But some man will say,.... Or "some one of you", as the Syriac and Arabic versions read; for there were some among them members of this church, that denied the resurrection of the dead, 1Co 15:12 a weak believer indeed may be designed, one of the babes in Christ in this church, that could not digest such strong meat, but had some doubt and difficulties in his mind about this point, though he did not absolutely deny it: but by the manner in which the objections and queries are put, and the sharpness in which the apostle answers them, it looks rather that an infidel as to this doctrine is intended, one of those Epicureans, who said, 1Co 15:32 "let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die"; or some Heathen philosopher, a mere natural man, that rejected this doctrine because not agreeable to his carnal reason, and laughed at it as monstrous and ridiculous:how are the dead raised up?
This query is put, not as though the person merely hesitated, and was in some suspense about this matter, or with a desire to be informed; but as denying the thing, and as objecting to it as a thing impossible, and impracticable; suggesting it could not be, it was a thing incredible that those dead bodies which have been laid in the earth for so many hundred, and some, thousands of years, and have been long ago reduced to dust, and this dust has undergone a thousand forms; that such whose bodies have been burnt to ashes, or destroyed by wild beasts, and digested by them, should ever be raised again.
Such a doctrine must be past all belief:and with what body do they come? out of their graves, as you say, and appear on the earth at the last day: will they come forth with the same bodies, or with other?
with earthly or heavenly ones? mortal or immortal? with bodies different from one another, and from what they now are?