Marriage and Resurrection
Gramps49
Shipmate
in Kerygmania
Luke 20:27-38
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” J
Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”
When my father died, Mom knew she would see him again. When my grandfathers died, bother grandmothers knew they would be reunited with their husbands again. But doesn't this indicate at the time of the resurrection marriages will be immaterial? Will we be reunited with our spouses, let alone families?
Comments
Good questions. My one set of grandparents never saw me so how could they recognise me ?
Many many years ago we decided to have a a chat with a couple of nice Mormon youths. They told us that our marriage was eternal. We didn't become Mormons
Jesus' response is to tell them that they don't understand resurrection, in which we will be transformed to become like the angels, and that will transform all our relationships. The absurdity of the widow and her seven husbands will be nullified in that unspecified new relationship between people who are all brothers and sisters together, children of God and resurrection. How will relationships with spouses change if as well as spouses they're also siblings?
You said
Where does Jesus say we will become like angels. I see him saying that the resurrection makes marriage immaterial because marriage happens before death, not after.
Well, I'll be ...
*Bursts out laughing but manages not to spurt coffee all over computer screen* Love that understated humour!
The apostles knew Moses and Elijah at the transfiguration of Jesus, without ever having met them, so I've always taken that to mean that we'll know and love each other in the afterlife. If we were married in the afterlife that could be a bit confusing for people who've been married to more than one person whilst here.
I'm sure you're right in what you say about "a higher form of related-ness".
I'm not sure this speaks to me as a person who loves their life partner. But then I think it wasn't directed at me but at the Sadducees. Those of us who hope to be reunited with a loved one have, I'm sure, nothing to fear. And even if, say, you have remarried because of the death of your spouse, or for whatever other reason, I'm sure Jesus is not , in this story, telling us to be worried about the future.
"Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew."
I understand that "feet" is a euphemism for genitals.
Ah yes. You wouldn't want anyone looking at your feet. Must get them covered.
No, but they'd have had quite a few G-strings of varying gauge.
And every now and then they'd open the piano lid to get more air on them.
Interesting that you raised this example. Taken literally it would mean that the messenger on the mountains might have to have beautiful feet, by whatever criteria there are for beautiful feet. ISTM far more reasonable to see feet symbolising the bringing of peace, salvation etc. It would not matter if the messenger had ugly, deformed feet.
That is different from the exclusion in Deut 23: 1 "No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. "
So "feet' represents the rest of the body apart from the face!
Those paper things (or thingies as we'd say) are still in use here - they make it easier and a bit cleaner to pick up and gnaw upon the the drumstick.
And taken in the "feet always means genitals" sense, it means they are dragging their nuts on the ground. Which I'm sure was BroJames's point; a sort of reductio.
Well that's a newy - "feet always means genitals". A term used as a euphemism requires the term to have an ordinary meaning as well its euphemism use. So reductio doesn't apply. Terms can be used in different contexts with different meanings .
Yes, that is my f***ing point.
This is a nice board for nice discussions! Be nice!
I'm sure it is possible to disagree over whether "feet" are a euphemism in a particular passage of Scripture without actually moving to DEFCON 1 and launching a full-scale nuclear attack.
Please do not disillusion your Turquoise Host in this matter.
Distressed Hostly Turquoise Fin Submerges
So the text breaks the idea of the commercial and external exchange of goods as being fundamental to marriage. In the life to come, it doesn't matter if one party has sufficient livestock for the deal, and it doesn't matter if the other party is or is not a virgin housekeeper and potential childbearer (which is again based on earthly property concerns - who will inherit property if there are no heirs?)
The text announces freedom for people in relationship from the property/financial concerns which may motivate or stress relationships.
You know, I've heard this quoted for truth all over the place, and I have severe doubts about it. A property deal, in essence? That's the core of marriage?
Coming from where I do, I'd be far more inclined to see the core of marriage as yet another move in the extension of the family (the larger family, not nuclear) into the future. A chess move, if you like. It's about bringing in someone from outside (who depends on matrilocal vs. patrilocal cultures) and thereby (please God) "generating" yet another step into the future for the family--that is, another generation of children. Does property play into it? Yes, because human beings require it to survive, so naturally it's going to stick its nose in. But it's about the babies, from the perspective I inhabit--and I'm speaking in general terms about human marriage as an institution, not about anybody's particular child-free marriage.
You can do property deals all you like without involving women, virgin or otherwise. You can obtain housekeepers, virgin or otherwise, without involving marriage or major property deals. You can have SEX all you like outside of marriage itself, housekeeping, or property deals. But you're going to have a damn hard time advancing the family into the next generation without following an orderly, culturally accepted way of bringing outsiders into the existing family with the goal of generating a new generation of babies. Because those babies ARE the family in its next step, and generally speaking, the family will not be able to claim or even identify them properly if men and women don't marry. If children are born without official paternity, if they are abandoned by one or both parents (which destroys the maternal link as well), if they are raised in orphanages or communal set-ups which deny parental links--the family is basically kaput. So no, I don't think marriage is "esssentially" a property transfer. It's essentially a means of extending the family--at least for the cultures and groups I come from. (one of which is matriarchal)
Rant over.
First, I note that you have altered the verb tense from my comments. I said "were" and "was", referring to what I understand to have been the thinking about marriage in New Testament times. Insofar as I make any claims to what the core of marriage is now, according to the thinking of the current Western world, it is an exchange of internal goods: love, attraction, emotional connection.
Second, you are interpreting "property" as referring to real estate. Property in this sense is much more expansive, including the notion of a "paterfamilias" whose family members are his responsibility and possession. Property in this sense does not only refer to land or stuff: it is a way of organizing relationships. Who belongs to whom? What does "belong" mean?
I agree that in such times and cultures as that in which Jesus was preaching, family was the basic unit of society, not the individual. Marriage was a means of extending the family.
According to L. William Countryman (Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their Implications for Today, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1988) "The ethics of sexual property included an ideal... the ideal defined the household, the fundamental building block of society, as consisting of a male head who possessed one or more women as wives or concubines, and children who would either carry on the family (sons) or be used to make alliances with other families (daughters)." Further, "there is little evidence of significant development in this ethic between the writing of the Torah and the time of Jesus."
Countryman uses this sense of sexual "property" extensively in his book. He summarizes Jesus' response to the Sadduccees : "Jesus answered them by denying that the institution of marriage had any place at all in the life of the resurrection. The family and its internal hierarchy would, of course, fall along with the institution of marriage, leaving no more reason for the levirate law than for the problems it threatened to create."
You'd probably have to read the book to get a better sense of what Countryman means by "property." Crimes against people whose relationships were governed as sexual property were property crimes; for example, adultery was a property crime by one man against another man by taking and vandalizing his property, reducing its value to him. Such crimes fall under the heading of "greed" in the book title.
Or so it seems to me.
Fuck that, say I. Cultures are more complicated than that, PEOPLE are more complicated than that, and while there may exist cultures where women are nothing but property to be bargained by the "true humans" (that is, males), these are to the best of my knowledge few and far between.
Look, let's try this. Instead of referring me to yet another book written by a man, try referring me to a woman's work which shows the same assumptions and belief.
Whatever the songs may say, for most people that's not the case now either. Even in cultures (like the one I inhabit) where young people have for at least the last 250 years been expected to find their own life partners rather than have their parents do it for them, most youngsters grow up instinctively knowing that they are expected to fall in 'lerv' with the sort of person their parents are likely to approve of, welcome into the family and see as suitable parents for the next generation.
This discussion on "marriage as property deal or alternatively NOT" has legs - on the other hand we seem to have come rather a long way from the Sadducees and resurrection. I'll see whether a transfer to Purgatory is in order.
Hostly Fin Submerges
Now, it's not clear to me how much of that influenced the Sadducees and their question, in contemporary Judaism Levirate marriage isn't practiced and it may have already been unusual in the 1st century - though clearly not unknown otherwise the question wouldn't have been asked in that way. But, the question clearly relies on particular social expectations and structures surrounding marriage - and Jesus' answer clearly is that after the resurrection those expectations and structures will be so different that the question has no meaning ... without really describing what the new social structure will be.
It seems to me (admittedly a tangent) that one reason for Levirate marriage was to provide for childless widows, who otherwise might have an ambiguous status (or none) in the O.T. world.
If that didn't work they'd have found another and the core of the dialogue (from the saduccees side at least) would remain the same.
As a 'parodox' it almost works with all her other changing relationships (is Ruth a daughter or a mother).
As an example paradox, abstract leviritical marriage would probably be a slightly poorer choice over other remarriage examples (as everyone involved nominally agrees that the first marriage is the intended one).
I still think it seems a weaker form than other examples you could construct. The one advantage being that it's a command to re-marry.
I wonder if there's a second 'trap' waiting there. Especially given John lost his head for saying the 'wrong' thing about remarriage.
The ideal position from their point of view would presumably be if Jesus said something silly (and pharisaical) from a saduccee point of view and also something unsound from the pharisaical point of view.
Deo gratias.
I am more confident about the former than about the latter! If the resurrected Jesus could and did eat food, how can we be sure that there is no sex in the new heavens and Earth? Whereas inequality in the marriage relationship is represented in Genesis as undesirable and a consequence of the Fall.
Our gender identity is very much a part of our personality.
Genesis tells us God created male and female for companionship, The one is supposed to be the help mate of the other--goes both ways in my book. Now, that purpose will probably be fulfilled in the age to come, but are there still gender roles?