The resurrection of the dead is not a peripheral doctrine but the climax of Christian hope. Paul devoted the longest chapter in his letters to it (1 Corinthians 15), arguing that if there is no resurrection, 'your faith is futile and you are still in your sins' (15:17). Christ's bodily resurrection — the empty tomb, the physical appearances, the eating of fish — establishes the pattern. Believers' resurrection bodies will be related to their current bodies as a plant is to its seed: continuous in identity but radically transformed. Paul describes them as imperishable, glorious, powerful, and 'spiritual' — meaning not immaterial but animated and perfected by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). Daniel 12:2 confirms a double resurrection: 'some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.' Jesus echoed this in John 5:28-29. The early church creeds affirm 'the resurrection of the body' against Gnostic spiritualizing that treated the material world as inherently evil. Christianity does not promise escape from the body but the redemption of the whole person — body and soul — for eternity.