[mizpeh]

Originally Posted by pelathais

The Sadducees did not believe in the "immaterial self" that you mention. Their view was that apart from God Himself, everything was material and naturalistic.

So, while yes, Jesus' argument didn't go to great lengths in proving the resurrection of the dead, it did use the only part of the Bible that the Sadducees recognized as valid, the Pentateuch, to disprove one of their doctrines.

Pelathais,

Thanks for you comments. I thought the question Jason posed was interesting and was thinking along the same lines as you are but then I went to the comment section of the his blog and the same point was brought up by another poster. Here is Jason's response to it:

"You are right. The Sadducees did not believe man survived death as an incorporeal spirit, or that his body would be resurrected. The problem is that Jesus specifically identified the purpose of His argument as proving the resurrection of the dead, not a continued personal, incorporeal existence after death. I don't see how Jesus’ argument, or proof-text demonstrates that.

Even if we looked at this only as an argument for an incorporeal existence after death, it still doesn’t seem persuasive. Granted, Jesus is God, and no one knows how to better interpret and apply Scripture than its ultimate author—so let Jesus be right and me be wrong. But I cannot help to scratch my head over this.


Imagine that this passage did not exist in the NT. Furthermore, imagine that you are a seminary professor. Imagine that one of your students wrote a paper on the post-death existence of man, cited the same OT passage Jesus cited, and employed the same line of reasoning Jesus employed to argue either for an incorporeal existence after death or the resurrection of the dead. What kind of comments would you make on that paper? I would tell him he was taking the verse out of context, stretching it too far, and that his conclusion did not follow his premises. But we’re not talking about a seminary student’s paper. We are talking about the incarnate God’s use of the OT and reason. One doesn’t critique God’s reasoning abilities or hermeneutics. And yet, the rational powers He gave me cannot make rational sense of His hermeneutic, or argument."