Ship of Fools: Love and marriage in the afterlife

Thread: Love and marriage in the afterlife Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

I just went to a wedding yesterday. It was the first marriage for the bride, but the second for the groom, who was a widower. It was a church wedding, and there was a lot in the ceremony from the Bible about love, and everlasting and so on, and it got me thinking. I know how much the groom loved his first wife. I assume he equally loves his second wife. So, what happens in the afterlife? Does he have two wives in heaven?

I know this sort of goes along with the question Jesus was asked about a similar situation, the woman who marries seven brothers in succession, whose wife is she in heaven. And Jesus replied something along the lines of there is no marrying or giving in marriage in heaven.

So what does happen to our relationships in heaven? Is marriage only a "in this lifetime" relationship?

I'm wondering what everyone's take on this is.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

My view is that marriage - in the sense of an exclusive relationship - is for this life only. But relationships with people in a non-exclusive (and non-sexual) sense will persist into the next life.

So yes, he will have a special and close relationships with both wives in the next life, but it will not be to the exclusion of others in either direction.

Does that make sense?

Posted by apostate630 (# 15425) on :

I don't anticipate any sort of afterlife. If there is, look guys, all agreements arrived at in this life are off the table.

Just my two cents.

Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :

quote:
Does that make sense?

It does to me, SC.

I've heard from an Orthodox friend that she believes that there is an Orthodox strain of thought (how representative or widespread I do not know, but she thinks it mainstream) that marriage does (or can) last beyond death - it can be part of our eternal life. I was certain this couldn't be right, but she assured me it was. Can anyone shed any light on this?

[ 27. January 2013, 20:09: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

SD, yes that makes sense and tends towards what I hope is the case myself. But somehow it doesn't seem to accord with popular theology.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Our intimacies, our knowledge of each other, our love for each other, the increase of that, will know no end. Every broken relationship - and ALL are broken - will be healed, deadapted, readapted to what it should have bee and more, perfected, restituted. There will be NO endless, unfulfilable erotic desire, no desperation, no fear, no abandonment, no betrayal, no loss, no lust.

The best of marriages and the best of sibling and friend and parent-child relationships will be a shadow of ALL our relationships.

It has not entered in to our hearts how good it will be.

Posted by Tubifex Maximus (# 4874) on :

I think Jesus actually addressed this, didn't he? Mark 12:25 and Luke 20:35. The context is Jesus answering a similar question put to him by Sadducees who don't believe in the afterlife. I've never quite got my head round the concept of heaven but it does look as if the early church was thinking it's quite different to this life.

Posted by Augustine the Aleut (# 1472) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:

quote:
Does that make sense?
It does to me, SC.

I've heard from an Orthodox friend that she believes that there is an Orthodox strain of thought (how representative or widespread I do not know, but she thinks it mainstream) that marriage does (or can) last beyond death - it can be part of our eternal life. I was certain this couldn't be right, but she assured me it was. Can anyone shed any light on this?

I recall having read something by Seraphim Rose (not a canonical authority!) that this was the reason why blessings for 2d and 3d marriages, whether or not after death or divorce of the spouse, used different formats and prayers, as the first marriage was the eternal one. I suspect that this falls under the pious opinion category. I could not find the reference, so it might have even been another source from that period, and not Seraphim.

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

That doesn't sound quite fair to the second spouse, especially if it's their first marriage.

Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :

I must say I agree, Nicole. Thanks to Augustine for the putative source.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

I'm in my 2nd marriage and kinda hope Jesus was right about the whole thing, because if I end up w/ hubby #1 for all eternity, well, it's gonna be awkward.

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
My view is that marriage - in the sense of an exclusive relationship - is for this life only. But relationships with people in a non-exclusive (and non-sexual) sense will persist into the next life.

I agree. I'm so old I'm starting to get to that place already. My first husband comes by about once a month to see our son, but my present husband (of 30 years) and I both get along fine with him and it's sort of like the relationship you have with friends you've known for ages.

Martin's post is lovely.

Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :

I've puzzled over the reply Jesus gives in Mark 12: 25, and the Luke passage is not so dissimilar. It seems that Jesus is not answering the question asked but some other one, along the lines of "do people marry in the life to come?". I guess we need to understand it as an answer, though how exactly?

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

Perhaps Jesus was coy because in some ways, it is such a ridiculous question, given our current realities. We can't make our marriages and our commitments work in this life-- we experience infidelities (whether sexual or other) and broken promises and alienation-- and yet we're spending our time worrying about the next life?

Jesus-- and the NT-- give us very, very little details about the next life. We know there is one, and that God is there. Jesus seems to think that's enough for now. Our focus should be on trying to understand how to follow him in this life-- how to make our marriages and our relationships and our commitments somehow correlate with those kingdom realities now. Focusing on how to live a life here and now that resembles the fruit of the Spirit-- love , joy, peace, all that stuff-- seems to be plenty for us to worry about right now.

Then, as Martin said, we can just be wonderfully surprised at how much better it can be in the next life.

Posted by poileplume (# 16438) on :

May I support cliffdweller and others? I think it is a case of "God made man in his own image and man returned the compliment."

Heaven is the very essence of perfect love. Are we not trying to privatise Heaven to conform to our own very limited experience of love in this world? I cannot compare even my incredible marriage, and its God given love, to the infinite love that is the embodiment of heaven.

In other words, may I submit it is a non question?

Posted by Anyuta (# 14692) on :

Yes, it's true that in Orthodoxy there is no concept of "till death do us part". The Orthodox ideal is one spouse per person per life. However, the Church does bless second, and even third marriages, because of the understanding that humans aren't perfect, mistakes are made, we get lonely etc. I believe the general thinking is not that the first one is "real" and the others not, but rather that a merciful God will sort it all out, and that the afterlife will be so different from this life that our relationships will also take a form we can not wrap our limited human minds around. In typical Orthodox fashion, we don't spend too much time worrying about details we have no way of knowing. We just sort of accept it as true that in SOMEway marriage continues into the next life.

By the way, the three marriage limit applies even in the case of widowhood. And priests are held to a higher standard..at least in theory the one spouse per life rule is maintained, and more than that, the priest,s wife can't have been previously married either (although that one might be limited to divorce, I'm not sure..I'd have to look it up).

I personally think that "marriage" in the normal human sense (legal contract, with a ceremony of some sort determining the point if its start) is not what will persist in the afterlife. I think that a couple who are deeply in love, but not technically married will be together, while a married couple who hate each other, or even who are merely just friends will not be "bound" to each other for eternity. But overall, I take the Orthodox approach of just trusting that God will sort it out in a way that will seem perfectly right to us when it happens, but that we are incapable of grasping now.

And if I'm wrong, and I'm "married" to my first husband in the next life, then I'll know I didn't make the cut and ended up in hell after all.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anyuta:
But overall, I take the Orthodox approach of just trusting that God will sort it out in a way that will seem perfectly right to us when it happens, but that we are incapable of grasping now.

And if I'm wrong, and I'm "married" to my first husband in the next life, then I'll know I didn't make the cut and ended up in hell after all.

With ya on both counts, sister!

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

Swedenborgians have a detailed view of the afterlife. It is includes being married forever to the one you love.

The situation in Nicole's OP is not really a problem. In the next life people are able to see much more clearly who their true love actually is. Everyone has one. No one is left out.

So if a person has experienced more than one spouse they will live forever with the one that they truly love.

We treat Jesus' words about marriage not existing in the next life as metaphoric. The meaning of the metaphor is that people need to be prepared for heaven (the marriage) in this life, because after death it is too late.

Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anyuta:
And if I'm wrong, and I'm "married" to my first husband in the next life, then I'll know I didn't make the cut and ended up in hell after all.

Amen, amen, amen.

Posted by Erroneous Monk (# 10858) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
There will be NO endless, unfulfilable erotic desire, no desperation, no fear, no abandonment, no betrayal, no loss, no lust.

I want this so much. Sigh.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

In just a little while you will have it. Until then ...

Posted by Jon in the Nati (# 15849) on :

quote:
I cannot compare even my incredible marriage, and its God given love, to the infinite love that is the embodiment of heaven.

In other words, may I submit it is a non question?

I think it is a non-question, and it does speak to the tendency (understandable, certainly) to attempt to domesticate heaven. I actually encounter this sort of thing a lot, when I preach on heaven. Someone, usually a widow, will ask me if she will know her late husband in heaven. I've been asked, usually by men, but not always, if there will be sex in heaven.

Behind both of these questions and the countless variations of them, I think, is the assumption that heaven is basically a 'this-worldly' experience, and that it will somehow be less than this world, or if we will have things taken away from us in the next world. I have a pretty strong feeling that in heaven all attachments to things of the material world (or of the flesh, as St. Paul likes to say) will be done away with, and that even my wife, my parents, my children (etc.) will not count for much next to gazing on the face of the Creator God for all eternity. In short, I do not think of heaven as a 'this-worldly' experience, and so questions having to do with things of this world are ultimately of little consequence.

Posted by Bostonman (# 17108) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jon in the Nati:
I have a pretty strong feeling that in heaven all attachments to things of the material world (or of the flesh, as St. Paul likes to say) will be done away with, and that even my wife, my parents, my children (etc.) will not count for much next to gazing on the face of the Creator God for all eternity.

Doesn't that kind of suck, though?

I mean, I love someone very, very much, who has struggled with depression and addiction most of her life. One of the things that gives me very, very much hope is my faith that all the suffering, all the despair, everything else, as long as it may be, is but a brief flash compared to the eternity we'll have to love one another in an unbroken heaven. And that sounds like a beautiful, beautiful thing. Don't get me wrong—the gazing on God stuff sounds great too. But really, your wife and kids won't count for much relative to God? I'd prefer to think that wives and kids will count for even more illuminated by God's light.

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

I think I go with Bostonman on this. I don't want to forget or stop caring about my loves in this life.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

I wonder if we aren't underestimating heaven. Perhaps it isn't that we'll cease to have our this world loves, so much as that all our other relationships will finally be brought up to the same level...

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I wonder if we aren't underestimating heaven. Perhaps it isn't that we'll cease to have our this world loves, so much as that all our other relationships will finally be brought up to the same level...

Maybe. But I believe that the intense joy associated with true love in this world will be even more intense and central in the next life.

Posted by Laurelin (# 17211) on :

I'm sure we underestimate the joys of heaven ...

If I were married, I would be rather devastated to think that my mate and I would not be partnered in the afterlife. HOWEVER, our images of heaven are very poor if we honestly imagine that being in the presence of God for eternity could possibly disappoint us in any way. God is the source of all true Love.

[Flippant thought: If I don't get married in this life, and there is no marriage in the next, at least I won't be an eternal gooseberry. Thank goodness. [Biased]

]

Seriously: “... What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—"

1 Corinthians 2:9

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jon in the Nati:
I have a pretty strong feeling that in heaven all attachments to things of the material world (or of the flesh, as St. Paul likes to say) will be done away with...

When Paul spoke of the flesh, he was not talking about material things only. In Galatians 5:19-21 he lists the sins of the flesh

quote:
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Some of these are clearly material, but others, such as idolatry and sorcery are not. I understand 'flesh' to mean unredeemed human nature.

Moo

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

The face of God will be made of one hundred billion human faces for a start.

Like sentient chromatophores on a squid.

We'll have forever to get to know them, starting with those we love and have known.

We're going to be happily, relationally, contentedly, creatively, playfully BUSY.

Posted by Laurence (# 9135) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Our intimacies, our knowledge of each other, our love for each other, the increase of that, will know no end. Every broken relationship - and ALL are broken - will be healed, deadapted, readapted to what it should have bee and more, perfected, restituted. There will be NO endless, unfulfilable erotic desire, no desperation, no fear, no abandonment, no betrayal, no loss, no lust.

The best of marriages and the best of sibling and friend and parent-child relationships will be a shadow of ALL our relationships.

It has not entered in to our hearts how good it will be.

(too choked up by that to say any more at the moment. But it's a good sort of [Tear]

)

[ 29. January 2013, 14:06: Message edited by: Laurence ]

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