In Matthew 22, the Sadducees (a sect of anti-afterlife Jews) gave Jesus a puzzle. If a man’s wife dies and he remarries, then who will the man be married to after the Resurrection - the first wife, or the second? Jesus responded by saying that people will not be married in Heaven.
Matthew 22: "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven." Which is one of the key texts the Catholics long used to argue for the superiority of celibacy, and which Mormons have done a lot of hemming and hawing to explain away.
Siskind continues:
Anyway, I was interested to learn there’s now an atheist version of this conundrum. Robert Ettinger, considered “the founder of cryonics”, had his body frozen after his death in hopes of being resurrected in the far future. His first wife died, he remarried, and both his first and second wives are also cryopreserved. There’s no evidence Ettinger was anything other than monogamous during life, so what happens in the far future? His second wife was an “author, feminist, and marriage counselor”, so I bet she’ll have strong opinions on this.
4 comments:
I'm surprised you didn't mention the link to the use of cataphracts in modern policing. My question: can we add little bows in holsters? I love those, esp. in Osprey paintings.
His first wife died, he remarried, and both his first and second wives are also cryopreserved. There’s no evidence Ettinger was anything other than monogamous during life, so what happens in the far future?
going to go way out on a limb and guess he'll be married to whoever was younger when she died
Marriage, in both legal and religious terms, has well established limits - classically, "till death do we part".
Once the man's first wife dies, neither of them are married to the other any longer. Then, once either the man or his second wife dies, neither of THEM are married to the other. Resurrect all three in the future? None of them are now married.
Anything that happens next is strictly between those three people to figure out, but all of them lived and died with the understanding that death would wipe the slate clean. Everyone kept up their respective ends of the bargain during the relevant time periods, the arrangement(s) ended naturally, and anything after that is a separate issue.
But who will his wives want to be with? His second wife at least was previously married—okay, that guy wasn’t cryo-preserved, but it was a serious relationship, he was the father of her kids—all things being equal, why would she necessarily choose Ettinger again?
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