Like angels

23 The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, 24 saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. 26 So too the second and third, down to the seventh. 27 After them all, the woman died. 28 In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.”29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 31 And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching (Mt 22:23-33).

i) I've discussed this before, but I have some additional things to say. V30, and its counterpart in Mark and Luke, became the basis for the traditional view that the world to come is sexless. That interpretation may be correct, but a huge theological edifice has been erected over a tiny foundation. It's generally considered dubious to put much doctrinal weight on a single verse of Scripture. Multiple-attestation gives us greater context. 

ii) Apropos (i), the flow of argument in this exchange is rather enigmatic. That may be in part because the Synoptics don't give us a full transcript of what was said, but only the gift. So some connections are missing. We must fill in the gaps.

In addition, real conversations and real debates are often choppy as they can abruptly veer off in different directions. The account may preserve that.

iii) However you construe it, the passage raises questions about life in the world to come. To a great extent, that's speculative. Within certain boundaries, there's nothing wrong with theological speculation. It's natural for Christians to be curious. And Christian metaphysics opens up many possibilities that naturalism lacks. So long as we stay within the parameters of what Scripture allows and disallows, and keep in mind that this is conjecture.

iv) Apparently, the Sadducees thought this life is all there is. They were physicalists. They denied the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. As such, they deny both the intermediate state and the final state. Therefore, Jesus may touch on both in his response.

They may have felt the closest thing to immortality is to "live on" through your children. 

v) In context, the immediate topic of consideration isn't marriage in general but Levirate marriage in particular. So it's possible that "marriage" in this passage is shorthand for Levirate marriage throughout the exchange. 

That would make sense. Procreation was sole rationale for Levirate marriage. If, in the world to come, there will be no death, then Levirate marriage is moot. 

vi) One problem with the traditional interpretation is lack of consistency. On the traditional interpretation, the most logical explanation is not that saints will be like angels because they won't marry or die; rather, saints won't marry or die because they will be like angels. That's a more direct explanation. If the saints are discarnate souls, then that's why they won't died or get married. They won't because they can't. The soul can't die. And conjugal relations require bodies. 

That grounds the new order in nature. Their future existence is fundamentally different because their nature will be fundamentally different. 

By contrast, the traditional interpretation says humans will be essentially the same. They will have bodies very similar to their original bodies, only their glorified bodies will be immortal. 

vii) But there are problems with that straightforward explanation. It sabotages what Jesus says about the "resurrection". If saints are like heavenly angels in the incorporeal sense, then there is no resurrection of the body. Yet it's highly unlikely that that's what Jesus means, even though it would simplify the inference. 

viii) In principle, the logic could operate in reverse. There is no intermediate state. When the patriarchs died, they passed into oblivion. They will live again when the resurrection of the just takes place. 

But in context it would be very jarring for Jesus to indicate that death terminated the existence of the patriarchs. He seems to imply continuity of existence. Not future existence, but present existence, at the very time Jesus is responding to the Sadducees. 

ix) On the traditional interpretation, the saints will still have gendered bodies. Christian men and women will be resurrected as men and women. As what they were, with some improvements! But their relationships will be Platonic. 

Yet you have to ask how realistic the traditional interpretation is. If they have bodies with sex organs and sex hormones, then the sex drive will be intact. 

x) An advantage of making allowance for marriage in the world to come is that it would compensate for childless couples in this life, or eunuchs (Isa 53:6; Acts 8) who never had a chance. And analogous situations.

xi) A potential objection to the alternative interpretation I'm floating is that procreation in the world to come would eventually result in overpopulation. However, infertile couples can be sexually active. That's a natural contraceptive. Procreation might be confined to saints who never hand the opportunity in this life. So it might plateau. 

xii) Another potential objection to the alternative interpretation is that it leaves the Sadducean dilemma in place. There are, however, answers consistent with the alternative interpretation. Maybe death, or remarriage, or both, or either one, dissolves a preexisting marriage. On any one of these explanations, the deceased wife of seven husbands is either single or married to her last husband.