Sure Way to End an Argument

22 November 2025   Luke 20:27-40 

Memorial of St. Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr

“For they no longer dared to ask Him any question.”  Luke 20:40    

 The blogosphere is full of arguments against the existence of God based on the “Problem of Evil.” It goes something like this: Evil exists. Either God cannot do anything about that, in which case God is not all-powerful; or God doesn’t care, in which case God is not all-good. Therefore, since evil exists, God does not exist.

Of course, the whole “Problem of Evil” argument presumes that objective moral values and duties exist – that is the only way we could identify anything as objectively evil. It also presumes that we can know these objective moral values and duties, all of which is a very powerful argument that God exists.

When they start planning to kill you, you know there won’t be any more real arguing.

At this point “Problem of Evil” bloggers often resort to “That’s just stupid” kinds of retorts, and the argument is over. When the name-calling starts, you always know there is not going to be any more real arguing.

The Sadducees didn’t believe there was an afterlife, and they used the familiar “Seven brothers marry the same woman” meme. “Whose wife will she be in the afterlife?” Since plural marriage was a grave sin, they concluded, there could not be any real afterlife. QED (Latin acronym, quod erat demonstrandum, used sometimes by math-heads at the ends of mathematical proofs. It means “what was to be proved,” i.e. what has been proved).

Jesus countered the premises of their argument. The Sadducees presumed that the purpose of marriage was the preservation of a family name – that’s why all the brothers married their deceased brother’s widow. To Jesus, however, that was not the purpose of marriage at all. The purpose of marriage is the maintenance of the image of God in us, the maintenance of a community and culture in which people see themselves and others as children of God (Luke 20:36, see also Genesis 1:26-31). That’s why Jesus’ first miracle was at a wedding, where He turned water into wine – a sign that He means not just to give His life for us, but to us.

In heaven the only thing that matters is our relationship to God, that we bear His image, His life. Marriage, and the rearing of children in marriage, is the primary vehicle of that message, and the foundation of a stable community. Marriage isn’t about the maintenance of a name for this life only. That wouldn’t mean anything to the Sadducees, however, unless they could find that in the Five Books of Moses (Genesis through Deuteronomy). So even Moses, Jesus added, believed in heaven. It is why he referred to “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). It would be absurd to think of God as the God of people who no longer exist. If God is really the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” then they are still alive with God in heaven, where all are children of God. QED.

“They no longer dared to ask Him anything” (Luke 20:40). It wasn’t because the Sadducees had changed their minds. It was because they had decided to kill Jesus instead (see Luke 22:2).

When they start planning to kill you, you know there won’t be any more real arguing.

When arguments disappear, however, that isn’t always the end of the world. When people see that there are no arguments that hold up against the truth claims of the Gospel, that can be pretty persuasive, too – even in the presence of name-calling and threats. St. Cecilia dedicated her virginity to God, but was forced to marry they pagan Valerian. On her wedding night she explained her vow to her husband, precipitating his conversion and that of his brother. All died as martyrs, but we still talk about them, and make them saints, and dedicate churches to their memory, and almost no one knows who the emperor was at the time of their death (it was Severus Alexander, but only us nerds know that.)

It seems to have worked so far, anyway. Tertullian was right – the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.

St. Cecilia, pray for us.