Anastasis

The Greek word anastasis means "resurrection" or "rising up"—from ana (up) and stasis (standing). It's the standing-up-again of what had fallen, the rising of what had been laid down. When Martha confessed to Jesus, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection (anastasis) on the last day" (John 11:24), she was expressing standard Pharisaic hope for future bodily restoration. Jesus's stunning response shifted everything: "I am the resurrection (anastasis) and the life" (John 11:25). Resurrection wasn't just a future event but a present person standing before her.

Paul stakes everything on anastasis: "if Christ has not been raised (egēgertai), then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14). He doesn't argue from resurrection to other doctrines; resurrection is the doctrine, the load-bearing wall of Christian faith. Remove it and the entire structure collapses. This is why he spends fifty-eight verses in 1 Corinthians 15 defending anastasis against those who claim "there is no resurrection of the dead" (1 Corinthians 15:12).

But Paul's vision of anastasis isn't mere resuscitation—dead people standing up to die again eventually. It's transformation: "What is sown is perishable; what is raised (egeiretai) is imperishable...It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:42, 44). The resurrection body maintains continuity with the old (it's your body) while being radically discontinuous (it's imperishable, glorious, powerful). Jesus's post-resurrection appearances model this: he could be touched, he ate fish, yet he appeared through locked doors.

The "firstfruits" language is crucial: "Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20). In agriculture, firstfruits guarantee the harvest to come—Christ's anastasis ensures ours. His resurrection wasn't a unique miracle but the beginning of new creation, "the firstborn from the dead" (Colossians 1:18). We're waiting for our bodies' redemption (Romans 8:23), participating now in resurrection life through the Spirit.

Here's what scandalized the Greco-Roman world: resurrection was undesirable, even repulsive. Greek philosophy prized the immortal soul escaping the prison of flesh—Plato's whole system aimed at liberation from the body. When Paul preached anastasis in Athens, they mocked him (Acts 17:32). The Christian claim wasn't that souls survive death (everyone believed that) but that bodies—physical, material bodies—would be raised and glorified. This wasn't spiritualization but radical materialism: God loves matter enough to redeem it, remake it, resurrect it. The body isn't disposable packaging but the very form of human existence, destined for transformation rather than escape.