Commentary on Matthew 17.29–17.32

“On that day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection,” and so on, down to: “they were astonished at his teaching.” Things equivalent to these, or the same, are said also in Mark and Luke, in words differing slightly. “On that day” — what day, if not the day when “the Pharisees went and took counsel against him, how they might entrap him in talk,” and asked about the census tax? For it is likely that, when our Saviour had answered about the census tax and said, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” and they had marvelled at his answer, the Sadducees, knowing his wise answers, thought either that by raising a difficulty they themselves would show that they, who say there is no resurrection, had a stronger argument than those who hope for it, or perhaps that they would learn how there can be a resurrection according to the writing of Moses, and what the life of those who rise will be. Observe that almost all our Saviour’s teaching at this time was given in response to questions. First, “when he had come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, saying, By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority?” Having asked them in return about John, he seemed with good reason to have declined to give the answer they wanted. Then after this he tells the parable of the two children, the one who promised to work in the vineyard and did not work, and the one who promised but did not work. Then after this he tells the parable of the vineyard and of the tenants who killed the servants and the son, and what follows; another parable about those invited to the wedding; and after this Matthew recorded a second inquiry, that about the census tax, and a third, the difficulty raised by the Sadducees about the resurrection. And after this a fourth question was put by a Pharisee who tested him about “Which commandment is great in the law?” When so many questions had been put to him, he himself, when the Pharisees were gathered together, questioned them about the Christ. The Sadducees, however, saying that there is no resurrection, not only rejected what in the usage of simpler believers is called the resurrection of the flesh, but did away entirely not only with the immortality of the soul but even with its survival, thinking that the life of the soul hereafter is nowhere indicated in the writings of Moses. The same doctrine about the human soul as the Sadducees’ is held to this day by the Samaritans, who consider themselves learned in the law and strive to the death for the law of Moses and circumcision. Some of the Corinthians in the Apostle’s time understood resurrection in this sense — I mean that of the Sadducees and Samaritans, which does away with the life of the soul hereafter — and taught that there is no resurrection; about them he writes: “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” That those in Corinth who said there is no resurrection of the dead rejected the resurrection in the Sadducees’ sense, that is, the … of the soul, he makes plain from the words: “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” If you examine this carefully, you will see that one who rejects the resurrection of the dead believed in the church, even if he is wrong to reject it, has not in every case hoped in Christ in this life only. For if, by hypothesis, the resurrection believed by the many were not true, the one who rejects it would not have hoped in Christ in this life only, since the soul lives, not receiving back that body, but putting on something ethereal and better; nor “are we of all people most to be pitied” if we were to say that the soul lives and exists, but that this body is not put about it again, and were not to say that it receives it back. Further, to establish that the Apostle in the First Letter to the Corinthians takes his stand chiefly against this sense, we shall also make use of the words, “If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? And why are we in danger every hour?” and, “If, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus, what do I gain, if the dead are not raised? Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” For suppose that what is thought true by the many about the resurrection of the dead were not true: how does it follow that we run into danger in vain when we strive for the salvation of our souls? And how is there no gain for the one who fought with beasts for Christ, his soul being dealt with according to its worth, though it does not receive back its former body? And how does “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” follow from there being no resurrection of the flesh? We do not say these things in disbelief of what is written in Isaiah in this way: “All flesh shall see the salvation of God,” or of what is said by Job: “For everlasting is he who is to release me upon the earth, and to raise up my skin that endures these things”; nor do we disbelieve the apostolic voice that says, “He will give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” Rather, as far as we can, we are clarifying the sense of the word “resurrection” in the passage of the Gospel before us, and for this we have adduced the texts from the First Letter to the Corinthians. “Then Sadducees came to Jesus, who said there was no resurrection” — resurrection, that is, in their sense, as we have explained — “and asked” our Lord, “saying, Moses said, If a man dies having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.”

It seems to me worth setting out for this purpose the words of Moses to which the Sadducees, as written in the Gospel, referred what they said. The text in Deuteronomy runs thus: “If brothers live together and one of them dies,” and so on, down to: “the house of him whose sandal was loosed.” The Sadducees, having no hope of resurrection, understood this text badly and conceived nothing worthy of God about the law set out; and they thought it followed from there being a resurrection that the husband too will rise again a man, having male organs, and the wife will rise a woman, clothed in a woman’s body. Supposing in this lowly way that what is said about the resurrection is said on the ground that, in their view, these things follow from it, they invented a tale about seven brothers who married one woman, and raised the difficulty whose wife such a woman would be when she rose, having once been called the wife of seven men. They could also have raised the difficulty without such a fiction, from women who had married several times, and perhaps also from men who had married several times. And our Saviour, answering them, did not explain the meaning of the law of Moses, since they were not worthy of knowing so great a mystery; he only declared, saying that the divine Scriptures too proclaim this about the resurrection from the dead, that there are no marriages there, but those who rise from the dead become like the angels in heaven; and as the angels in heaven neither marry nor are given in marriage, so, he says, are those who rise from the dead. I think it is shown by this that those who are counted worthy of the resurrection from the dead become like the angels in heaven not only in not marrying and not being given in marriage, but also in that their bodies of humiliation are transformed and become such as the bodies of the angels are, ethereal and of radiant light. Someone might seek a doctrine strange to most believers — perhaps from many places, but plainly from this one as well — raising the question whether, just as those who rise from the dead are like the angels in heaven, changing from human beings into the order of angels, so also other angels in heaven were once human beings and, having contended well in a human body, have become angels in heaven, as some others did before them. Let whoever seeks this strange doctrine from the present passage, and perhaps from elsewhere, look around the whole of Scripture and the sequence of things, and consider what follows for one who holds these things, and whether one must accept a teaching from which follow such things as are shown by “We shall judge angels,” and by “things into which angels long to look.” And if someone also accepts the Epistle of Jude, let him see what follows for this teaching from the words, “And the angels who did not keep their own position of authority, but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloom for the judgment of the great day.” And let the one who dares to inquire into such things see how one must understand what is written in Genesis, that “the sons of God, seeing the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, took wives for themselves from all whom they chose.” To raise the difficulty about the passage plainly, to examine its consequences, and to entrust the clarification of such great matters to paper, is perhaps not safe; for it is enough that we have ventured so far even in what has been said.

Having once set out the words of the law from Deuteronomy, I think it not out of place to see what kind of meaning it has. We must ask, then, who in it is the one wife, and who are the two husbands who are brothers of one another: the first marrying the wife but bearing no fruit from her, and the second, the dead man’s brother, marrying her and begetting a child from her for the one who has died. And after this you will ask who is the one who does not wish to take his brother’s wife, and for this reason has his one sandal loosed before the council of elders, and is spat upon in the face by the woman, who goes up to the gate and says, “My husband’s brother will not raise up his brother’s name in Israel.” One might also ask in the passage what the council of elders is, and the gate to which the woman goes up saying what is written. That every law which professes to be God’s must be believed to be something venerable and worthy of reverence, or, if it is not venerable, not to be a law of God, everyone not wholly without understanding would agree. But whether we find what is venerable and useful in this law or not, God would know first, and his Christ, and after them the approved money-changer according to Scripture, who knows how to “test all things” and to “hold fast what is good, and abstain from every form of evil.” Come, then, since we wish to explain the legal problem before us, let us call upon him who said, “I will utter problems from of old,” and say — well, if it be what is given by him; but if not, what occurs to us about the passage; and the reader will judge what is about to be said. It seems to me, according to one interpretation, that the wife is the human soul, married first to the letter of the law and bearing no children by it, and second to the spiritual law, and bearing fruit and begetting by it, yet not abandoning, in what she has borne, the honour due to the letter of the law that died for her. And perhaps every soul that is to be blessed, and is figuratively a wife, is in every case married first, in its introductory stages, to the letter of the law, which dies as the wife, the soul, advances, so that she may attain the more venerable, child-bearing marriage, when she “will be saved through childbearing, if the children continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control,” not being saved before the childbearing or without it. The children of this wife, the soul, by the second husband, the spiritual law, are the works done according to it. The brothers, born of one mother, the understanding, are the two laws, which also live together; for their house is not separated, the one from the other, but both of them, both interpretations, are in the letter which contains them as in a house. And see whether this can be shown from the words, “If brothers live together”; then next comes, “and one of them dies, and he has no offspring,” which I have explained as I could. Let us also look at the words, “The wife of the dead man shall not be married outside to a man not near of kin,” and ask which wife, that is, soul, transgresses this law, and which keeps it. In such passages I take it that, after the death of the literal interpretation of the law and its overthrow, one soul, which had previously been the wife of the dead man and had trusted him, acts against the divine commandment and comes wholly “outside” the law “to a man not near of kin,” when it accepts a doctrine that is not near to the interpretation of the letter, but wholly alien both to it and to the interpretation of the letter of the law; and such souls did not wish to be married to the spiritual law that lived together with that one, but to unite with some doctrine outside both of these and in no way near of kin. Another soul, living according to God, when the former husband has died and been overthrown, does not wish “to be married outside to a man not near of kin,” but is married to the brother of the deceased, who lived together with him, when her husband’s brother goes in to her, and comes within her soul, and takes her to himself as wife, and lives with her, the soul, to her blessedness, since she is married according to the will of God to the second, the spiritual law. And the child that the soul, the wife, who has lived with the second and spiritual brother, bears and begets, is established in the name of the deceased; it is not from the first husband, yet it bears the name of the first too. For the name of what is begotten of the spiritual law is the name of the deceased, since that one too was called the law of God; and the name of the dead husband must not be blotted out from the discerning and true Israel, even if … is blotted out.

Let this much be said, in part, about the law. But we need God again, or rather even more, enlightening our mind in Christ to contemplate what follows: “For if the man does not wish,” it says, “to take his brother’s wife, his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate, to the elders, and say,” and the words that follow. And first observe that, as long as the wife was doing what was commanded by the law, and the husband went in to her and lived with her and had children by her, he was not called “man,” but the brother of the woman’s husband; but when he does not wish to take his brother’s wife, and will not raise up his brother’s name in Israel, and, when summoned by the elders of the city, says, “I do not wish to take her,” and is dishonoured by having his sandal loosed, and is spat upon in the face by the woman, and is renamed, so that his name is “the house of him whose sandal was loosed,” then he is called “man.” For it is as though, through his keeping the law, the words were said to him, “I said, You are gods”; but through his doing what is contrary to the law, he is as it were convicted by the Word, who says to him, “But you die like men.” And consider whether you can understand that, after the death of the literal interpretation, there is another interpretation of the law that has gone astray, neither spiritual nor blameless, but having its origin in error, though it comes from the starting points of what is written in the law, and does not wish to raise up the name of their brother and to honour the name of the law. Such an interpretation does not wish to take its brother’s wife, the soul; for it does not wish to bear fruit for the glory of the name of the dead brother. Therefore the wife, who is ready to honour her first husband, does not stand below, but goes up to the gate and entrance of her own city, which also has a council of elders. Let these things be understood as happening in the church, and in the introduction and entrance into it. The wife, then, convicts the husband who does not wish to bear fruit — a doctrine of this kind — and says, “My husband’s brother will not raise up his brother’s name in Israel.” Then the elders of that city, examining such a husband, ask whether he truly does not wish it; and when he answers that he does not, she herself comes to the one who would not raise up offspring for his brother, and before the elders convicts him and dishonours him by loosing his one sandal. And in this connection consider, in view of “Remove the sandal from your feet,” said to Moses and to Joshua, and of “I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal,” written in Luke and Mark and John, whether to remove the sandal is not the same as to loosen it; for Moses and Joshua are not commanded to loosen it, nor did John speak of loosening with regard to the Saviour. This transgressor, then, has neither been wholly unshod nor fully equipped with footwear, but has each by half; therefore the woman, having convicted him before the elders, spits in his face. For every soul spits on a doctrine that does not beget children or bear fruit, and by overturning it loosens it in the points in which it stumbles. “And she shall answer and say, So shall they do to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.” And note again here that he is named “man” a second time, in the case of the one who sins and now also does not build up his brother’s house. Let everyone, then, who sees this man having his sandal loosed by a woman and being spat upon, and hears her say, “So shall they do to the man who does not build up his brother’s house,” do everything for the building up of his brother; for if he does not build up his brother’s house, his one sandal will be loosed, and he will be spat upon, and the name of every such person in Israel will be called among those who see, “the house of him whose sandal was loosed.” Let us also look at a second interpretation of the law set out. Let the two brothers be two laws, according to which the one who kept the first was not without law toward God, while the one who keeps the second is under the law of Christ. And understand, please, that at the coming of Christ the first law died, the husband of the human soul, since “what was glorified has not been glorified in this respect, because of the glory that surpasses it,” that of the second; and the second law is that of Christ, the brother of the first, given through Moses, and son of the same Word who also begot the first. While these two brothers, then, lived together, especially at the coming, one of them died, and he had no offspring; but the wife of the dead man, the soul under the law, after the death of her first husband does not become “outside, to a man not near of kin”; for a husband is near of kin, the law of the Gospel, as brother of the dead husband, the first law, and he goes in to his brother’s wife. For example, see the soul of Paul under the law, and then, through Christ who redeemed him from the law, come under the Gospel. See whether the husband of Paul’s soul did not die, and yet, when he had died, the wife of the dead man did not become “outside,” as those from the heresies think, nor “to a man not near of kin”; for her husband’s brother went in to her, took her to himself as wife, and lived with her, and the fruit, the offspring, the child, the one born, came to be in the name of the deceased. For according to the spiritual law the Gospel names everything, and the name of the deceased was not blotted out when the law of the Gospel came; for among the true Israel the name of the former too is kept. Who, then, after this, is the man who does not wish to take his brother’s wife, if not the doctrine in the heresies, which does not wish to accept the soul that has honoured its former husband, and the memory of the former husband? Against him his brother’s wife goes up to the gate, of which it is said, “This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter by it,” and goes up to the elders, and testifies about the one who does not wish to raise up offspring for his brother in Israel, nor to honour the law of God given through Moses. When, then, the elders ask such a man whether the woman speaks the truth about him and he does not wish to raise up offspring for his brother, then the wife of the dead man comes before the elders and loosens the one sandal from his foot, so that, even if he is shod with the name of Christ, he has the name of God loosed, and for this reason does not bear the name of Christ either gloriously or truly. And the woman spits in the face of such a one, and reproaches him as a mere man, who would not be made divine by bearing fruit; and she says that so it will be for everyone who does not build up the house of his brother, the Gospel word, which is also of the law and the prophets; and the one who does not build it up will have no other name among the Israelites than this: that this is the house of him whose sandal was loosed. Everyone, then, who wallows in the heresies, especially those that divide the Godhead and separate the law from the Gospel, “is the house of him whose sandal was loosed,” spat upon in the face and having his one sandal loosed. We have also taken up a third interpretation of this kind for the passage, which we shall state briefly. Wisdom is called a wife because of “I sought to take her as my bride,” and one must love her, according to Solomon, who said, “Love her, and she will guard you”; and her husband is the wise man. If, then, the wise man departs from life without having begotten any from Wisdom, let the brother who lived with him and rested in the same doctrines champion them, so that one may be born from Wisdom who will win glory for the one who departed from their life together by presenting the fruit. But if the brother who is left in the doctrines does not wish to champion them, he will be dishonoured by Wisdom, who loosens him by half; for such a one will neither remain unloosed nor be completely loosed. To establish that, according to Scripture, the law is called the husband of the wife, that is, of the soul, we shall cite …