Interesting. I like Christy’s response> No need to read too much into Jesus’ response although, for all we know, it may indeed be the case that people do not marry in heaven. The Sadduccees did not believe in the resurrection because they did not find it in the five books of Moses. Jesus points out that this is alluded to in Exodus 3:6. Jesus’ remarks in verse 30 about not marrying likely indicates Him knowing something that you and I do not. Case closed. People in heaven will be like the angels —that is, eternal. Live forever. Part of earthly procreation is the replacement of those who have passed away. We don’t think of it that way, but essentially that is it. If everyone lives forever (in heaven —that is, those who go there), then there is no need for replacing the population. OK…that is it. No marriage…but that does not mean no love!!
I’m would say you are correct with your last statement. Humans don’t go to heaven. But I don’t care enough to spend the hours involved in this discussion to work through it. But all of those verses are verses used to support my view as well.
There are things like “ no one but Jesus has been to the Father.”
John 3:13
New American Standard Bible
13 No one has ascended into heaven, except He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man.
Then we also see that the white throne judgement is when the names of those found in the book of life are given eternal life. ( again a lot of work is involved here to show what does that actually mean just like verses about hell and conditional immortality ).
But it makes no sense to say we die, go to heaven, get pulled out of heaven and resurrected, stand judgement, hear our name, get sent back to a new heaven.
But that’s all the time I’m willing to spend on this. If anyone is interested I suggest checking out the 14 hours of podcasts done by the biblical scholar Tim Mackie on this and following it up with the few podcasts he did on revelation and “ apocalypse “ .
- My marriage vow in this world was “till death do you part.” As grateful as I am for the marriage that I have in this world, I’m not at all interested in doing it again in the next world: been there, done that, so I’ll pass. I don’t think I’d mind settin’ up house in one of those mansions Jesus talked about in John 14:2, but if it’s anything like earth, an eternity filled with tornados, volcanos, earthquakes, and hurricanes is gonna get old eventually.
Adamjedgar,
I don’t understand at all what you are getting at here. Please explain.
Additionally to your OP, I don’t understand the reason for your assumption that there would be procreation in eternity. I’ve never heard of such a view from any Christian denomination I’m familiar with. I am only familiar with it as a doctrine from Mormonism,which conceives of an afterlife entirely different from any traditional form of Christianity. Please explain the source of your view.
Please review Genesis 3:16. Your charactarization of it in your reply to me is not accurate.
To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Finally, for now, would you attempt to tell a combat veteran anything about combat past, present or future without having experienced combat yourself? I ask you to reconsider your blythe (and inaccurate) encouragement to me about any aspect of pregnancy and child-bearing until you have experienced it yourself. You do not know what an unbearable burden you are imagining for women.
BTW…
The experience of childbirth varies enormously between women. For some it is long painful ordeal and for others it is not. For my wife, it was the latter – over so fast, the doctor (or nurse practitioner) barely able to catch them as they came out. LOL (didn’t look like it was terribly painful either) But looking this up on the internet suggests that for most women it is longer and more difficult than it was for my wife. But from everything I have seen and heard, the variation is still considerable.
Does your wife agree with this not terribly painful comment?
Mitchell, my experience was nearly textbook. There are the 9 months of alien invasion, hormonal torture, crushed internal organs, constant requirement to feed/graze, external and internal limitations on everything, disequilibrium, dyslexia, brain fog, hemorroids (geeze! They hurt!), distension, breast pain, incessant drooling, ankle swelling, sleeplessness, back pain, (for many women but not me) nausea, inability to take normal needed medications, complete reorienting of the self from individual to host, relentless need to urinate, horrible pressure on the parineum, to name a few things…and all of that is optimally assuming that the conception was pleasurable for the mother in the first place.
Shall we go on to talk about the permanent damage women who have experienced pregnancy live with? Prolapsed uterus? Bladder issues? Loss of brain size?
Again, would you walk into a VFW hall and attempt to school the combat vets there about combat, without having experienced it yourself? I’m sure you were a great support system for your wife, but your view from the outside is inadequate to remotely come close to the experience itself.
We need more input here from women who have been in this trench themselves! Sisters, where are you?!
- Pardon my ignorance, but isn’t the reason childbirth is painful because if it weren’t the fetus would drop out and fall to the floor sometime before the baby is nine months along?
- A sister-in-law had several miscarriages because her anatomy wouldn’t keep the fetus in the womb. And my brother told me that he was able to baptize one premature baby because it was still alive, but died.soon after falling out.
So fall-prevention?
- Yes, it would seem so to me: the price of a 9-month gestation period, female “insistence” on standing and walking on two feet like men. and evolutionary progress. Maybe, maybe.
Science is full of studies of things from the outside. You might as well discount all of biology which studies living organisms without actually being those organisms. My experience from the outside is also a valid experience and source of information not the least because it include observation of those who have had those experiences themselves.
Why? Do the experience of women only count if they are members of this forum? One of the OTHER things I found when I looked this up on the internet was quite a number of women saying it wasn’t that bad and collections of testimonies showing wide variations in their experiences. And lists of things they say is a lot more painful.
I am guessing there is no marriage because there is no reproduction. Also, we all will be part of the bride of Christ.
Hi Kendel,
I am the father of 5 kids and my wife has had a number of very traumatic miscarriages (one was almost 4 months along). Two of the miscarriages were boys and both are buried alongside my wifes late parents and have names.
I have almost zero tolerance for Mormon doctrine…theirs is such a corruption of the original scriptures they wrote their own (Boook of Mormon). The founder was not a matyr…he was a criminal and died a criminal.
My statement about pain in childbirth is a passage taken directly from the Bible. God very clearly stated that a consequence of the introduction of sin in to this world was that Eve (and all future women) would experience pain in childbirth. There is no interpretation required in this, its been a theologically accepted doctrine for millenia and the reason why is because its interpretation is a simple as me saying “go to bed” to my children. There is no ambiguity in the statement God made (it does not matter whether or not Genesis is read as an allagory).
One thing i should mention at this point (because i know what is coming) there is a textual variant between KJV and number of modern translations in Genesis 3 regarding pain in childbirth.
A list of the various readings from a large number of translations can be found here
I tend to go with the more traditional readings:
The Latin Vulgate
16 mulieri quoque dixit multiplicabo aerumnas tuas et conceptus tuos in dolore paries filios et sub viri potestate eris et ipse dominabitur tui
To the woman also he said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee.
King James Version
King James Bible
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
NIV
To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
I dont think it really matters, the point is, a definitie increase in pain during childbirth is a consequence of sin…how much doesnt really make any difference to the point. as my O.P here is not about childbirth pains in any case…that is a side issue that has not really got anything to do with the original statement Jesus made to the Sadducces.
Now back on topic…
I read at length Isaiah 65:17-25 and I am trying to reconcile the apparent difference between what Isaiah says and what Jesus said. The prophet Isaiah is considered by most theologians to talk directly of the coming messiah…he focuses on it.
My wife made what i think is a good observation…perhaps Jesus was simply taking a swipe at the way in which the Jewish leaders over the years had corrupted the term marriage.
Perhaps he was not saying “there will be no union between a man and a women in heaven”. Perhaps he was saying that the type of marriage that the Sadduccees had in mind (a corrupted version of the original) was not going to be there?
Lets face it, look at how the Jews had corrupted the passover festival…turned the temple into a money trading market…that was a gross corruption of the meaning and reason for the passover to continue up until the cross.
Interesting idea, I have not heard that earlier.
As far as I know, the relationship between the width of the hole and the width of the head of the child is the problem. There is some sort of conflict of interest between the mother and the child. A small head would make the birth easier but being born early would increase the vulnerable time needed for head growth after the birth or leave the head small. If the hole in the pelvis would be larger, the woman probably could not run efficiently, at least not on two feets. In the wild, sometimes there is a need to run to escape.
Apparently, the mothers and unborn children had a negotiation and ended up in a compromize that is somewhat painful to the mothers but gave the possibility to get a smart kid that can be kicked out from home in reasonable time.
If we would take the Eden story strictly literally, my interpretation would be that sin and the size of the head were connected. A larger head after Eden = painful labor. An alternative, less likely interpretation might be that Eve had an interestingly shaped pelvis and the shape of pelvis changed after the fall. Well, I guess I choose the alternative that the Eden story was a symbolic story with an important message, not a modern report of the actual events.
Humans are born prematurely as helpless infants with virtually no behavioural instincts. The kid isn’t born smart in the slightest. Look at quadruped mammals.
And the resurrection is the end of neoteny. Pair bonding, eroticism, pop songs, advertising the whole natural package is reproductive. How will we appreciate music? That goes back to when we were fish. Evolution will finally be dead and buried!
@adamjedgar , It may seem like a side issue to you. To the one probably imagined as doing the bearing, it’s key.
Every one of the alternate translations you offered support my point. They all speak of an increase in pain for women, not the beginning of pain in child-bearing. There is no assumption in the text of Genesis, that child-bearing was ever without pain—not in the English translations, at least.
You are able to empathize with your wife, and you certainly have experienced your own anguish as a father. I’m sorry that this has happened to your family.
Regarding the picture in Isaiah, I see this as an image that the people of the time could understand as a blessed land. I don’t think there is any reason from these verses to assume that procreation continues in Heaven, at whatever location and in whatever state it exists. They are earthbound poetic language that speak to an earthbound people in a way they can understand.
To your OP, the matter you propose is not merely theological theory to half the species. Although to be fair, I am assuming that the procreation imagined in the OP is, as it always has been among humans, the burden of women. Maybe you are more equitable in your thinking and willing to include men in the infinite bearing of this burden for eternity. In which case, I mourn the fairness of the proposal as well.
Having experienced pregnancy and childbirth, as well as womanhood myself, I can only say that I rejoice at passages that indicate freedom for women from the biological as well social burdens we have been carrying since larger males learned how to dominate.
Peace and rest among equals in the eternal Kindom of our Lord is part of the joy I look forward to.
I can only wonder, what motivated this “By the way.”
Under many circumstances, yes. You are right.
In the context of this thread, I don’t believe a merely statistical, descriptive view of the repugnant burden being proposed for women can really be grasped without experience. Just as reading war accounts or even watching movies of actual combat cannot in any way substitute for the experience itself. Someone who has been through trauma has experienced it with the body itself and experiences the memories of the event or period somatically. It’s not theory any more. And it effects the way we look at that issue from that point on.
However, you already know all that.
In the course of discussions like this, where one’s view of an issue is affected by lived experience, there is no substitute.
I do understand, however, that your views are different from what I understand to be proposed in the OP.
Ok.
This is not the experience of most women, and certainly not mine. It’s dismissive of all the concerns I expressed earlier. Additionally, it doesn’t reflect well on you.
Certainly not. But women in this Forum area privvy to this particular discussion about yet one more theological issue that involves them but is proposed by people who do not bear the burden of what is being proposed. Thus my call to hear from them.
(Not that anyone here has any say in how things run in God’s eternal Kingdom. Praise Jesus!)
Or poison the well for all others who still need it.
I liked your whole meditation here but remain disposed to think this is or can be the promised new world.
For me it was only that my experience with my wife was so different. (three times BTW, for three sons – all very short and without any of the expected screaming and such). Obviously we were just lucky. I also have friends who had much more difficult, even life threatening, experiences with giving birth.
For many on the internet, it is to calm the fear many expecting new mothers have about what to expect.
In the context of the thread, my position is that the resurrected body is not biological and I believe the physical is necessary for having children so I suspect this is not something we can expect in general in heaven. On the other hand, I think the physical universe is only one place in a vast spiritual reality and it is possible that some may choose to have have similar experiences elsewhere, and I see no reason to exclude the possibility.
That’s a very good point I was going to make myself. We need to remember marriage in the time of Jesus Christ wasn’t what it is today. We tend to think of it as a romantic endeavour, at least in the western culture, but back then women were seen as little more than property and marriage was all about transfer/consolidation of land and/or wealth/power and of course producing an heir. The man would get all the benefits, while the wife would be unpaid cook, house keeper and a ‘baby machine’. Even in the example given by the Sadducees, the wife is passed between brothers like a possession. So in the light of all this, I would be worried if Jesus said there will be marriage in heaven.
Having said that, I don’t think anyone should worry they won’t be with their beloved in heaven.
Would God really take away one of the best things that happened to you in this life?(I’m speaking of those who were fortunate enough to have a happy marriage)
Just because the piece of paper you signed on Earth doesn’t have any legal power, does it really mean you cannot be with your earthly spouse in afterlife?
However when it comes to reproduction, I simply cannot see it happening. There’s already reasons for it given above so I won’t be repeating those, but I see more problems with it:
- there’s currently 8 billion people. That’s a lot. It was recently mentioned on the forum that total number of people who ever lived is way over 100 billion, and there’s more to come. So even if only small percentage ends up in heaven, that’s still billions. More than enough to play with, even for eternity. So why have more, into infinity?
- I can see a problem with babies being born in heaven, as they wouldn’t have experienced life on Earth. Wouldn’t that make them completely different from us? Am I the only person seeing this as a potential problem?
To all the people who perhaps seen a woman in labour and thought “perhaps it’s not so bad”: maybe it’s because women are already accustomed to severe abdominal pains on a regular basis, some every single day. Or maybe they were conditioned from childhood to put up with pain, as if it’s a ‘default setting’. Or maybe they’re just soo happy the ■■■■ pregnancy is over, they don’t care anymore. Maybe…