justinangel
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vs. 27 "He" refers to Christ.
vs. 29 "We'' refers to the church.
''I" throughout refers to Paul. "You" throughout, to his readers, the church.
vs. 28 "They" refers to ?
I believe it refers to practitioners of paganism. The whole passage is an argument in support of resurrection of the dead, not baptism for the dead. It is as if he were saying to his detractors that even the pagans believe in resurrection.
If Christ be not risen from the dead, our faith is in vain. And if you can pay for your own sins and thereby reconcile yourself to God, Christ died in vain.
Nevertheless, Paul is alluding to a church ceremony that was a custom among baptized Christians, probably to the prayers and penitential works performed by the early Christians for the benefit of the faithfully departed souls. He is addressing the church at Corinth, his "brethren", not any alleged detractors. Certainly Paul wouldn't make any argument of the resurrection from a pagan custom that neither he nor the Church would approve of. Nor would he ignore the opportunity of admonishing Christians at Corinth who incorporated a pagan belief and custom in the faith if that were the case. Thus "They" is synonomous with "I" and "We".
Meanwhile, Christ paid for our sins by making eternal satisfaction to the Father. He atoned for the eternal penalty. We, on the otherhand, are required to make satisfaction for temporal penalties. When we sin, we must repair our relationship with God and re-establish the equality of justice and friendship with God. David acknowledged this personal obligation after he committed two mortal sins, and so he wrote in Psalm 116: "What shall I render to the Lord for all his bounty to me?" Our relationship with God is one between a father and his children, not judge and defendants.
The early Church (East and West) believed in the existence of purgatory, which was not an invention of the Roman Catholic Church in the 4th century.
"Accordingly, the believer, through great discipline, divesting himself of the passions, passes to the mansion that is better than the former one, viz.,to the greatest torment, taking with him the characteristic of repentance for the sins he has committed after baptism. He is tortured then still more -- not yet or not quite attaining what he sees others to have acquired. Besides, he is also ashamed of his transgressions. The greatest torments, indeed, are assigned to the believer. For God's righteousness is good, and His goodness is righteous. And though the punishments cease in the course of the completion of the expiation and purification of each one, yet those have very great and permanent grief who are found worthy of the other fold, on account of not being along with those who have been glorified through righteousness."
St. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 6:14 (A.D. 202)
And the early Church prayed for the poor souls of the faithfully departed.
"A woman is more bound when her husband is dead ... Indeed, she prays for his soul, and requests refreshment for him meanwhile, and fellowship with him in the first resurrection; and she offers her sacrifice on the anniversary of his falling asleep."
Tertullian, On Monogamy 10 (A.D. 216)
I'm afraid the so-called Protestant reformers over 1, 300 years later unauthoritatively removed Maccabees, Sirach, and Ruth from the canon of Scripture because of their rejection of the traditional doctrine of purgatory which failed to square with their mistaken idea of being saved by faith alone and the forensic imputation of Christ's alien righteousness on the believer. Contrary to what you assert, the Roman Catholic Church, notably the Council of Trent, did not include these OT texts to defend her traditional beliefs and practices in the wake of opposition.
Abericus by name, I am a disciple of the chaste shepherd ... He taught me faithful writings ... These words, I Abericus, standing by, ordered to be inscribed. In truth, I was in the course of my seventy-second year. Let him who understands and believes this pray for Abericus.
Inscription of Abericus (A.D. 190)
PAX
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