No Longer Male and Female
Speculative Thoughts on Marriage, Sex, and Gender
Beyond all categories of biological sex and gender, deep in the eternal heart of God, there is a more fundamental reality: Lover, Beloved, and the Love between them—a community of persons loving and being loved. From all eternity, God is constituted in a relationship giving and receiving love—and in becoming incarnate, the eternal Son invites us into that relationship of love. This is what biological sex and gender gestures toward, although we see it “through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV)
This is not to say that our categories of biological sex and gender map neatly onto intra-Trinitarian relations, as if masculinity and male-ness correspond to the Lover and loving, and femininity and female-ness to the Beloved and being loved—that way danger lies. But neither is it to say that these categories have nothing to do with God who is Love. In the first creation account God says “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness” and then creates them “male and female,” perhaps a merism that encompasses all sexual variations (Genesis 1:26-27 NRSVUE).
God is known throughout the Scriptures in an abundance of images, spanning sexual and gendered categories. We have certain privileged metaphors in the Bible and tradition that should be respected, but they are, at the end of the day, still only metaphors. God reveals love to us through biological sex and gender, but we miss this if we mistake the symbols for the reality itself, the pointed finger for that to which the finger points.
Jesus seems to make it clear that human marriage will ultimately fade away in the resurrection: “In the resurrection people neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels of God in heaven” (Matthew 22:30 NRSVUE). Human weddings and marriages point beyond themselves to the union of God with his people, of Christ the Bridegroom with his Church the Bride—and once the reality comes, the symbol is put aside. Though it is not made explicit, this strongly implies that sexual activity, too, is a symbol that will fade away as that eternal marriage is consummated and we embark on an endless journey into the divine relationship of love. So…
(Beyond this point is very speculative, so be warned!)
…if 1) both human marriage and sexual activity are symbols that were always intended to point beyond themselves to the union of God with his people, of Christ with his Church, 2) these symbols were always meant to fade away when the reality comes, and 3) biological sex distinctions are a crucial aspect of these symbols—does this not suggest that these distinctions, too, will fade away (or at least be radically transfigured) in the resurrection? Until now I have spoken of gender and biological sex, but here I speak only of the latter, because gender is already socially constructed—which is not to say it is unreal (or even to claim it will not characterize the resurrected state), but is to say it is more fluid and malleable. With death defeated and the need for procreation transcended, what use will there be for, say, reproductive organs?
I know that one form pushback against this idea can take is the claim that biological sex distinctions are essential to what it means to be human; this is worthy of consideration. The word “sex” comes from the Latin sexus, perhaps related to secare, meaning “to cut, to sever”—an etymological quirk that reflects, however accidentally, the second biblical creation account: Eve being created from one of the sides (in Hebrew, tsela) of Adam (ha adam, “the human”), and thus Adam being divided into male and female (ish and ishah, c.f. Genesis 2:21-23). This suggests both an understanding of being human as a distinct and more fundamental reality than being male or female, and a vision of marriage and sexual activity (through which two become basar echad, “one flesh”) as a way of temporally overcoming this sexual division (Genesis 2:24).
This is not to say that biological sex distinctions are not good, any more than it is to say human marriage or sexual activity is not good; it is merely to suggest that they are temporary goods which will (like human marriage and sexual activity) ultimately come to an end, or be so transfigured as to be almost unrecognizeable to us were we to encounter them now.
If human marriage and sexual activity fade away in the resurrection when the Church the Bride is united to the Christ the Bridegroom, might the division of male and female be finally overcome as well? I have no solid answers, and still less do I purport to know all the specifics of the resurrected life, but I think these are questions worth asking and reflecting upon. What do you think?
(Ay apologies for the long comment, but this post prompted a lot of thought for me I've had trouble articulating)
This all seems exactly right to me. I've even at times thought a lot about the providential good and gift that sexual and gender minorities can be to the whole picture of significance of human sexuality. I admittedly sort of straddle a simultaneously "high" and "low" view of human sexual distinction and cultural instances of gender. I think on the one hand every authentic human culture produces norms of gender expression that in some sense (or at least in some part) point towards the mystical reality of Bridegroom and Bride, of the reconciliation of heaven and earth etc...
At the same time it seems like all such expressions in our fallen human cultures are perennially tinged with violence, or with the spectre of idolatry, of being made into a whole rather than recognized as a fitting part of the image of an ineffable and uncontainable whole. And there can be a sense that the higher love of God transcends all such depiction, and is best pointed to in the androgyny of the religious habit, that mutes distinctions of male and female that are no longer as we are in Christ.
With that lens I sort of tend to see those for whom such social scripts are intolerable and unmanageable, who simply cannot live them and flourish as honest and authentic gifts to those around them, as helping us to relativize what ought to be relative, not by destroying distinctions but by playfully and cheerfully transgressing them. For all that might be beautiful and true in our gendered patterns of life, there is at least as much false, shallow, or worthy of a bit of ridicule.
There's possibly an irreconcilable (at least this side of heaven) tension in trying to hold all that together at once, and a kind of thin line for the sexual/gender minority then between idol-smasher and iconoclast, but that seems like it mirrors the thin line between the more ordinary familial love that images the love of God and the carnal idolatry that sets flesh over spirit and fails to recognize Christ in the stranger and outcast.
I don't know, I might be way off the mark here, and coming from a fairly limited personal experience. But your post prompted me to think out loud a bit.