Unity.

The sixth day:  The partnership between man and woman:

     So God created humankind in [God’s] image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.  God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Genesis 1:27-28

God creates them “in our image” and blesses them (a ritual?), and then God commands them to reproduce, to fill the earth and subdue it, and to have dominion over all other living things…  God commands man and woman to work in a team in order to bring forth a population and create order and care for everything else that lives.  Man and woman are co-created by God’s word like everything else.  They are blessed and then commanded and then given purpose. 

There’s a little bit more motive for God in the second story.  Man is created toward the beginning.  (See chapter 2, verse 5—you have to have someone around who can work the land!) In Genesis 2, God forms a man “from the dust of the ground” and breathed into him the breath of life (v. 7).  Eleven verses later, after being plopped in the garden, God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”  First come the animals, then the man names the cattle and the birds and everything else, but the animals just didn’t do.  So the man goes to sleep and God the surgeon takes a rib and makes a woman and brings her to him (v.22).  The man makes a vow,

     This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called woman, for out of Man this one was taken.  Therefore a man leaves his father and a mother clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.  And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

In Matthew 19, when asked about divorce, Jesus points back to “the beginning” (v. 4), even quoting the text from Genesis 2 as God’s intention for marriages.  And yet, even Jesus recognizes that this didn’t happen to work out that way it was created—therefore, Jesus points us Moses (Deut. 24) wherein a provision is made for divorce. 

I wonder how the creation accounts impact our understanding regarding the relationship between men and women yet today?  Especially since the two stories are significantly different—the first pointing to an “equal” creation and the second, wherein the woman was not created from the dust, but rather from the man himself. 

My good friend and colleague Matt pointed me to a book:  It’s over 500 pages so it’s safe to say that I won’t finish reading it in the near future.  Pope John Paul II writes The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan.[1]  (First of all, how cool is it that a celibate man explores this theme?!)  John Paul II opens his exploration with a similar analysis on the Biblical accounts of creation.  Looking at both the metaphysical, “objective” first account (you know, the created in the image of God stuff) and considering the more anthropological “subjective” second account (created from the dust), John Paul II suggests that both equally play into this theology of the body.  After all, Jesus in Matthew 19 leans into both accounts of the “beginning.” The account Christ quotes from, however, is the second one: “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:24). 

Referring to the second account, John Paul II writes, “the man falls ‘asleep’ in order to wake up both ‘male’ and ‘female’.”[2] Having come from “the same humanity” John Paul II explains that this is the “original unity.”

So were we created for unity with another person? Do you think Genesis 2 still aids in forming our cultural understanding of the purpose and function of marriage? Ultimately, partnership.  “Oneness” with another person. In my last blog post, I posed the question about the “ideal” of marriage, wondering if it is something that is internally desired by human beings. 

So again, I ask, how do we come to understand God’s intention for partnership between created man and woman?  If we were theologically (and physically) created for unity (man/woman unity, that is)—what about homosexuality?  What about the person who never marries?  What about the person who marries and then divorces or marries and then loses a spouse to death? Jesus even attempts to answer, “What about the eunuchs?” at the end of the pericope from Matthew 19:

     His disciples said to him, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry." But he said to them, "Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can." Matthew 19:10-12

About unity with other human beings: “Not everyone can accept this teaching.”  In other words, through a variety of passive and active situations, not everyone experiences this kind of unity.  There are people who by choice or circumstance remain outside of a union with another human being.  Therefore, Jesus says, "Let anyone accept this who can."  

If you dig into the Greek a bit you get a little bit of a different look though.  Jesus says, o` duna,menoj cwrein corei,tw. A more rough translation might be, “The one being able to contain (literally, “to be spacing”), let him contain.” Perhaps then, Jesus sees marriage as an… ability.  Is that right?  An ability that is given. (dunamij in its form here is middle passive.) Hmm. On the one hand: created “in the beginning” for unity.  On the other hand: not everyone is granted the ability. 

So again, I ask, how do we come to understand God’s intention for partnership—one human to another? I think I may be even more confused now.  Looking forward to digging into The Theology of the Body over the course of the rest of this month. 

I’m so new to thinking about these things and I'm curious about what you think.  Drop a line below if you have a chance. 

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[1] John Paul II.  The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan. Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997. 

[2] Ibid., 45.