describing what belongs to, comes from, or is empowered by the Holy Spirit of God
This is almost entirely Paul's word. Everyday Greek used its parts for wind or breath, and the Old Testament in Greek never used it at all. Paul took it up and made it the standard label for whatever belongs to God's Holy Spirit. The one thread running through all its uses is the Spirit: a gift, a blessing, a song, a person, even a body can be called this because the Spirit gives it, inspires it, or brings it to life.
So the word covers a wide spread. It describes:
- the gifts and abilities the Spirit hands out
- the wisdom and understanding he grants
- the songs the church sings
- the people in whom he lives
It can even describe God's law, which is called this because it comes from God himself. In none of these is the word pointing to something vague or ghostly; it points to something real whose source is God's Spirit.
Two of Paul's uses are easy to misread. When he calls the wilderness food, drink, and rock by this word, he means God supplied them by his own power, not that they were made of some spirit-substance. And when he says the resurrection body will be this kind of body, he means a body fully alive to and governed by the Spirit, not a ghost and not a body made of spirit-material.
Nuances
Whether the resurrection "spiritual body" means a body composed of a refined spirit-material or a body animated and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
- majorityA body animated and transformed by the Holy Spirit, not composed of spirit. The parallel term Paul uses for the present body describes what animates it (the soul or natural life), not what it is made of, so its counterpart must describe what animates the new body rather than its substance.; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT), rev. ed. (2014); Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC) (2000); N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003); James P. Ware, "Paul's Understanding of the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:36-54," JBL 133 (2014)
- minorityA body made of spirit understood as a fine heavenly material, since ancient thought often treated spirit as a refined physical stuff ranked above flesh rather than as the opposite of matter.; Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (1995); Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (2010)