322. Gender in Heaven
322. GENDER IN HEAVEN
Many, though not all, of the ancients believed that the female gender was not only socially subordinate to the male but intrinsically inferior. Did St. Thomas share this prejudice? If so, he must have believed that in Heaven just as all would be of the same perfect age (thirty), all will be of the same perfect gender (male).
Whether all will rise again of the male sex?
Augustine says: . . . both sexes will rise again.
At the resurrection, God will restore man to what He made him at the creation. Now He made woman. . . . Therefore He will also restore the female sex at the resurrection.
I answer that, Just as . . . a different quantity is due to different (individual) men (in the traditional generic, not gender—specific, sense of “men”), so also. . . a different sex is due to different (individual) men. Moreover, this same diversity is becoming to the perfection of the species. . . . Wherefore just as men will rise again of various stature, so will they rise again of different sex.
And though there be difference of sex, there will be no shame in seeing one another, since there will be no lust. . . (S81,3).
Although both St. Augustine and St. Thomas shared some of the assumptions of their cultures about the social subordination of women, neither believed in the intrinsic inferiority of women. And the deepest reason for their transcendence of that prejudice was their transcendence of society as their standard, and their fidelity to divine revelation instead. Thus St. Thomas answers the question that arises from his semi-male-chauvinist culture by an appeal to God’s will to create mankind female as well as male when He created them in perfection (and in His own image!—see Genesis 1:27) in Eden.
St. Thomas also appeals to the principle of diversity that is so rightly dear to modern minds. Perfection does not consist in unison but harmony, and therefore we will be different in Heaven, as we are on earth, not only in trivial accidents but also in important properties like gender. For human perfection, in Heaven as well as on earth, is more properly predicated of the whole human community (the “common-unity”) than of the individual. Thus Genesis 1:27 did not say merely that women as well as men were made in God’s image, but that that image was, or consisted in “male-and-female” together. Adam and Eve were more Godlike when they were together than when they are alone (“It is not good for man to be alone”), because togetherness is the cause and effect of love, and “God is love.”
What will it be like in Heaven to notice and rejoice in sexual differences and sexual beauty but without lust? What was it like in Eden? Perhaps the best way to find out is to try it. Try to look at everything, even sex, as God does and as His perfected, unfallen children did once and will do again.
But are there any concrete examples and models of this lustless love for us in our fallen history, which is between Eden and Heaven, between Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained? Yes. There are two: Jesus and Mary. Love and imitate them. That is the way to become more Heavenly, and the way to practice for Heaven.