Skeptics of Christianity often claim that early believers didn't believe Jesus had risen, physically, from his grave. They argue that it wasn't until the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD/CE that the emperor Constantine forced Christian leaders to adopt his theology and proclaimed Jesus as God. They do this to undermine the gospels. They do it to put doubts in the minds of believers and non-believers, alike. They think this is a persuasive argument that will convince weak believers to question their faith and non-believers from thinking it's credible.

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This tactic may work for the ignorant and those who won't bother to seek truth for themselves. 

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You see, cynics like to have it both ways. They like to argue for their own twist on scripture while using that same scripture to back it up. But Paul foiled them. In this pivotal passage, the "apostle to the Greeks" listed, in order, the main tenets of the gospel he and his fellow evangelists taught everyone they could reach. He made it clear that "This is what we preach and this is what you believed." He then put it bluntly, "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith... you are still in your sins." (1 Cor 15:14,17).

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In other words, if his body is still in the grave, never mind. We're all cooked, anyhow.

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A creed is a condensed statement of beliefs, packaged in an easy-to-remember stanza, like a poem. Virtually all credible New Testament scholars say that this letter (1 Corinthians) was written in the early -mid 50s, no more than two decades after Christ's death and resurrection. And since in this letter Paul is reiterating what he had taught several years before -- what he had "received" (learned) still earlier than that (probably from Peter and James* around 35-37 AD, just a few years after-the-fact), it's obvious to any honest mind that Jesus' death, burial and bodily resurrection was the exact gospel preached by Paul, Peter, James, John and others from the very beginning. And it's this gospel that exploded across the Roman Empire.

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You go, Paul!.

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Dave