What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (29)

Grant Richison inquires what Paul meant when he ends a long statement in Philippians 3 with the words “… that by any means possible I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

In English, Richison says, the wording seems to express doubt about the certainty of Paul’s resurrection (and by implication the resurrection of others as well).

“Does he question the assurance of his salvation?” Richison asks. He goes on to examine the passage for clues.

First, here’s Paul’s entire statement for context:

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith — that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

The argument against using this verse as an anti-eternal security proof text is multi-pronged, and we should probably consider each of the interpretive possibilities.

1/ The “If-Since” Argument

Richison points out that there are four ways of saying “if” in Greek, and the one used here can be translated “since”, as in “since I will attain to the resurrection from the dead. This is obviously the line taken by the ESV, which I’ve quoted above, since they translate it “that by any means possible” rather than “if”. There must be some credibility to this solution, since only fourteen of thirty-two translations on Bible Hub use the English word “if” to translate the Greek [εἴ].

However, this still leaves the average reader with questions. Even if the “if” is properly translated “since” or “that”, it still leaves us with a statement that in English appears conditional. It reads as if resurrection is something Paul is concerned about qualifying for or attaining to. Richison proposes further examination.

2/ The “Resurrection” Argument

The second argument is complicated, and turns on the word “resurrection”. I’ll let Richison make it in his own words:

“The word for “resurrection” in this phrase is used nowhere else in the Greek New Testament. The idea is a resurrection out from among the dead. There are two resurrections, but only one is out from among the dead. The one is for Christians and the other for non-Christians (John 5:28). There is a resurrection of the dead, and there is a resurrection from the dead. The resurrection from the dead is the first resurrection of believers to be with their God. The resurrection of the dead is the resurrection of non-Christians to face judgment. Everyone will surface in one resurrection or the other. The resurrection of this passage is a partial resurrection out from among the corpses of non-Christians. Literally, this word means ‘out-resurrection.’ ”

Again, there is a certain credibility to this argument. Richison thinks Paul is speaking of the rapture. Paul’s rapture teaching of 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians preceded his letter to the Philippians by as much as seven to ten years. All three cities were in Macedonia no more than 250 miles apart, so it’s plausible Paul would make reference to the rapture without further qualification, assuming his readers to be familiar with the specific teaching about resurrection from his other letters.

Technically, there are at least three resurrections if we include the tribulation martyrs who “came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years”, but this latter group was revealed by John after Paul’s death. In any case, Paul never puts limits on the number of resurrection events. All future resurrection events, including any not previously mentioned in scripture, fall into one of two categories: they will be phases of either the “resurrection of life” or the “resurrection of judgment” (an event called “the second death” in Revelation). John makes the important distinction that the saved and unsaved are not raised together. Early Christians had no expectation of a single, common resurrection event for all men, but rather a series of partial resurrections, each with different purposes in view.

In using a word that means “out-resurrection”, Paul seemingly eliminates the possibility of his being present at the resurrection of judgment or second death, since this is not a partial resurrection event but the final awakening, however brief and disappointing, of all those left unraised. John stresses in Revelation that everyone not previously raised from the dead earlier on is now raised to stand before the great white throne: “The sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them.” There is no question of attaining or not attaining to that resurrection. If you do not know Christ, you will be there, like it or not. So then, there is no way Paul could have been concerned about his own eternal security. His use of “attain” eliminates that possibility, assuming we accept that word as the best possible translation from the original language. It probably isn’t, but we’ll get to that …

3/ The “By Any Means Possible” Argument

The phrase “by any means possible” also introduces an apparent element of uncertainty in English, but this quickly disappears when we look at the Greek. That four word English phrase is a single Greek word, pōs, 99 times out of 103 translated “how”. Obviously that doesn’t work as English syntax (“since how” or “that how” are word combinations we just don’t use, and “if how” is no improvement even when we assume a non-conditional “if”).

So then, we might not have 100% certainty about how best to translate a phrase that doesn’t easily move from one language to another. What we can say with confidence is that there is no implicit uncertainty being expressed in the Greek. Paul is talking about the mechanism of coming to the resurrection state, not questioning its likelihood.

4/ The “Attain” Argument

The Greek underlying “may attain” lacks the “may” or “might” found in some translations that hint at ambiguity. Furthermore, the word itself does not imply effort on the part of the one doing the “attaining”. The vast majority of the time katantaō appears in the NT, it simply means to arrive at a destination. That arrival can be active or passive. Luke uses it often in Acts to describe the act of going from port to port on board ship (“we came to Ptolemais”, “we came to Rhegium”). Nothing could be more effortless than being a passenger on a boat owned and operated by others. Further, in 1 Corinthians, the use of katantaō implies no effort at all. Paul writes, “they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages have come [katantaō]”. There is no question of struggling to “attain” to the end of the ages. It’s catching up with us, folks!

In Summary

All this is not to malign the efforts of particular translators, but to point out the great difficulty of translating some Greek and Hebrew passages into a precise English equivalent. Sometimes there just isn’t one, and any effort to make the text flow and read dynamically — or even intelligibly — allows for possible misunderstandings of authorial intent that have to be dismissed as untenable once we look a little more closely. Whether you recognize one or more of the four difficulties with the English translation identified above, it should be abundantly clear Paul is neither questioning his salvation nor suggesting he might arrive at his eternal destination by performing good works.

I believe the best way to understand this verse in English is as follows:

“… that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. That is the way I want to arrive at the resurrection out of the dead!”

In any case, using this as a proof text for works-based salvation or saved-then-lost is only remotely conceivable in English. No first century Greek would have given those arguments a second thought.