Female Bodies in Heaven

Scriptures:

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

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.

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.

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 3:20-21 – 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.

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

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

But to Christians, after their departure from the world, no restoration of marriage is promised in the day of the resurrection, translated as they will be into the condition and sanctity of angels. – Tertullian, To His Wife, chapter 1

Origen:

“Sadducees came to Jesus, therefore, which are those who say that there is no resurrection”, but the resurrection (as we have set forth) according to them, and they question again our Lord saying, “Moses said, if someone dies without having any children, his brother will take his wife as next of kin and will raise up seed for his brother” (22.24 / Deut 25.5).

I think it a worthwhile endeavor here to set forth the text of Moses, unto which the Sadducees are said to have appealed in what is written about them in the Gospel. The text runs as such in Deuteronomy: “If brothers should live together, and one of them dies,” etc., up to, “the house of him who has had his sandal loosed” (Deut 25.5-10). The Sadducees, as they have no hope of the resurrection, hear this text in a faulty way, not considering the present law in a way at all worthy of God. They suppose that it would follow from there being a resurrection that the husband will be raised again as a man having male parts, and likewise that a woman will be resurrected as the wife having a body that is female as at present. And taking hold in lowly fashion of the things said concerning the resurrection of the dead as from their reckoning to follow these things, they fashion some sort of myth that concerns seven brothers marrying one woman, and so pose the problem of whose wife she would be when raised, one woman having come to be named for seven husbands. They could also have posed the problem apart from this form of women with many marriages, perhaps also [in the forms] of men with many marriages.

Yet when our Savior answers them, he does not explain the intention of Moses’ law, as though they are not worthy of the knowledge of so great a mystery. Rather, he simply makes a pronouncement, saying only that the divine Scriptures proclaim that there in the resurrection of the dead there are no marriages, but those who are resurrected from the dead become as the angels in heaven, and just as “the angels in heaven neither marry nor are married”, so also (he says) it is with those who are resurrected from the dead. I myself think it is made clear through these things that not only will those who are accounted worthy of the resurrection from the dead be “as the angels in heaven” with respect not only to not marrying or being married, but also with respect to their bodies “of lowliness” (Phil 3.21) being transformed to be such as the angels whose bodies are ethereal and brilliant light. Origen, Commentary on Matthew, Book 17, chapter 29-30

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

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

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

Thomas Aquinas:

For one is a boy, before he is a man. Absolutely speaking, however, the perfect precedes the imperfect in the order of time and of nature. For a boy is produced from the man. This, therefore, is the reason why the woman was produced from the man, because he is more perfect than the woman, which the Apostle proves from the fact that the end is more perfect than that which is for the end; but man is the woman’s end. And this is what he says: For man was not created for woman, but woman for the sake of man, as a helper, namely, in reproduction, as the patient is for the sake of the agent and matter for the sake of form: “It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a helper like unto him” (Gen 2:18). – Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on 1 Corinthians 11, Chapter 611

Ante-Nicene Christianity