In his recent article, Does Singleness Show Heaven? author Matthew Capone argues there is no biblical warrant to conclude that singleness in this life witnesses to or anticipates the life to come. More than that, he concludes that earthly singleness is a “not good” reality whose only consistently unique comfort is found in the knowledge that it will one day cease.

There is much to appreciate in Capone’s argument. He is clearly aiming to bring biblical faithfulness and theological rigour to bear on the question at hand. He rightly emphasizes the significance of marriage as an eschatological foreshadow—a signpost that points us to what is to come in the new creation. He wisely cautions us against drawing unqualified parallels between all aspects of Jesus’ earthly singleness and ours. And he is undoubtedly correct that all of Jesus’ people—married and single alike—are called to focus their lives on glorifying and enjoying God in this creation, as we together look forward to the next.

And yet, I cannot agree that being unmarried in this life has no value or significance in helping us understand anything about life in the next (or, indeed, vice versa). Not only do various biblical passages and theological threads come together to suggest that the single life is indeed eschatologically meaningful, but I (and Sam Allberry, whom Capone dialogues with at length, alongside contemporary theologians such as Oliver O’Donovan and Stanley Hauerwas) are far from the only ones to believe this. In fact, we are surrounded by a great cloud of historical witnesses who celebrated and esteemed the unmarried life precisely because they understood it to be uniquely and eternally significant.

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