And the seven left no descendants.
Last of all the woman also died.
At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be?
At first the challenge of the Sadducees seems unrelatable. After all, it isn't as though we have laws today where a brother has to marry a woman to ensure descendants for his brother. No one is posing challenges to the idea of the resurrection and insisting that we solve them based only on the five books of Moses. And yet this tactic of the Sadducees is really quite modern. It applies a reductio ad absurdum to the very idea of resurrection, attempting to demonstrate that the concept is too naive and simplistic to hold water when subjected to realistic analysis. This is a still a common tactic among modern skeptics. And the resurrection of the body is still a common target. Wouldn't the earth fill up? Hasn't the matter that composed one person's body been in others by now? Who gets it? The list goes on. Further, modern skeptics also limit the means by which an argument for the resurrection can be made. Those who accept any Scriptures do so only on within a system of self-constructed limits based on an interpretive hermeneutic of suspicion. Supposed later redactions do not receive the same wait as some imagined original underlying authorial intent. Others accept no evidence from Scriptures or indeed anything other than method of scientific experimentation. For them we can refer neither to prophets, nor philosophy, nor logical necessity, nor anything else that cannot be demonstrated in a lab environment.
To all of skeptics ancient and modern Jesus says, "Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?" When we people think they've reduced religion to an absurdity it is because they are thinking as humans, on human terms, with human concepts. They don't have the ability to conceive of what God has prepared for those who love him (see First Corinthians 2:9). The life of the resurrection will not merely be the same but more. It will be qualitatively different, transformed in such a way that many of the current conventions that govern our lives will no longer be appropriate. Marriage was appropriate to ensure the propagation of a species limited by mortality. It was thus an image of the eternity of God, even an icon of it. But once God's own eternity comes to renew and redefine creation the icon will no longer be needed. The portrait on the wall can be remove once the person himself comes to dwell in our midst. Like angels those who rise from the dead will live, not to fight a losing battle against death, but to worship and enjoy the glory of God forever.
As for the dead being raised,
have you not read in the Book of Moses,
in the passage about the bush, how God told him,
I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob?
From the limited point of view of earthly beings Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, seemed to be dead and therefore gone, no longer related to creation or even to God. Many biblical scholars take for granted scientific ideas like creatures being nothing more than matter, like and impose those apparently mature and rational principles on their interpretation of the bible. They end up with confused ideas about Jesus as just another revolutionary fighter against oppression or as nothing more than a teacher of spiritual truths. But this is because they've never let themselves take a serious look at who God really is, and what claims are made about him. They date the books of prophets after their prophecies are fulfilled because to them prophecy is obviously impossible. They can't take seriously the idea of a God who is truly God, with a transcendent perspective, who fills our world of time without being confined within it.
Given the modern scientific sensibilities it may be tempting for us to be ashamed of the Gospel. But if so, let us read what Paul wrote to Timothy:
So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord
But, we ask, how can we avoid it? We are not experts. We have the same limited human intellects as that befuddle the skeptics. And so we do. But we also have the mind of Christ (see First Corinthians 2:16). We ought not to rely only on the merely human. We have no excuse for being deceived because we did not know "the power of God". But perhaps we are only vaguely in touch with that power. If so, let us defer again to Paul:
For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame
the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.
For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice
but rather of power and love and self-control.
Every alternative to the resurrection leads eventually to despair. The modern world is caught up in this despair and only we have the antidote. So we can't hold back because we are ashamed or unprepared. God has given us the key to boldness, equipping us with all we need for the challenges of our times.
for I know him in whom I have believed
and am confident that he is able to guard
what has been entrusted to me until that day.
Maverick City Music - Forever And Ever Amen
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