Meditations in Matthew Twenty-two: A Resurrection Challenge

On Tuesday of Passion Week, the Sadducees challenged Jesus regarding his doctrine of the resurrection (Matt 22:23–33). Their belief “that there is no resurrection” (Matt 22:23) is well known.

Jesus’s response to the Sadducees is of vital importance to our prophetic model. Inmillennialism is a preteristic view of prophecy. “Preterism” comes from a Latin word meaning past. Some preterists, like the Sadducees, deny a future physical resurrection. We wish to clear our prophetic model of this error.

Preterism and the Resurrection

Preterists teach that Jesus linked his second coming to the Temple’s demise. They use the Olivet Discourse (Matt 24–25; Mark 13; Luke 21:5–38) to do so. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus mentioned his “coming” eleven times in this passage. In four of these, he used the Greek word parousia (Matt 24:3, 27, 37, 39). In the others, he used erchomai six times (Matt 24:30, 42, 46, 48; 25:6, 27) and hēkō once (Matt 24:50). In all these passages, Jesus connected his “coming” to the destruction of the Temple in his generation (Matt 24:1–3, 34).

Many preterists do not distinguish between these words. This failure makes their conclusions about the resurrection resemble those of the Sadducees. The following observations show why this is true.

The resurrection would occur at the second coming of Christ (e.g., 1 Cor 15:23). This event would occur when the Temple fell. (This happened in AD 70). The resurrection would occur at the same time. We will use the term full preterists to describe persons who reach this conclusion.

A few full preterists argue for a physical resurrection in the first century. We will not engage their arguments, but make a single observation—they produce no historical evidence for their belief. 

Most full preterists take another approach. They define the resurrection as something other than the raising of physical bodies. The resurrection of the saints will not, they say, resemble Christ’s resurrection. No empty tombs resulted from their supposed AD 70 resurrection. 

This is an unorthodox position that contradicts the New Testament. John says, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2; emphasis added).¹ Our resurrection bodies will be like Christ’s. He is the firstfruits of the resurrection, we will be the full harvest (1 Cor 15:23). His resurrection produced an empty tomb—“they found not his body” (Luke 24:23). So will ours.

Full preterists contradict the Apostles’ Creed when it affirms “the resurrection of the body [flesh].”² They deny all orthodox standards of the Christian faith.

Max R. King is a full preterist who denies the bodily resurrection. He bases his teaching, in part, on Jesus’s debate with the Sadducees. He says, “Perhaps the greatest controversy in resurrection teaching has to do with the kind of body that is raised up. This question is as old as the Christian doctrine of the resurrection itself, appearing first in the ministry of Christ (Matt 22:23–33).”³

King argues at length for a spiritual (i.e., non-physical) resurrection. He concludes by saying “the absence of any promise or hint of a fleshly resurrection” characterizes the Christian age.⁴ 

Inmillennialism escapes this unorthodox position by distinguishing between the Greek words Jesus used for his “coming.” Parousia, erchomai, and hēkō are not synonyms. Christ’s parousia is his presence with his churches during the messianic age. The Temple fell at the beginning of this period. The resurrection will occur at its end. Christ’s “coming” (from erchomai and hēkō) refers to a point-in-time event that occurred in AD 70.

The Sadducees on the Resurrection and Jesus’s Response

The Sadducees belonged to the “Jewish party which rejected the oral Torah and any doctrine not derivable from the five Books of Moses.”⁵ They, therefore, argued against the resurrection from the Pentateuch.

They presented Jesus with a situation based on Deut 25:5–10. In their supposition, a woman had seven brothers as husbands (Matt 22:24–28). They then based their rejection “of the resurrection on the fact that no woman could have seven husbands in the future life.”⁶ A bodily resurrection would create an impossible situation.

To understand their full argument, we must remember another facet of their belief. “The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit” (Acts 23:8; emphasis added). They rejected all postmortem non-physical existence. This position forced them to reject a bodily resurrection, which is “bodily life after ‘life after death.’”⁷

Jesus refuted this reasoning in a way that astonished the multitude and put the Sadducees to silence (Matt 22:33–34). But, his reasoning may not be so clear to us. Here are his words:

Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, 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. (Matt 22:29–32; emphasis added)

Jesus quoted Exod 3:6—shown in italics above—to prove his point. The Sadducees could not object to Jesus’s quotation. It came from the Pentateuch they accepted. But, how does this quotation overthrow the Sadducees’ argument? Is it not true that “Jesus’ argument proves only the immortality of the soul and not the resurrection of the body”⁸?

Jesus destroyed the Sadducees position by showing the error of their underlying assumption. They denied life after death and, therefore, resurrection after life after death. Their first premise was wrong. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were alive when God spoke to Moses at the burning bush (Exod 3:1–4:17).

We can extrapolate this truth. Abraham, for one, had multiple wives before his death. Can we not assume his wives were alive, too? If so, God had already solved the Sadducees’ multiple-spouse dilemma in the intermediate state.⁹

The Sadducees supposed “problem,” therefore, was nonexistent. “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” The spirits of men existed after death. And, in due time, God would raise their bodies in the resurrection. 

The Sadducees 

showed ignorance of the Scriptures, when they drew inferences from the experiences of this life and applied them to the conditions of a future life; and they showed ignorance of the power of God when they assumed that, if He granted a future life, it could not be very different from this one.… In the life beyond the grave there are no wives and no husbands, and this disposes of the supposed difficulty.¹⁰

Conclusion

The reasoning of modern full preterists differs from that of the first-century Sadducees. But both deny a bodily resurrection in our future. 

This does not negate the advantages of preterism. As we have argued in previous posts, New Testament time stamps require us to put the fulfillment of most prophecies in our past. The prophecies of the resurrection are not among these. Inmillennialism shows how this is true.

1. See our explanation of this verse here.
2. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom With a History and Critical Notes, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 2:45.
3. Max R. King, The Spirit of Prophecy (Warren, OH: Parkman Road Church of Christ, 1971), 192.
4. King, The Spirit of Prophecy, 225.
5. Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew, vol. 22 of The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1992), 332.
6. Warren W. Wiersbe, Meet Your King (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1980), 159.
7. N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 108-09.
8. Blomberg, Matthew, 334. Blomberg answers this objection in context.
9. “The state or situation of disembodied souls during the interval between death and the resurrection.” See John McClintock and James Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, 12 vols. (Harper and Brothers, 1867-87; repr., Baker Academic, 1982), 4:621.
10. Alfred Plummer, An Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to S. Matthew, 2nd ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910; repr., Minneapolis, MN: James Family, n.d.), 306.