Valerie Karras - "No Woman in the Resurrection": The Gender Eschatology of John Chrysostom

Origen, the Cappadocians, and Maximus the Confessor are well-known for their views that sexual differentiation is ontologically insignificant in their theological anthropology and that they propose its abolition in the resurrection body.  What is less discussed, however, is that even the most prominent Antiochene Father, John Chrysostom, held a similar view.  This is particularly striking given the Antiochenes’ more literal, less Platonic and less allegorical approach to biblical interpretation, particularly in the creation accounts of Genesis.  Discerning Chrysostom’s views on the nature of sex and gender, both in terms of God’s eternal plan and in his eschatological anthropology, is also more difficult since he has no expansive and detailed discussions of these along the lines of, e.g., Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominis opificio.  Nevertheless, by carefully reading some of Chrysostom’s sermons as well as key passages in his De virginitate, it is possible to glean something of the Antiochene Father’s views of the provisional and economic nature of human sexual differentiation, including his belief that in eschatological humanity “there will be no woman.”