Question for Mormons

[Tony_Souza]

Before I ask my question, I feel I need to be very clear about something. I have seen a number of threads here about Mormonism, and I know there are a number of good Mormons on here who like to post. Sadly, many of these threads quickly degenerate to hurling insults and belittling each other’s positions. The guilty parties are Catholic and Mormon alike. I would like to have a civil conversation, where ideas are discussed on their merits, and without acting like twelve year olds. We can argue, debate, and discuss with each other and still be respectful.

That being said, here is my question. It is my understanding, someone correct me if I am wrong, that the Latter Day Saints believe that in marriage a man and a woman are “bound for time and all eternity.” This bond continues into the next life, forever. So how do you interpret Mark 12:25, which says, “For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven?” (KJV)

 

[Techno2000]

Before I ask my question, I feel I need to be very clear about something. I have seen a number of threads here about Mormonism, and I know there are a number of good Mormons on here who like to post. Sadly, many of these threads quickly degenerate to hurling insults and belittling each other’s positions. The guilty parties are Catholic and Mormon alike. I would like to have a civil conversation, where ideas are discussed on their merits, and without acting like twelve year olds. We can argue, debate, and discuss with each other and still be respectful.

That being said, here is my question. It is my understanding, someone correct me if I am wrong, that the Latter Day Saints believe that in marriage a man and a woman are “bound for time and all eternity.” This bond continues into the next life, forever. So how do you interpret Mark 12:25, which says, “For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven?” (KJV)

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=394758

 

[ParkerD]

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=394758

Techno 2000,
Thanks for remembering that thread, since it saves a lot of time for Tony Souza to read that thread and then ask questions after that.

Tony Souza,
I hope that thread answers your question, and that you will find it was a respectful conversation. Your question is extremely important, so if that thread leaves you still wondering, then I’ll check back here once in a while and others may also and hopefully you will have a perspective that gives you a new insight.

Have a splendid day.

 

[Tony_Souza]

Thanks guys. I didn’t realize there was already a preexisting thread.

 

[Lehi]

Hi Tony. In addition to the link that was provided, I’d like to provide you with some additional information about this. The following is a commentary by non-LDS NT scholar Ben Witherington. The link below is to a post in my personal blog, in which I provide links to more apologetic resources on this issue.

The case put forward by the Sadducees is particularly extreme. Not only had six brothers attempted and failed to impregnate the woman in question, but she had also outlived them all and was single when she died. It is perhaps this last fact which prompts the question: Whose spouse will she be in the resurrection? …Jesus stresses that in the age to come people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not say there will be no marriage in the age to come. The use of the terms “γαμουσιν” (gamousin) and “γαμιζονται” (gamizontai) is important, for these terms refer to the gender-specific roles played in early Jewish society by the man and the woman in the process of getting married. The men, being the initiators of the process in such a strongly patriarchal culture, “marry,” while the women are “given in marriage” by their father or another older family member. Thus Mark has Jesus saying that no new marriages will be initiated in the eschatological [resurrection] state. This is surely not the same as claiming that all existing marriages will disappear in the eschatological state. Jesus, then, would seem to be arguing against a specific view held by the Sadducees about the continuity between this life and the life to come, a view involving the ongoing practice of levirate marriage. In the eschatological state we have resurrected beings who are no longer able to die. Levirate marriage existed precisely because of the reality of death. When death ceases to happen, the rationale for levirate marriage falls to the ground as well. When Jesus says…that people will be like the angels in heaven in the life to come, he does not mean they will live a sexless identity (early Jews did not think angels were sexless in any case; cf. Gen. 6:1–4!), but rather that they will be like angels in that they are unable to die. Thus the question of the Sadducees is inappropriate to the conditions of the eschatological state…In Mark 10 Jesus grounded normal marriage in the creation order, not in the order of the fall, which is the case with levirate marriage (instituted because of death and childlessness and the need to preserve the family name and line). Thus Jesus is intending to deny about the eschatological state “that there will be any natural relation out of which the difficulty of the Sadducees could arise.”

     Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2001)328.

lehislibrary.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/matt-22-eternal-marriage-some-ideas/