I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
Read Chapter 22
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
He is not the God of the dead. Jesus Christ here proves the resurrection of the body by the immortality of the soul; because in effect these two tenets are inseparable. The soul being immortal, ought necessarily to be one day reunited to the body, to receive therein the recompense or punishment which it has merited in this same body, when it was clothed with it.
By this text St. Jerome refutes the heretic Vigilantius, and in him many of modern date, who to diminish the honour Catholics pay to the saints, call them designedly dead men. But the Almighty is not the God of the dead; of consequence these patriarchs, dead as they are in our eyes as to their bodies, are still alive in the eyes of God as to their souls, which he has created immortal, and which he will undoubtedly have the power of reuniting to their bodies.
The Sadducees were a profane sect, who denied the resurrection of the body, and the existence of angels and spirits, and any future state in another world: (see Acts xxii...
Further, he quotes Moses to explain the eternity of souls: “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,” and immediately he adds, “For he is not the God of the dead but of the living.” Thereby he shows that souls live after death. To say that God is the God of the dead is to consign the life of God to those who have no life. The nature of the resurrection and how it is the resurrection of both the good and the evil is pursued by the apostle Paul more fully in the last part of his first epistle to the Corinthians. .
It is again by Moses that he stops their mouths. It is they who had brought forward Moses. Jesus says, “And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead but of the living.” He is not the God of those who are not, who are utterly blotted out and rise no more. He did not say “I was” but “I am.” I am the God of those that are, those who live. Adam lived on the day he ate of the tree, then died in the sentence. Even though the progeny of Adam died, they live in the promise of the resurrection. How then does he say elsewhere, “That he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living”? But this is not contrary to that. For here he speaks of the dead, who are also themselves to live. Furthermore, “I am the God of Abraham” is another thing from “That he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.” He knew of another death too, concerning which he says, “L...
And again by Moses does He stop their mouths, since they too had brought forward Moses; and He says, But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Not of them that are not His meaning is, and that are utterly blotted out, and are to rise no more. For He said not, I was, but, I am; of them that are, and them that live. For like as Adam, although he lived on the day that he ate of the tree, died in the sentence: even so also these, although they had died, lived in the promise of the resurrection.
How then does He say elsewhere, That He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living? Romans 14:9 But this is not contrary to that. For here He speaks of the dead, who are also themselves to live. And moreover too, I am the God of Abraham, is another thing from, That He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. He knew of another death too, conce...
