Here we have to discuss Matthew 22 again. For though it is
clear that the importance of marital relationships is addressed here, there is
another element which has not yet been mentioned. The question of the Sadducees
is not about the endurance of marriage in the resurrection in general, but
about the so-called 'levirate' marriage. According to the law of Moses, if a
married man dies without having a son, his brother should marry the woman and
give her a son "so that his [brother's] name will not be blotted out from
Israel" (Deuteronomy 25,5-6). This worrying about the future,
however, is not necessary any more in the life after death. The community there
will be full and complete, and no one's name will be wiped out any more for it
will be written on a white stone (Revelation 2,17). This would make it
understandable why Jesus only speaks about new marriages: "At the
resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage" (Matthew
22,30). Just as the angels are not worried about the future, but are serving
God without delay, the community of God will serve Him without anxiety. It also
implies that familial and marital relationships do not determine one's identity
completely - in the present as well as in the future - because one's eternal
identity is founded in relation to God.
If this interpretation is right, one may find converging elements in
the three lines of thought considered here. The eschatological qualification of
Jesus in Matthew 22, His admonition that obedience to God outweighs the
importance of interpersonal relationships, and the so-called 'Household Rules'
all point to the qualification of marriage as being subordinate to the relation
with God.
With respect to the question of how particular marriages last in the
resurrection or eschaton, we cannot provide a complete picture. But it seems to
me that Paul's speaking about 'body', about the whole human person, implies
that the qualification eschatology gives to creation is firstly made by the
constitutive relation to God. This fundamental relation, however, will not
overcome the constitutive elements by which our being a person is characterised
in the present. This 'will not' is no expression of God's inability to do so,
but it expresses God's intentional goal for creation which He has begun and
which He will lead to its final destination. If we acknowledge that
relationships form and in-form our human created identity, these relationships
cannot be said to be absent in the eschaton. Though we have to be very careful
with respect to the particular picture this view contains, and of course, we
should pay attention to the fact that we cannot produce a complete survey of
created reality after Jesus' return in glory, it is clear that 'community' is
an important feature of the character of life in the resurrection. (Hans
Schaeffer, Createdness and Ethics: The Doctrine of Creation and Theological Ethics
in the Theology of Colin E. Gunton and Oswald Bayer [Theologishe Bibliothek
Töpelmann 137; Berlin: Walter de Gryuter, 2012], 338-39)
