How will the resurrection take place?

 But in certain passages good Protestants could be forgiven for asking questions about the purity of Paul’s sola gratia (by grace alone). One such is a verse from Philippians (3.11), in which – having affirmed his faith in the risen Jesus and his communion in his suffering and death – Paul speaks of “attaining, if I can, the resurrection from the dead”. How could Paul have written “if I can”, as if resurrection depended on him, on us, and was within our purview? Unless “if I can” is understood in the sense of receiving a gift, as in, “if I can recover from this illness.”

In the face of this embarrassing passage, we need to look at various [French] translations.

And here comes another surprise: a significant number of them agree with Louis Segond’s “if I can” (Ostervald, Bayard, Crampon, Castellion, Lemaître de Sacy). Others (Jerusalem, TOB, Synodale, Osty, Centenaire, Nouvelle Bible Segond), probably disturbed by the idea of “if I can”, soften the formulation to “if possible”. But the two formulations still seem as if they’re saying that they’re not sure about the resurrection. Indeed Zwingli and Chouraqui render it, “perhaps”!

Looking at the Greek text is essential. Another surprise: the words translated by “if possible” or “if I can” don’t exist in the original! We find there a form of words impossible to translate literally “if how (ei pos) I come to the resurrection of the dead.” So Paul does not doubt the resurrection, nor affirm our power over it, but he wonders about the how of this resurrection. The same Paul who in earlier letters (1 Thessalonians 4.14-17, 1 Corinthians 15) describes the resurrection in extravagant detail, now asks questions about its whys and wherefores. Paul has changed his tune! We might best translate the phrase as “by whatever means” or “by one means or another”. This changes everything. Paul now affirms an “I don’t know how” which must have disconcerted his translators, but which can only serve to make us rejoice.

For all that, some Bible translations are faithful to the original: Maurice Carrez (“by some means”), Darby (“by whatever means”), the Bible Segond 21 (“by one means or another”), the English King James Version (“if by any means”), Calvin (“by some means”), the Vulgate (“if by some means”).

A problem remains. Why does Paul say “if”? One possible explanation is that he was waiting for the day of the resurrection of the dead as a fast-approaching deadline, and he hoped that when this day came he would not yet be dead, and so would not need to be raised but simply to receive immortality. In that case, the sense of the phrase would be “If by some means I should still be alive at the day of the resurrection of the dead.”

Luther’s famous translation brings a final surprise: the great reformer, perplexed by these two enigmatic Greek words, doesn’t translate them at all! He writes “in order that” (and not “if”): “In order that I should arrive at the resurrection of the dead.” Here, Luther removes two words. Elsewhere, as we know, he adds a word, when he speaks of “by faith alone”, where Paul had simply said “by faith” (Romans 3.28)! And so we find ourselves where we began this article: sola gratia/sola fide!

We have at least learned that a translation is always an interpretation!

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