NT Wright says marriage won’t exist in Heaven, but love will be transformed

Michie · Jul 29, 2025

Renowned theologian and New Testament scholar N.T. Wright recently contended that in the new creation, marriage as humans know it won’t exist — yet relationships and desires will be radically transformed in eternity.

In a recent episode of the podcast "Ask N.T. Wright Anything," Wright responded to a listener who asked whether it would feel “awkward” to remarry after the death of a spouse, considering the Christian hope of reunion in the new Heavens and new Earth.

“Will our relationship be much different than it is now?” the listener asked. “If yes, then how? If no, then wouldn’t remarriage be awkward?”

Continued below.

NT Wright says marriage won’t exist in Heaven, but love will be transformed

Renowned theologian and New Testament scholar N T Wright recently contended that in the new creation, marriage as humans know it won t exist yet relationships and desires will be radically

www.christianpost.com

Gregory Thompson · Jul 29, 2025

Sounds about right. Since we won't remember what marriage was, it won't matter anyway.

FireDragon76 · Aug 2, 2025

That may not be the most pastorally sensitive answer- at the least, I notice Wright sometimes has the tendency to lean in with polemical stances initially (perhaps due to his Evangelical background?). It also isn't true across the breadth of the Christian tradition. Eastern Christians believe the reality created by the sacrament of marriage persists, even after death, which is why traditionally remarriage was frowned upon in the East.

Especially in the modern Latin West, there's been more pressure to "move on" and remarry, often remarkably quickly, but even in the Western world not so long ago, people often had extended periods of ritualized mourning, recognizing that the bonds created through marriage persisted.

Xeno.of.athens · Aug 2, 2025

Michie said:
Renowned theologian and New Testament scholar N.T. Wright recently contended that in the new creation, marriage as humans know it won’t exist — yet relationships and desires will be radically transformed in eternity.

In a recent episode of the podcast "Ask N.T. Wright Anything," Wright responded to a listener who asked whether it would feel “awkward” to remarry after the death of a spouse, considering the Christian hope of reunion in the new Heavens and new Earth.

“Will our relationship be much different than it is now?” the listener asked. “If yes, then how? If no, then wouldn’t remarriage be awkward?”

Continued below.

NT Wright says marriage won’t exist in Heaven, but love will be transformed

Renowned theologian and New Testament scholar N T Wright recently contended that in the new creation, marriage as humans know it won t exist yet relationships and desires will be radically

www.christianpost.com

I think that Jesus may have said it first - For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
Matthew 22:30 NRSV-CE

ViaCrucis · Aug 5, 2025

I would agree marriage does not exist in the Age to Come, Jesus was clear on that. But the bonds created in marriage shouldn't be viewed as temporal and transient--all our relationships, all of our bonds, matter. Inter-human connectedness is fundamentally good, and I subscribe to the position that nothing truly good is lost; that which is truly good is eternal.

What it all looks like in the Age to Come, however, is unknowable and unknown. But there is sacred beauty in the bonds we have with one another. In Christ those bonds aren't made meaningless, but given renewed meaning.

-CryptoLutheran

Conrail2020 · Sunday at 1:36 PM

A little bit late to this conversation but I’ll give a little bit of thoughts on NT Wright’s assessment on the fate of marital relationships in the future world to come. It seems like Wright somewhat contradicts himself when he discussed the issue on whether or not marital bonds that God brings together in this life carries over to the post-resurrection world.

On the same podcast a couple times over the past six years or so, he emphasized that while marriage as we know it will cease upon the new creation and resurrection, the bonds of love made in those marital relationships will not cease but transformed by God into a new mod as it were and would shine brightly along with all other loves that were made in the present and with the ultimate love made in our relationship with Christ. This time around, he didn’t seem to emphasize it as such and just seems to be making an assumption alongside podcast co-host Mike Bird that such bonds appear irrelevant at the moment of death or in the new creation. You can go back and listen to or look at the transcript of the conversation, they don’t seem to think such bonds of love remain.

As someone in this forum conversation had said already, Till death do us apart is not universally accepted in the ecumenical universal church, as the Eastern Orthodox Church have a slightly different interpretation of what happens to marriage as we know it after death and if the love shared in marital relationships carry over in a new and Christ shaped way that we just at the moment do not have good language for yet.

But whether or not such a thing is the case is beyond our sight and understanding at this point of existence, and whether NT Wright believes or has flip flopped on his previous statements is unknown as of now. Yet, we should never shoot down questions or biblically aligned speculation on what the future world that God is preparing for us and all of creation is going to be like. While marriage as we know it may well in fact no longer be present in the new age, there does seem to be good indications that the bonds of love within marital relationships will not just disappear because of our relationship with God and the communion of saints. Wright himself said in one the podcasts mentioned before “God doesn’t give gifts to just snatch them away”.

RileyG · Monday at 3:54 PM

FireDragon76 said:
That may not be the most pastorally sensitive answer- at the least, I notice Wright sometimes has the tendency to lean in with polemical stances initially (perhaps due to his Evangelical background?). It also isn't true across the breadth of the Christian tradition. Eastern Christians believe the reality created by the sacrament of marriage persists, even after death, which is why traditionally remarriage was frowned upon in the East.

Especially in the modern Latin West, there's been more pressure to "move on" and remarry, often remarkably quickly, but even in the Western world not so long ago, people often had extended periods of ritualized mourning, recognizing that the bonds created through marriage persisted.

I always found the belief about eternal marriage in the Eastern Churches quite fascinating!

RileyG · Monday at 3:55 PM

Michie said:
Renowned theologian and New Testament scholar N.T. Wright recently contended that in the new creation, marriage as humans know it won’t exist — yet relationships and desires will be radically transformed in eternity.

In a recent episode of the podcast "Ask N.T. Wright Anything," Wright responded to a listener who asked whether it would feel “awkward” to remarry after the death of a spouse, considering the Christian hope of reunion in the new Heavens and new Earth.

“Will our relationship be much different than it is now?” the listener asked. “If yes, then how? If no, then wouldn’t remarriage be awkward?”

Continued below.

NT Wright says marriage won’t exist in Heaven, but love will be transformed

Renowned theologian and New Testament scholar N T Wright recently contended that in the new creation, marriage as humans know it won t exist yet relationships and desires will be radically

www.christianpost.com

Yeah, that's my understanding too. Essentially, the sacraments are gifts from God, and the liturgy is where heaven and earth meet. They are a foretaste of the heavenly kingdom.

Hawkins · Tuesday at 7:33 AM

Humans are a small trinity composing of body, soul and spirit. The spirit is a necessity because by design humans will live a multiple stage eternity. On earth, humans have earthly emotions, between husband and wife, mother and son, etc. These earthly emotions are governed or "stored" in the spirit. When we die the spirit will leave (it's said to be returned to God), all left is our soul representing the true self of us. Those emotions will also be gone (there's no love in Hades or hell).

The chances are, once we are given a new body it may be embedded with a new spirit which marks our second stage of living. By then, the emotion left could be that we humans love each other as brothers and sisters.

RileyG · Tuesday at 1:02 PM

Hawkins said:
Humans are a small trinity composing of body, soul and spirit. The spirit is a necessity because by design humans will live a multiple stage eternity. On earth, humans have earthly emotions, between husband and wife, mother and son, etc. These earthly emotions are governed or "stored" in the spirit. When we die the spirit will leave (it's said to be returned to God), all left is our soul representing the true self of us. Those emotions will also be gone (there's no love in Hades or hell).

The chances are, once we are given a new body it may be embedded with a new spirit which marks our second stage of living. By then, the emotion left could be that we humans love each other as brothers and sisters.

What’s the difference between soul and spirit?

ViaCrucis · Tuesday at 3:30 PM

RileyG said:
What’s the difference between soul and spirit?

Biblically speaking, nothing.

The Bible doesn't teach human beings are a "trinity", or what is more commonly call tripartism or trichotomism. Nor has this ever been the historic Christian perspective.

More common has been what is sometimes called dichotomism, man is a dichotomy of his material self (the body) and his immaterial self (the soul or spirit).

Sometimes this dichotomism also becomes a problem, biblically and theologically, when it gets forced too hard into an overtly Platonic dualism; Platonic dualism would view "the soul" as the "true self" and the body as in some sense lesser, inferior, or a facade hiding the true self of the soul. Think of what Yoda says in Star Wars, "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter" this is a very Platonic way of seeing things, and taken excessively leads to various Gnostic and heretical ideas--such as that the body is evil and false, because physical matter is inferior/evil.

But taken simply and non dualistically, the dichotomy of body and soul is a helpful way of understanding biblical teaching that human beings were created as rational, thinking, relational, and moral creatures-we aren't just our bodies, but we aren't flighty souls trapped in bodies either. We are fully integrated, fully bodied, fully "souled" creatures who reason, who were created to love God, reflect God, love each other, and be God's Image bearers in creation. This means that when the body dies, we don't merely cease to exist--there is something about us that can exist even without and apart from the body--but this isn't how we were made or intended to exist, it is an unnatural severing of body and soul caused by the unnatural reality of death, which is an affliction upon the whole cosmos wrought by and perpetuating sin.

The Bible, when speaking of human beings, uses a lot of terms to describe the "parts" of human beings--body, mind, soul, spirit, heart--to name some of the most common. We wouldn't, therefore speak of a quadrinity of human beings by speaking also of the mind or the heart; or a quintity by speaking of the mind and heart along with body, soul, spirit. Instead we understand that, biblicaly speaking, and according to the historic faith of the Church, that the human person can be described as "more than the body" and so there is something about us that gives us an "us-ness" even apart from the body (and yet, this body of ours is also very much us--my body is also me); so this dichotomous language that there is a material and immaterial dimension to the human person is something we have historically and continuously seen throughout Christian history, going back to Scripture itself.

There is, therefore, no reason to regard the human soul and the human spirit fully independent things--but rather both "soul" and "spirit" are ways of speaking of the rational, emotive, relational, spiritual, and trans-material quality of the human creature.

-CryptoLutheran

DragonFox91 · Tuesday at 9:07 PM

So he thinks it all goes away. I think most teachers are too quick to write off 'it all goes away' here. I believe that what Jesus is teaching is family lineage, especially when it comes to inheritance, goes away.

RileyG · Tuesday at 10:02 PM

ViaCrucis said:
Biblically speaking, nothing.

The Bible doesn't teach human beings are a "trinity", or what is more commonly call tripartism or trichotomism. Nor has this ever been the historic Christian perspective.

More common has been what is sometimes called dichotomism, man is a dichotomy of his material self (the body) and his immaterial self (the soul or spirit).

Sometimes this dichotomism also becomes a problem, biblically and theologically, when it gets forced too hard into an overtly Platonic dualism; Platonic dualism would view "the soul" as the "true self" and the body as in some sense lesser, inferior, or a facade hiding the true self of the soul. Think of what Yoda says in Star Wars, "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter" this is a very Platonic way of seeing things, and taken excessively leads to various Gnostic and heretical ideas--such as that the body is evil and false, because physical matter is inferior/evil.

But taken simply and non dualistically, the dichotomy of body and soul is a helpful way of understanding biblical teaching that human beings were created as rational, thinking, relational, and moral creatures-we aren't just our bodies, but we aren't flighty souls trapped in bodies either. We are fully integrated, fully bodied, fully "souled" creatures who reason, who were created to love God, reflect God, love each other, and be God's Image bearers in creation. This means that when the body dies, we don't merely cease to exist--there is something about us that can exist even without and apart from the body--but this isn't how we were made or intended to exist, it is an unnatural severing of body and soul caused by the unnatural reality of death, which is an affliction upon the whole cosmos wrought by and perpetuating sin.

The Bible, when speaking of human beings, uses a lot of terms to describe the "parts" of human beings--body, mind, soul, spirit, heart--to name some of the most common. We wouldn't, therefore speak of a quadrinity of human beings by speaking also of the mind or the heart; or a quintity by speaking of the mind and heart along with body, soul, spirit. Instead we understand that, biblicaly speaking, and according to the historic faith of the Church, that the human person can be described as "more than the body" and so there is something about us that gives us an "us-ness" even apart from the body (and yet, this body of ours is also very much us--my body is also me); so this dichotomous language that there is a material and immaterial dimension to the human person is something we have historically and continuously seen throughout Christian history, going back to Scripture itself.

There is, therefore, no reason to regard the human soul and the human spirit fully independent things--but rather both "soul" and "spirit" are ways of speaking of the rational, emotive, relational, spiritual, and trans-material quality of the human creature.

-CryptoLutheran

Very well said and well written! Thank you for your insight!

Peace

Conrail2020 · Wednesday at 11:03 AM

ViaCrucis said:
Biblically speaking, nothing.

The Bible doesn't teach human beings are a "trinity", or what is more commonly call tripartism or trichotomism. Nor has this ever been the historic Christian perspective.

More common has been what is sometimes called dichotomism, man is a dichotomy of his material self (the body) and his immaterial self (the soul or spirit).

Sometimes this dichotomism also becomes a problem, biblically and theologically, when it gets forced too hard into an overtly Platonic dualism; Platonic dualism would view "the soul" as the "true self" and the body as in some sense lesser, inferior, or a facade hiding the true self of the soul. Think of what Yoda says in Star Wars, "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter" this is a very Platonic way of seeing things, and taken excessively leads to various Gnostic and heretical ideas--such as that the body is evil and false, because physical matter is inferior/evil.

But taken simply and non dualistically, the dichotomy of body and soul is a helpful way of understanding biblical teaching that human beings were created as rational, thinking, relational, and moral creatures-we aren't just our bodies, but we aren't flighty souls trapped in bodies either. We are fully integrated, fully bodied, fully "souled" creatures who reason, who were created to love God, reflect God, love each other, and be God's Image bearers in creation. This means that when the body dies, we don't merely cease to exist--there is something about us that can exist even without and apart from the body--but this isn't how we were made or intended to exist, it is an unnatural severing of body and soul caused by the unnatural reality of death, which is an affliction upon the whole cosmos wrought by and perpetuating sin.

The Bible, when speaking of human beings, uses a lot of terms to describe the "parts" of human beings--body, mind, soul, spirit, heart--to name some of the most common. We wouldn't, therefore speak of a quadrinity of human beings by speaking also of the mind or the heart; or a quintity by speaking of the mind and heart along with body, soul, spirit. Instead we understand that, biblicaly speaking, and according to the historic faith of the Church, that the human person can be described as "more than the body" and so there is something about us that gives us an "us-ness" even apart from the body (and yet, this body of ours is also very much us--my body is also me); so this dichotomous language that there is a material and immaterial dimension to the human person is something we have historically and continuously seen throughout Christian history, going back to Scripture itself.

There is, therefore, no reason to regard the human soul and the human spirit fully independent things--but rather both "soul" and "spirit" are ways of speaking of the rational, emotive, relational, spiritual, and trans-material quality of the human creature.

-CryptoLutheran

Very well said sir!

God bless

RDKirk · Wednesday at 11:18 AM

Then will there be inequality of love in Heaven? Will the heavenly love between those who were married on earth be greater in any way that the general love among all in Heaven?

Will those who had few or even no love in the present time thus be eternally short on love in heaven compared to others who enjoyed many loves on earth?

ViaCrucis · Wednesday at 12:10 PM

RDKirk said:
Then will there be inequality of love in Heaven? Will the heavenly love between those who were married on earth be greater in any way that the general love among all in Heaven?

Will those who had few or even no love in the present time thus be eternally short on love in heaven compared to others who enjoyed many loves on earth?

I can't think of a reason why that would be.

The Lord says that there are those who are eunuchs since birth, those who become eunuchs, and there are those who are eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom; i.e. there are those who have devoted themselves to life-long chastity and celibacy. Those many Faithful who were devoted to a life of celibacy and chastity are deprived of nothing; just as those who were married in this life are deprived of nothing.

Likewise, to those who fathered and bore children, the love between parent and child is not destroyed in the Age to Come, but this does not mean that the childless (whether by choice or circumstance) shall be deprived of anything in the Age to Come.

Nothing of our present time compares to the glory and beauty of the Coming Age; where all is made perfect in Christ. All that is good is made perfect; and all who lacked good shall receive perfect good.

Therefore I, having no children of my own, will not be deprived--but shall rejoice and share of the good of all those who did bear children; for all are in Christ, so the commandment "rejoice with those who rejoice" shall it not be be magnified? Could it be any other way? That the commandment which says "Do not envy" and the commandment that says "love one another even as I have loved you" and the commandment that says "rejoice with those who rejoice" shall reach teleos in the perfected glory of Christ in the Age to Come--where not only is there no envying but rather there is but rejoicing in the good of others--so that my brother's joy shall be my joy, and my joy shall be my sister's joy; and our joy shall be perfect in Christ. Do we not read the Apostle saying, "Make my joy complete by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind." (Philippians 2:2), if the Apostle desires his joy finding its teleos by the unity of will, love, and commonhood even among the Faithful here and now--how much greater is that joy when these things are eternally true?

We shall not be deprived of each other. And in each other--and we all in Christ--shall be of unspeakable, incomprehensible joy. Beholding what no eye has seen and no ear has heard.

RileyG · Wednesday at 2:18 PM

RDKirk said:
Then will there be inequality of love in Heaven? Will the heavenly love between those who were married on earth be greater in any way that the general love among all in Heaven?

Will those who had few or even no love in the present time thus be eternally short on love in heaven compared to others who enjoyed many loves on earth?

I really don’t know. I assume in heaven, our love for one another will be perfected?

RDKirk · Wednesday at 2:48 PM

RileyG said:
I really don’t know. I assume in heaven, our love for one another will be perfected?

But is it perfected if it is not equal.

RileyG · Wednesday at 2:50 PM

RDKirk said:
But is it perfected if it is not equal.

I don’t know. I’m not in heaven, yet.

RDKirk · Wednesday at 2:51 PM

ViaCrucis said:
I can't think of a reason why that would be.

The Lord says that there are those who are eunuchs since birth, those who become eunuchs, and there are those who are eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom; i.e. there are those who have devoted themselves to life-long chastity and celibacy. Those many Faithful who were devoted to a life of celibacy and chastity are deprived of nothing; just as those who were married in this life are deprived of nothing.

Likewise, to those who fathered and bore children, the love between parent and child is not destroyed in the Age to Come, but this does not mean that the childless (whether by choice or circumstance) shall be deprived of anything in the Age to Come.

Nothing of our present time compares to the glory and beauty of the Coming Age; where all is made perfect in Christ. All that is good is made perfect; and all who lacked good shall receive perfect good.

Therefore I, having no children of my own, will not be deprived--but shall rejoice and share of the good of all those who did bear children; for all are in Christ, so the commandment "rejoice with those who rejoice" shall it not be be magnified? Could it be any other way? That the commandment which says "Do not envy" and the commandment that says "love one another even as I have loved you" and the commandment that says "rejoice with those who rejoice" shall reach teleos in the perfected glory of Christ in the Age to Come--where not only is there no envying but rather there is but rejoicing in the good of others--so that my brother's joy shall be my joy, and my joy shall be my sister's joy; and our joy shall be perfect in Christ. Do we not read the Apostle saying, "Make my joy complete by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind." (Philippians 2:2), if the Apostle desires his joy finding its teleos by the unity of will, love, and commonhood even among the Faithful here and now--how much greater is that joy when these things are eternally true?

We shall not be deprived of each other. And in each other--and we all in Christ--shall be of unspeakable, incomprehensible joy. Beholding what no eye has seen and no ear has heard.

Doesn't that mean the heavenly relationships between people who had a relationship in this life will be the same quality (not any more or less special) as the heavenly relationships between people who had no relationship in this life?

NT Wright says marriage won’t exist in Heaven, but love will be transformed

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