Will we remain male and female in heaven?

Duke Divinity School

". . . sexual difference is not, or should not be, a matter of theological indifference.  Genesis 1 suggests that sexual difference has something to tell us, not just about human beings, but about God in whose image they are made, male and female.  The unresolved question, then, is:  Where, why, and how does sexual difference make a difference? . . .
     "But is sexual difference then without theological importance?  Can we return to our tradition of sexual monoculture, of sexual 'indifference'?  I think not. . . .
     ". . . God is three in one, unity in difference.  Human beings in their createdness mirror this divine procession of love in being more than one, male and female.  Christian theology must affirm that all human beings are in the imago dei and that women are different from men.  This means that women were not made for men any more (or any less) than men were made for women.  The as-yet unsung glory of Genesis 1:26-27 is that the fullness of divine life and creativity is reflected by a humankind that is male and female, encompassing if not an ontological then a primal difference. . . .
     ". . . Sexual difference is a primordial difference, a template for the fruitfulness that can come not when two are the same, but when they are different.  For human creatures, as for sea and dry land, light and dark, fecundity is in the interval.  And this is why sexual difference is not just instrumental to marriage or even to the family.  It is good in itself.
     ". . . we will never know what man is until we can say, as Irenaeus obviously intended, 'The glory of God is woman fully alive.'"

     Janet Martin Soskice, "Imago Dei and sexual difference:  toward an eschatological anthropology" (orig. 2007), in Rethinking human nature:  a multidisciplinary approach, ed. Malcolm Jeeves (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2011), 302, 304-306 (295-306).  This is as close as Soskice gets to the "eschatological" she inserted in to the title of this piece.  Which is to say, she does not come right out and reject "the more orthodox view that the resurrected body will be 'sexless'" rejected by Augustine (302), with whom she clearly sides.  Yet despite the reference to "marriage or even . . . the family," this seems to be an implication of her insistence that "Sexual difference is" "if not an ontological [(304)] then a primal[,] . . . a primordial difference."