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Gift_from_God
Guest
While I am really confused, I would have said “yes” and then direct them to the local diocese for more information on the Catholic faith
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While I am really confused, I would have said “yes” and then direct them to the local diocese for more information on the Catholic faith
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cradlecatholic5
Guest
From the Ashes777 -
that’s priceless! I guess you did have an issue w/ keeping a straight face!
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zach_dunn
Guest
I think a little over a year ago I got into a debate with a Mormon here on CAF about this very question. I think I was talking to ParkerD . . . I think if you searched for the verse here at Catholic answers that you’d be able to find many threads/posts talking about it.
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Kristin234
Guest
Thank you! I will look into it. I live near a LDS temple so my house is always one of the many houses that the missionaries stop at. They tend to ignore that verse every time I bring it up
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zach_dunn
Guest
I found the thread that we talked about this in: forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=430347Thank you! I will look into it. I live near a LDS temple so my house is always one of the many houses that the missionaries stop at. They tend to ignore that verse every time I bring it up
I know for a fact that it comes up on the fourth page of the thread!
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Anna_Scott
Guest
LemonAndLime,
Just don’t engage. Don’t answer even one question. They have many lines to pull you into a conversation and then they will pursue you even more aggressively. Remember the Mormon god is an exalted man. This is not the God of Christianity. But don’t even get into this argument with them. Just refuse to engage at all.
I was a member of the Mormon Church for a very short time. I left the Church shortly after Baptism, when I discovered what they really believe. This is a pagan religion. Just stay away from them.
Peace,
Anna
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SteveVH
Guest
The way they will answer is that Jesus was talking about getting married in heaven (“For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage…”). They are speaking about their earthly marriages continuing in heaven, rather than marriages taking place in heaven. I started a thread to find out what they think about the wedding feast of the Lamb and His bride, the Church, which is the only “marriage” spoken about that will occur in heaven. As I recall, that thread died pretty fast.
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JillNicole
Guest
I was always under the impression that in heaven, we would all be immeasurably happy. Therefore, if what makes me happy is my family, then they’ll be there, and we’ll all spend a happy eternity in the glory of the Lord. Right?
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RebeccaJ
Guest
Right, we are perfectly united in Christ in heaven. I don’t know of any Christian who conceives of this as lacking in happiness or joy.
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JRKH
Guest
It is true that we will be immeasurably happy in heaven since our wills will be perfectly conformed to God’s Will.
Having been perfected in God, Those in heaven will desire that which God desires in His Love and Justice. Glory for the Holy and the Righteous, damnation for the unrighteous.
Whether our earthly friends and family will be with us in heaven will depend on their faith and how they lived out their faith not simply on what makes us “happy” in an earthly, emotional sense.
Peace
James
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soren1
Guest
Kathleen,
You make an excellent point here. Something that is largely overlooked is dialogue with Mormons is the contrast in how each religion understands the unity of Christians. Mormonism ecclesiology does not have a doctrine of a “mystical body,” but thinks of the church only as an organized whole but not go further by considering it as real unity, that is, literally one body. Consequently, they cannot, on the basis of their ecclesiology, think of a more profound union of human of persons than a biological family, and so it seems to them a great loss that we should cease to be married to our spouses in heaven. If one understands that the divine sonship in which all Christians participate constitutes us as a real family, and that unity in the Holy Spirit is a deeper unity than union in the flesh, than it is impossible to see how the continuation of a marriage would be anything but superfluous. But Mormons don’t get that, so they think continued marriage is necessary for happiness and they interpret the end of marriage in death simply as a loss, with not further context.
One remarkable sign of this blindness in Mormonism is the amazing exegesis the give of Matt 22:30. For them, those who are not married and given in marriage are not the exalted persons in the celestial kingdom, but the less worthy “children of this world” who serve the exalted persons and inhabit the lower kingdoms. This exegesis can be demolished easily, because it does not fit the nature of the argument Christ is making against the Sadducees, but even more simply, it underrates angels. Nowadays, our modern notion of angels is shaped b their depiction on sentimental greeting cards, but biblical angels are heavy duty business. If you look at the glorious and frightening manifestation of the angels to Ezekiel, the power displayed in wiping out the firstborn of Egypt, the presiding role of the angels over heavenly worship of Revelation, etc., one sees that to be “like the angels” is a very big deal. In fact, more than a few observant exegetes have understood that when the Letter to the Hebrews Claims that Christ is greater than angels, it is claiming that he is divine, simply.
In Second Temple Judaism, these things were well understood, and there is no way anyone could here “they will be like the angels” as meaning anything other than achieving the most exalted condition available to a creature. What is Christ is revealing, therefore, is not merely that marriage ends in heaven, but that the end of of marriage constitutes a higher state of life. This is good news. The Sadducees have reveal the carnality of their thoughts, not knowing the scriptures or the power of God, by thinking of the resurrection as a return to the conditions of mortal experience, in which marriage is taken for granted.
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JillNicole
Guest
Ah, that’s what I was looking for. As I typed out my first post I knew that something wasn’t quite right with the way that I was phrasing it. We will be happy because our wills will be the same as God’s.
Matthew 18:18 would lead one to believe that marriage continues in heaven, as it is here on Earth. And it does continue, but in a deeper way that we can’t understand yet, and we’ll be so much happier for it. Cool.
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Big_Dummy
Guest
concerning Matthew 22:29-30, they would simply say that they were not sealed in the temple and thus for them there is no marriage in heaven.
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soren1
Guest
I understand that they will say that, because D&C 132:15-17 interprets Matt 22:29-30 in exactly that way:
*Therefore, if a man marry him a wife in the world, and he marry her not by me nor by my word, and he covenant with her so long as he is in the world and she with him, their covenant and marriage are not of force when they are dead, and when they are out of the world; therefore, they are not bound by any law when they are out of the world.
Therefore, when they are out of the world they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but are appointed angels in heaven, which angels are ministering servants, to minister for those who are worthy of a far more, and an exceeding, and an eternal weight of glory.
For these angels did not abide my law; therefore, they cannot be enlarged, but remain separately and singly, without exaltation, in their saved condition, to all eternity; and from henceforth are not gods, but are angels of God forever and ever.*
The point of my earlier post was to give one reason why this interpretation fails. While Mormons may *assert *that Jesus only speaks of unworthy persons, Catholics can demonstrate that he does not, and that Christ really is teaching what it sounds like he is teaching.
I only gave one of the arguments for this. I pointed out that the Mormon reading requires us to take a much lower view of angels that would have been thinkable for first century Jews. According to D&C 132, being made “like the angels” is a penalty for not abiding God’s law, yet the entire Jewish and biblical notion of angels, as the highest of all created beings (they are even called “elohim” in the Old Testament) clashes directly with this view. To say, “If you don’t get a Temple sealing you only get to be like an angel,” is an un-Jewish type of claim that would have seemed incoherent to Jesus’ hearers, who would only have understood likeness to an angel as a promotion. One must totally ignore biblical teaching about angels to not be struck by this point.
I think that this, as a stand-alone argument, is sufficient, but it might not even be the best reason. Even without knowing about historical and biblical angelology, and just reading the text on its own, one can see that if Jesus is saying what Joseph Smith claims, he is making an illogical, bad argument. The story is that the Saduccees, who deny the resurrection, try to trap Jesus by showing an absurdity in the very notion of resurrection itself: if people are resurrected, and all who have died are alive together again, then those who remarried after the death of a spouse would rise again to a state of polygamy - or polyandry in the example that the Saduccees give. This argument has no reference to who does or does not receive an exaltation - it is an argument against resurrection* as such*. Thus, for Jesus to respond by citing a loophole in a specific example says nothing whatsoever to the actual problem the Saduccees are alleging in Christ’s teaching.
The exact fallacy that Jesus commits on the Mormon reading is non-topicality: he responds to an objection against all resurrection as such by considering one distinct type of resurrection. At best Jesus shows that not all people will be married in the resurrection, but problem that the Saduccees rasie will hold if anyone is married in the resurrection. If the Saduccees understood Jesus’ argument in the way Smith does, then they could refute him easily, by simply pointing out that he has dodged the question, for the same problems would apply in the case of someone who did keep the law. Can anyone really think that the gospels are presenting Jesus - himself the author of the Mosaic law - as dodging such a clear question on the topic of the law itself? Of course, not, yet that is the conclusion that the Mormon interpretation would drive us to.
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josephback
Guest
I think you handled it well. It was probably a way for them to start talking about Mormon beliefs and theology. You cut off the opportunity. Argument is one step closer to Mormonism(or another religion). I say stick with the Truth!
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SteveVH
Guest
I’ve always found it interesting that the Mormon’s I have spoken to seem to think that they are the only faith tradition that believes they will be with their families in heaven. The view seems to be that this is the source of our happiness, however, and that we could not be happy unless we continued in our earthly relationships. The source of our happiness will be the vision of God, face to face, and we will enjoy this vision with our families. We will have an even deeper intimacy with each other, including our spouses, then we could ever have on this earth.
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TheExorcist
Guest
Yes that’s pretty much the vision. That starts to break down though when you have members with a less than ideal marriage who say “wow I get to be criticized by this guy FOREVER?” or “I have to be nagged about the garbage by her FOREVER”. Then you think, “wow Im not sure that WOULD be Heaven”
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RebeccaJ
Guest
Way back when I was a Mormon, there was a ante-faith-promoting story going around, where, the two missionaries knocked on someone’s door and delivered this line (from the OP).
They asked the woman if she were married, she said yes, and then went to the line of “don’t you want to be with your husband forever”. Her reply was along the lines of “why would I want to be with that *** for eternity!?” and slammed the door.
Mormons have an idyllic view of marital relationships in their doctrine and teachings, that doesn’t always line up to reality.
They asked the woman if she were married, she said yes, and then went to the line of “don’t you want to be with your husband forever”. Her reply was along the lines of “why would I want to be with that *** for eternity!?” and slammed the door.
Mormons have an idyllic view of marital relationships in their doctrine and teachings, that doesn’t always line up to reality.
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SteveVH
Guest
Very funny and all too true.
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zaffiroborant
Guest
EVERY SINGLE LDS MISSIONARY that knocks on my door and they come once a year every year, believes this. Who is telling them that no one else believes that they will be with their family in heaven? Some one is teaching all these young people lies about other faiths. I find the uniform understanding of other faiths presented by these missionaries to be absolute proof that the LDS church does indeed spend a considerable effort in teaching mis-truths about other religions in spite of the claims of LDS on this board.
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