Gender Identity: To Infinity and Beyond

Abstract

Recent work in systematic and moral theology has sought to recover a sense of the normativity of eschatology, claiming that it is a central task of moral reasoning to stretch itself to imagine our final state of affairs to guide our actions in our current times and places. At the same time, there is a growing theological consensus that gender will not persist into the eschaton. It seems, then, that eschatological normativity cannot be applied to our moral reasoning about gender. This article will attempt to resolve this incompatibility by arguing for the eschatological presence of gender. In favor of those claiming that we need eschatologically-informed ethics, especially with respect to gender, I will show that the arguments provided for gender's eschatological absence face difficulties that they cannot overcome, chief of which is the disjunction between creation and redemption they introduce.