
come to new life? The image of the death of a seed was a familiar one in
Greek mythology: Persephone, the daughter - or rather an aspect - of
the goddess of vegetative growth, Demeter, spends three months of the
year in Hades, or with Hades, the god of death, and the remaining nine
months among the living. This myth tells the story of the cycle of vege-
tative life: the seed dies before it comes to new life in springtime. As a
story of the cycle of life, it stresses the continuity of life and death
rather than the disruption between the two. Death is a kind of sleep,
rather than a disappearance or a wiping out of the “old” being.20 Paul´s
point, however, seems to be the opposite: “When you sow, you do not
plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of
something else” (1 Cor 15:37).
This way of describing the relationship between before and after
death is not only contrary to mythological thinking, but also to Platonic
and Aristotelian thought, where we also find, at least indirectly, the
image of the seed: according to Platonic thinking, the seed of a man
secures his physical continuity after death, since the seed contains a
new “himself”21, and according to Aristotelian thinking, the seed is
potentially the same kind of being as that from which the seed origi-
nally came. Both Plato and Aristotle refer to the seed in order to stress
the continuity of the race between the generations, whereas the function
of Paul´s image of the seed seems to be a disruption within the individ-
ual before and after death. For Paul, death is the “last enemy” (1 Cor
15:26). The implication of this metaphor is well formulated by Oscar
Cullmann: “When one wishes to overcome someone else, one must
enter his territory. Whoever wants to conquer death must die; he must
really cease to live – nor simply live on as an immortal soul, but … lose
life itself, the most precious good which God has given us.”22
_____________
20 Cf. Hesiod, Work and Days, edited with prolegomena and commentary by M.L. West
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 116.
21 Plato, Symposium: “Pregnancy, reproduction – this is an immortal thing for a mortal animal
to do … (206c); “ … reproduction … is what mortals have in place of immortality” (206e);
“… mortal nature seeks so far as possible to live for ever and be immortal. And this is possi-
ble in one way only: by reproduction, because it always leaves behind a new young in place
of the old.” (207d); “Now, some people are pregnant in body, and for this reason turn more to
women and pursue love in that way, providing themselves through childbirth with immortali-
ty and remembrance and happiness, as they think, for all time to come.” (208e) In other
words: the seed that “people” (i.e. men) are “pregnant” with, will secure their (imperfect,
since bodily) immortality, i.e. continuity; this suggests that the male seed contains the new
being, which is a new “himself” (“a new young in place of the old”). The English translation
of Symposium is that of Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff, in Plato, Complete Works.
22 Oscar Cullmann, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness
of the New Testament (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958), pp. 25f.
 Metamorphosis and the Concept of Change 117

Paul might think that the “someone” who may ask “With what
kind of body will they come?”, is a fool for several reasons. He is a fool
if he hopes for a beautiful body like that of Apollo or fears a lame body
like that of Hephaestus. He is equally a fool if he thinks that there is a
continuous cycle of life and death. Paul introduces another kind of
immortal body, based on another kind of relationship between life and
death: “it is sown a psychic body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is
a psychic body, there is also a spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:44). The words
“soul” and ”psychic” are rarely used by Paul. Within the just cited and
the following two verses, however, he uses them four times, each time
in contrast to “spirit” and “spiritual”.23 In 15:45 Paul cites Genesis 2:7
("So it is written: ´The first man Adam became a living soul´"), where
“living soul” refers to the breath of life that God breathed into man
made of “the dust of the ground”.24 It is therefore reasonable to trans-
late σῶμα ψυχικόν with “natural body” in contrast to “spiritual body”.
This is also the most common translation.25 On the other hand, in this
letter Paul is confronting Greeks, and among them “the wise” (σοφός),
“the scholar” (γραμματεύς), “the philosopher” (συζητής; 1 Cor 1:20),
and I suppose that it is far from improbable that Paul was familiar with
the body-soul dichotomy in Hellenic thinking. The very special word
construction σῶμα ψυχικόν is in the context of Hellenic thinking rather
provocative, and if Paul here has the traditional body-soul split in
mind, this strange expression stresses in a very effective way that Paul
distances himself from Hellenic philosophical thinking: he not only
unites soul and body, but also explicitly says that man’s soul will die
along with the body.26 I suggest that Paul here uses this expression in
_____________
23 “It is sown a psychic body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a psychic body,
there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living
soul"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the
psychic, and after that the spiritual.” (1 Cor 15:44-46)
24 Gen. 2:7: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (21st Century King
James Version).
25 In 12 of the 19 English translations of The New Testament at www.biblegateway.com
σῶμα ψυχικόν in verse 44 is translated with “natural body”. The other translations
are: “natural (physical) body” (Amplified Bible), “natural human body” (New Liv-
ing Translation), “physical body” (Contemporary English Translation), “human
body” (New Life Version), “earthly body” (New International Reader´s Version),
“beastly body” (Wycliff New Testament), “body for this world” (Worldwide English
(New Testament)). Not one of them translates ψυχικόν with a word that has any-
thing to do with soul.
26 Whereas for Plato the expression σῶμα ψυχικόν is more or less a contradiction in
terms, for Aristotle it would be possible. It could mean a body which is formed, or
animated, by its special soul: an animal body is different from a human body be-
cause of their different kinds of soul. σῶμα ψυχικόν could also be used to mean a
118 Vigdis Songe-Møller

order to stress the newness of his message: even what you, Corinthians,
call a soul, will die, together with the mortal body. The Corinthians
have to throw away their usual conception of death and life after
death.27 That his message of the resurrection of the dead breaks radi-
cally with the Greek intellectuals´ way of thinking, Paul has already
made clear: “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the
philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the
world? … Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolish-
ness to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:20-23).
If not the immaterial, immutable soul, then what secures the conti-
nuity of the individual before and after resurrection? The answer must
be: “the body” – in some way or other: “But God gives it a body as he
has determined, and to each (ἑκάστῳ) seed he gives its own (ἴδιον)
body” (1 Cor 15:38). Although may be translated with “each
kind”, ἴδιον clearly signifies the personal or individual. In other words:
each seed, i.e. each earthly body, will, it seems, get its own individual
resurrected body. Therefore, the individual is, in some way or other, the
same before and after resurrection; and this sameness has something to
do with the body. In other words: the soul, according to Paul, totally
disappears in death, but the body does not: it is raised. This is certainly
a provocative way of putting it!
In his chapter in this book Troels Engberg-Pedersen argues, to my
mind convincingly, that, although there is a total transformation of
each individual body, there is also a continuity: “That, I suggest, is the
point of the τοῦτο that Paul repeats four times in 15:53-54. … If this
something is going to “put on” immortality and incorruption, then it
must, as it were, be there.”28 There is, however, nothing in the text
which states exactly what kind of continuity this is: even though each
individual has a body before and after resurrection, it is not the same
body. More generally: we cannot point at any special part of the indi-
vidual that remains the same. The continuity of the person before and
after resurrection can, it seems, only be put in negative terms: it does
_____________
living body as opposed to a dead body. On the other hand, Aristotle explicitly op-
poses “psychic” and “somatic” parts of the human being: “We may assume the dis-
tinction between bodily (σωματικαί) pleasures and those of the soul (ψυχικαί)” (Ni-
comachean Ethics 1117b28). As far as I know the word construction σῶμα ψυχικόν is
not to be found in the Greek philosophical corpus.
27 Cf. Asher, Polarity and Change, pp. 41-43. According to Asher the pneumatikon-
psychikon antithesis was unfamiliar to the Corinthians. If this is the case, 15:44 must
have sounded very strange in the ears of the Corinthians, both learned and un-
learned.
28 T. Engberg-Pedersen in this volume, p. 110.
 Metamorphosis and the Concept of Change 119

not seem to depend on an unchanging element, an element which re-

mains the same before and after death and which, like the Platonic soul,
does not ever, and cannot, undergo any kind of change. Or, to put it
differently: continuity is not based on the essence of the individual, on
that which determines what kind of being this individual is. This is
nothing but a repetition of the statement with which I started: the
change is total. If the change is total, if each individual changes from
what she is (perishable and mortal) into what she is not (imperishable
and immortal), then what remains the same? There is no rational an-
swer to this question, and Paul does not try to explain it. Rather, he
points to the will and agency of God: “God gives it a body as he has
determined” (1 Cor 15:38). God, in other words, can be supposed to
create continuity, independently – or beyond – the limitations of hu-
man reason.29
The metamorphosis of the resurrected body, so Paul tells us, is a
mystery: “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will
all be changed - in a flash (ἐν ἀτόμῳ), in the twinkling of an eye, at the
last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised impe-
rishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself
with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality” (1 Cor 15:51-
53). Ironically, the phenomenon of change is as great a mystery to the
Greek philosophers in the Platonic tradition as the metamorphosis of
the body is to Paul. Neither can be explained by human reason. And for
both Plato and Paul, there is something beyond human rationality, for
which this “something beyond” is its presupposition: for Plato it is the
Good (in the Republic) or the Beautiful (in Symposium),30 and for Paul it
is God. The “foolishness”, according to the learned Greeks, of Paul´s
message (1 Cor 1:23) is perhaps no more foolish than Plato´s “explana-
_____________
29 Cf. Descartes, who stresses that God should not be thought within the boundaries of
human reason: God creates truth. See for instance Descartes´ letter to Père Mersenne,
April 14, 1630: “Que les vérités mathématique, lesquelles vous nommez éternelles,
ont été établies de Dieu et en dependant entièrement, aussi bien que tout le reste des
creature.” In Descartes, Œvres philosophique. Tome I (1618–1637) (Paris: Éditions Gar-
nier, 1988), p. 259.
30 See for instance Republic 508b-e: “Let´s say, then, that this [the sun] is what I called
the offspring of the good, which the good begot as its analogue. What the good itself
is in the intelligible realm, in relation to understanding and intelligible things, the
sun is in the visible realm, in relation to sight and visible things. … So that what
gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower is the form of
the good.” And 509b: “Therefore, you should also say that not only do the objects of
knowledge owe their being known to the good, but their being is also due to it, al-
though the good is not being, but superior to it in rank and power”. The Good is
thus not only beyond human reason and knowledge, but also beyond being: both be-
ing and knowledge is “due to” the Good. The English translation of Republic is that
of G.M.A Grube and rev. C.D.C. Reeve, in Plato, Complete Works.
120 Vigdis Songe-Møller

tion” of change: while Plato situates every kind of change in the instant
(ἐξαίφνης), Paul situates this extraordinary change – the resurrection
of the dead – in the moment (ἐν ἀτόμῳ).31

“… Suddenly a Bright Light from Heaven

Flashed around me” (Acts 22: 6)

Ἐξαίφνης is once put in the mouth of Paul, in the Acts, when Paul tells
of his conversion, which is also a kind of metamorphosis:
“About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly (ἐξαίφνης) a bright
light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a
voice say to me, 'Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?'
" 'Who are you, Lord?' I asked.
" 'I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,' he replied. My
companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him
who was speaking to me” (Acts 22:6-9).
In his book St. Paul. The Foundation of Universalism Alain Badiou calls
Paul´s conversion an event, something which happens, “purely and
simple”, unexpectedly and uncontrollably, on an anonymous road;32
Paul sees a light and hears a voice, and he puts his belief in what he
sees and hears, without asking for explanation or for proof. Paul´s be-

_____________
31 Asher argues that the introduction of the notion of change in 15:51-52 functions as
the solution to the problem of resurrection: in order to correct the foolish, imagined
interlocutor in 15:35, who, according to Asher, “denied that there is a resurrection of
the dead” (Polarity and Change, p. 166), on the ground that “it is impossible for a ter-
restrial human body (flesh and blood and corruptible) to attain a celestial dwelling”
(p. 152), Paul “is emphasizing change, that is, the transformation that the human
body must undergo during the resurrection to comply with the strictures of cosmic
polarity” (p. 163). According to the principle of cosmic polarity, which the Corin-
thians dissenters, according to Asher, adhere to, there is a sharp distinction between
the sub- and superlunary realms; therefore a terrestrial body cannot ascend to a hea-
venly habitation. Paul therefore, to a certain degree, agrees with the Corinthian dis-
senters; only if he can show that the body undergoes a radical change, he can con-
vince them that there is not only a resurrection of the dead, but a resurrection of the
body. I find Asher´s thorough analysis convincing, but, as far as I can see, he fails to
recognize that by introducing the notion of change, Paul is not only offering a solu-
tion to a problem, but is inscribing himself in a long philosophical tradition, in which
change is one of the central problems. According to Asher, Paul´s notion of change is
similar to a long range of philosophers´ notion of change (his analyses of this simi-
larity are too sweeping to be convincing), but Asher does not seem to face the fun-
damental problem – or paradox – of change.
32 Alain Badiou, The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2003), p. 18.
 Metamorphosis and the Concept of Change 121

lief, or conviction, is, according to Badiou, unconditioned: It is not de-

pendant on having met Jesus, on having heard stories about his life, his
death and his resurrection. It is independent of empirical or theoretical
knowledge; it belongs to another order, to the order of event. To put it
differently: there is no “natural” explanation for Paul´s conversion, just
as there is no “natural” explanation for the resurrection of the dead.
Neither event can be explained by human reason; they are both, so
Badiou, conditioned by the divine. Badiou´s classification of Paul´s
conversion, as well as of the resurrection of the dead, as an event that
can be explained neither empirically not theoretically is, to my mind, a
fruitful perspective. The temporal dimension of such an event is, neces-
sarily, placed beyond empirical time. It belongs to the instant.
As already mentioned, Plato uses the word ἐξαίφνης twice in Sym-
posium, both times to describe a radical conversion of mind. I shall here
mention one of them. In the so called “ladder of love”, Diotima de-
scribes the ascent from ignorance to full knowledge, driven by erotic
desire. The first part of this ascent is completed by gradual steps – from
the desire for one beautiful body to all beautiful bodies, then from the
desire of beautiful bodies to beautiful souls, until the lover is over-
whelmed by “the great sea of beauty”33. Diotima explains how and
why the philosopher-lover ascends from one step to the other; there is a
reason, a logos, for his ascent: the beauty, which he desires, is the same
in all objects – in bodies, in souls, in knowledge – and he is therefore
driven from the love of single examples of beauty to that which is
common to all beautiful things. The lover’s last step, however, towards
“the divine Beauty itself in its one form”34, cannot be explained by the
logos, which has determined the steps so far. The last step is rather a
jump into what Diotima calls “the final and highest mystery” (τὰ δὲ
τέλεα καὶ δε ἐποπτικά, ὧν ἕνεκα καὶ ταῦτα ἔστιν).35 The rational
continuity of the ladder is broken: “You see, the man who has been
thus far guided in matters of Love, who has beheld beautiful things in
the right order and correctly, is coming now to the goal of Loving: all of
a sudden (ἐξαίφνης) he will catch sight of something wonderfully
beautiful in its nature; that Socrates, is the reason for all his earlier la-
bors.”36

_____________
33 Plato, Symposium 210d.
34 Plato, Symposium 211e.
35 Plato, Symposium 210a.
36 Plato, Symposium 210.
122 Vigdis Songe-Møller

The only “explanation” that Diotima can give, is that it happens in-
stantly. “The divine Beauty itself” is the presupposition for all rational-
ity and is thus itself above human reason.37

Conclusion

Although Paul is far from being a Platonist, there are several parallels
between Paul and Plato in their ways of dealing with radical change.
Both of them describe not only ontological change, but also radical
change of mind by pointing to an event which occurs in an instant and
to an entity which is beyond human reason. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul is
preoccupied with three events: the resurrection of Christ, the resurrec-
tion of the dead and the faith in Christ. All these events involve radical
change, so radical that Paul may have felt a necessity of giving some
kind of an explanation. Since for Plato all change is radical change, it
might not be a complete coincidence that Paul here comes very close to
Plato´s way of thinking. Whereas Plato explains all kinds of change by
the extraordinary and inexplicable moment, Paul explains this extraor-
dinary change, the resurrection of the dead, by a similarly extraordinary
moment, which is on the verge of time: at the last trumpet, and obvi-
ously beyond human reason. Both Plato and Paul single out an ex-
traordinary change of mind which enables the philosopher and the
Christian, respectively, to grasp the truth. Also these changes of mind
are explained by the inexplicable instant. And where Plato points to the
unconditioned Good, or to the unconditioned Beauty, Paul points to
the active and creative will of God.

_____________
37 The second time ἐξαίφνης is used in Symposium, is in the last section of the dialogue,
after the speech of Socrates/Diotima, when Alcibiades, the well-known politician,
with whom Socrates had had some kind of love affair, rovers into the party. Alci-
biades is drunk and does not notice the presence of Socrates, not even when he is
seated beside him. Suddenly (Symposium 213c) he becomes aware of the presence of
Socrates, and his way of talking and behaving changes. Alcibiades´ sudden aware-
ness of Socrates and his correspondingly sudden change of behaviour is an obvious
(metaphorical?) parallel to the philosopher’s sudden view of the Beauty itself. Cf.
Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness. Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Phi-
losophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 184 f.