Jesus’ Defense of the Resurrection
[This post is an abbreviated version of a journal article that provides much more detailed explanation and argumentation. For the full version of the article see JBTW 1.1]
On Tuesday of the Passion Week, the religious leaders attempted repeatedly—and unsuccessfully—to trip Jesus up with hard questions. The question posed that day by the Sadducees pertained to a very specific doctrine they themselves rejected. Their question was not merely about afterlife, or immortality; it was about a specific future event: physical, bodily resurrection (Mt 22:23–33; Mk 12:18–27; Lk 20:27–40).
Several exegetical observations bear this out. (1) All the Synoptic versions of this pericope use the specific term “resurrection” (anastasis) multiple times to denote the issue at stake. (2) All the Synoptics set the stage by spelling out the Sadducees’ explicit denial of the resurrection. (3) The grammar used in both the question and the answer points to a specific event at a future time; the Sadducees ask about future conditions “at the resurrection” (Mt. 22:28; Lk. 20:33), and Jesus replies regarding future conditions “at the resurrection” (Mt. 22:30) during “that age” (Lk. 20:35). (4) Jesus used Moses’ words not to prove that the patriarchs are still alive spiritually, but to prove “that the dead are raised” (Lk 20:37).
Intriguingly, Jesus rests the bulk of his argument on a single text that never directly mentions resurrection—Exodus 3:6.
A Common Explanation of Jesus’ Argument
One of the oldest and most common explanations of Jesus’ strategy is that he pins his argument on a verb tense. The Hebrew text of Exodus 3:6 includes no verb of being, but the Hebrew construction assumes an implied present-tense verb. The Septuagint reflects that implication by inserting a present-tense verb—God did not say “I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” but “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”—implying that they were still alive even though they had died centuries before.
But there are problems with this explanation. For one thing, both Mark and Luke bypass the present tense verb altogether in their account. So, if the verb (“I am”) is the key to unlocking Jesus’ argument, it’s difficult to explain why the Spirit would direct both Mark and Luke to omit it, putting their readers at a distinct disadvantage for understanding Jesus’ reasoning. (This also explains why this argument is more common among commentators on Matthew or systematic theologians who rely primarily on Matthew, but not among commentators on Mark or Luke.)
Secondly, this grammatical explanation proves only immortality (that the patriarchs had not ceased to exist), not resurrection (that the patriarchs would be bodily raised to life again). Neither the Sadducees’ question nor Jesus’ answer are about whether people continue living after death; the specific issue at stake is whether they would experience a resurrected bodily existence in the future.
A Biblical Theological Explanation
The core of Jesus’ argument is covenantal. “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” is the title Yahweh uses to connect himself to the Abrahamic covenant. At stake in that title is not merely the covenantal relationship between God and the patriarchs, but his necessary faithfulness to the covenantal bond itself. That covenantal bond consisted of certain specific promises to the patriarchs—including some that were not fulfilled in their lifetime.
The Importance of Core Covenant Promises
A covenant is not merely a relationship; it is a relationship grounded on specific promises. “I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you” (Gen. 17:7). But what promises, exactly, would entailthe patriarchs’ physical resurrection? What promises are at the core of God’s covenant with the patriarchs that assume an earthly, physical existence, and yet were not fulfilled in their lifetime? The answer surfaces in the very next verse: I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession (Gen. 17:8).
Three vital points emerge here. First, the promise of the possession of the land is repeated regularly precisely because it is at the core of the covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. At least thirteen times, God explicitly reiterates the land promise as being at the core of the Abrahamic covenant (Gen 12:1, 7; Gen 13:15; Gen 13:17; Gen 15:7; Gen 15:18; Gen 17:8; Gen 24:7; Gen 26:3; Gen 28:4,13; Gen 35:12; Gen 50:24; cf. Ps 105:7-11).
Second, God promised the land not merely to the patriarchal descendants of the future (the seed), but to the patriarchs themselves—a point that God himself repeatedly emphasizes in his covenantal statements (see the bolded references just listed). Significantly, this emphasis on the covenantal land-promise to the patriarchs themselves continues into the Exodus context to which Jesus appeals as evidence of resurrection (Ex 6:3–4, 8).
Third, the land promise remained unfulfilled in the patriarchs’ lifetime and, therefore, requires their physical resurrection if God is to keep this repeated promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The patriarchs lived as strangers and sojourners in Canaan only as “the land of promise” (Heb 11:9). It is a stubborn biblical theological datum that the land was promised not just to future generations, but to them—the patriarchs themselves. Yet they died without ever inheriting that promise (cf. Heb. 11: 39). But death cannot cancel covenant promises that the character of God compels him to keep. Spirit beings neither need nor inherit physical land. How, then, can God be true to his promise to give them the land he swore to give them? The Bible’s solution is resurrection. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will inherit the land God promised them—literally and physically—because of the future bodily resurrection.
The Importance of Historical Context
The historical context of the passage to which Jesus alludes (Exodus 3) is indispensable to a biblical theological understanding of his argument. In commissioning Moses to lead the Israelites out of slavery, God introduced himself to Moses as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Exod 3:6). Why? What about God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was relevant to Israel’s bondage in Egypt?
Genesis 15 explains prophetically exactly what God was doing in Exodus 3, and why: “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to inherit it. . . . Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs [for] four hundred years. . . . But . . . they shall return here” (Gen. 15:7, 13, 16). Why? Because “the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I have given this land’” (Gen. 15:18).
Exodus 6 explains retrospectively exactly what God is doing, and why: “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob . . . . I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan . . . . and I have remembered my covenant. . . . and I will bring you out . . . . I will bring you to the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you as a possession” (Ex. 6:3-8).
In other words, the land-promise is at the heart of what God is doing in Exodus 3, and therefore at the heart of why he introduces himself to Moses as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”—and that’s why Jesus’ alludes to that particular passage as Pentateuchal proof of future bodily resurrection.
In the full historical context of Exodus 3, the divine title implies not only that the patriarchs are still very much alive (immortal), but also that they must be physically resurrected if the core promises of God’s covenant with them are to be fulfilled to them. The only way for the patriarchs to experience this promise made repeatedly to them is if they are resurrected bodily from the dead. And they must experience the promise because God’s promises are infallibly reliable. The measure of God’s covenant faithfulness is the trustworthiness of God’s covenant words.
The Importance of Applying the Biblical Theological Data
Many interpreters correctly grasp that when Jesus stakes his argument for resurrection on the divine title in Exodus 3, he is grounding that argument in the certainty of God’s covenantal promises to the patriarchs. Some interpreters, for other systematic theological (ST) reasons, come right up to that threshold, but stop short of the application of that argument to the land promise and its obvious implications for resurrection. To cite I. Howard Marshall: “God will raise the dead because he cannot fail to keep his promises to them that he will be their God.” (I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 743). What about God’s other promises to them—especially promises that specifically entail resurrection? Why shouldn’t the fact that God “cannot fail to keep His promises” not extend to his promises of the land to the original patriarchs themselves?
He is “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” precisely because he entered into covenant with them. A covenant entails promise(s). One of those core promises was that the patriarchs themselves would possess a piece of land that God repeatedly defined with geographical specificity, and which they never possessed in their lifetime. God can always give more than he promised; but he cannot give less, or other, than he promised. Nor can he give what he promised to the patriarchs to others instead. At its most basic level, Jesus’ argument for resurrection is grounded in the inviolability of God’s promises to those with whom he covenants himself.
Jesus is not relying on some miniscule, pedantic detail buried away in some obscure passage; the promise of the land to the patriarchs themselves is repeatedly at the heart of multiple confirmations of the Abrahamic covenant (see the passages cited above). This is one of those mundane exegetical facts that is easily overlooked precisely because it is in such plain view.
The additional explanatory advantage of the view proposed here is that it is the only one that specifically addresses the controversy’s explicit focus on bodily resurrection, by capitalizing on the key component of promise that is at the heart of the covenant and, therefore, at the heart of the divine title to which Jesus turns for proof of the future event of bodily resurrection.
Summary of Jesus’ Theological Method
Key contextualizing strands of this pericope are essential for arriving at an accurate evaluation of Jesus’ theological method: (1) The Sadducees specifically denied “the resurrection” (Mt. 22:23; Mk. 12:18; Lk. 20:27); (2) The Sadducees’ question specifically addressed an explicit future event—“at the resurrection” (Mt. 22:28; Mk. 12:23; Lk. 20:33); and (3) Jesus’ answer specifically addressed that explicit future event—“at the resurrection,” “when they rise from the dead,” “that age and the resurrection of the dead” (Mt. 22:30; Mk. 12:25; Lk. 30:35), “concerning the dead that they rise,” and “that the dead are raised” (Mt. 22:31; Mk. 12:26; Lk. 20:37).
These contextual details are the guardrails necessary to keep one’s explanation of Jesus’ argument on track.
Jesus’ argument is an essentially ST conclusion in the sense that he infers a doctrine that is not explicitly stated in the text he chooses. He is modeling ST at its very best: a ST conclusion inferred on the basis of both explicit and implicit BT data grounded in exegetical data emerging from the covenantal implications of a specific divine title embedded in a specific historical context. The covenant relationship God formed with the patriarchs requires resurrection so that he can fulfill the covenant promises he made not just to their seed, but to them.
To be sure, Jesus is not hanging from the slender thread of a single inferential datum the entire weight of a doctrine that is not also expressly taught elsewhere. He might have taught the resurrection from multiple passages in the Prophets (e.g., Isa. 26:19 or Dan. 12:2) or the Writings (e.g., Ps. 16 or Job 19). Nevertheless, the theological method he employed in answering this specific question from this particular text is both adequate and sound. He makes a systematic theological inference (the doctrine of a physical resurrection), based on biblical theological implications (God’s covenantal relationship with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob which includes promises to them personally that have not yet been fulfilled), grounded in exegetical theological data (God’s chosen title as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” in a historical context where the land promise is central, as well as multiple texts that specify God’s promise of the land to the patriarchs personally, not just corporately to their descendants).
To reference God’s title as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” is to reference the covenant relationship, and the promises are the covenant. The covenantal promises to the patriarchs are the very reason God appeared to Moses in Exodus 3 and commissioned him to lead the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob out of Egypt. And that’s the passage to which Jesus turns in order to prove specifically “that the dead are raised” (Lk. 20:37), in response to the Sadducees’ proposed dilemma about what will happen “at the resurrection” (Mt. 22:28; Mk. 12:23; Lk. 20:33).
Even Abraham understood the necessary connection between resurrection and another one of God’s covenant promises (Heb. 11:17-19). Because of God’s inviolable promise that Isaac would be the one to perpetuate his line, Abraham logicized (the verb in Heb. 11:19 is logizomai) that the sacrifice of Isaac could not possibly be the end of Isaac, even if it meant that God would have to raise him from the dead. Abraham’s willingness to imagine an outcome as necessary in order for God to keep his word, even when it entailed an experience for which he had no precedent or revelation, is an astonishing lesson to theologians: God cannot lie and will always do what he says. Indeed, Abraham’s imaginative application of God’s omnipotence in order to keep his word is a fitting foil to the Sadducees whom Jesus rebuked for their failure to understand God’s power. The specific text Jesus cites never states a doctrine of resurrection, yet his inference silences his critics and astonishes the crowd. Even some of the scribes were impressed by Jesus’ argument (“Well said, Teacher!” Luke 20:39). The original audience clearly understood it to be a valid conclusion. The remarkable use that Jesus makes of God’s words here demonstrates their trustworthiness, including biblical-theologically grounded implications not directly stated in the text.
