Male and Female He Created Them
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- BASIC ATTITUDE OF JESUS
- THE SOLICITUDE OF ADAM
- THE FIRST LOVE SONG
- MEANING OF ORIGINAL NAKEDNESS IN GENESIS
- THE NUPTIAL MEANING OF THE BODY
- THE NUPTIAL MEANING OF THE BODY (CONTINUED)
- THE MYSTERY OF ORIGINAL INNOCENCE
- EVE'S VOICE IN THE SONG OF BIRDS
- CONJUGAL UNION AS “KNOWLEDGE”
- PROCREATION AS REVELATORY
- SALVATION AS A MARRIAGE DRAMA
- "FILL THE EARTH AND SUBDUE IT”
- CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE: A SAVING MYSTERY
1. BASIC ATTITUDE OF JESUS
There are indications that Catholics don't know what to make of their Church's teaching on human sexuality. Many are perplexed about the Catholic position on birth control, male/female roles, husband/wife roles, premarital strictures, divorce, remarriage—the particulars go on and on. Typically, they focus on particular conflicts which pit the Church against them and their sexual views.
Many years ago, some men came to Jesus about a particular problem they had in dealing with male/female relations. They asked: “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” Jesus demanded that they extend their horizons; sexuality needs to be perceived as an integral part of what it means to be human. He encouraged them to ask why man was created masculine and feminine in his origins and to acknowledge the rich complexity of human sexuality.
He called on them to consider the religious dimension of what it means to be masculine and feminine. Abruptly, he referred them to the first four chapters of Genesis, to the “beginning”, to the theological and psychological nuances of the primordial revelation.
Jesus answered: “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh?’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Mt. 19:4–6)
The last sentence clearly makes this teaching on the unity and indissolubility of marriage normative for Christians.
The text and context of this passage teach the following: There was a state of innocence in the beginning for man. This did not last. He fell into sin, but he is not left without hope. We can be assured that hostility between the Evil One and man will result in the bruising of the serpent's head. (Gen. 3:15) Because fallen man lives with the promise and in the light of a redeemer, those, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as they wait for the redemption of their bodies. (Rom. 8:23) It is significant that Genesis does not speak of man's likeness to the rest of creation, but only to God. “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him.” (Gen. 1:27)
So how do we respond to sexual crises? We need to rediscover the meaning of the Genesis text, “Male and female He created them” (1:27) and to acknowledge that “from the beginning” God did this. Furthermore, we need to reflect upon the emotional bonding and reproductive wonders that result from that creation and finally to recall the experience of our own sexuality in the total context of Christ's words. Such reflection will lessen the confusion people often feel about their sexual identity, but it will never relieve the anxiety we feel over our inability “to be in control” of our sexuality since we live in that time when we have come “to the knowledge of good and evil.” (Gen. 3:7)
Basically, the biblical account is calling us to reflect on our experiences of sexuality (Rom. 8:23) and on the religious dimension of these experiences. (Mt. 19:4–6) We need to go beyond the ordinary way of responding to our sexuality whereby we tend to focus on particular crises.
Jesus calls us to a religious interpretation of the common and unique human experience of masculinity and femininity; this is how it was “from the beginning” even as we continue to “groan in waiting for the redemption of our bodies.” As followers of Christ, we no longer compartmentalize our sexuality because Jesus teaches its integration into our whole person. Human sexuality is not simply what we do but what and who we are. For “Male and female He created them.”
2. THE SOLITUDE OF ADAM
My commentary continues on the words and context (Gen. 1-3) of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew 19:4–6. “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. So they are no longer two but one.’ What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”
Being alone is not something we look forward to. Nor do we easily recall moments of past loneliness. We do not readily enter into the painful experience of loneliness and we avoid the isolation of an empty office or house or waiting room. We are very frightened by the loneliness associated with aging. Charles Dickens has one of his characters in DAVID COPPERFIELD say: “I am a lone lorn creetur and everythink goes contrairy with me.”
Yet in the Yahwist account of creation (Gen. 2), the first human makes immense discoveries about himself in his original solitude. Through solitude, Adam gained an inner awareness of his own uniqueness as a person, intimate communion with God, a sense of his own freedom, and an understanding of the religious significance of his body.
It is clear that the solitude of man (male and female) in the second chapter of Genesis contains a key revelation concerning the meaning of human existence. The first account of creation (Gen. 1) describes man's creation in one act as “male and female”, whereas the second account speaks first of the creation of the man and only afterwards of the woman from the “rib” of God—Yahweh speaks the following words about the first man's solitude: “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen 2:18). These words appear in the wider context in which man's creation is connected first and foremost with the need to “till the ground” (Gen. 2:5) and to undergo a specific test before God. “So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.”
(Gen. 2:1). In this test of naming the animals, Adam developed an insight into what being human meant. He became aware within himself of his essential difference from the world of animals: “but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him.” (Gen. 2:20). Adam's original solitude is the story of his search for identity before it is a search for a mate. In distinction from the world of animals with which he shares a body, Adam finds that in his body he is a unique subject of experience. Alone among all creatures he is called to “till the earth”; consequently he discovers that he is not on the same footing with any of the animals he has named. This self-knowledge helps him to realize an incredible mystery about his identity: He is “in the image of God”. Original solitude is the way in which man discovers his dissimilarity to all other living creatures and where by he asserts himself as a “person” before God—Yahweh in the visible world.
While still alone, man is placed in the “garden of Eden” where he is free to eat of every tree “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Adam shall not eat for he shall die. (Gen. 2:16–17). In this command, God—Yahweh forms the first covenant; man thereby becomes a partner of the Absolute. In his original solitude, Adam not only becomes aware of his self-knowledge, but also of his self-determination: he is free to enter into covenant relationship with God (immortality) or he may enter into the world of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (death).
This self-awareness is accomplished by one whom “the Lord God formed of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” (Gen. 2:7). Man is conscious of his superiority to material creation through typically human behavior. It is his capacity to work by “tilling the earth” and “subduing it” whereby Adam discovers the unique structure of his material body. His body permits him to be the author of truly human activity. Because of his body, the first human becomes conscious of his solitude, his self-knowledge, and his self-determination.
This analysis of the original solitude of man calls us to reflect further on the deeper meanings of Genesis and of our experiences as embodied persons.
3. THE FIRST LOVE SONG
A Columbia University psychoanalyst, Herbert Hendin, in his book, The Age Of Sensation concluded from his interviews with 100 young men and women: “What has changed (over the past generation) is the pitch of anger between the sexes. The openness, the casualness with which young men and women regard each other presents a picture of surface camaraderie that leads many people to believe we are ushering in an age of unprecedented sexual harmony. But in actual experience, greater openness between the sexes often means greater openness about their fear and anger toward each other and a general cynicism, disillusionment and bitterness that one rarely found among the young 20 years ago.” Nothing has happened more recently to belie Hendin's findings. Those young people are now older adults and more of their marriages are ending in divorce. Children experience the most severe deprivations because they have been woefully neglected by their parents at the interpersonal level. Our culture has institutionalized lack of commitment and seems determined to strip sex of tenderness and romance. Consequently, American men and women tend with distressing frequency to secure themselves against each other by emotional numbness, depersonalization and cynicism. To use the phrase of St. Augustine of Hippo: Ours is “a land of unlikeness” (regio dissimilitudinis).
The relations between man and woman were not meant to be such “in the beginning”; nor do they have to be now even as we wait for the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:23). The story of man's creation in Genesis 2 reveals that the original solitary “man” emerges in a double unity as “male” and “female”. Adam discovers rich dimensions of his humanity knowing Eve and Eve discovers her richness in Adam; their humanity would have been less manifest without the other.
And it is precisely in Adam's awakening to see Eve as “a helper fit for him” that he knows joy and even exaltation for the first time. In discovering woman as the second “self” or person who shares his humanity yet is different in her body, Adam sings the first love-song, the biblical prototype of the Canticle of Canticles: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23). Human solitude is overcome; one person exists “beside” another person; the openness to another human first revealed in the original solitude of Adam is fulfilled and decisively confirmed when Adam discovers “a helper fit for him.” This “communion of persons”, his desire to share oneself with another, especially in the conjugal union of husband and wife, is a reflection in our bodies of the Trinitarian communion of Divine Persons.
The body reveals man—the human person. That is the deepest meaning we can attach to
Adam's love song. In the masculinity and femininity of the first couple, in their very corporality, in the communion of their persons, Adam and Eve are created in the “likeness of God.” Genesis unearths the religious significance of human sexuality in a few lapidary phrases. Its theology of the human body is also a theology of masculinity and femininity. Man and woman are two
“embodiments” of the same solitude; two ways of being a body and, at the same time, “a human”; two complementary ways of self-consciousness and self-determination; and two ways of being conscious of the meaning of the body. Such is the mutual enrichment revealed in the “incarnate” communion of the male-person and the female-person.
The ethical dimension of this theology of masculinity and femininity is revealed in Jesus' words (Mt. 19) about the unity and indissolubility of marriage; its sacramental dimension is developed in St. Paul's letter (Eph. 5). This latter is in the great tradition of Hosea, Isaiah, and Ezekiel.
“A man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). The unity referred to here undoubtedly is expressed and realized in the conjugal act, in which “historical” men and women recover something of the unrepeatable and unique joy of their first parents when they discovered their mutual complementary and identical humanity through their bodies. Moreover, the element of free choice “from the beginning” is present right in Genesis 2:24.
Only the man and woman of maturity have sufficient self-awareness, freedom, and a certain fulness of consciousness of their bodies in order to enter into marriage. Only the mature man and woman can discover their own humanity by surpassing the limit of their solitude and assume the solitude of the body of the second “self” as their own. A husband and wife make such a discovery by becoming “one flesh”. In this faithful and indissoluble union of life and love, men and women overcome the terrible disruption afflicting the contemporary family and rescue it from its failure to be what God intended it to be “from the beginning” and what society needs it to be: a force of stability, affection and love.
4. MEANING OF ORIGINAL NAKEDNESS IN GENESIS
I have been commenting upon Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:4–8 and his interpretation of the first four chapters of Genesis. His words and their context in Genesis recapture the meaning of original solitude (Gen. 2:20) and original unity (Gen. 2:23). Now we reflect upon the significance of our first parents’ original nakedness and their lack of shame. “And the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed.” (Gen. 2:25).
In discovering “original” human experiences, we find that these experiences are not simply a part of prehistory, but are at the root of every human experience. There is an extraordinary dimension to everyday life. “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” (Gerard Manley Hopkins). The study of “the revelation of the human body” helps us to understand the extraordinary side of what appears so ordinary: the absolute originality of the two different ways of the human “being a body” created in the image of God.
Genesis 2:25 reveals the mutual experience of Adam and Eve: man experienced the femininity that was revealed in the nakedness of the woman's body and likewise, woman experienced the masculinity that was revealed in the nakedness of the man's body; “and they were not ashamed.” “Nakedness” signifies the original good of God's vision through which the “pure” value of the body and of maleness and femaleness, of sex, is revealed.
Genesis 3:7 presents a significant difference from the formulation of Genesis 2:25. Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; “then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.” (Gen. 3:7). “Then” indicates a new content, a new moment of the experience of the body.
The non-presence of shame found in Genesis’ earlier description of original nakedness shows a different perception of the human body in man's prehistory from the relationship of man and woman within “historical” time and the attendant shame.
How do we interpret the absence of shame in the experience of original nakedness? Genesis teaches that our first parents saw their bodies with an original innocence. This innocence gives us a glimpse of their interior life. In an extraordinary way, that is, outside the limits of shame, man and woman knew that the fulness of life was mediated through the reciprocal complementarity of their hallowed bodies “all laced in the other.” (Hopkins). There was no rupture between the spiritual and the sensible. Their experience of the other's physical nakedness corresponded to the interior vision of man created in the “image of God.” Each saw with an interior gaze the goodness of the body of the other; such a vision corresponded to the vision of the Creator who “saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). They saw and knew “each other, in fact, with all the peace of the interior gaze, which creates the fulness of the intimacy of persons.” (Pope John Paul II).
The experience of shame in Genesis 3:7 signals a change of the meaning of the body before Creator and creatures. Shame is the experience of fear in the presence of the other “self”, in the presence of differences. There is no longer an openness to a different way of being; the difference may be physical, or cultural, or racial, or interior. Man has become intolerant of differences. Our nature is now historically framed in fault and our tear-trickled cheeks of flame are filled with shame (Hopkins). Personal intimacy is disturbed and almost “threatened” by the sight of differences and the accompanying shame. Differences breed distrust which now intrudes itself into the mainstream of human history.
In our reflections on original solitude, unity and nakedness we have arrived at an understanding and interpretation of man which rests on essentially “human” experiences. Genesis does not allow us to reduce man simply to an animal. Yet, many devotees of the evolutionistic theory insist upon such a radical reduction.
An adequate anthropology needs to consider what is essentially human in Elohist and Yahwist narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 do precisely that. At the “beginning” man and woman emerge with an awareness of the “nuptial” meaning of their body. In subsequent articles I will elaborate on this term.
In anticipating that elaboration, I will briefly discuss creation as “gift”. In Christ’s use of the words “created” and “Creator” in Mt. 19, we discover a new dimension of understanding the original solitude-unity-nakedness of man. Pope John Paul II calls this new criterion of interpretation, “the hermeneutics of the gift.” What does this mean?
“Creation” is the fundamental and original gift. The “created” world is a gift from the Creator because He “is love” (1 Jn. 4:8). Only love can be the motive of the God-Creator in giving a beginning to good and delighting in good (Gen. 1:31; 1 Cor. 13). The gift of creation (Gen. 1:29, 30) is a fundamental and radical “giving” precisely because the gift comes into being from nothingness. Only man among all creation is capable of understanding the meaning of gift as the call from nothingness to existence. Man alone proves capable of answering the Creator with the language of this understanding. The relationship of God as giver of creation and man as the created one who receives the gift is discovered in the account of man's creation: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him” ( Gen. 1:27). Man who is created in God's image alone is capable of understanding the meaning of gift as the call from nothingness to existence. Man responds to Creation as gift when he receives the world and the other “self” as gift.
5. THE NUPTIAL MEANING OF THE BODY
Mannequins can be startling in their life-like-appearance. In department stores I am sometimes taken by surprise “by a human presence” in an unlikely pose or place. But a quick glance reveals nothing more than a mannequin, a plaster model of the human body with puppet-like limbs draped in clothing. It is a mere object, not a subject-person.
Yet a “mannequin-mentality” infects our image of the human body. Many people today experience their bodies and the bodies of others as mere instruments of work, of profit or of gratification. The real “self” is disassociated from the body which becomes simply a means for receiving or sending messages of various kinds to the outside world. The “thinking” self is somehow detached from the body which becomes a bare substance dressed up to enhance its attractiveness or utility.
The account of the creation of man and woman in Genesis does not make room for a “mannequin-mentality” towards the human body. In light of Jesus’ teaching on the “beginning” (Mt. 19: 4,8), what has emerged from our reflections are those essentials which must be present in a fully human understanding of man: only because of his body did man in his original solitude, unity, and nakedness become aware of himself as person, of his freedom, of communion with another self, and of creation as the fundamental and original gift. These insights from human prehistory” remain valid for an adequate anthropology of the human person in “historical” times, i.e., in the period after our first parents ate “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Gen. 2:17).
It was not good that man should be “alone” for he needed “a helper fit for him.” In the inspired words “alone” and “a helper fit for him”, God teaches that Adam fully realized his humanity by existing “with someone and for someone.” Man and woman achieved happiness in their “original” state only through a relationship of mutual giving, through a communion of persons. From the very depths of his solitude, Adam knew a beatifying fulfillment for the first time when God brought Eve to him. “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” he exclaimed as they both emerged into the new dimension of mutual gift. This gift is revealed by the Creator-God and simultaneously discovered by Adam and Eve in the human body in all the original truth of its masculinity and femininity.
For us something incredible begins to emerge: the human body itself is a source of revelation about the meaning of human existence. A man can trust his body and its powerful sexual drives if the communion he seeks with a woman is a “communion of persons” that includes the body, and not a communion of bodies that excludes the person. It means that a woman needs to wed bodily attraction for a man with an “interior” perception of his person. Their bodily attraction cannot be unrelated to an interior sense of their love for one another.
The nuptial significance of the human body means that masculinity-femininity, i.e., human sexuality, is the original sign both of God's gift of creation which springs from love and of man's (male-female) awareness of gift lived in an original way. Such is the significance of the first meeting of Adam and Eve which testifies to the nakedness of both without mutual shame (Gen. 2:25).
Man and woman have also become aware in Genesis 2:24 of the finality of their masculinity-femininity. Uniting with each other so closely as to become “one flesh”, they will subject, in a way, their humanity, to the blessing of fertility, of procreation, which the Elohist narrative speaks of (Gen. 1:28).
They have come into “being” with an awareness of the finality of their own sexuality, of their own bodies. In Genesis 2:25 man and woman are said to be free from the “constraint” of their own bodies and sexuality.
Human procreation here is seen not to be the result of “sexual instinct.” Both Genesis 1:28 and 2:25 indicate that man and woman, united in “one flesh,” acknowledge that the procreative capacity of their bodies, precisely in that it is experienced as a gift, cannot be identified with the “sexual instinct” of the animal world; rather because they were free with the very freedom of the gift, human procreation has been raised to the level of “image of God”, to the level of persons and communion between persons. (Pope John Paul II, Catechesis on the Book of Genesis). The theology of the human body adds another element to adequate anthropology: human fertility cannot be reduced to an animal instinct; the interior freedom of man (Gen. 2:25) raises sexuality and procreation in man to the personal level.
What then does “nuptial meaning of the body” mean as revealed in Genesis? This complex and rich phrase may be further described in the following ways:
It is the giving of bride and groom to each other. (Rite of Marriage).
- In loving things, love is a one-way street; in loving persons, there is a return of love.
- To be a person is to be essentially in search of a person.
- For a person there must be a person.
- “It follows then, that if man is the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake, man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself.” (Gaudium Et Spes, 24)
- Fecundity is the fruit and the sign of conjugal love, the living testimony of the full reciprocal self-giving of the spouses.” (Pope John Paul II in “The Apostolic Exortation on the Family”, 28)
Next week I will reflect further on the nuptial meaning of the human body.
6. THE NUPTIAL MEANING OF THE BODY
In the beautiful Dixon Gardens near Park and Cherry, a gleaming marble statue of Jupiter and Europa punctuates the terrace at the end of a long rolling lawn opposite the main house and gallery. It creates a stunning vista. Jupiter, the king of the Greek pantheon of gods, in the guise of a bull, deceives Europa who is encouraged by the tameness of the animal to venture and mount his back, whereupon Jupiter advances into the sea and swims with her to Crete. The statue depicts the beginning of another amorous affair by the polygamous Greek god.
The early Christians were offended by Jupiter's polygamy: “Was Juno not enough for him?” protested the Christian Arnobius of Sicca (+311), deploring the lusts attributed to the Greek god and his conversion, for such purposes, into a swan or bull.
It is impossible to conceive the Christian imagination exalting human sexuality in the image of a bull. A catechesis of Genesis leads to a more adequate anthropology of what it means to be human; we have discovered that a theology of the human body is, at its roots, a theology of masculinity and femininity. At least it was so “from the beginning” (Mt. 19: 4,8) according to the Teacher from Nazareth and by His own authority He restores the normative unity of man and woman. The human body with its sex includes right “from the beginning” the “nuptial” attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love.
The nuptial meaning of the human body consists in the man finding and accepting in freedom the woman as she is willed “for her own” sake by the Creator and vice-versa. There is something about the man which is not satisfied until it completes itself in another person, the woman. We have in Genesis 2:23-25 a two-fold capacity revealed about man and discovered by him: the capacity to give himself “as a gift to another and the capacity to affirm another person as willed by God for his/her sake.” This is the profound mystery articulated by the II Vatican Council: “If man is the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake, it follows then that man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself.” (Gaudium et Spes, 24)
Genesis 2:25 says that “the man and his wife were naked, and were not ashamed.” In the original innocence man and woman can be presented to one another in the whole truth and reality of their masculinity/femininity (“they were naked”) because they are free with the freedom of the gift (“not ashamed”), i.e. their body/persons experienced the full freedom from any constraint of body and sex. So freed from constraint, man and woman could enjoy the whole truth and reality of their masculinity/femininity as God revealed it in the mystery of Creation. Fundamentally, the nuptial meaning of the body in theological prehistory (Genesis 1–2) is the revelation of human freedom, the reality of which, despite many distortions in “historical” time, is described by T.S. Eliot as “the inner freedom from practical desire.” The way that goes from man’s original happiness in the morning of Creation to “the redemption of the body” (Rom. 8) passes here.
Man and woman are created in “the image of God” insofar as their bodies reflect a nuptial significance. In their masculinity and femininity they have the capacity of expressing love whereby they become a gift to one another that fulfills the very meaning of their being and existence. They consequently affirm the person of the other as someone who is unique and unrepeatable, someone who is chosen by Eternal Love. This mutual “affirmation of the persons” creates “the communion of persons.”
An awareness of the meaning of the human body based on Genesis 2:23–25 is the fundamental key to understanding human existence in the world. These verses unearth for us the connection between the revelation and discovery of the nuptial meaning of the body and man’s original happiness.
Christ revealed to man and woman another vocation, namely, that of renouncing marriage in view of the kingdom of heaven, through voluntary celibacy. If a man or a woman is capable of making a gift of themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, this further proves in its turn (and perhaps even more) that there remains in “historical” time the freedom of the gift in the human body. It means that this body possesses a full “nuptial” meaning. (Pope John Paul II)
7. THE MYSTERY OF ORIGIN
In the Church of S. Maria in Carmine in Florence, the Brancacci Chapel constitutes one of the most solemn witnesses of the Catholic faith in the Renaissance. Two of the frescoes are of particular interest: The Temptation of Adam and Eve by Masolino and the Expulsion of Adam and Eve From Paradise by Masaccio. Before sin, the bodies of our first parents are portrayed in harmonious proportion with all contrasts eliminated. Without the use of shaded colours, they appear innocent as they stand facing one another in the serene light of the morning of creation. After they tasted “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 1:9), their bodies in “historical” time look tormented by the violent drama and powerful tension of the expulsion; a harsh light strikes their bodies, giving them the appearance of being weighed down and deformed by the burden of living. The artists of these frescoes have vividly portrayed the fall of Adam and Eve from their “original innocence.”
What is original innocence? It was the grace of “purity of heart” within our first parents; they had the interior capacity to experience, in one another’s body, the meaning of creation as the fundamental and original gift and the capacity to know the nuptial meaning of their bodies; above all original innocence or original righteousness describes the interior state of their hearts by which they were enabled to discover the whole dimension of conscience. We have only faint and infrequent intimations of the profound tranquility of their hearts rooted in grace. This grace determined the fullest and deepest dimension of their humanity: the participation in the interior life of God which was the interior source and foundation of their innocence. They lived in a special state of “spiritualization”. Original innocence is the gift by which man and woman were enabled to give themselves to one another in mutual love. As long as this love remained disinterested, they were without shame in the presence of one another's nakedness. Such as they were, they gave themselves outright and “forthwith found salvation in surrender” (Robert Frost). In the mystery of Creation, man and woman were made to be a gift to each other and for each other. In their very existence as male and female, by their sexuality and freedom as persons in the grace of their original innocence, man and woman were capable of mirroring the creative activity of God. And now, in “historical” time, man and woman receive, through the grace won by the Savior on the Cross, not the power to return to the state of original innocence prior to the fall of Adam and Eve, but the strength to live, through Christ, with Christ and in Christ, a new ethos of redemptive love (Pope John Paul II in A Catechesis on Genesis).
To understand the theology of the body, we need to reflect upon Genesis 2:25 again where we find that mysterious gift made to the human “heart”: “the man and his wife were naked, and were not ashamed”. The gift of grace enabled man and woman from “the beginning” to exist as disinterested gift. In “the beginning” the body was an “eye”-witness to the gift of grace to the human “heart”, i.e. the human will. The discovery of the nuptial meaning of the body is made possible through the gift of original innocence; in that very discovery, the mystery of original innocence is revealed.
8. EVE'S VOICE IN THE SONG OF BIRDS
In one of his most lyrical poems Robert Frost captured the purity of Eve’s heart in creation’s morning; the music of his words echoes the innocence and happiness of our first parents:
“He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would the birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds is why she came.”
With whom else could she have shared the call or laughter of her early eloquence but with Adam? We have intimations everywhere that creation even now is diffused with laughter and soft eloquence and that grace is the inspiration of our song. Nowhere is this truth revealed with greater clarity than in the two ways of being a body, as man and woman. For it is only through the body that we discover what it is to “feel at home” with someone and to experience ourselves as subject; at the same time, we learn that openness to the gift of another and experience of her “hospitality” deepens the inner chambers of one's own subjectivity and the subjectivity of the other. To give oneself to another is to discover that the giving and accepting of the gift of self interpenetrate so that “giving” becomes “accepting". In marital love, man and woman reflect one another's gift “like a hillside reflects itself in water at its foot and looks upon its own adornment when it is rich in grass and flowers” (Dante, Paradiso 30).
Because the nuptial meaning of the body had been so deeply inscribed in the depths of the human heart “from the beginning”, it remains as a distant echo of the first formed innocence of Adam and Eve. Their call and laughter “probably never would be lost.” Original happiness (Gen. 2:23-25) is an indication that both emerged from Love and initiated love in a way that would not be lost among their descendants. We now understand better the meaning of Jesus' words in re-establishing as normative that which was “from the beginning” (Mt. 19:4). The English novelist, Jane Austen, reflected this vigorous common sense in her writings.
The moral behavior of Christians is governed by a continued awareness of the nuptial meaning of the body “from the beginning”. The fundamental fact of human existence and of the Christian ethos is that God “created them male and female”. He always created them in that way and they are always such. By grace even “historical” man and woman are capable of existing as disinterested love. To understand the mystery of the human body is to know that man is given and freely receives the woman “for her sake”. “From the beginning” the man is the special guardian of the reciprocity of the gift. The German author, Gertrude von le Fort, wrote in similar fashion.
By accepting and welcoming the gift of the other, “historical” men and women under the ethos of the redemption are called to give and receive without wanting anything. “For in coveting nothing, nothing raises them up, and nothing weighs them down because they are in the center of their humility” (St. John of the Cross). Each is united to the other by an awareness of the gift. The central challenge is to give oneself to the other in the fulness of one’s subjectivity. Man needs an interior sensitiveness to the gifts of the Holy Spirit that enables him to transcend and dominate his visibility, his sexuality, his desire to reduce the other to a mere object. Our subjectivity is what raises all that we are to the level of person; it is in our subjectivity that we are created in the image and likeness of God.
The human body as male or female is the primordial sacrament or sign of the transcendent Creator. Genesis 2:24 reveals the “beginning” of the sacrament of marriage. In its nuptial meaning, the body effectively transmits in the visible world the invisible mystery of Truth and Love that is hidden in God from all eternity.
In revealing the original innocence of Adam and Eve, Genesis 2:23-25 also tells of the holiness that enters the world through the body. Man's consciousness of the mystery of his body shows him entering the world as a subject of Truth and Love. The first feast of humanity (Gen. 2) draws its origin from the divine source of Truth and Love in the very mystery of creation. Did not the vision of Adam and Eve correspond to the vision of the Creator who “saw everything He had made, and behold, it was very good.” Even though sin and death overshadow the first garden feast, we have reason to hope: for “from the beginning” Love and Truth destined the human body not for destruction but for glory. The song of the new Eve in Paradise harbingers for us the everlasting day at the resurrection of the body.
9. CONJUGAL UNION AS “KNOWLEDGE”
Pablo Picasso's early painting, “The Tragedy”, has achieved an intriguing popularity in our time. In blue monochrome it depicts a downcast husband, wife and child by the seashore, each in solitary isolation from the other.
The artist portrays the scene without warmth. He raises the insistent question: what is the meaning of family in the modern world? The blue color, recalling the humid depths of the abyss of the nearby sea expresses the compassion, the sadness of his poignant interrogation. The chief characteristic of the scene is the incapacity of the family to communicate. Each member is unaware of the presence of the other; more fundamentally, each seems to lack knowledge of the person of the other.
The biblical portrayal of family life is different. Even though Genesis 4:1–2 is inserted in that horizon of sin and death which weighs on the historical experience of the meaning of the human body, it nevertheless hearkens back to the “beginning” when God bound up the story of man's creation as male and female with the blessing of fertility (Gen. 1:27–28). The conjugal relationship was designed by the Creator to be revelatory, i.e. to give “knowledge” of the unique and unrepeatable identity and concreteness of the human person due to the body and sex.
In Genesis 4:1–2, we read: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.’ And again, she bore his brother, Abel.” In previous analyses of Jesus’ reference to the “beginning” (Mt. 19:7–9; Mk. 10:4–6), we developed a theology of the body in which stress was placed on human sexuality as a gift. We found that original innocence manifests and constitutes the perfect ethos of the gift. With interior “purity of heart” we cannot reduce the mystery of masculinity and femininity to the level of a mere object. In this passage we address not simply the gift of human sexuality (donum) but also the actual experience of man and woman “being given” to one another in conjugal union (datum).
By becoming “one flesh” in the marital act, man and woman experience the meaning of the body in a particular way. Significantly, Genesis describes their union as a reciprocal “knowing”; it is a basic, mutual “knowledge” in which man and woman participate by means of their body and their sex (cf. Gen. 4:17; 4:25; Lk. 1:34).
In archaic language the Bible directly reveals for the first time human intentionality (intentionality, design or purpose is characteristic of knowledge). Through the duality of the marital act, man and woman become “one flesh”. Their joined bodies, their maleness and femaleness, reveal the unique identity and concreteness of each person.
By “knowing” each other, by “being given” to the other, husband and wife experience a profound unity, while remaining in their union two really different subjects. So human sexuality in Jesus’ teaching was designed from the “beginning” to reveal the mature man and woman to each other as unique and unrepeatable subjects, as persons, precisely by means of their bodies and their sexuality.
Each age must have its own artists to express and to record it for the future. Picasso perceived modern men and women as incapable of “knowing” one another. Yet Catholics assert that even in this time when “the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now” (Rom 8:22), men and women can still discover the uniqueness of themselves as persons through the “knowledge” gained by “being given” to the other by means of their body and sex. Such is the vision of family in Genesis 4:1–2.
10. PROCREATION AS REVELATORY
The “New York Times Book Review” recently featured on its front page two books about parenthood: “The Good Mother” by Sue Miller and “Monkeys” by Susan Minot. Although I've not read the novels, the reviews are quite positive. Ms. Miller's celebrates motherhood in phrases that ring true: “The healing beauty of everything that is commonplace” and “momentary revelations of the harmony and beauty that underlie domestic life, a gift.” Her main character, Anna Dunlap, recalls Tolstoy's Anna Karenina's dilemma: “I love—equally, I think, but more than myself—two creatures, Seryozka (her son from whom she is separated) and Alexey (her lover) and since I can't have them together…I don't care about the rest.” Ms. Minot's novel is the story of Rosie, the mother of seven children, who relishes her brood, adores them, and brings them to Mass with a fierce pride. At one point she breast-feeds the youngest in front of the rest with “that wild look…(which said): “There is nothing in the world compared to this.” Both novels remind me of the two-fold awakening of the woman portrayed by Jacob Epstein's life-size statue, “Visitation” which I discovered several years ago in a copse of birchtrees in a Baltimore sculpture-garden. The aged Elizabeth awakens to herself as a woman when the child within her quickens for joy in the presence of Mary, the Mother of the Lord.
Our reflections on parenthood in Genesis 4:1–2 require us to dismiss any sense in which some have been brought up: that being human and enfleshed is a form of mortification. For women especially the body suffered as an object of fear, punishment and subjection. In Genesis 4:1 the mystery of femininity is manifested and revealed completely in motherhood. In later biblical thought the woman's body is also expressive of creative love: “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts you sucked” (Lk. 11:27). The biblical knowledge of self-conscious and self-determining persons involves a particular consciousness of the meaning of the human body that is bound up with fatherhood and motherhood. Likewise, the mystery of masculinity is revealed in the generative and fatherly meaning of a man's body. The knowledge/procreation cycle is key in Genesis 4:1–2.
Many criticize the Church's teaching on sexual morality as too mechanistic, too act-oriented and not sufficiently person-oriented. But Catholic doctrine requires a deeper penetration into the mystery of human sexuality than this caricature. The Church calls for a contemplative dimension in the disciple who is seeking an understanding of his/her life revealed in Christ Jesus. In marital unity man and woman rediscover their humanity; there is a making each other one's body. In procreation the father and mother discover the generative meaning of their bodies; the “biological” determination of the human body and sex stops being something passive. By “knowing” each other in the unity of “one flesh”, they are enabled to constitute a new human person, that is, to confirm and renew the existence of man as the image and likeness of God in the one conceived. Creation is renewed in human generation “with the help of the Lord God” (Gen. 4:1).
Within each person there is an ineluctable desire to discover the meaning of his/her body. Through the generative meaning of the body, each of us bears the mystery of what happened “in the beginning". Genesis 4:1-2 teaches that the woman especially in human generation and birth becomes aware of the mystery of creation. Through the unique biophysiological design of her body, the woman experiences the profound creativity of femininity in generating another human being with the cooperation of her husband.
Human beings as male and female discover themselves again as persons in human generation. Did not Eve say as much: “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord” (Gen. 4:2). Eve gives the name “man” to the newly begotten. Such “knowledge” is at the beginning of every act of generation. “Now Adam knew his wife Eve.” Man is thereby enabled to see with the fresh observation of the Creator that everything made is very good (Gen. 1:31). I am reminded of the wonderful gaze of God upon the awakening Adam on Michaelangelo's Sistine ceiling. Parents know that the one they have begotten is ‘man,’ made in the image and likeness of God as “in the beginning”.
The generative meaning of the human body puts us into touch with a unique awareness of death, the inevitable horizon within which all humans live. But even in this time after sin when we are subjected to suffering and the sting of death, the cycle of knowledge and generation overcomes in a way the inexorable perspective of death. When man goes beyond the solitude of his own being and affirms this being in an “other”, and then both of them affirm it in the new person they generate, biblical “knowledge” acquires an even greater dimension. Creation is very good indeed (Gen. 1:31)!
ADDITIONAL ESSAY:
SALVATION AS A MARRIAGE DRAMA
During the last days of September, Drs. John and Lyn Billings will be in the Diocese of Memphis to discuss their views on human sexuality. They are universally respected for their work with married couples especially in advancing the research and practice of natural family planning. I first met them in Rome at the 1980 Synod of Bishops, the theme of which was the Christian family and marriage. They addressed the Pope, Bishops, married couples and religious on their work on the regulation of birth. In anticipation of their coming to Memphis, I wish to reflect on the saving mystery of marriage revealed in the Holy Scriptures.
In the Old Testament, one of the most important ideas used to describe the relationship between God and man is the image of marriage. Many other metaphors are used: father-son, king-subject, and master-servant. But the marriage-image points above all to a communion or dialogue between the two partners, God and Israel. The history of salvation is described as a marriage drama. Married love and fidelity become a symbol to describe the torturous and free nature of Israel's relationship with God. In using this image, Hosea (Chap. 1–3), Jeremiah (Chap. 3 & 31), Ezechiel (Chap. 16–23), and Isaiah (Chap. 54) help us to discover a deeper dimension of God's love for Israel: His personal participation in Israel's history. We discover that God's fidelity is steadfast and that His initial spousal commitment in the desert remained irrevocable despite Israel's later “whoring” ways. So we have a truly significant phenomenon in the history of revelation: God could find no better description of His love for us than the image of a husband’s love for his wife. Remarkable!
Israel continued to reflect on the human reality of marriage. She developed two inspired accounts of God’s creation of man and woman in the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. The Elohist narrative (Gen. 1:27) observes that “God created man in his own image…male and female he created them.” We can deduce from this text that man became the “image and likeness” of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons which man and woman form right from the beginning. Genesis 2, the Yahwist text, speaks of man's original innocence and solitude, the original unity of man and women, the unity and indissolubility of marriage, the nuptial meaning of the human body, the mystery of woman revealed in motherhood, and many other themes. A memorable description is the depth and force of man's emotion when his original solitude is broken and he discovers the humanity of the woman: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” (Gen. 2:23) The first nuptial song exalts in the communion of man and woman. Our word “sweetheart” still to some extent reflects Adam's discovery. Israel was equally acquainted with the tragic aspect of marriage. She ascribed the radical, deep-seated impotence experienced in achieving a happy and successful married life to a primordial datum of human history: to the first man who had sinned with the help of his wife. (Gen. 3)
The inner meaning of human creation and marriage is to be found in the personal communion between man and woman, the “one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24) This original intimacy is both prophesy and sign of the love of Christ for His Church (Eph. 5:22–33). Salvation culminates in the marriage of the Lamb and the Bride (Rev. 21) whose original sign is the communion of husband and wife from the beginning.
ADDITIONAL ESSAY 2:
"FILL THE EARTH AND SUBDUE IT”
The autumn harvest is upon us. We see and hear about it everywhere. The markets are overflowing with fresh fruits and vegetables. Farming families and city households declare this season to the Lord our God (Dt. 26:3) and rejoice in the fruitfulness of the earth and the creativity of the human family. Reverence and wonder are the fruits to be gained from contemplation of the autumn creation.
Genesis speaks of a close connection between the power given to Adam and Eve to exercise over the land and the right to life: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” (Gen. 1:28). God based man's fundamental right to life upon his dominion over the land and all creatures. This right to exist is closely linked to the vocation of man and woman to family life and to procreation: “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh.” (Gen 2:24). So Genesis draws a series of lines between the fruitfulness of the land and the human family which is creative life and love.
God's creation of man as male and female is bound up with his commands to be fruitful and multiply and to subdue the earth so that it might yield seed and fruit for food. Thus, from the beginning there was a connection between the right ordering of our relationships as men and women and the command to exercise a creative dominion over the earth.
In the past several months, I have had two occasions to see the wonderful interconnection between the land and family life, once in Minnesota and once in Tennessee.
In both families, I sensed a profound deference between husband and wife out of reverence for Christ (Eph. 5:21). Both families keep holy the Sabbath, “resting on the seventh day” from the labors of the field.
These Christian farmers also recognize that the mandate to subdue the earth means to approach the land in justice and holiness. One of them pointed with pride to a special kind of grass he had planted along a long trench to reduce soil erosion. The grass served to catch the soil as the rain water washed from the fields to the nearby natural streams. He also spoke of the varieties of soil on his 200 acres of Tennessee farmland and the differing rates of water absorption. By proper fertilization, “white soil” increased greatly its yield of corn. One day an old neighbor observed: “In your grandfather's time, hardly anything grew in that “white soil”. Look what you have been able to accomplish!”
Farming husbands and wives make a success of their marriage when each participates in the important decision about planting, growing, harvesting and storing of vegetables and fruits for use of the family. Children are involved with their parents’ tasks at home, and in the fields, barns and sheds. Tractors, combines, cotton-pickers, milking-apparatus—all are progressively mastered by each member of the family.
I visited the Tennessee farm in mid-summer when things were relatively quiet awaiting the harvest. Gene, our farming host, pointed out to us the white and red cotton flowers, the wonderful symmetry of an ear of corn, and the kitchen window from which he and his wife, Gail, view with wonder the acres of growing crops.
Gene mused as he pointed across the teeming fields: “There is great reverence out there. One gains a sense of dependence. I sow the seed, but it grows on its own.” The Teacher from Nazareth observed the same wonderful inner vitality of the seed and taught about the word of God bearing fruit in its own time.
(Mt. 13:24–30). It is enough for us to sow the word with courage, faith and perseverance.
Such is the wonder and lesson of creation when the order of the Creator is restored as it was “from the beginning.”
ADDITIONAL ESSAY 3:
CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE: A SAVING MYSTERY
American novelists write of marriage in strongly negative tones. John Updike likens marriage to a kind of auction in which partners are bidding each other up and up until the stakes become unbearable. Norman Mailer likens it to warfare.
The book of Genesis has another view. It reveals two ways one becomes human. In the story of Adam alone in the garden, we find the first man becoming aware of himself as human through self-knowledge, self-determination and consciousness of his body. This self-knowledge allows him to discover his identity as a being “in the image of God”—in a complete relationship with God.
In Genesis, man also discovered another way of being human when he looked upon the femininity of the woman and the woman discovered another way of being human when she observed the masculinity of the man. “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (2:25). Christians believe that in the beginning God saw everything that he had made, including marriage, and it was very good (Gen. 1:31).
The unity of man and woman “in the image of God” is the unity of two different ways of being human. This calls for a profound respect both for human sexuality and for the human person. Neither can be understood without the other. Human sexuality cannot be isolated from the human person; for man cannot be understood as “a naked ape.” Among all the beasts of the field and birds of the air “there was not found a helper fit for man” (2:20). Nor can the study of the human person be undertaken without reference to sexuality. Otherwise we would be overlooking a fundamental datum of revelation: “God created them male and female” (1:27). We cannot separate sex from the person without destroying the biblical understanding of the human body. The goodness of creation was somehow lacking when man was without a helper, for God said that “it is not good that the man should be alone” (2:18). Man “alone” cannot realize a unique characteristic of personal existence: it is only by being “for someone and with someone” that man emerges from the depth of original solitude (2:20) and participates in the mystery of creation through the gift of himself to the other (2:24). Genesis teaches that our bodies are a source of revelation about the original meaning of human existence. We discover that the plan of God “from the beginning” placed emphasis upon the nuptial meaning of the body. Our masculinity and femininity have been given to us both as a sign of God's love and as a way for us to participate in the creative activity of God. Man and woman are created to be a gift for each other and to each other. Nor does Christ's redemption make it possible for us to return to the state of original innocence revealed in Genesis. But we do have the strength to live, through and in Christ, a new ethos, the way of redemptive love. Christ invites his disciples to a deeper conversion than that demanded by Moses. Jesus calls his followers to purity of heart and lifelong fidelity to one's spouse (Mt. 5:27f). The Catholic teaching on marriage can only be understood within the total Christian ethos of redemption and as part of our calling in Christ to “walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).
Just as the mystery of human suffering is transformed by baptism, so too the marital covenant of life and love is transformed because the spouses have been inserted into the mystery of Christ (Eph. 5:21–33). After baptism whatever we are or have becomes part of the new creation—our persons, our sexuality, our bodies, our families, our lives. Consequently, in the Catholic marriage ceremony, the spouses can affirm with integrity that they will accept children lovingly from God. Catholic teaching on responsible parenthood can be understood only when Christian marriage is seen “as a mystery so profound as to prefigure in the marriage covenant the sacrament of Christ and the Church.” (Sarum rite in the New Roman missal).
The Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality appears odd to most Americans. Catholics do not perceive the covenant of a man and woman as a kind of costly auction or warfare. Our beliefs are increasingly counter-cultural. The particular customs of Catholics appears so strange because we experience marriage in all its human reality as a saving mystery in Christ.