“They Are Like the Angels”: Genderless Bodies in Heaven?

Gender is a charged topic in the Church today. Some might say that gender differences are fixed and unchanging as God intended them in this way. Others might say that gender is a social construct, and, like other social constructs, it can be rebuilt in whatever way one desires. Yet it may come as a surprise to many in both camps that Scripture is not so clear about whether gender differences are, in fact, immutable.

The Old Testament portrays the Father as neither a man nor a woman. We may use “he/him” pronouns for the sake of simplicity, but we must never forget that the Father is both a “man of war” (Exod. 15:3) and a woman who cries out in labor (Isa. 42:14). In the New Testament, Christ calls himself a man numerous times, but he also compares himself to a mother bird who gathers her children under her wings (Matt. 23:37; Lk. 13:34). Like the Father who is not always the Father, the Son is not always the Son.

 The Apostle Paul views himself in a similar way. In 1 Corinthians 3, he considers his activity of spreading the gospel to the Corinthian church as like how a mother breastfeeds her child because the child is not ready to eat solid foods. As Paul says in 1 Cor. 2:14-15, the Corinthian people are “soulish” (psychikoi) rather than “filled with the spirit” (pneumatikoi). If the Corinthians were ready, he would have allowed them to transition to solid foods but, like a gentle and kind mother who knows the best for her child, he must continue to breastfeed them. As Origen of Alexandria read the episode, only when church members spiritually progress to a suitable extent can they feast on the solid food of spiritual teachings, which for Origen was additionally the Eucharist.[i] Like the Father and the Son, Paul—a being who is (only) fully-human—can accustom himself to the identities of both man and woman.

Paul is not the only mortal who fits this mold. Christ is clear: “For when they arise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven” (Mk. 12:25; Matt. 22:30). The belief that resurrected humans become like angels is already found in earlier Jewish texts like 1 Enoch. As in 1 Enoch, Christ’s message is that resurrected humans do not live their lives in the same way as we do on earth. Many fathers read this verse with a focus on its marital language. Christ mentions the active (masculine) and passive (feminine) role involved in marriage to say that, like the angels who are immortal and do not produce offspring, resurrected humans are immortal and do not produce offspring. Although a sacrament, marriage is not the ideal state of humanity.[ii]

Certain fathers also allegoricalized the meaning of this verse. St. Gregory of Nyssa argued that resurrected humans return to an original state of glorious humanity prior to the Fall.[iii] Before the Fall, humans were spiritual rather than fleshy creatures. After the Fall—as the language of “garments of skin” (Gen. 3:21) conveys—humans were placed in fleshy bodies because of their disobedience. In becoming like the angels, resurrected humans will essentially receive their original “garments of spirit.” They will return to a time when creation was “very good” (Gen. 1:31). Gregory sought confirmation for this interpretation in Paul’s distinction of the “soulful body” (sōmapsychikon)and “spiritual body” (sōma pneumatikon) in 1 Corinthians 15. As New Testament commentators rightly stress, Paul meant this distinction to be understood through the lens of Stoic metaphysics.[iv] Gregory may not have been as precise as contemporary commentators about Paul’s metaphysics, but his choice to take seriously Paul’s belief in the materiality of the spiritual body warrants theological attention in relation to the notion that resurrected humans are genderless.

The Transfiguration best encapsulates this possibility. The fathers typically read the dramatic altering of Christ’s clothes and appearance on Mount Tabor as indicating the soteriological process of deification that occurs when one progresses up the spiritual ladder toward union with God.[v] Christ himself did not change on the mountain; rather, the apostles were the ones who were transformed to see Christ in a new way. By walking in the footsteps of the apostles, Christians can now be transfigured in a similar manner. A few have even experienced the most profound, physical effects of transfiguration, such as famously St. Seraphim of Sarov who appeared in the form of a fiery body to his disciple. If the Transfiguration reveals the ultimate destiny of humanity, one which already invites participation in this life, then the significance of the Transfiguration clarifies that resurrected humans are genderless. We may not exactly know what materiality or “stuff” makes up the spiritual bodies awaiting resurrected humans, but it’s apparent that those bodies are not composed of flesh and therefore are not gendered. We will truly be like the angels.

Hopefully, there is a practical side to this recognition. A growing number of people inside and outside the Church experience discrimination because they do not identify with the gender that they were assigned at birth. Often spurred by such discrimination, something like forty percent of transgender people attempt to end their own life.[vi] The Christian attitude to their tribulations should be an outpouring of love. Christ even notes how there are certain humans who present outwardly with masculine characteristics but lack a penis and/or reproductive ability (Matt. 19:10-12). While he presumably did not have transgender people today in mind, this verse and others when read in an expressly pastoral tone recommends the cognizance that gender identity is complex and it is not a one-size-fits-all classification. Considering the malleability of gender in Scripture and in our world today, we should reconsider how to imagine gender in a way that decreases the harm done to transgender people and upholds the truths proclaimed through the mouths of prophets, saints, and ultimately Christ himself.

[i] John David Penniman, Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 120-27.

[ii] On the theological question of marriage, see Brian A. Butcher, “Gender and Orthodox theology: Vistas and Vantage Points,” in Orthodox Christianity and Gender: Dynamics of Culture, Tradition, and Lived Practice, edited by Helena Kupari and Elina Vuola (London: Routledge, 2019), 33-36.

[iii] Amy Brown Hughes, Gregory of Nyssa on the Resurrected Life: Bodies of Hope (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026), 24-25.

[iv] See Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology & Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 26-37.

[v] See especially Brian E. Daley, trans., Light on the Mountain: Greek Patristic and Byzantine Homilies on the Transfiguration of the Lord (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2013).

[vi] I.M. Dickey and S.L. Budge, “Suicide and the transgender experience: A public health crisis,” American Psychologist 75 (2020): 380-90.