Saying, Teacher, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up children unto his brother.
All Commentaries on Matthew 22:24 Go To Matthew 22
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Saying, Master, &c. Seed, i.e, posterity, a Song of Solomon , as the Syriac translates, who should be called after the name of the dead, that so the dead man might seem still to survive in him. This law is found in Deuteronomy 25:5.
The Sadducees expected by this question to confound Christ. For if He should say the woman was the wife of one of the men, it would incite the other brothers to wrath, and envy, and perpetual strife, since there was no reason why she should be given to one more than another. For the first husband, who might seem to have had the best right to her, lost his right by death. If, on the other hand, Christ had said that she was the wife in common of all the seven, they would have accused Him as a teacher of shameful doctrine and public incest. It was as though they said, "Such are the absurdities which follow from the doctrine of the Resurrection. Thou therefore, 0 Christ, ought not to assert it. And thus your silly followers imagine, in their stupidity, that you are wise." Then Christ, by a word, brushes aside their fallacy, as it were a spider"s web, and shows them their ignorance, by adding what these men with their crass and carnal minds never took into consideration, namely, that in the world to come this widow would be no one"s wife at all.
Know not the Scriptures, which clearly declare the Resurrection, as Job 19:25; Job 19:2 Macc7:9 et seq. and2Macc12:44; Isaiah 26:19 and Isaiah 66:14; Ezekiel 37:1, Ezekiel 37:9; Daniel 12:12, &c.
The power of God; Gr. δÏναμις. He means, "Ye know not that God is omnipotent, and therefore can raise to life again the bodies which have been reduced to dust, even as He created them out of nothing at the beginning. For greater power is required to create a thing out of nothing than to raise it from the dead." Christ here touches upon the double root of the Sadducean error. The first was ignorance of the Scriptures, which clearly teach the Resurrection. The other was ignorance, or want of consideration, of the omnipotence of God. This caused them to interpret the Scriptures which treat of the Resurrection as referring to a mystical resurrection from vice to virtue.
In the Resurrection, i.e, in the world to come, in Heaven, and celestial bliss. Nor are given in marriage; for women who are good and modest do not choose husbands for themselves, but are given to husbands by their parents.
But they shall be as the angels, &c. The blessed in Heaven after the Resurrection shall be like the angels, not by nature, but, 1 , by purity; 2 , by spiritual life, for they live by spiritual not corporeal food; 3 , by incorruption and immortality; 4 , by happiness and glory, in which, like the angels, they will continue for all eternity. Wherefore there will be no need then of marriage and generation; for these things have been instituted for the perpetuation of the race and the individual, by means of children. Because the father is mortal, therefore he begets a Song of Solomon , that after death he may live and continue in his son. But in Heaven there shall be no death, and they shall live for ever. Marriage, therefore, and procreation of children would be without an object there. Wherefore S. Luke adds ( Luke 20:35), Neither can they die any more. Appositely says S. Augustine (Qust. Evang. in Luke 20:35), "Marriage is for the sake of children, children for the sake of succession, succession on account of death. Where, therefore, death is not, marriage is not."
S. Luke adds, And they are the sons of God, being the sons of the Resurrection. Blessed are they that rise again; they shall be like God both in body and soul; for they shall he spiritual, glorious, immortal, and eternal as God Isaiah , forasmuch as they are born the sons of the Resurrection, and are born again to a blessed and endless life, wherefore they shall neither need nor delight in the procreation of children.
From this passage Auctor Imperfecti teaches that chastity is the most angelic of all the virtues. The angels know not by experience the meaning of lust. And S. Cyril of Jerusalem (Cat12) calls "virginity the conversation of angels and the purity of incorporeal nature." Wherefore S. Basil (de Virginit79) teaches that virginity is the seed of future incorruption; yea, that virgins anticipate here, and begin that future likeness with the angels in Heaven, and desire to be rewarded with its perfection there, by constant struggling with and victory over the flesh here. S. Basil adds that chastity makes us like not only to the angels, but to God Himself. "How great and glorious a thing," saith Hebrews , "is virginity, which makes a corruptible man most like unto God, that he should receive the similitude of God in himself, as in a most clear mirror, from God Himself, with His favours flowing unto him after the manner of a most sweet ray (of light)!"
Elegantly and piously saith S. Bernard, "What is more beautiful than chastity, which makes clean what hath been conceived unclean, which makes a servant of an enemy, and, in short, an angel of a man? For a chaste man differs from an angel only in felicity, not in virtue. Although the chastity of the one has more happiness, the chastity of the other is stronger. Chastity stands alone in this—that in the place and time of mortality it represents the state of immortality. In the midst of marriage rites, it alone asserts the customs of that blessed country, in which they neither marry nor are given in marriage, affording here on earth some experience of that celestial converse."
Lastly, from this place S. Hilary, S. Athanasius (Serm3 , cont. Arian), S. Basil (in Psalm 114v.), S. Jerome (in Ephesians 4:13), upon the words, "until we all come . . . to a perfect Prayer of Manasseh ," seem to assert that after the Resurrection, in Heaven, there will be no female sex, as there is none in the angels, so that all females will be changed into males, and rise again in the male sex. S. Augustine testifies that many held this opinion in his own day (de Civit. xxii19).
But S. Augustine himself teaches the contrary. So does S. Chrysostom in this passage and Tertullian (lib. de Resurrect.), also S. Jerome and the Scholastics, passim. The a priori reason Isaiah , that the female sex is not a defect (vitium), but a natural condition. It existed in a state of innocence in Paradise. For Eve was created by God to be "the mother of all living," as Adam was created a man. Now, in the Resurrection the same nature shall rise again altogether in every one whatsoever; and with this the difference of sex has much to do. Sex, therefore, shall then remain, lest different individuals, different men from what they were in this life, should seem to rise again. The same thing is clear from the words of Christ. They neither marry nor are given in marriage. They neither marry, spoken of males, nor are given in marriage, of females. Christ, therefore, so far from denying, presupposes that there will then be females; but in such manner that sex will not be used for the purposes of marriage and generation. And this is what is to be understood as the meaning of the Fathers above cited, who seem at first to hold a different opinion.
