Female Bodies in Heaven

Scriptures:

1 Peter 3:7-9 – Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.

Matthew 22:30 – For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

Luke 20:34-36 – The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

1 Corinthians 7:29-31 – But this I say, brethren, the time is short, so that from now on even those who have wives should be as though they had none, those who weep as though they did not weep, those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice, those who buy as though they did not possess, and those who use this world as not misusing it. For the form of this world is passing away.

Galatians 3:28 – There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

1 John 3:2 – Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

Philippians 3:18-21 – For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.

1 Corinthians 15:

³⁵ But someone will say, “How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?” ³⁶ Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. ³⁷ And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain—perhaps wheat or some other grain. ³⁸ But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body.

³⁹ All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds.

⁴⁰ There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. ⁴¹ There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.

⁴² So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. ⁴³ It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. ⁴⁴ It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. ⁴⁵ And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

⁴⁶ However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. ⁴⁷ The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. ⁴⁸ As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. ⁴⁹ And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.

⁵⁰ Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. ⁵¹ Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— ⁵² in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. ⁵³ For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

Romans 8:14–19 – All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God…. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

Galatians 3:26–28 – For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.

Revelation 21:7 – “The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”

Church Fathers:

Clement of Rome:

Let us expect, therefore, hour by hour, the kingdom of God in love and righteousness, since we know not the day of the appearing of God. For the Lord Himself, being asked by one when His kingdom would come, replied, When two shall be one, that which is without as that which is within, and the male with the female, neither male nor female. – 2 Clement, chapter 12

For a woman, being half a man…. – Peter, Homilies of Clement, book 2, chapters 23-24

Athenagoras

For neither the command, Honour your father and your mother, is adapted to souls alone, since such names are not applicable to them, for souls do not produce souls, so as to appropriate the appellation of father or mother, but men produce men; nor could the command, You shall not commit adultery, ever be properly addressed to souls, or even thought of in such a connection, since the difference of male and female does not exist in them, nor any aptitude for sexual intercourse, nor appetite for it; and where there is no appetite, there can be no intercourse; and where there is no intercourse at all, there can be no legitimate intercourse, namely marriage; and where there is no lawful intercourse, neither can there be unlawful desire of, or intercourse with, another man’s wife, namely adultery. – Athenagoras, On the Resurrection of the Dead, Chapter 23

Irenaeus:

Why was it, that when these two (Aaron and Miriam) had both acted with despite towards him (Moses), the latter alone was adjudged punishment? First, because the woman was the more culpable, since both nature and the law place the woman in a subordinate condition to the man. – Irenaeus, Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenæus, Fragment 32

Clement of Alexandria:

He will therefore prefer neither children, nor marriage, nor parents, to love for God, and righteousness in life. To such an one, his wife, after conception, is as a sister, and is judged as if of the same father; then only recollecting her husband, when she looks on the children; as being destined to become a sister in reality after putting off the flesh, which separates and limits the knowledge of those who are spiritual by the peculiar characteristics of the sexes. For souls, themselves by themselves, are equal. Souls are neither male nor female, when they no longer marry nor are given in marriage. And is not woman translated into man, when she has become equally unfeminine, and manly, and perfect? Such, then, was the laughter of Sarah when she received the good news of the birth of a son; not, in my opinion, that she disbelieved the angel, but that she felt ashamed of the intercourse by means of which she was destined to become the mother of a son. – Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, book 6

And those whose life is common, have common graces and a common salvation; common to them are love and training. “For in this world,” he says, “they marry, and are given in marriage,” in which alone the female is distinguished from the male; “but in that world it is so no more.” There the rewards of this social and holy life, which is based on conjugal union, are laid up, not for male and female, but for man, the sexual desire which divides humanity being removed. Common therefore, too, to men and women, is the name of man. – Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, book 1, chapter 4

So when a person refuses to indulge temper or desire, which in fact grow from bad character and bad nurture till they overshadow and conceal rational thought, when he strips off the darkness these produce, when he repents and out of repentance feels shame, when he integrates soul and spirit in obedience to the Word, then, as Paul joins in affirming, “there is no male or female among you.” Galatians 3:28 The soul stands aside from the mere appearance of shape whereby male is distinguished from female, and is transformed into unity, being neither male nor female. – Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata 3.13.93

Tertullian:

For you too, (women as you are,) have the self-same angelic nature promised as your reward, the self-same sex as men.” – Tertullian, On The Apparel of Women, book 1, chapter 2

We have said these things—even if it seems we have engaged in a digression—for clarification of the law from Moses of which the Sadducees make mention and inquire of the Savior, saying, Moses said, “If someone dies who does not have children,” [K688] etc. Come, then, let us inquire about other things in the Gospel after this which are from, But there were seven brothers to us, and the first wife died, etc. On the one hand, Isaiah says in his prophecy, “Seven women will grasp for one man, saying, ‘We will eat our bread and we will use our own garments for clothing; just let your name be called upon us, and remove our reproach” (Isa 4.2). The Sadducees who come to the Savior reverse the categories in the prophecy to seven men marrying one woman. And it seems to be that it is this form that causes their problem, when they set forth through the form the teaching rejecting the resurrection and think it follows that in the resurrection each of those who are raised has the same relationship as he had in this life, such that the man would receive back the wife after the resurrection takes place, and the father would remain in the same relationship to the son and brother to brother. They are ignorant that while the Creator made all things with regard to usefulness, where procreation is also corruption, [K689] he made these types of relationships out of necessity, so that, on the one hand, a certain man might be provided through a woman for the procreation of children, and on the other hand those who are begotten might, being brothers, have some kinship through their common origin. The work of procreation was also [for the relationships of] father and son and mother and daughter. If then, those who are counted worthy of a privilege because they lived well in the present age they will exist in that life in the more blessed state, and no one of those who have not struggled here will be accounted worthy of the resurrection of the dead, clearly then those things that were useful here for procreation will not be present there. For God does nothing extraneous nor does anything useless come to be on his account. – Origen, commentary on Matthew, book 17, chapter 33

Hippolytus:

Men, he says, “in the resurrection will be like the angels of God,” to wit, in incorruption, and immortality, and incapacity of loss. For the incorruptible nature is not the subject of generation; it grows not, sleeps not, hungers not, thirsts not, is not wearied, suffers not, dies not, is not pierced by nails and spear, sweats not, drops not with blood. Of such kind are the natures of the angels and of souls released from the body. For both these are of another kind, and different from these creatures of our world, which are visible and perishing. – Hippolytus, Fragment 1 On the Resurrection and Incorruption.

[Notice how Hippolytus puts genderless souls in the same category as angels. If souls and angels do not have genders, will the female sex exist in the resurrection.]

Aphrahat:

They shall not marry wives there, nor shall they beget children; nor shall there the male be distinguished from the female; but all shall be sons of their Father Who is in heaven; as the Prophet said:— Is there not one Father of us all; is there not one God Who created us? – Aphrahat Demonstrations 22.12

About what I have said, that there they shall not marry, and the male is not distinct from the female our Lord and his Apostle have taught us. For our Lord said, “Those who are worthy of that world and of that resurrection from the house of the dead do not marry wives nor are women given in marriage to men. For they cannot die, but they are like angels in heaven, and they are children of God” (Lk. 20:35-36). And the Apostle said, “There is neither male nor female, neither slave nor free, but you are all one in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 3:28). God made Eve distinct from Adam for the purpose of propagation so that she might become the mother of all the living; but in that world there is no female, as also in heaven there is no female, nor bringing forth, nor the use of desire. In that place there is no want of anything, but perfection and fullness. — Aphrahat, Demonstration 22 On Death and Latter Times, chapter 13

Arnobius:

You consider that the deities have sexes, and that some of them are male, others female; we utterly deny that the powers of heaven have been distinguished by sexes, since this distinction has been given to the creatures of earth which the Author of the universe willed should embrace and generate, to provide, by their carnal desires, one generation of offspring after another. – Arnobius, (305 AD) The Seven Books of Arnobius Against the Heathen Book 7 Chapter 35

Athanasius:

Put away the womanish mentality and take up courage and manliness. For in the kingdom of heaven there is no male and female [Gal. 3:28], but all well-pleasing women take on the rank of men. – Pseudo-Athanasius, Discourse on Salvation to a Virgin, chapter 10

Ambrose of Milan:

Why, then, should you concern yourself with gender, when what is required from you is the strength of the soul, not of the body—a soul which has no sex? Do not, therefore, distinguish honor or divide reward where no distinction of sex is made. Do not wonder, however, if the one who was first to fall is now called later to the struggle. She who began badly should follow, not lead—that even after her experience she may become more modest. Eve wrongfully overturned the order of nature—she should have waited for the one who was meant to go before her. The serpent cunningly began from the one who came after; therefore, the Prophet returns to the one who came before—the man who would not have fallen had he not followed the one who came after. – Ambrose of Milan, Homily on Psalm 1, Chapter 14

Gregory of Nazianzus:

O nature of woman overcoming that of man in the common struggle for salvation, and demonstrating that the distinction between male and female is one of body not of soul! O Baptismal purity, O soul, in the pure chamber of thy body, the bride of Christ! O bitter eating! O Eve mother of our race and of our sin! O subtle serpent, and death, overcome by her self-discipline! O self-emptying of Christ, and form of a servant, and sufferings, honoured by her mortification! – Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration VIII. Funeral Oration on His Sister Gorgonia.

Cyril of Jerusalem:

The soul is immortal, and all souls are alike both of men and women; for only the members of the body are distinguished. There is not a class of souls sinning by nature, and a class of souls practising righteousness by nature: but both act from choice, the substance of their souls being of one kind only, and alike in all. – Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, Lecture 4, chapter 20

Hilary of Poitiers:

And so, the common opinion holds that nothing is contained in the prophetic Scriptures concerning the conditions of the resurrection. But the Lord says: “You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.” Therefore, it is written; and the ambiguity must cease, since such great authority condemns it. For many often bring up this same objection: in what form shall the female sex rise, and whether they will be restored again with the functions proper to their nature and body? We indeed venture to touch upon this matter—almost universally passed over—without rashness: but we observe that the only question proposed to the Lord was, whose wife she should be reckoned from among the seven; and that the Lord rebuked them for erring, because they did not know the Scriptures or the power of God, since they neither marry nor are given in marriage (v. 30). And indeed, it would have sufficed, against the Sadducees who so believed, to have cut off the notion of bodily desire, and to have taken away such empty pleasures of the body by the cessation of those functions. But He added: They will be like the angels of God. Therefore, since the mystery of the Scriptures and the power of the divine might show that they will be like the angels, the same understanding we hold in Scripture concerning the angels must be applied to our hope regarding women in the resurrection. And this indeed is the answer He gave to the question posed concerning the conditions of the resurrection. — Hilary of Poitiers, Commentary on Matthew, chapter 23, section 4. PL 9.1045C-1046A

Gregory of Nyssa:

7. We must, then, examine the words carefully: for we find, if we do so, that that which was made in the image is one thing, and that which is now manifested in wretchedness is another. “God created man,” it says; “in the image of God created He him” (Genesis 1:27). There is an end of the creation of that which was made in the image: then it makes a resumption of the account of creation, and says, “male and female created He them.” I presume that every one knows that this is a departure from the Prototype: “for in Christ Jesus,” as the apostle says, “there is neither male nor female.” Yet the phrase declares that man is thus divided.

8. Thus the creation of our nature is in a sense twofold: one made like to God, one divided according to this distinction: for something like this the passage darkly conveys by its arrangement, where it first says, “God created man, in the image of God created He him” (Genesis 1:27), and then, adding to what has been said, “male and female created He them” (Genesis 1:27),— a thing which is alien from our conceptions of God.

9. I think that by these words Holy Scripture conveys to us a great and lofty doctrine; and the doctrine is this. While two natures— the Divine and incorporeal nature, and the irrational life of brutes — are separated from each other as extremes, human nature is the mean between them: for in the compound nature of man we may behold a part of each of the natures I have mentioned — of the Divine, the rational and intelligent element, which does not admit the distinction of male and female; of the irrational, our bodily form and structure, divided into male and female: for each of these elements is certainly to be found in all that partakes of human life. That the intellectual element, however, precedes the other, we learn as from one who gives in order an account of the making of man; and we learn also that his community and kindred with the irrational is for man a provision for reproduction. For he says first that God created man in the image of God (showing by these words, as the Apostle says, that in such a being there is no male or female): then he adds the peculiar attributes of human nature, “male and female created He them” (Genesis 1:27). – Gregory of Nyssa, On The Making of Man, chapter 16

4. Man, then, was made in the image of God; that is, the universal nature, the thing like God; not part of the whole, but all the fullness of the nature together was so made by omnipotent wisdom. He saw, Who holds all limits in His grasp, as the Scripture tells us which says, in His hand are all the corners of the earth , He saw, Who knows all things even before they be , comprehending them in His knowledge, how great in number humanity will be in the sum of its individuals. But as He perceived in our created nature the bias towards evil, and the fact that after its voluntary fall from equality with the angels it would acquire a fellowship with the lower nature, He mingled, for this reason, with His own image, an element of the irrational (for the distinction of male and female does not exist in the Divine and blessed nature);— transferring, I say, to man the special attribute of the irrational formation, He bestowed increase upon our race not according to the lofty character of our creation; for it was not when He made that which was in His own image that He bestowed on man the power of increasing and multiplying; but when He divided it by sexual distinctions, then He said, Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth (Genesis 1:28). For this belongs not to the Divine, but to the irrational element, as the history indicates when it narrates that these words were first spoken by God in the case of the irrational creatures; since we may be sure that, if He had bestowed on man, before imprinting on our nature the distinction of male and female, the power for increase conveyed by this utterance, we should not have needed this form of generation by which the brutes are generated.

5. Now seeing that the full number of men pre-conceived by the operation of foreknowledge will come into life by means of this animal generation, God, Who governs all things in a certain order and sequence — since the inclination of our nature to what was beneath it (which He Who beholds the future equally with the present saw before it existed) made some such form of generation absolutely necessary for mankind — therefore also foreknew the time coextensive with the creation of men, so that the extent of time should be adapted for the entrances of the pre-determined souls, and that the flux and motion of time should halt at the moment when humanity is no longer produced by means of it; and that when the generation of men is completed, time should cease together with its completion, and then should take place the restitution of all things, and with the World-Reformation humanity also should be changed from the corruptible and earthly to the impassible and eternal.

6. And this it seems to me the Divine apostle considered when he declared in his epistle to the Corinthians the sudden stoppage of time, and the change of the things that are now moving on back to the opposite end where he says, Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). For when, as I suppose, the full complement of human nature has reached the limit of the pre-determined measure, because there is no longer anything to be made up in the way of increase to the number of souls, he teaches us that the change in existing things will take place in an instant of time, giving to that limit of time which has no parts or extension the names of a moment, and the twinkling of an eye; so that it will no more be possible for one who reaches the verge of time (which is the last and extreme point, from the fact that nothing is lacking to the attainment of its extremity) to obtain by death this change which takes place at a fixed period, but only when the trumpet of the resurrection sounds, which awakens the dead, and transforms those who are left in life, after the likeness of those who have undergone the resurrection change, at once to incorruptibility; so that the weight of the flesh is no longer heavy, nor does its burden hold them down to earth, but they rise aloft through the air — for, we shall be caught up, he tells us, in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:17). – Gregory of Nyssa, On The Making of Man, chapter 22

No one, therefore, will be justified in seeking in that other life for the consequences in us of any passion. Just as if a man, who, clad in a ragged tunic, has divested himself of the garb, feels no more its disgrace upon him, so we too, when we have cast off that dead unsightly tunic made from the skins of brutes and put upon us (for I take the coats of skins to mean that conformation belonging to a brute nature with which we were clothed when we became familiar with passionate indulgence), shall, along with the casting off of that tunic, fling from us all the belongings that were round us of that skin of a brute; and such accretions are sexual intercourse, conception, parturition, impurities, suckling, feeding, evacuation, gradual growth to full size, prime of life, old age, disease, and death. If that skin is no longer round us, how can its resulting consequences be left behind within us? – Gregory of Nyssa, On The Soul and The Resurrection (no chapters)

Jerome:

Jerome says there is NO gender distinction in heaven (speaks well of Origen):

You have with you one who was once your partner in the flesh but is now your partner in the spirit; once your wife but now your sister; once a woman but now a man; once an inferior but now an equal. Under the same yoke as you she hastens toward the same heavenly kingdom. – Jerome (Letter 71 Section 3)

Jerome later said there IS gender distinction in heaven (now hates Origen):

… However, I will set out the actual words which are found in Origen’s third book: “We may say that the soul loves that flesh which is to see the salvation of God, that it nourishes and cherishes it, and trains it by discipline and satisfies it with the bread of heaven, and gives it to drink of the blood of Christ: so that it may become well-liking through wholesome food, and may follow its husband freely, without being weighed down by any weakness. It is by a beautiful image that the soul is said to nourish and cherish the body as Christ nourishes and cherishes the church, since it was he who said to Jerusalem: How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings and you would not; and that thus this corruptible may put on incorruption, and that being poised lightly, as upon wings, may rise more easily into the air. Let us men then cherish our wives, and let our souls cherish our bodies in a way as that wives may be turned into men and bodies into spirits, and that there may be no difference of sex, but that, as among the angels there is neither male nor female, so we, who are to be the Angels, may begin to be here what it is promised that we shall be in heaven.” – Jerome, Apology Against Rufinus, Book 1, chapter 28

And, indeed, when chastity is observed between man and woman, it begins to be true that there is neither male nor female; but, though living in the body, they are being changed into angels, among whom there is neither male nor female. The same is said by the same Apostle in another place: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” – Jerome, Apology Against Rufinus, Book 1, chapter 29

Now when it is said that they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the angels in heaven, there is no taking away of a natural and real body but only an indication of the greatness of the glory to come. For the words are not “they shall be angels” but “they shall be as the angels”: thus while likeness to the angels is promised identity with them is refused. “They shall be,” Christ tells us, “as the angels,” that is like the angels; therefore they will not cease to be human. Glorious indeed they shall be, and graced with angelic splendour, but they will still be human; the apostle Paul will still be Paul, Mary will still be Mary. – Jerome, Letter 75, To Theodora

31. I will speak freely, and although you screw your mouths, pull your hair, stamp your feet, and take up stones like the Jews, I will openly confess the faith of the Church. The reality of a resurrection without flesh and bones, without blood and members, is unintelligible. Where there are flesh and bones, where there are blood and members, there must of necessity be diversity of sex. Where there is diversity of sex, there John is John, Mary is Mary. You need not fear the marriage of those who, even before death, lived in their own sex without discharging the functions of sex. When it is said, In that day they shall neither marry, nor be given in marriage, the words refer to those who can marry, and yet will not do so. For no one says of the angels, They shall not marry, nor be given in marriage. I never heard of a marriage being celebrated among the spiritual virtues in heaven: but where there is sex, there you have man and woman. Hence it is that, although you were reluctant, you were compelled by the truth to confess that, A man must either be crowned in the body because he lived a pure and upright life, or be condemned in the body, because he was the slave of pleasure and iniquity. Substitute flesh for body, and you have not denied the existence of male and female. Who can have any glory from a life of chastity if we have no sex which would make unchastity possible? Who ever crowned a stone for continuing a virgin? Likeness to the angels is promised us, that is, the blessedness of their angelic existence without flesh and sex will be bestowed on us in our flesh and with our sex. I am simple enough so to believe, and so know how to confess that sex can exist without the functions of the senses; that it is thus that men rise, and that it is thus that they are made equal to the angels. Nor will the resurrection of the members all at once seem superfluous, because they are to have no office, since, while we are still in this life, we strive not to perform the works of the members. Moreover, likeness to the angels does not imply a changing of men into angels, but their growth in immortality and glory. – Jerome, To Pammachius Against John of Jerusalem, chapter 31

“Do you believe,” said I, “that there will be a resurrection of the dead or do you disbelieve?” He replied, “I believe.” I went on: “Will the bodies that rise again be the same or different?” He said, “The same.” Then I asked: “What of their sex? Will that remain unaltered or will it be changed?” At this question he became silent and swayed his head this way and that as a serpent does to avoid being struck. Accordingly I continued, “As you have nothing to say I will answer for you and will draw the conclusion from your premises. If the woman shall not rise again as a woman nor the man as a man, there will be no resurrection of the dead. For the body is made up of sex and members. But if there shall be no sex and no members what will become of the resurrection of the body, which cannot exist without sex and members? And if there shall be no resurrection of the body, there can be no resurrection of the dead. But as to your objection taken from marriage, that, if the members shall remain the same, marriage must inevitably be allowed; it is disposed of by the Saviour’s words: ye do err not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the angels (Matthew 22:29-30). When it is said that they neither marry nor are given in marriage, the distinction of sex is shown to persist. For no one says of things which have no capacity for marriage such as a stick or a stone that they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but this may well be said of those who while they can marry yet abstain from doing so by their own virtue and by the grace of Christ. But if you cavil at this and say, how shall we in that case be like the angels with whom there is neither male nor female, hear my answer in brief as follows. What the Lord promises to us is not the nature of angels but their mode of life and their bliss. And therefore John the Baptist is called an angel even before he is beheaded, and all God’s holy men and virgins manifest in themselves even in this world the life of angels. When it is said you shall be like the angels, likeness only is promised and not a change of nature. – Jerome, Letter 108, chapter 23

[What utter insanity! Jerome says that Christians in heaven MUST be capable of marrying each other, based on Christ’s statement that they won’t be married any longer! So he must think that men and women can still become sexually aroused, and become sexually fertile, and menstruate!  After all, you can’t have a marriage without intercourse. So they must be CAPABLE of having sex, according to Jerome!

Jerome was always of the same opinion about the body being raised a spiritual body until the slander against Origen commenced and they began accusing Origen of denying the resurrection of the flesh. Origen actually believed the essence of the body would be changed at the resurrection, no longer having veins, arteries, intestines, and reproductive organs, in agreement with the rest of the fathers.]

Rufinus of Aquileia:

Rufinus rebukes Jerome for flip-flopping and making accusations against Origen on this doctrine about male and female ceasing to exist:

We are to understand then that things in heaven and those on earth, that is, Angels and men, formerly had one form and one sheepfold, and that so it will be in their future restoration, since Christ will come to make both into one flock, and men are to be what angels now are, and what they, that is their souls, previously were. I ask then, with what face you can mock, as we lately saw you, so pleasantly, or rather not pleasantly at all but scurrilously, at those poor women who, striking their bellies and thighs, said that they should not after the resurrection have those frail bodies but would be like the angels and have a life like theirs. You reprove with bitter raillery these poor women for saying the very things which are now produced as passages from these selected Commentaries of yours. Do not you think this is somewhat as if a man were to accuse another of theft, while he had the very thing that had been stolen concealed in the bosom of his toga; and as if, after inveighing against the supposed thief in a long and magnificent peroration, after bringing forward witnesses and taking the oath in due form, he should have the stolen article extracted from his toga which he supposed himself to have convicted another of stealing. – Rufinus, Apology Against Jerome, book 1, paragraph 39

Augustine:

Some conclude that women shall not rise women, but that all shall be men, because God made man only of earth, and woman of the man. For my part, they seem to be wiser who make no doubt that both sexes shall rise. For there shall be no lust, which is now the cause of confusion. For before they sinned, the man and the woman were naked, and were not ashamed. From those bodies, then, vice shall be withdrawn, while nature shall be preserved. And the sex of woman is not a vice, but nature. – Augustine, City of God, book 22, chapter 17

Maximus the Confessor:

For they say that whereas God in His goodness created the splendid orderly arrangement of all beings, it is not immediately self evident to this orderly arrangement who and what God is, and they call “division” the ignorance of what it is that distinguishes creation from God. For to that which naturally divides these realities from each other, and which excludes their union in a single essence (since it cannot admit of one and the same definition), they did not give a name. The second is that according to which the totality’ of nature, which received its being through creation by God, is divided into the intelligible and the sensible. The third is that according to which sensible nature is divided into heaven and earth. The fourth is that according to which the earth is divided into paradise and the inhabited world; and the fifth is that according to which man, who is above all—like a most capacious workshop containing all things, naturally mediating through himself all the divided extremes, and who by design has been beneficially placed amid beings—is divided into male and female, manifestly possessing by nature the full potential to draw all the extremes into unity through their means, by virtue of his characteristic attribute of being related to the divided extremes through his own parts. Through this potential, consistent with the purpose behind the origination of divided beings, man was called to achieve within himself the mode of their completion, and so bring to light the great mystery of the divine plan, realizing in God the union of the extremes which exist among beings, by harmoniously advancing in an ascending sequence from the proximate to the remote and from the inferior to the superior.

This is why man was introduced last among beings—like a kind of natural bond mediating between the universal extremes through his parts, and unifying through himself things that by nature are separated from each other by a great distance—so that, by making of his own division a beginning of the unity which gathers up all things to God their Author, and proceeding by order and rank through the mean terms, he might reach the limit of the sublime ascent that comes about through the union of all things in God, in whom there is no division, completely shaking off from nature, by means of a supremely dispassionate condition of divine virtue, the property of male and female, which in no way was linked to the original principle of the divine plan concerning human generation, so that he might be shown forth as, and become solely a human being according to the divine plan, not divided by the designation of male and female (according to the principle by which he formerly came into being), nor divided into the parts that now appear around him, thanks to the perfect union, as I said, with his own principle, according to which he exists. – Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua, chapter 41

To be sure, initiating the universal union of all things in Himself, beginning with our own division, He became perfect man, having assumed from us, and for us, and consistent with us, everything that is ours, lacking nothing, but without sin, for to become man He had no need of the natural process of connubial intercourse. In this way, He showed, I think, that there was perhaps another mode, foreknown by God, for the multiplication of human beings, had the first human being kept the commandment and not cast himself down to the level of irrational animals by misusing the mode of his proper powers—and so He drove out from nature the difference and division into male and female, a difference, as I have said, which He in no way needed in order to become man, and without which existence would perhaps have been possible. There is no need for this division to last perpetually, “for in Christ Jesus,” says the divine apostle, “there is neither male nor female.” – Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua, chapter 41

Pseudo Justin Martyr:

Question 53. If male and female were created for the sake of procreation, when the resurrection occurs, will people rise having the distinction of procreative members? And if so, how is it not superfluous to bring along members that are inactive?

Response. Although the generative parts are not useful for procreation after the resurrection, yet they are useful for the remembrance that it was through such parts that human beings received their birth, growth, and continuation; for through them we are led to the conception of the great wisdom of Christ who created these things, and of humanity increasing through death, and of the preservation of our race in immortality by the succession of those who are born. – Pseudo Justin Martyr,  Questions and Responses to Orthodox Christians, Question 53

[How absurd to suggest that the genitals of men and women should be preserved so that we can look at them for eternity and remember how we came into being!]