Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Heaven But Never Dreamed Of
Asking

Peter J. Kreeft


Is There Sex in Heaven?

Is There Sex in Heaven?

But don't we know? Haven't we been thinking about almost nothing else
for years and years? What else dominates our fantasies, waking and
sleeping, twenty-four nose-to-the-grindstone hours a day? What else
fills our TV shows, novels, plays, gossip columns, self-help books,
and psychologies but sex?

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Heaven But Never Dreamed Of
Asking

Peter J. Kreeft


Is There Sex in Heaven?

We cannot know what X-in-Heaven is unless we know what X is. We cannot
know what sex in Heaven is unless we know what sex is. We cannot know
what in Heaven's name sex is unless we know what on earth sex is.

But don't we know? Haven't we been thinking about almost nothing else
for years and years? What else dominates our fantasies, waking and
sleeping, twenty-four nose-to-the-grindstone hours a day? What else
fills our TV shows, novels, plays, gossip columns, self-help books,
and psychologies but sex?

No; we do not think too much about sex; we think hardly at all about
sex. Dreaming, fantasizing, feeling, experimenting-yes. But honest,
look-it-in-the-face thinking?-hardly ever. There is no subject in the
world about which there is more heat and less light. [1]

Therefore I want to begin with four abstract philosophical principles
about the nature of sex. They are absolutely necessary not only for
sanity about sex in Heaven but also for sanity about sex on earth, a
goal at least as distant as Heaven to our sexually suicidal society.
[2] The fact that sex is public does not mean it is mature and
healthy. The fact that there are thousands of "how to do it" books on
the subject does not mean that we know how; in fact, it means the
opposite. It is when everybody's pipes are leaking that they buy books
on plumbing. [3]

My four philosophical principles will seem strange or even shocking to
many people today. Yet they are far from radical, or even original;
they are simply the primeval platitudes known to all pre-modern
societies; the sane, sunny country of sexual common sense by the vote
of "the democracy of the dead." [4] Yet in another way they are
"radical," in the etymological sense of the word: they are our sexual
roots, and our uprooted society is rooting around looking for sexual
substitute-roots like a pig rooting for truffles. It has not found
them. That fact should at least make us pause and look back at our
"wise blood,"[5] our roots. Here are four of them.

First Principle: Sex is Something You Are, Not Something You Do

Suppose you saw a book with the title, "The Sexual Life of a Nun."[6]
You would probably assume it was a scurrilous, gossipy sort of story
about tunnels connecting convents and monasteries, clandestine
rendezvous behind the high altar, and masking a pregnancy as a tumour.
But it a perfectly proper title: all nuns have a sexual life. They are
women, not men. When a nun prays or acts charitably, she prays or
acts, not he. Her celibacy forbids intercourse, but it cannot forbid
her to be a woman. In everything she does her essence plays a part,
and her sex is as much a part of her essence as her age, her race, and
her sense of humor.

The counterfeit phrase "having sex" (meaning "intercourse") was minted
only recently. Of course a nun "has sex": she is female. Draftees
often fill in the box on their induction forms labelled "sex" not with
the word "male" but "occasionally," or "please!" -The joke would have
been -unintelligible to previous generations. The significance of the
linguistic change is that we have trivialized sex into a thing to do
rather than a quality of our inner being. It has become a thing of
surfaces and external feeling rather than of personality and internal
feeling. [7] Thus even masturbation is called "having sex," though it
is exactly the opposite: a denial of real relationship with the other
sex.

The words "masculinity" and "femininity," meaning something more than
merely biological maleness and femaleness, have been reduced from
archetypes to stereotypes. Traditional expectations that men be men
and women be women are confused because we no longer know what to
expect men and women to be. Yet, though confused, the expectations
remain. Our hearts desire, even while our minds reject, the old
"stereotypes." The reason is that the old stereotypes were closer to
our innate sexual instincts than are the new stereotypes. We have
sexist hearts even while we have unisex heads. Evidence for this
claim? More people are attracted to the old stereotypes than to the
new ones. Romeo still wants to marry Juliet.

The main fault in the old stereotypes was their too-tight connection
between sexual being and social doing, their tying of sexual identity
to social roles, especially for women: the feeling that it was somehow
unfeminine to be a doctor, lawyer, or politician. But the antidote to
this illness is not confusing sexual identities but locating them in
our being rather than our doing. Thus we can soften up social roles
without softening up sexual identities. In fact, a man who is
confident of his inner masculinity is much more likely to share in
traditionally female activities like housework and baby care than ore
who ties his sexuality to his social roles.

If our first principle is accepted, if sexuality is part of our inner
essence, then it follows that there is sexuality in Heaven, whether or
not we "have sex" and whether or not we have sexually distinct social
roles in heaven.

Second Principle: The Alternative to Chauvinism Is Not Egalitarianism

The two most popular philosophies of sexuality today seem totally
opposed to each other; yet at a most basic level they are in agreement
and are equally mistaken. The two philosophies are the old chauvinism
and the new egalitarianism; and they seem totally opposed. For
chauvinism (a) sees one sex as superior to the other, "second," sex.'
This is usually the male, but there are increasingly many strident
female chauvinist voices in the current cacophony.' This presupposes
(b) that the sexes are intrinsically different, different by nature
not social convention. Egalitarianism tries to disagree with (a)
totally; it thinks that to do so it has to disagree with (b) as well.
But this means that it agrees with chauvinism on (c), the unstated but
assumed premise that all differences must be differences in value, or,
correlatively, that the only way for two things to be equal in value
is for them to be equal in nature. Both philosophies see sameness or
superiority as the only options. It is from this assumption (that
differences are differences in value) that the chauvinist argues that
the sexes are different in nature, therefore they are different in
value. And it is from the same assumption that the egalitarian argues
that the sexes are not different in value, therefore they are not
different in nature.

Chauvinism: Egalitarianism:

(c) (c)

and (b) and not (a)

therefore (a) therefore not (b)

Once this premise is smoked out, it is easy to see how foolish both
arguments are. Of course not all differences are differences in value.
Are dogs better than cats, or cats than dogs? Or are they different
only by convention, not by nature? Chauvinist and egalitarian should
both read the poets, songwriters, and mythmakers to find a third
philosophy of sexuality that is both more sane and infinitely more
interesting. It denies neither the obvious rational truth that the
sexes are equal in value (as the chauvinist does) nor the equally
obvious instinctive truth that they are innately different (as the
egalitarian does). It revels in both, and in their difference: vive la
difference!

If sexual differences are natural, they are preserved in heaven, for
"grace does not destroy nature but perfects it." [10] If sexual
differences are only humanly and socially conventional, heaven will
remove them as it will remove economics and penology and politics.
(Not many of us have job security after death. That is one advantage
of being a philosopher.) All these things came after and because of
the Fall, but sexuality came as part of God's original package: "be
fruitful and multiply."" God may unmake what we make, but He does not
unmake what He makes. God made sex, and God makes no mistakes.

Saint Paul's frequently quoted statement that "in Christ . . . there
is neither male nor female" [12] does not mean there is no sex in
Heaven, for it refers not just to Heaven but also to earth: we are "in
Christ" now." (In fact, if we are not "in Christ" now there is no hope
of Heaven for us!) But we are male or female now. His point is that
our sex does not determine our "in-Christness"; God is an equal
opportunity employer. But He employs the men and women He created, not
the neuters of our imagination.

Third Principle: Sex Is Spiritual

That does not mean "vaguely pious, ethereal, and idealistic."
"Spiritual" means "a matter of the spirit," or soul, or psyche, not
just the body. Sex is between the ears before it's between the legs.
We have sexual soul . [14]

For some strange reason people are shocked at the notion of sexual
souls. They not only disagree; the idea seems utterly crude,
superstitious, repugnant, and incredible to them. Why? We can answer
this question only by first answering the opposite one: why is the
idea reasonable, enlightened, and even necessary?

The idea is the only alternative to either materialism or dualism. If
you are a materialist, there is simply no soul for sex to be a quality
of. If you are a dualist, if you split body and soul completely, if
you see a person as a ghost in a machine," then one half of the person
can be totally different from the other: the body can be sexual
without the soul being sexual. The machine is sexed, the ghost not.
(This is almost the exact opposite of the truth: ghosts, having once
been persons, have sexual identity from their personalities, their
souls. Machines do not.)

No empirical psychologist can be a dualist; the evidence for
psychosomatic unity is overwhelming." No pervasive feature of either
body or soul is insulated from the other; every sound in the soul
echoes in the body, and every sound in the body echoes in the soul.
Let the rejection of dualism be Premise One of our argument.

Premise Two is the even more obvious fact that biological sexuality is
innate, natural, and in fact pervasive to every cell in the body. It
is not socially conditioned, or conventional, or environmental; it is
hereditary.

The inevitable conclusion from these two premises is that sexuality is
innate, natural, and pervasive to the whole person, soul as well as
body. The only way to avoid the conclusion is to deny one of the two
premises that logically necessitate it-to deny psychosomatic unity or
to deny innate somatic sexuality.

In the light of this simple and overwhelming argument, why is the
conclusion not only unfamiliar but shocking to so many people in our
society? I can think of only two reasons.

The first is a mere misunderstanding, the second a serious and
substantial mistake.

The first reason would be a reaction against what is wrongly seen as
mono-sexual soul-stereotyping. A wholly male soul, whatever maleness
means, or a wholly female soul, sounds unreal and oversimplified. But
that is not what sexual souls implies. Rather, in every soul there
is-to use Jungian terms-anima and animus, femaleness and maleness;
just as in the body, one predominates but the other is also present.'?
If the dominant sex of soul is not the same as that of the body, we
have a sexual misfit, a candidate for a sex change operation of body
or of soul, earthly or heavenly. Perhaps Heaven supplies such changes
just as it supplies all other needed forms of healing. In any case,
the resurrection body perfectly expresses its soul, and since souls
are innately sexual, that body will perfectly express its soul's true
sexual identity.

A second reason why the notion of sexual souls sounds strange to many
people may be that they really hold a pantheistic rather than a
theistic view of spirit as undifferentiated, or even infinite. They
think of spirit as simply overwhelming, or leaving behind, all the
distinctions known to the body and the senses. But this is not the
Christian notion of spirit, nor of infinity. Infinity itself is not
undifferentiated in God. To call God infinite is not to say He is
everything in general and nothing in particular: that is confusing God
with The Blob! God's infinity means that each of His positive and
definite attributes, such as love, wisdom, power, justice, and
fidelity, is unlimited.

Spirit is no less differentiated, articulated, structured, or formed
than matter." The fact that our own spirit can suffer and rejoice far
more, more delicately and exquisitely, and in a far greater variety of
ways, than can the body-this fact should be evidence of spirit's
complexity. So should the fact that psychology is nowhere near an
exact science, as anatomy is.

Differences in general, and sexual differences in particular, increase
rather than decrease as you move up the cosmic hierarchy. (Yes, there
is a cosmic hierarchy, unless you can honestly believe that oysters
have as much right to eat you as you have to eat them.) Angels are as
superior to us in differentiation as we are to animals. God is
infinitely differentiated, for He is the Author of all differences,
all forms.

Each act of creation in Genesis is an act of differentiation-light
from darkness, land from sea, animals from plants, and so on."
Creating is forming, and forming is differentiating. Materialism
believes differences in form are ultimately illusory appearance; the
only root reality is matter. Pantheism also believes differences in
form are ultimately illusory; the only root reality is one universal
Spirit. But theism believes form is real because God created it. And
whatever positive reality is in the creation must have its model in
the Creator. We shall ultimately have to predicate sexuality of God
Himself, as we shall see next.

Fourth Principle: Sex Is Cosmic

Have you ever wondered why almost all languages except English
attribute sexuality to things? Trees, rocks, ships, stars, horns,
kettles, circles, accidents, trips, ideas, feelings these, and not
just men and women, are masculine or feminine. Did you always assume
unthinkingly that this was of course a mere projection and
personification, a reading of our sexuality into nature rather than
reading nature's own sexuality out of it (or rather, out of her)? Did
it ever occur to you that it just might be the other way round, that
human sexuality is derived from cosmic sexuality rather than vice
versa, that we are a local application of a universal principle?" If
not, please seriously consider the idea now, for it is one of the
oldest and most widely held ideas in our history, and one of the
happiest.

It is a happy idea because it puts humanity into a more human
universe. We fit; we are not freaks. What we are, everything else also
is, though in different ways and different degrees. We are, to use the
medieval image, a microcosm, a little cosmos; the universe is the
macrocosm, the same pattern written large. We are more like little
fish inside bigger fish than like sardines in a can. It is the
machine-universe that is our projection, not the human universe.

We do not have time here to apply this idea, so pregnant with
consequences, to other aspects of our being, to talk about the cosmic
extension of consciousness and volition, but many philosophers have
argued for this conclusion," and a deeper eye than reason's seems to
insist on it. But we can apply it to sexuality here. It means that
sexuality goes all the way up and all the way down the cosmic ladder.

At the "down" end there is "love among the particles": gravitational
and electromagnetic attraction. That little electron just "knows" the
difference between the proton, which she "loves," and another
electron, which is her rival. If she did not know the difference, she
would not behave so knowingly, orbiting around her proton and
repelling other electrons, never vice versa.

But, you say, I thought that was because of the balanced resultant of
the two merely physical forces of angular momentum, which tends to
zoom her straight out of orbit, and bipolar electromagnetic
attraction, which tends to zap her down into her proton: too much zoom
for a zap and too much zap for a zoom. Quite right. But what right do
you have to call physical forces "mere"? And how do you account for
the second of those two forces? Why is there attraction between
positive and negative charges? It is exactly as mysterious as love. In
fact, it is love. The scientist can tell you how it works, but only
the lover knows why.

Sex at the Top

Sex "goes all the way up" as well as "all the way down." Spirit is no
less sexual than matter; on the contrary, all qualities and all
contrasts are richer, sharper, more real as we rise closer and closer
to the archetype of realness, God. The God of the Bible is not a
monistic pudding in which differences are reduced to lumps, or a light
that out-dazzles all finite lights and colors. God is a sexual being,
the most sexual of all beings.

This sounds shocking to people only if they see sex only as physical
and not spiritual, or if they are Unitarians rather than Trinitarians.
The love relationship between the Father and the Son within the
Trinity, the relationship from which the Holy Spirit eternally
proceeds, is a sexual relationship. It is like the human sexual
relationship from which a child proceeds in time; or rather, that
relationship is like the divine one. Sexuality is "the image of God"
according to Scripture (see Genesis 1:27); and for B to be an image of
A, A must have all the qualities imaged by B. God therefore is a
sexual being.

There is therefore sex in Heaven because in Heaven we are closer to
the source of all sex. As we climb Jacob's ladder the angels look less
like neutered greeting card cherubs and more like Mars and Venus.

Another reason we are more, not less, sexual in Heaven is that all
earthly perversions of true sexuality are overcome, especially the
master perversion, selfishness. To make self God, to desire selfish
pleasure as the summum bonum, is not only to miss God but to miss
pleasure and self as well, and to miss the glory and joy of sex. Jesus
did not merely say, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God," but also added
that "all these things shall be added" when we put first things
first." Each story fits better when the foundation is put first.

C. S. Lewis calls this the principle of "first and second things."23
In any area of life, putting second things first loses not only the
first things but also the second things, and putting first things
first gains not only the first things but the second things as well.
So to treat sexual pleasure as God is to miss not only God but sexual
pleasure too.

The highest pleasure always comes in self-forgetfulness. Self always
spoils its own pleasure. Pleasure is like light: if you grab at it,
you miss it; if you try to bottle it, you get only darkness; if you
let it pass, you catch the glory. The self has a built-in, God-imaging
design of self-fulfillment by self forgetfulness, pleasure through
unselfishness, ecstasy by ekstasis, "standing-outside-the-self." This
is not the self-conscious self-sacrifice of the do-gooder but the
spontaneous, unconscious generosity of the lover.

This principle, that the greatest pleasure is self-giving, is
graphically illustrated by sexual intercourse and by the very
structure of the sexual organs, which must give themselves to each
other in order to be fulfilled. In Heaven, when egotistic perversions
are totally eliminated, all pleasure is increased, including sexual
pleasure. Whether this includes physical sexual pleasure or not,
remains to be seen.

Application of the Principles: Sex in Heaven

In the most important and obvious sense there is certainly sex in
Heaven simply because there are human beings in Heaven. As we have
seen, sexuality, like race and unlike clothes, is an essential aspect
of our identity, spiritual as well as physical. Even if sex were not
spiritual, there would be sex in Heaven because of the resurrection of
the body. The body is not a mistake to be unmade or a prison cell to
be freed from, but a divine work of art designed to show forth the
soul as the soul is to show forth God, in splendor and glory and
overflow of generous superfluity.

But is there sexual intercourse in Heaven? If we have bodily sex
organs, what do we use them for there?

Not baby-making. Earth is the breeding colony; Heaven is the homeland.

Not marriage. Christ's words to the Sadducees are quite clear about
that."' It is in regard to marriage that we are "like the angels."
(Note that it is not said that we are like the angels in any other
ways, such as lacking physical bodies.)

Might there be another function in which baby-making and marriage are
swallowed up and transformed, aufgehoben? Everything on earth is
analogous to something in Heaven. Heaven neither simply removes nor
simply continues earthly things. If we apply this principle to sexual
intercourse, we get the conclusion that intercourse on earth is a
shadow or symbol of intercourse in Heaven. Could we speculate about
what that could be?

It could certainly be spiritual intercourse-and, remember, that
includes sexual intercourse because sex is spiritual. This spiritual
intercourse would mean something more specific than universal charity.
It would be special communion with the sexually complementary:
something a man can have only with a woman and a woman only with a
man. We are made complete by such union: "It is not good that the man
should be alone."" And God does not simply rip up His design for human
fulfillment.

The relationship need not be confined to one in Heaven. Monogamy is
for earth. On earth, our bodies are private." In Heaven, we share each
other's secrets without shame and voluntarily." In the Communion of
Saints, promiscuity of spirit is a virtue.

The relationship may not extend to all persons of the opposite sex, at
least not in the same way or degree. If it did extend to all, it would
treat each differently simply because each is different-sexually as
well as in other ways. I think there must be some special "kindred
souls" in Heaven that we are designed to feel a special sexual love
for. That would be the heavenly solution to the earthly riddle of why
in the world John falls for Mary, of all people, and not for Jane, and
why romantic lovers feel their love is fated, "in the stars," "made in
Heaven."28

But this would differ from romantic love on earth in that it would be
free, not driven; from soul to body, not from body to soul. Nor would
it feel apart from or opposed to the God-relationship, but a part of
it or a consequence of it: His design, the wave of His baton. It would
also be totally unselfconscious and unselfish: the ethical goodness of
agape joined to the passion of Eros; 29 agape without external,
abstract law and duty, and Eros without selfishness or animal drives.

But would it ever take the form of physical sexual intercourse? We
should explore this question, not to kowtow to modernity's sexual
monomania but because it is an honest question about something of
great significance to us now, and because we simply want to know all
we can about Heaven.

Since there are bodies in Heaven, able to eat and be touched, like
Christ's resurrection body," there is the possibility of physical
intercourse. But why might the possibility be actualized? What are its
possible purposes and meanings?

We know Heaven by earthly clues. Let us try to read all the clues in
earthly intercourse. It has three levels of meaning: the subhuman, or
animal; the superhuman, or divine; and the specifically human. (All
three levels exist in us humans.)

Animal reasons for intercourse include (1) the conscious drive for
pleasure and (2) the unconscious drive to perpetuate the species. Both
would be absent in Heaven. For although there are unimaginably great
pleasures in Heaven," we are not driven by them. And the species is
complete in eternity: no need for breeding.

Trans-human reasons for intercourse include (1) idolatrous love of the
beloved as a substitute for God and (2) the Dante-Beatrice love of the
beloved as an image of God. As to the first, there is, of course, no
idolatry in Heaven. No substitutes for God are even tempting when God
Himself is present. As to the second, the earthly beloved was a window
to God, a mirror reflecting the divine beauty. That is why the lover
was so smitten. Now that the reality is present, why stare at the
mirror? The impulse to adore has found its perfect object.
Furthermore, even on earth this love leads not to intercourse but to
infatuation. Dante neither desired nor enacted intercourse with
Beatrice.

Specifically human reasons for intercourse include (1) consummating a
monogamous marriage and (2) the desire to express personal love. As to
the first, there is no marriage in Heaven. But what of the second?

I think there will probably be millions of more adequate ways to
express love than the clumsy ecstasy of fitting two bodies together
like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Even the most satisfying earthly
intercourse between spouses cannot perfectly express all of their
love. If the possibility of intercourse in Heaven is not actualized,
it is only for the same reason earthly lovers do not eat candy during
intercourse: there is something much better to do." The question of
intercourse in Heaven is like the child's question whether you can eat
candy during intercourse: a funny question only from the adult's point
of view. Candy is one of children's greatest pleasures; how can they
conceive a pleasure so intense that it renders candy irrelevant? Only
if you know both can you compare two things, and all those who have
tasted both the delights of physical intercourse with the earthly
beloved and the delights of spiritual intercourse with God testify
that there is simply no comparison.

A Heavenly Reading of the Earthly Riddle of Sex

This spiritual intercourse with God is the ecstasy hinted at in all
earthly intercourse, physical or spiritual. It is the ultimate reason
why sexual passion is so strong, so different from other passions, so
heavy with suggestions of profound meanings that just elude our grasp.
No mere practical needs account for it. No mere animal drive explains
it. No animal falls in love, writes profound romantic poetry, or sees
sex as a symbol of the ultimate meaning of life because no animal is
made in the image of God. Human sexuality is that image, and human
sexuality is a foretaste of that self-giving, that losing and finding
the self, that oneness-in-many-ness that is the heart of the life and
joy of the Trinity. That is what we long for; that is why we tremble
to stand outside ourselves in the other, to give our whole selves,
body and soul: because we are images of God the sexual being. We love
the other sex because God loves God.

And this earthly love is so passionate because Heaven is full of
passion, of energy and dynamism. We correctly deny that God has
passions in the passive sense, being moved, driven, or conditioned by
them, as we are. But to think of the love that made the worlds, the
love that became human, suffered alienation from itself and died to
save us rebels, the love that gleams through the fanatic joy of Jesus'
obedience to the will of His Father and that shines in the eyes and
lives of the saints-to think of this love as any less passionate than
our temporary and conditioned passions "is a most disastrous
fantasy."33 And that consuming fire of love is our destined Husband,
according to His own promise." Sex in Heaven? Indeed, and no pale,
abstract, merely mental shadow of it either. Earthly sex is the
shadow, and our lives are a process of thickening so that we can share
in the substance, becoming heavenly fire so that we can endure and
rejoice in the heavenly fire.

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Heaven But Never Dreamed Of
Asking

Peter J. Kreeft
Is There Sex in Heaven?

We cannot know what X-in-Heaven is unless we know what X is. We cannot
know what sex in Heaven is unless we know what sex is. We cannot know
what in Heaven's name sex is unless we know what on earth sex is...

Is There Sex in Heaven?

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Heaven But Never Dreamed Of
Asking

Peter J. Kreeft

Is There Sex in Heaven?