I was thinking the other day about marriage in the life to come. We know that Jesus said there would be no marriage at the resurrection due to what he told the Sadducees who tried to trip him up. A lot of people assume this means that there will be no sex, no procreation, or either. I'm coming to the conclusion that this is not necessarily so, and let me explain why.
Adam and Eve were created in a state of original justice, and in that state, God commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. That means sex and procreation. In fact, St. Thomas taught that before the Fall, sex was (or would have been, depending on your perspective) immensely more pleasurable and enjoyable because of the right ordering of the passions (feelings/emotions). All of this is standard Catholic teaching.
Now, also standard Catholic teaching is that at the Resurrection, we will be not only restored to our state before the Fall, but to a better condition. It's incompatible with this to think that we will be barren, which is always a curse in Scripture, or that we will have no sex, which is the first commandment given to Adam and Eve. The Resurrection will in every other way be compatible with our existing bodies, why would this be an exception?
So what's this about no marriage? Well, regardless of what sacramental theology will tell you, Adam and Eve were never married in the sense that we are married today. Yes, their relationship prefigured marriage, but it was not actually a marriage as we practice it today. They did not stand before God and vow publically to be mutually committed to each other for life. They didn't need to. First of all, circumstances ruled out any other arrangement — there were only two of them! Second of all, the purpose of marriage vows is to bind you to do something you might not otherwise do: they are a form of force made necessary by the Fall. If you truly love your spouse, vows are superfluous. If I reminded you not to murder your spouse, you would undoubtedly look at me like I had three heads. Why? Because that's the furthest thing from your mind (I hope!): you have no need to be reminded not to murder your spouse, since you just would not do it. Likewise, Adam and Eve, at least in the beginning, did not need marriage vows for two reasons: One, there was no one else to marry; and two, in their original state, they would naturally be totally committed to one another.
Hence marriage was only necessary when husbands and wives started to be unfaithful to each other (by which I mean, breaking their implicit committment to love each other unconditionally). This probably started with Lamech, the first polygamist and arguably the first depraved man in Scripture. I suspect Lamech likely married multiple women because he lost his ardor for the first ones and lusted instead after the later ones. Divorce hadn't yet entered man's mind.
So, when Jesus says that men will neither marry nor be given in marriage, I suspect he's saying two things: One, there will be no need for God, a priest, or marriage vows, because we will be restored to original justice and will naturally do, without the compulsion of vows, what we ought to do: namely have a lifelong committment to one another; and two, we will unconditionally love everyone, so in a sense the whole concept of one man and one woman in marriage will recede into the background.
Marriage is a sign of the life to come: that is, it symbolizes how we ought to love one another. Because it's impossible for fallen man to just arbitrarily decide he will unconditionally love everyone on earth, God gave us marriage to allow us to focus on one person, and learn how to unconditionally love that one person, and then learn how to unconditionally love our children. The family is a school of love. But it is not supposed to stop there. We ought to love, unconditionally, every man and woman. Once we learn how to, and cannot fail to unconditionally love, we've graduated from the school.
I speculate that in the life to come, men will be able to have sex with whatever women they want to, and conversely for women, because there will be no such thing as infidelity anymore (understood as a failure to unconditionally love). And there will be intense pleasure simply from knowing people in friendship.
We wil continue to have children, who will be born into a state of original justice, and have parents who know from their own experience how to raise them justly. And so the children will not sin. God, being creator, can create an infinite-sized universe to hold all of us. If you want, you can have your own planet and start your own race of children (no celestial marriage required!)
So you will get to love and have children with your present spouse forever, and all your past spouses, too, if you want (and remember, everyone will be reconciled). Isn't God good?
Dear Sir,
What an interesting speculation. Thank you for sharing it.
shalom,
Steven
How does this fit in with those of us called to the celibate life? Will we find our soul partners, or continue to be a single in a world of pairs?
Anna,
I see the celibate vocation as a sign of the life to come, in that in the life to come, we will love and be committed to everyone, instead of focusing our energies on one person. The celibate will really then be ahead of the game (if she has learned to love everyone in this life). There will be (in my speculation) no "pairing" in the life to come. My point with respect to existing married people is not that they will retain their exclusive pairing, but that they will not lose their relationship with their spouses.
I think it would be unwise of me to speculate on how procreation will work in the life to come, other than it will be similar to how it is done now but much more enjoyable and will not be confined to what we know as marriage.
Interesting, but it sounds rather like the LDS teaching to me. I prefer not to speculate at all.
Well, Ellen, remember, there is a little bit of truth in every lie. But I did say I refused to speculate on what form procreation in the New Jerusalem would take.
That at the Resurrection we will be restored to the pre-fall condition, and then some, is very solid Catholic teaching. Any sense of being without sexual pleasure or even procreation would be (in my humble opinion) Gnostic, and any barren condition would contradict everything the Lord taught us in this life. Jesus refers to having children in the life to come in his teaching on celibacy (Matthew 19:29) — though to be fair, Theodore of Heraclea and St. Jerome interpret this in a strictly spiritual sense. And it is true, that while I base my argument on solid teachings from the Fathers, and I think the conclusion is consistent with what I know of the faith, my conclusion itself about procreation in the Resurrection is, as far as I know, unknown to the Fathers, and so will forever belong to the realm of speculation.
By the way, the teaching that we will become gods (that is, be divinized and deified, sharing by grace in the energies of God but not in his divine nature) is well established Catholic teaching. See CCC 1999, 398, 1589, 1988; Eph 3:19, 4:13, 4:24; 1 John 3:1f; John 17:20-25; 1 Cor 6:12-20; Gal 4:19; 2 Cor 3:18; 2 Peter 1:4; St. Maximus the Confessor, 43 Ad Ioann, cubic. PG xci, 639, quoted from ftnt. 114, Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, p 278; St. John Chrysostom, Homily 20, Ephesians 5:22-33; St. Augustine, Tractates
On the Gospel of John, 21, 8, St. John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith, I.8, St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54:3.
I figure if we are becoming gods, then continuing to procreate as we do now is a small thing, and if we are barren in the Resurrection as some of the Fathers teach, we should easily be able to create our own beings anyway.
"God became man so that man might become God" (St. Athanasius)
"May we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity" (Roman Missal)
Interesting... but why do you think that new souls will continue to be created in Heaven? No new angels are being created, so I thought there would be no new humans created after this world passes away either.
Amy,
Well, angels were never created with reproductive abilities. We were; it is part of our nature. And being resurrected means being more human, not less; reproduction is not accidental to our nature, it is intentional.
I admit the image Jesus used "they will be like the angels in heaven" lends itself to certain interpretations. But some have wrongly used this to claim that we become angels after death (a pernicious heresy ;-)). Perhaps he simply meant that all will be single and love everyone equally. After all, we know we will have bodies, which is not like the angels either.
Another thing to consider is that some of the most important people in Scripture have been born to very holy older couples who had been childless (St. John the Forerunner, The Virgin Mary Theotokos, Patriarch Isaac, a few others too). If barrenness is considered a curse, and bearing children in old age a sign of great holiness, and bearing children is an act of co-creation with God (that's what "procreate" means), why would everything change in the New Jerusalem?
I do not think new souls will be created in heaven. I think we will continue to procreate at the Resurrection (which will not be heaven). Why do I think this? Fundamentally because the Resurrection will be a restoration of the state of Adam and Eve before the Fall, a restoration to Eden, where they were commanded to be fruitful and multiply. And also because resurrection to barrenness goes against everything divine revelation tells us about the character of God.
"I do not think new souls will be created in heaven. I think we will continue to procreate at the Resurrection (which will not be heaven)."
Then how will we enter heaven? Right now, we have to die to enter Heaven. Since death is a result of original sin, and at the Resurrection we'll be restored to the state Adam and Eve were in before the Fall, does that mean we won't ever die? And if we don't die (and I know that we won't), then how will we enter Heaven?
In the Age to come, there won't be any drama brought about from other wives and such. The Sadducees were trying to trap Jesus into making a pigeonholed answer on a legal controversy and also were trying to get Him to say something which would make the Resurrection of the dead problematic. Jesus, of course, skillfully burst their bubbles by saying they knew not the Scripture nor the power of God.
I've always taken the view on children, lands, etc, being added in this age and in the age to come as a spiritual connotation, not one of physical connotation. The truest and safest theological statement to make in this regard is that God, in His infinite wisdom and love, is preparing for us a new heaven and a new earth ordered in such a way that both brings glory to His Name as it seems glorious and wondrous for us. I suspect merely being in the glorious presence of God alone would make dwelling eternity in a huge ramshackle barn a delight, but of course the physical beauty and richness of the new heavens and new earth will be far more amazing and spectacular in appearance and beauty than we can ever ask, think, or imagine.
At any rate, God is good, and His mercies endure forever.
Another thing I'd be careful with is the terminology "god." In the sense we are made in the image of God and possess creative capabilities, we are "gods" who are upon the earth among all the other species, which lack the ability to create the complexity and alter the natural environs in the way we can, much less, of course, interact spirit to Spirit with the one, true, holy, eternal living God.
Scripture is clear that all of the saints from the foundation of the world are "kings and priests" unto God, and this function is not simply a future Resurrection Age reality but a reality in the present age by faith: we are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people, a holy nation, chosen by God to show forth the praises of Him Who has called us out of darkness, into the kingdom of His light.
Scripture focuses on us as kings and priests unto God, subject to the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, our Chief Priest, Jesus Christ. That's where we should glory: in being set apart as his saints both now and forever to be his kings and priests.