But we don't want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who have fallen asleep, so that you don't grieve like the rest, who have no hope.
Paul was about to make an argument for the encouragement of the Thessalonians; but in doing so, he did not introduce the doctrine of the resurrection as anything new, but as something they already knew and believed in.  "Paul assumes their faith and argues from it.  Their vivid and naive belief in Christ's advent within their own lifetime was the very source of their distress."[25] Thus it is certain that faith in the resurrection existed from the very first in Christianity.