Yay, so good, thanks! A lot of angles I didn’t expect. I currently believe God loves diversity in the Chesterton sense, so the idea that marriage is mystically favored to such an extreme is not one I share. I think we each contribute something new to creation that’s interesting and let’s say “fun” for God when it’s in harmony with let’s say the Good. But as a constructor of mathematical models it’s also obvious that marriage/procreation vastly amplifies that creativity in most cases. Still, one can easily name celibate geniuses in earth’s history (even if you don’t count Christ as one) who contributed more creatively than many married couples and all their descendants, and that’s within the confines of mortal life. If they didn’t decay and die, presumably they would go on creating new things forever. But then maybe that’s in some sense being a servant to the celestial marriages, idk. Anyway, thanks so so much!
Your interpretation of Jesus’s response to the Sadducees is frankly much more sensible than anything else I’ve heard. Literally everyone from Catholics to Evangelicals offer only one-sentence examinations “Jesus says no marriage in heaven.” But that isn’t even the plain reading of the passage! The plain reading if I had to summarize it in one sentence would be “You aren’t even asking the right question,” which as you note is in essence his response to all the trick questions. But ask a Catholic about his other responses to trick questions, and you’ll get their usual multi-paragraph contextual analysis, which is what has led me to basically just psychologize everyone on this issue. Maybe Biblical marriages were extra miserable because less choice was involved, but today unless you advocate for the Isaac/Rebecca model of spouse selection, how can you not take it more seriously and with more hope?
(By having a deeply rooted Gnostic-type distrust of the physical aspects of mortal life is how. Which is why my list of preferred ways to interpret Scripture includes the principle that the interpretation that preserves the meaning and purpose of mortal life is generally to be preferred while those that turn mortal life into some sort of trick should be highly scrutinized.)
Yay, so good, thanks! A lot of angles I didn’t expect. I currently believe God loves diversity in the Chesterton sense, so the idea that marriage is mystically favored to such an extreme is not one I share. I think we each contribute something new to creation that’s interesting and let’s say “fun” for God when it’s in harmony with let’s say the Good. But as a constructor of mathematical models it’s also obvious that marriage/procreation vastly amplifies that creativity in most cases. Still, one can easily name celibate geniuses in earth’s history (even if you don’t count Christ as one) who contributed more creatively than many married couples and all their descendants, and that’s within the confines of mortal life. If they didn’t decay and die, presumably they would go on creating new things forever. But then maybe that’s in some sense being a servant to the celestial marriages, idk. Anyway, thanks so so much!
Sorry for the wall-of-text posts btw, I have 3+ kids and don’t have time for paragraph breaks.
Your interpretation of Jesus’s response to the Sadducees is frankly much more sensible than anything else I’ve heard. Literally everyone from Catholics to Evangelicals offer only one-sentence examinations “Jesus says no marriage in heaven.” But that isn’t even the plain reading of the passage! The plain reading if I had to summarize it in one sentence would be “You aren’t even asking the right question,” which as you note is in essence his response to all the trick questions. But ask a Catholic about his other responses to trick questions, and you’ll get their usual multi-paragraph contextual analysis, which is what has led me to basically just psychologize everyone on this issue. Maybe Biblical marriages were extra miserable because less choice was involved, but today unless you advocate for the Isaac/Rebecca model of spouse selection, how can you not take it more seriously and with more hope?
(By having a deeply rooted Gnostic-type distrust of the physical aspects of mortal life is how. Which is why my list of preferred ways to interpret Scripture includes the principle that the interpretation that preserves the meaning and purpose of mortal life is generally to be preferred while those that turn mortal life into some sort of trick should be highly scrutinized.)