@Jericho - how do you feel about your Lord using the Pharisees false teaching on immortal soulism?
It’s really an interesting crossroads, you can either cling to the Pharisees’ teaching and their view of life after death, or you can accept the Master’s rebuke and recognize the folly of that path.
The foundation of your belief must begin with the Old Testament.
Jesus teaches them of the Bush - Matthew 22:31–32
When Jesus referred to
“the Bush”, he was pointing to the passage in Exodus where God revealed Himself to Moses from the burning bush. It was common practice to give short titles to well-known sections of Scripture. For example, Paul writes:
“Wot ye not what the scripture saith in ‘Elijah’?” (Rom 11:2). Likewise, Ezekiel’s vision of the Cherubim was often called
“The Chariot.”
Jesus could easily have chosen clearer Old Testament passages about the resurrection ( e.g. Dan. 12:2; Isa. 26:19; Ps. 16:10; 17:15). But since the Sadducees gave supreme authority to the Pentateuch and treated the rest of the writings only as devotional rather than doctrinal, he confronted them with a text they could not dismiss. Thus He said:
“Have ye not read—that which was spoken unto you by God—‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?”
In these words the Lord presented a twofold argument. First:
“God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Second: although the patriarchs had died, God still claimed covenant relationship with them. Therefore, they must live again, resurrection is guaranteed (cp. Heb. 11:16).
If you Jericho believe in the doctrine of the immortal soul, then Jesus’ reasoning in Luke 20:37–38 (and parallels) loses its force. I'm sure you can already see why.
If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were already alive in heaven as disembodied souls, then there would be no need to argue for their future resurrection. They would already be “living unto God,” and the whole discussion with the Sadducees about resurrection (the actual context) would be pointless.
Jesus’ logic depends on the fact that they are dead now, but God still calls Himself their God, showing His covenant promise that they must live again. Resurrection, not soul-immortality, is the only way his words make sense.
The Sadducees denied resurrection, not immortality of the soul. If Jesus wanted to prove immortality, He could have used other arguments. Instead, He proved resurrection from the Pentateuch, the very portion the Sadducees revered most.
So, if you assume the soul is immortal, Jesus’ argument is circular and redundant: He’d be “proving” people are alive when the whole discussion is about whether the dead will rise again. His words only make sense if the patriarchs are now dead and await resurrection.
Do you understand this Jericho?
Soul Immortality?
Many have argued, especially on the basis of the words
“for all live unto him” that Jesus’ reasoning establishes the immortality of the soul. Most commentators have reached this conclusion almost without exception.
The passage in Exodus emphasizes that everlasting life rests on a personal relationship with God (see Ps. 16:8–11; 49:13–15; 73:23–26). Therefore, immortality cannot be something common to all humanity. This was exactly Paul’s point when he wrote of Abraham’s faith:
“God quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were” (Rom. 4:17). It is in this sense that the patriarchs
“all live unto him” (cp. Rom. 14:8).
Jesus’ argument, however, was not drawn merely from the single verse in Exodus 3, but from its broader context. In the
Bush passage (Ex. 3:6, 15, 16; 4:5; 6:3–4, 8) God identifies Himself no fewer than six times with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Importantly, two of these references explicitly reaffirm His covenant promise to
give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they had lived only as strangers. Such a promise requires their future resurrection, for they had not received it in their lifetime. When Jesus quoted the words of Exodus, these promises were included in his reasoning.
Had they wished, the Sadducees might have countered by claiming that the burning bush only symbolized God’s promise to
figuratively raise Israel out of Egypt, not a literal bodily resurrection. Yet they did not, which suggests that Jesus had deliberately drawn their attention to these covenant passages as well.
It is also noteworthy that Rabbi Gamaliel, known for his sympathy toward the early Christians (see
Acts of the Apostles, HAW, ch. 23), later used the same reasoning against the Sadducees, though basing it on Deut. 1:8 and 11:9 (Edersheim). It is quite possible that he first learned this line of argument directly from Jesus himself.
