There are those (including some Muslim scholars) who like to drive a wedge between the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection and those of Paul.  ‘Paul,’ they say, ‘never mentions the empty tomb; therefore, he must have believed in a very different kind of resurrection – a ‘spiritual, rather than a physical kind’.  This impression seems to be strengthened by Paul’s insistence that resurrection bodies (of both Christ and others) are ‘spiritual’ rather than ‘fleshly’.

Bultmann famously asserted:

‘The accounts of an empty  tomb are legends, of which Paul as yet knew nothing. (Source)

According to James P. Ware:

‘To be sure, a number of scholars, such as Richard Hays, N. T. Wright, and Anthony Thiselton, argue that Paul’s conception of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, in continuity with the  Gospels and  Acts, involves the resurrection (and glorious transformation to imperishability) of the once-dead body of flesh and bones from the tomb. But the mainstream view in contemporary New Testament scholarship is represented by scholars such as Dale Martin, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, and Marcus Borg, who argue that Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 envisions an heavenly or “spiritual” body which excludes participation of the earthly, mortal body in final salvation.’

Helen Bond (The Historical Jesus: a Guide for the Perplexed) entertains some doubts:

[Paul’s] clear separation of ‘physical bodies’ from ‘raised spiritual bodies’ in 1 Corinthians 15:42–50…seems to reduce the need for an empty grave.

It has been too readily assumed that when Paul says that ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’ he is thereby denying bodily resurrection.  But it is important to note that, for Paul, the resurrection is of the ‘body’ (soma) but not of the ‘flesh’ (sarx).

Ware explains:

‘Central to the readings of Martin, Engberg-Pedersen, and Borg is the assumption that the “spiritual body” (soma pneumatikon) in 15:44–46 refers to a body composed of spirit or pneuma, distinct from the body of flesh laid in the tomb. However, this claim reflects an utter misunderstanding of the actual lexical meaning of the key terms in question. The adjective which Paul here contrasts with pneumatikos (“spiritual”) is not sarkinos (“fleshly ”), cognate with sarx (“flesh”), and thus referring to the flesh, but psychikos (literally “soulish”), cognate with psyche  (“soul”), thus referring to the soul. This adjective outside the New Testament is used, without exception, with reference to the properties or activities of the soul (e.g ., 4 Macc1:32; Aristotle, Eth. nic. 3.10.2; Epictetus, Diatr. 3.7.5–7; Plutarch, Plac. philos. 1.8). Modifying soma (“body”) as here, with reference to the present body, the adjective describes this body as given life or activity by the soul. The adjective has nothing to do with the body’s composition, but denotes the source of the body’s life and activity.’

With regard to the empty tomb, it is true that Paul never explicitly mentions it.  This omission may be merely circumstantial, given the occasional nature of Paul’s writings.  Stein, however, has suggested that the omission is connected with Paul’s own experience and his apologetic concerns: with regard to the resurrection, he could argue on equal terms with the other apostles, for although he had not seen the empty tomb, he had nevertheless seen the risen Lord.  On the other hand, the empty tomb it is ‘almost certainly implied’ (Cranfield) by Paul’s mention of Christ’s having been buried after his death but before his resurrection (1 Cor 15:4; cf. Rom 6:4).

Furthermore, the empty tomb has much less apologetic force than the resurrection appearances.  As Barrett puts it:

‘Faith…would be destroyed by the discovery of the dead body of Jesus, but it cannot be created simply by the discovery of an empty tomb’.  Kreitzer concludes: ‘The reason that the empty tomb is not explicitly discussed in Paul should not be taken as evidence of its historical unreliability, but of its unimportance as a matter of Christian proclamation.’

Or, as this writer puts it:

‘Paul’s audience in Corinth wasn’t doubting Jesus’ resurrection; rather, they were doubting their future resurrections (1 Cor. 15:12-13, 29, etc.). The empty tomb wouldn’t be evidence for the general resurrection that Paul’s audience was doubting. Indeed, an empty tomb is just a by-product of the general resurrection, since it is a bodily event.’

The Book of Acts gives some prominence to the disagreement between the Pharisees and the Sadducees concerning the doctrine of a bodily resurrection (Acts 4:2; 23:6–8; 24:21; cf. Acts 26:6; 28:20).  Now Paul, as a good Pharisee (Phil 3:5; cf. 23:6; 26:5) would certainly have conceived of the resurrection in material terms.

L.J. Kreitzer discusses this in his article on ‘Resurrection’ in IVP’s Dictionary of Paul and his Letters:-

‘It is reasonable to assume that Paul accepted the traditional Pharisaic view of the resurrection of the body and understood his encounter of the risen Lord Jesus Christ in light of it. As Sider states, “as a good first-century Pharisee, Paul could not conceive of the resurrection of the dead in purely immaterial terms”’

Ware concludes:

‘Many scholars today profess to find in 1 Corinthians 15 a conception of the resurrection at variance with the Easter faith evident in the Gospels, the book of Acts, and the historic Christian creeds. However, there is no scholarly or exegetical basis for this conclusion. The specific way in which Paul shapes his argument, the structure of the syntax in which his thought is given expression, and the lexical meaning of his key terms, reveal that he conceived of resurrection as a tangible, physical event involving the body of flesh and bones. In affirming that Jesus has been “raised” (15:4), Paul affirmed the resurrection of Jesus’s crucified body from the tomb. And in affirming that the faithful will be “raised” (15:42–44, 52), Paul affirmed that our present perishable bodies will be endowed, through the power of Jesus’s resurrection, with imperishable life. In 1 Corinthians 15, as in the Gospels and Acts, the resurrection is understood as the miraculous revivification of the mortal body of flesh and bones, and its transformation so as to be imperishable.’