What??? Does anyone else find this argument bizarre? You’re arguing that Christ was only talking about the Saducees not marrying in heaven, thus leaving the possibility open to others? That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Let’s keep this simple and read the text for what it really says without forcing it to mean something it clearly does not in order to fit a particular theology. Nobody reading this passage is going to get the idea that Christ is somehow trying to say that the Saducees don’t have celestial marriage but others do. This passage has nothing to do with eternal marriage. The Saducees are trying to trap Christ about the very idea of resurrection and eternal life. They think they can trip Him by posing a dilemma for eternal life. Christ settles it quite easily. Marriage does not exist in heaven, therefore there is no dilemma. You have to do some serious mental gymnastics to force this passage to uphold the LDS idea of celestial marriage.
…The dilemmas created by the LDS belief in eternal marriage are so numerous it would take pages and pages to go through. Suffice it to say that Catholic belief in this area is far simpler and presents none of the LDS problems.
Let’s also not forget that Christ Himself is not married. If any LDS wants to make the arugment that Christ is married, I would love to hear it, but maybe we should just leave it to Dan Brown.
Chris-WA,
The conversation has gone into depth about the seven Sadducees brothers in the hypothetical example given by the Sadducees several times on other threads, so this thread reflects a continuation of one of those conversations. Here is what I had written on an earlier thread about the text in Matthew 22:23-33:
"I want to let anyone reading know that I certainly believe Jesus and have an understanding of His teachings, including being able to diagram a fairly simple paragraph in which the Sadducees introduced a subject to Him, and He used His language with the understood subject being built into the verb as He described the condition in the resurrection (being like angels) of the seven hypothetical Sadducees brothers whom the Sadducees asking the question were referring to with their question.
One diagrams such a paragraph by identifying the subject and thus being able to match that understood subject when a verb is used that has an understood subject, such as the verb “are neither married nor are given in marriage”. In English, the understood subject is rendered to the word “they”, but that is not so in some languages such as the original language of the text. The word “they” in English for that verse, refers directly back to the subject that was introduced by the Sadducees’ question–which subject is the seven Sadducees brothers who didn’t believe in the resurrection, married the same woman after each one died successively, and found themselves being resurrected after all (much to their surprise, of course, since they taught and believed there would be no resurrection)."
The above is not “mental gymnastics”. It is taking grammar and using it to understand the use of an understood subject, “they”.
The Sadducees used their hypothetical example because they thought it would “trap” Jesus because of an existent belief that marriage continues after the resurrection, and they wanted to demonstrate using the Mosaic law, that Moses must not have believed in the resurrection or the law would not have constructed the idea of a brother raising up seed unto his dead brother by marrying a woman whose husband had died.
Jesus used the hypothetical example to specifically answer the Sadducees’ question. Their question had been specific, about “whose wife will she be?” His answer was that all the dead brothers (“they” in English, but an understood subject that is part of the verb conjugation in the original textual language) “neither marry, nor are given in marriage…”
Jesus was not saying anything about other people besides the seven hypothetical Sadducees brothers and their hypothetical wife, but it can be concluded that anyone else who has the qualities of the Sadducees (not believing in Christ, not believing in the resurrection, not believing in eternal covenants, not believing in eternal marriage) will receive a resurrection that is similar to the Sadducees–but this has nothing to do with a believer who is willing and desirous of entering into the eternal marriage covenant. Jesus’ statement was specific, not a generalization about all humankind, at all.
Catholics have their belief about marriage, which is their choice, but Jesus’ teaching about marriage for covenant believers is His citation about the prototypical covenant marriage of Adam and Eve, who were married by God Himself performing the marriage ceremony, and God is an eternal Being and Jesus taught that a covenant marriage should not be “put asunder” by man. This is what Jesus taught about covenant marriages.
I have also previously noted on other threads that Christ would logically not marry because He knew perfectly well that He was going to be killed at a young age, and would logically not bring a wife and children into the predicament of being a young widow or fatherless. Nor did He need marriage to grow in understanding or compassion or awareness–unlike that humankind are given marriage with a directly stated result of being an “help meet” for the man and the woman to grow in the understanding by the many positive benefits of marriage (including having and raising children) compared with being single.
Have a good day.
I have not seen any evidence of any of these beliefs with the Apostles or any of their successors.