Virgil, et al., you have presented a very detailed argument, and this may appear to be a rather inadequate response; but I hope it will at least give an idea of where I think the thorough-going preterist argument does not work.

I remain persuaded that the New Testament expresses the realistic expectation, first, that those who die with Christ will be raised to reign with him at the parousia, and secondly, that there will be a final resurrection of all the dead, when all people will be held accountable for what they have done. I don’t think that this can be reduced to a metaphorical statement about the restoration of Israel and the renewal of the covenant.

I agree that in 1 Thess. 4:13-18 Paul is not attempting to describe what their resurrection is ‘going to be like’. The issue is whether those still alive may have hope for those who have died. Your reference to 1 Corinthians 15:15-19 at this point is apt.

Paul here unequivocally connects the Parousia (the coming Presence of Christ) with the resurrection of the dead.  The two cannot be theologically and prophetically separated.

I agree with this, but I do not think that Paul has in mind a final resurrection of all the dead at this point. It is a limited resurrection, perhaps of the martyrs, perhaps of those who have simply died in Christ, closely associated with the public vindication signified by the parousia motif. So it remains part of a foreseeable future.

Andrew is polemically connecting the word “real” to the word “physical.”

No, that’s not the case. By ‘real’ I mean that the person who died has a realistic expectation of participating in the vindication that is promised. We could use the word ‘bodily’ instead (cf. the sōma pneumatikon of 1 Cor. 15:35-50), but that still doesn’t quite get the point, which is that we have here a personal resurrection, not a metaphor. It is ‘real’ as opposed to conceptual or metaphorical, not ‘real’ as opposed to immaterial.

Unfortunately for whatever reason, the definite articles were left out in the English translation: the death, the sin, and the law.  There is a specific death, sin and Law referenced by Paul here, the death being the ultimate archenemy of God throughout the Biblical narrative…

I’m not sure I see the point that you are trying to make here. It is common for abstract nouns to take the article in a generic sense, without reference to an individual or specific instance.

Isaiah 25 is problematic because the LXX and MT diverge from each other and from Paul. I accept that 1 Corinthians 15:51-57 could – perhaps should – be placed within a narrative about the renewal of Israel’s covenant with YHWH. However, as I have just said, I think that the New Testament envisages a ‘real’ resurrection of the faithful dead at the culmination of this renewal, when Jesus and those who have suffered with him are vindicated before the throne of God and inherit the ‘kingdom’ or reign that is given to the saints of the Most High. So 1 Corinthians 15:50-55 describes the same two-level participation in the parousia that we have in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18: those who sleep shall be raised from the dead in the same manner that Jesus was raised from the dead, and the rest will be transformed, because ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable’ (1 Cor. 15:50).

To suggest that in 1 Corinthians 15:35-50 Paul is speaking of the ‘resurrection’ of the people, of a corporate body, makes nonsense of his argument. He answers the question ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ not by differentiating between individual and corporate bodies (he doesn’t say, ‘Don’t be stupid, I’m talking about a corporate body here!’) but by arguing for different modes of bodily existence. Christ is not presented as a corporate figure, rather those who are in Christ will bear the image (eikonia) of the man of heaven: they will share in his story. The same thought is found in Romans 8:29: those who suffer are ‘predestined to be conformed to the image (eikonos) of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren’. To have a close identification with Christ does not automatically entail the idea of incorporation.

The argument, moreover, arises out of Paul’s protestation that he risks death every day. ‘What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus?’ (15:32). It is the same concrete dilemma that he expresses in Philippians when he speaks of his preference to depart and be with Christ (Phil. 1:21-24; see also 3:10-11), or in 2 Corinthians 5 when, after recounting his extreme physical sufferings, he expresses his desire to put on his ‘heavenly dwelling… so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life’. I just don’t see how we can read this in any other way than as the expectation of a personal resurrection life or life with Christ in heaven following the parousia. He is not talking about the community here.

When the verse should be translated as, “the last enemy is being abolished (or destroyed), the death” we see it repeatedly translated with a future tense “the last enemy that will be abolished is death.” NET, ESV and NLT even switch to an infinitive.

Yes, katargeitai is present tense, but two things. First, Blass and Debrunner describe a ‘futuristic present’, not unknown in classical Greek, and often used in the New Testament for prophecies: for example, Mark 9:31: the Son of man ‘is handed over (paradidotai) into the hands of men, and they will kill him’. This is not the same as the ‘gnomic present’. (Nor does it mean, of course, that every present tense has a future aspect.) Secondly, 1 Corinthians 15:26 is part of an argument, not a free-standing assertion. In conjunction with verse 25 it looks very much like a future statement: it is necessary for him to reign until he has put all enemies under his feet – a quotation from Psalm 110, which also has a very clear future orientation.

…why is Paul using present passives throughout 1 Cor. 15 when referring to both dying and also resurrecting…

Paul does not state that the ‘dead ones are being raised’ – that is a translation choice that you have made. The Greek does not force the continuous sense. The present statements about resurrection are part of Paul’s response to the question he raises in verse 12: ‘…how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?’ This is a question about a general premise and is quite properly expressed in present tense verbs (as in RSV). It is not a question about whether the dead are actually being raised now. It is about whether the whole notion of resurrection is credible at all, presumably reflecting the sort of pagan scepticism that Paul encountered in Acts 17:32.

The new covenant prophesied about in Jeremiah 31, which is what is being quoted here, will be instituted after his enemies will be made a footstool for his feet – should we understand that the death is not included, if the defeat of a physical death is yet future? Are all enemies defeated, except the death?  Where does that leave this new covenant that is written on our hearts and minds? 

Don’t see the problem here. The passage does not say that the new covenant ‘will be instituted after his enemies will be made a footstool for his feet’. The quotation from Jeremiah is applied to the ‘single offering’ by which he has ‘perfected for all time those who are sanctified’, which is the ‘single sacrifice for sins’ of verse 12. It precedes the exaltation and the wait until his enemies are destroyed. There is actually no reference to a last enemy here: as in Psalm 110 the enemies are those who oppose the faithful people of God.

So the new covenant is first established in Christ’s death; then Christ is raised to the right hand of God and waits until all his enemies have been destroyed. Within the narrative about the restoration of Israel and the vindication of the persecuted community, that victory comes – let us say, provisionally – in the defeat of paganism and the acknowledgement of Christ’s ‘kingdom’. For the martyrs who are raised at this moment, this is a victory over death – death will no longer have dominion over them (cf. Rev. 20:6) – but that is not the point that is being made in Hebrews 10.

That is the main story that is being told in the New Testament. But it seems to me that this possibility of a victory over death invites the thought that death will eventually be destroyed for all humanity, indeed for the whole of creation. This is what Paul argues in Romans 8: in the vindication of the Sons of God creation sees the potential for its own escape from the bondage to decay.