The Resurrection Body and the Third Glory: Answers to Five Questions on 1 Corinthians 15:35–41

Christos Fellowship companion essay (below) to “‘Bodies Telestial’: 1 Corinthians 15:35–41 in the Joseph Smith Translation.”

Thomas Lee Abshier, ND | 08 October 2026

1. The seed and the plant: what carries over, and what changes?

Paul’s analogy works both ways. A farmer does not plant a wheat stalk; he plants a bare kernel. Yet what comes up is wheat, not barley. “To every seed his own body” (v. 38). The plant is the same living thing as the seed, and it looks nothing like it.

What carries over is the person. The one who rises is the one who died. Paul’s whole argument depends on this: if Christ did not rise in the body that was buried, the faith is vain (vv. 13–17). The risen Jesus is the clearest example of this continuity. The tomb was empty, so the same body was raised, not replaced. He told the disciples, “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39). He ate fish in front of them. He still carried the wounds of the cross (John 20:27). His identity, his history, and even his scars came through.

What changes is the body’s mode of life. Paul lists four contrasts in verses 42–44:

sown in corruption, raised in incorruption;
sown in dishonour, raised in glory;
sown in weakness, raised in power;
sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body.

“Spiritual body” (sōma pneumatikon) does not mean a body made of spirit, as if it were a ghost. The present body is called psychikon, literally “soulish.” That does not mean it is made of soul. It means the body is animated by ordinary natural life. In the same way, the raised body is animated and governed wholly by the Spirit of God. It is still a body, but no longer subject to decay, fatigue, or death. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption” (v. 50). The problem is not that the body is material. The problem is that it is mortal. Paul’s summary is “this corruptible must put on incorruption” (v. 53). The image is of something put on over what remains, not of a swap.

The risen Jesus also shows the change. He was sometimes not recognized at first (Luke 24:16; John 20:14). He appeared in a locked room (John 20:19). So the seed analogy holds on both sides: the same person, in a transformed body. Paul says Christ “shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Phil 3:21).

2. Does verse 41 teach degrees of glory?

What the verse itself says. Read in context, verse 41 is not mainly about rewards. Paul builds his case from creation: God already makes many kinds of bodies, each with its own splendor. Flesh differs from flesh, earthly bodies differ from heavenly ones, and even the stars differ from one another. So it is no strain for the same God to give the resurrected a kind of body different from the one buried. Verse 42 begins, “So also is the resurrection of the dead,” and what follows contrasts the sown body with the raised body, not a ranking of the raised.

What the wider New Testament teaches. Still, the idea of differing reward among the saved is well grounded elsewhere:

“The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works” (Matt 16:27).
In the parable of the pounds, one faithful servant receives ten cities and another five (Luke 19:17–19).
A believer’s work built on Christ will be tested by fire. If it burns, “he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire” (1 Cor 3:12–15).
Daniel, whom Paul may well have had in mind, uses the same celestial imagery: “they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever” (Dan 12:3).

So a fair reading is that verse 41 does not teach degrees of reward, but it fits naturally with passages that do.

How this differs from the LDS three kingdoms. The biblical picture places differences of reward within one people. They are all saved through Christ, all in one kingdom, and all with him. Differences in reward follow faithfulness, but the dividing line between life and condemnation remains one.

The LDS doctrine of Doctrine & Covenants 76 is different in kind, not just in degree. It describes three separate kingdoms:

Celestial: for those who received the testimony of Jesus and the ordinances of the gospel.
Terrestrial: for honorable people blinded by men’s craftiness or not valiant in their testimony.
Telestial: for those who did not receive the gospel or the testimony of Jesus. This includes the liars, sorcerers, adulterers, and whoremongers named in D&C 76:103, after they have suffered for their sins.

Nearly everyone ends up in some degree of glory. Only a small group, the “sons of perdition,” is excluded. Later LDS teaching holds that the highest level within the celestial kingdom also requires temple ordinances, including eternal marriage. The three kingdoms are therefore not rewards to faithful servants of one Master. They are separate destinies for believers, the morally decent, and the unrepentant, and most of these are saved apart from faith in Christ in this life. That is a different structure of salvation from what the New Testament describes, and verse 40 had to be revised to support it.

3. Translation, or adding to the text?

Proper translation. Every translation adds words in some sense. Greek and English do not line up word for word. A translator supplies “is” where Greek omits it, chooses between possible meanings, and smooths out the grammar. The KJV translators carefully printed these added words in italics so readers could see what was theirs. The test is not whether a word was added. The test is whether the translator faithfully carries over what the original says and is open about the choices he makes.

What the JST is. The Joseph Smith Translation does not claim to be a translation in that sense. Joseph Smith worked from an English King James Bible, not from Greek or Hebrew manuscripts. He presented his changes as restorations, by revelation, of material that had been lost or corrupted. That is a claim about history: that Paul originally wrote “telestial” and later dropped the word. Claims about history can be checked against evidence. The oldest surviving copy of 1 Corinthians 15 is in Papyrus 46, dated to around AD 200. It has two categories, as do all other manuscripts and early translations. Nothing supports a three-part original. The added word also cannot be translated back into Greek, because no such Greek term existed.

The scriptural warnings. Use the verses in the question carefully. Revelation 22:18–19 strictly concerns “the words of the prophecy of this book,” that is, Revelation itself. Proverbs 30:6 (“Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar”) and Deuteronomy 4:2 state the general principle. God’s word is not ours to improve. Anyone who puts his own words into God’s mouth is a liar, whatever his intentions.

A workable standard has three parts:

A rendering must be answerable to the manuscripts.
A translator’s supplied words must clarify what is there, not introduce what is not there.
Where a reading depends on a later revelation rather than the text, it should be honestly labeled as such, not printed as though Paul wrote it.

In fairness, the LDS church still uses the KJV as its official English Bible. It prints JST changes as footnotes and appendix material. Leonard’s version, which merges the change silently into the verse, is less transparent than the church’s own practice.

4. Why a three-tier afterlife appeals, and what Jesus taught

The appeal is understandable. Most of us know kind, honest people who do not believe. A stark division between heaven and hell feels to many people as though it treats a decent neighbor and a murderer alike. A graded afterlife answers that discomfort. It promises that nearly everyone will be saved to some degree, that justice will be proportional, and that no one we love is truly lost. It also seems to reward effort in a way people can measure. These are serious moral intuitions, and we should answer them with care rather than dismiss them.

What Jesus taught. Jesus’ teaching holds two things together.

First, the final division is one division with two outcomes. “When the Son of man shall come in his glory… he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats” (Matt 25:31–32). “They that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:29). There is no middle kingdom for the honorable but unconvinced. In Matthew 25, the line runs through how people treated “the least of these my brethren,” the same test as loving your neighbor.

Second, judgment is proportional on both sides of that line. The faithful receive different rewards (Question 2). The condemned are judged according to what they knew: “that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself… shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not… shall be beaten with few stripes” (Luke 12:47–48). “It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you” (Matt 11:22).

So the intuition behind the three-tier system is partly correct. God’s justice is proportional, and the one who knew little is not judged as the one who knew much. The error is in turning proportion into a set of separate salvations. Scripture places the decent unbeliever’s hope not in a lesser glory but in the justice and mercy of a God who “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4) and who alone judges the heart.

5. What the resurrection body means for our bodies now

If God intended to discard the body, it would matter little what we did with it. Two opposite errors have grown from that assumption. One despises the body as a prison, and the other indulges it because it does not last. Paul answered both errors in this same letter. “The body is… for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power” (1 Cor 6:13–14). Because the body will be raised, what we do with it now matters. It is “the temple of the Holy Ghost… therefore glorify God in your body” (6:19–20).

Several practical consequences follow:

Stewardship, not ownership. “Ye are not your own” (6:19). Caring for health, rest, and strength serves the Lord, who will raise this body. Neglecting or abusing the body dishonors him.
Sexual integrity. Paul’s argument against sexual immorality in chapter 6 rests directly on the resurrection. What will be raised should not be joined to what God forbids.
Care for the sick, weak, and dying. If the body awaiting resurrection is the same body, then the bodies of the disabled, the elderly, and the dying are not lesser things. Tending them is tending what God intends to glorify. The seed sown “in weakness” is still seed.
Proportion. “Bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things” (1 Tim 4:8). The body matters, but it is not to be worshipped. Its glory is still to come, so we do not try to achieve it here by vanity or by fear of aging.
Hope in labor. Paul ends the whole chapter not with speculation about kingdoms but with an instruction: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (15:58). Work done in the body, for the Lord, carries forward into the resurrection, just as the seed carries forward into the plant.

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version.

“Bodies Telestial”: 1 Corinthians 15:35–41 in the Joseph Smith Translation

Christos Fellowship discussion handout. Text brought by Leonard.

The passage

Paul answers two questions: how the dead are raised, and with what body they come. He answers with a seed analogy. The seed dies, and God gives it a new body suited to it (vv. 36–38). He then lists different kinds of flesh (v. 39), different kinds of body (v. 40), and different kinds of glory among the sun, moon, and stars (v. 41).

The one changed verse (v. 40)

King James Version (1611)	Joseph Smith Translation (c. 1832)
There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.	Also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial, and bodies telestial; but the glory of the celestial, one; and the terrestrial, another; and the telestial, another.

Verses 35–39 and 41 are unchanged apart from modernized wording in the version Leonard found.

Background

The Greek has two terms only. The terms are epouránia (heavenly) and epígeia (earthly). No Greek manuscript or early version contains a third category.
“Telestial” is a coined word. It first appears in LDS scripture. It comes from Joseph Smith’s February 1832 vision of three “degrees of glory,” now Doctrine & Covenants 76, which names celestial, terrestrial, and telestial kingdoms.
The edit harmonizes the text with that vision. Joseph Smith was revising the Bible during the same months. LDS teaching links the three kingdoms to the sun, moon, and stars of v. 41 and to Paul’s “third heaven” in 2 Cor 12:2.
Paul’s own structure is a contrast between two bodies. Verses 42–44 spell it out: sown perishable, raised imperishable; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. In this reading, the sun, moon, and stars in v. 41 illustrate how God gives each thing its own glory. They are not a map of ranked heavenly kingdoms.

Questions for discussion – See Above

The seed analogy implies that the raised body is continuous with the sown body, yet different from it. What carries over, and what changes?
Does v. 41 support differences of reward or glory in the resurrection? Compare Matt 16:27, Luke 19:17–19, and 1 Cor 3:12–15. If so, how does that differ from the LDS doctrine of three kingdoms?
Where does legitimate translation end and adding to the text begin? What standard should we apply (see Rev 22:18–19; Prov 30:6)?
Why might a three-tier afterlife appeal to people? How does it compare with what Jesus taught about judgment (Matt 25:31–46; John 5:28–29)?
What does Paul’s teaching on the resurrection body mean for how we treat our bodies now?

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