Matthew 22:23

Matthew 22:23. The same day came to him the Sadducees Concerning whose doctrines and conduct see note on Matthew 3:7; which say, there is no resurrection Nor indeed any future life at all, as the word αναστασις , here rendered resurrection, is considered by many learned men as signifying; their doctrine being, that when the body dies the soul dies with it, and that there is no state of rewards or punishments after death, and no judgment to come. “The word αναστασις ,” says Dr. Campbell, “is indeed the common term by which the resurrection, properly so called, is denominated in the New Testament; yet this is neither the only nor the primitive import of it. When applied to the dead, the word denotes properly no more than a renewal of life to them, in whatever manner this happens. The Pharisees themselves did not universally mean by this term the reunion of soul and body, as is evident from the account which the Jewish historian gives of their doctrine, as well as from some passages in the gospels. To say, therefore, in English, that they deny the resurrection, is to give a very defective account of their sentiments on this topic, for they denied the existence of angels and all separate spirits; in which they went much further than [many of] the pagans, who, though they denied what Christians call the resurrection of the body, yet acknowledged a state after death wherein the souls of the deceased exist, and receive the reward or punishment of their actions.” The doctor therefore renders the clause, Who say there is no future life, which version, he observes, not only gives a juster representation of the Sadducean hypothesis, but is the only version which makes our Lord’s argument appear pertinent, and levelled against the doctrine which he wanted to refute. In the common version they are said to deny the resurrection: that is, that the soul and the body of man shall hereafter be reunited; and our Lord brings an argument from the Pentateuch to prove What? Not that they shall be reunited, (to this it has not even the most distant relation,) but that the soul subsists after the body is dissolved. This many would have admitted, who denied the resurrection; yet so evidently did his argument strike at the root of the scheme of the Sadducees, that they were silenced by it, and, to the conviction of the hearers, confuted. Now this could not have happened, if the fundamental error of the Sadducees had been barely the denial of the resurrection of the body, and not the denial of the immortality of the soul, or of its actual subsistence after death. If possible, the words, Luke 20:38, παντες αυτω ζωσιν , all live to him: (namely, the patriarchs and all the faithful dead,) make it still more evident that our Lord considered this, namely, the proving that the soul still continued to live after a person’s natural death, was all that was incumbent on one who would confute the Sadducees. Now if this was the subversion of Sadducism, Sadducism must have consisted in denying that the soul continues to live after the body dies. Certainly our Lord’s answer here, and much of St. Paul’s reasoning, 1 Corinthians 15:0., proceeds on the supposition of such a denial. Thus, 2Ma 12:42-44 , the author proves that Judas believed a resurrection, from his offering sacrifices for the souls of the slain, which shows that by a resurrection he meant a future state.