From "At the Heart of Love"

From "At the Heart of Love"

Father Marie-Dominique Philippe, O.P.

The Creation of Man and Woman

Father, would you speak to us about what the Bible says concerning the union of man and woman? What is God's design for the couple?

Without doubt you want to specify what the union of man and woman represents, the couple, in the vision of God, from God's standpoint. "Design" would mean that God is an artist, that He would have a plan to carry out, like a sculptor or an architect, or an administrator. God is a Father, He creates us with love; and at the summit of all creation of this physical universe is the appearance of man and woman. It is very significant when you consider the two narratives of creation. Without stopping at the exegetical point of view on the origin of the two narratives--they have been qualified as "Priestly" for the first 1 and as "Yahwist" for the second 2; this is unimportant--we are sure that God wanted--the Church is somehow there as a guarantor of God's will--these two narratives of man and woman's creation to be.

According to the first narrative, after the creation of the physical universe and the communication of life to the diverse kinds of living beings, there is something like a momentary pause. It is quite impressive. As if God begins to "reflect" momentarily, so much the passage from animal to man is something great in God's wisdom; God wants us to understand the abyss existing between the creation of all these living beings and this masterwork of God which is the creation of man and woman. "Let us make man in our own image and likeness" 3. And according to this first narrative, God makes them man and woman simultaneously, in order to show how, in God's eyes, man and woman have a deep equality of order, I was going to say, of life, in the order of spirit; and God creates them in His own image and likeness.

According to the second narrative, which is completely different--it appears primitive and it is almost hidden by the first--God creates man first. He creates him immediately after the creation of matter 4. Then He creates all that surrounds man; his vital milieu; for him He creates an Eden. But, alone in the midst of this marvelous, luxuriant garden that God gives him, man does not appear happy. God explains to us why: man is alone--"It is not good for man to be alone" 5. Then there is this narrative, so primitive and so extraordinary from the point of view of symbolism, of woman's creation. God plunges man into a sleep and becomes a "surgeon" in order to make woman from man. He uses a man's rib (after having plunged him in torpor) to make woman from man, so that she might really be his prolongation and at the same time his complement. It is God Himself who presents woman to man; then man expresses his joy: "This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh" 6.

It is very important for us to compare these two narratives. The first one is much more perfect from order's point of view: it is the narrative which shows us that God creates everything with wisdom; in a vision of wisdom, man and woman are at the summit, the whole physical universe being for them. Since it is a vision of wisdom, God insists on unity, the equality of both one and the other.

The second narrative expresses even more so the love of God--God creates by wisdom and God creates by love; one can even say: God creates by love and this love implies a whole reflection, a vision of wisdom. In the second narrative you very clearly see a much deeper intimacy. It shows us first God's gesture fashioning man's body (the gesture of the potter) in order to show God's proximity to man. It is as if through matter, through the body, God wanted to show His proximity: an artist, a potter is close to the clay he is fashioning; somehow, the potter extends himself in the clay. The clay fashioned by the potter is quite full of a certain intelligibility coming from the intention of the potter. Thus, God shows His proximity to man's body. Man's body is good because it is kneaded by God, according to the deep intentions of God.

Father, you rely on a narrative which is nonetheless mythical; to what extent are the narratives of Genesis true? What can they bring to the believer?

These narratives make us believe that we can grasp this mystery only by approaching it poetically and symbolically. The Holy Spirit, the principal author of Scripture, uses ancient religious traditions while purifying them; all, in fact, seek to evoke under a symbolic form the great mystery of the creation of man and woman. The religious traditions have a symbolic form, because the deepest secrets of the religious soul can only be said in this way. Isn't symbolic knowledge the most primitive, and at the same time the most ultimate? We know very well that precise, logical, scientific knowledge cannot express the deep things of the heart; as soon as one loves, one becomes a poet: one expresses his love according to a poetic language even more than according to a logical language. If God wants us to understand all the love that He has for His creatures, for man and woman who are His masterpiece, He employs this poetic, symbolic form.

It is true that this narrative is symbolic and mythical: if the philosopher or the grammarian, the literary person come to these first chapters of Genesis, they will come to them as they did to the great religious traditions; all of them express creation according to a symbolic and mythical language, since we were not present there. We only have little very embryonic bits of knowledge which we try to unify insofar as we can: in reality, we ignore what the origin of the world was. God knows it well, but He does not want to give us an explicit, clear knowledge of the creation of the world, of the creation of man and woman; He simply wants to stress that man was looked on by God from a standpoint of love, and that the whole universe had been created for him. This is true for man as for woman; and if in the second narrative God seems to have forgotten woman (His first glance seems to be entirely for man) it is perhaps to make us better understand how man and woman, in the thought of God, imply at the same time an equality from the point of view of the spiritual (substantial ) soul, and a great complementarity in the order of love. They are not created according to an equality in the sense that one may understand it today, but in a very much more profound equality: both of them are masterpieces for God, they are God's masterpieces and they are loved by God in a unique love. However, each of them expresses something of God's goodness, and they are given to one another in a complementarity of love.

This symbolic and mystical language is therefore a language of divine symbolism--one can almost speak of a "divine myth." In other words, it must be understood, beyond the symbolic and mythic form, that God wants to tell us something true, which escapes all our human knowledge: the scholar and the philosopher will never be able to explain how man and woman have appeared in the universe. In a certain way the artist can evoke it more easily than either the scientist or the philosopher. For the artist knows a little how, after having made numerous sketches, he instantly carries out his masterpiece; the masterpiece is particularly interesting to him: all the rest seems to get around, to faint away before his masterpiece. It is that which God wants to make us understand in these completely primitive narratives: what really interests Him beyond everything is neither the immense grandeur of our physical universe nor the variety of all the animals; all this interests God since He wanted it, but what interests Him and what touches Him "in depth," is His masterpiece: the creation of man and woman. And to make us better understand His love--just because love is always personal: love cannot be global, love cannot envelop two beings at the same time; even when you love twins, you love each of them in a unique way, and the mother of two twins always recognizes them, even if the others confuse them--God wanted to make two beings, two persons who have their autonomy and their own character.

He wanted also to indicate that these two beings in their diversity are nevertheless called to a very great unity, to a complementarity in the order of biological life, in view of procreation; this is extended in psychology, for all that regards human things 7. That is why God first makes this gesture of man's formation, and then brings man to an awareness of his poverty, of his isolation, even if He gives him quantities of material things and living beings; man is not able to satisfy himself by that. God thus makes man understand right away that there is in him a dimension which surpasses the universe, which goes very much further: man seeks someone whom he can love; and when this someone is not present, whom he cannot immediately love, man has some sadness inside himself, an unsatisfied call. That makes us understand this moment when God left man alone. And when He Himself says: "It is not good that man should be alone," God wants us to understand that He has indeed created him while placing in him an important calling, so that he should love someone who should be both close and different from him. The entire creation of woman shows it well: God wanted to show at the same time that she is close to man--"Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh"--and different: she is the one who shall be man's complement, before all in the order of love, while taking love really in the strong sense, that is a love which seizes all being; woman will be a complement in all her sensitivity, in all her being. She will be relative to man. The Hebraic term expresses that well: "ishshah," which is "woman," is the feminine of "ish," "man," in order that one should understand this unity and this relativity of woman regarding man 8. She is the one who is completely given to him. God Himself presents her to man.

Relative to man? We have to understand (we actually know how man will call attention to his birthright considering that he has some rights over woman and that he ought to dominate her; now this is not at all the thought of God). In God's thought, woman is a complement in the strong sense: she is the aid, that is the one who should or must to help man to discover love--woman has this power to awaken love in man's heart--and she is also the one who is going to allow an accomplishment: in a certain way, everything is accomplished in woman's heart, who receives this man's love in order to be able to dedicate herself to him and to enable this love to take its entire dimension and its entire fullness. God wanted them to be two, and to be one 9. This duality and this unity is what makes us understand the "design" of God for man and woman, the profound look of God on man and woman. It is the love look which makes us discover this complementarity, and this weight of love put there by God in man's heart for his wife, woman. This weight of love is in a receptivity and a response from woman's heart to man's (response because their mutual love is fulfilled), so that both, by loving, should become a source of life, a source of love, since God gives them this order: "Multiply" 10. It is all this great mystery, evoked from the starting point, from the union of man and of woman, in love, for fecundity.

He created them for themselves, since otherwise this would not be a work of love which would terminate at man. It is possibly the reason for which God wanted this second creation narrative to plainly show that the creative act terminates with man (and there is another creative act which terminates with woman). It is the personal look of God's love on man and on woman. But at the same time, and this deals with their complementarity and also with the intensity of love which ought to manifest itself between man and woman, God wanted their love to be a source of fruitfulness, to be a point of departure for a new being. This is evoked in a very hidden way at the beginning of Genesis, but if we are attentive to the entire development of Scripture, we notice well how God wanted the first covenant existing between Him, the Creator, and man and woman, His small creature, to be this covenant of fruitfulness, in fruitful love--I link both: love and fruitfulness, in a full love which will be realized, which will blossom in a fruitfulness. Here is where we grasp this first covenant of man and woman between them and with God. It is God's will of wisdom that establishes this covenant. That immediately helps us to understand (and we will have the opportunity to come back here once again) that this mystery of procreation is basic: we touch something sacred, since we touch an express will of God for man and woman.

Yes, procreation has something sacred. It is not to be understood uniquely from an ethical perspective, if we understand by "ethical" the relationships of man to man, if we consider the responsibility of man concerning man 11. There is something more profound: an overreaching of human responsibility. It is true: man receives woman from God; and that is in order for them to realize a work which surpasses them, of which they are responsible, trustees; this work is the family, which is going to be realized by procreation.

Would you please clarify a point? You said that man is the masterpiece of the universe. What does that mean? Why do you say that?

I say that according to all the great traditions. I know well that certain modern people are violently opposed to this great vision of the Church Fathers on Genesis. But we can say that the Holy Father in the first teaching of his pontificate took up the chapters of Genesis again to vehemently insist, following the guidelines of the Church Fathers, on the fact that man and woman are the universe's masterpiece. We are influenced by an entirely modern vision, of a certain "philosophy"--it is not actually scientific, but instead philosophical or rather positivist--which says in a quite terrible way, while relying on the progress of modern science, that man is no longer the universe's masterpiece: as the earth is no longer the center of the world, man and woman appear as a moment of evolution and, according to Freud, the Oedipus complex is at the most intimate in man's heart. As a masterpiece, it is not very successful! If man really comes down to the Oedipus complex, what a masterpiece! It is rather the "gargoyle" of God's masterpiece! It is this kind of total falling back of man on himself: instead of being truly in the image and in the likeness of God, he becomes almost the antithesis. Let us not insist, we shall perhaps come back to it later; but that is part--it is nevertheless very important to notice it at the starting point--of the entire pseudo-scientific, pseudo-philosophical climate in which, certainly, we live. So, when we say that man and woman are the masterpiece of God, that they are at the summit of the entire creation of the physical world, one resists a little, one does not adhere to it right away. It is quite normal in our climate, and I did it deliberately so that you can underline this problem, which is very important. I am placing myself in a purely theological perspective, the believer's perspective. In a philosophical perspective, this would be somewhat different, that is to say much shorter, much quicker: I would not be able to say much!

4 "In the day that the Lord made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet on earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up--for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground--then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being" (Gen. 2:4-7).

7 Let us note, as we will say it, that man and woman specifically have the same spiritual soul; the spiritual soul of one and the other is therefore specifically the same, even if from the point of view of exercise there is a diversity and a complementarity. From a psychological point of view, the love of man and that of woman can appear as specifically different; in reality, they are not.

8 "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman (ishshah), because she was taken out of man (ish)" (Gen. 2:23).

9 "Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Gen. 2:24).

10 "And God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.'" (Gen. 1:28).

11 Can't we actually distinguish somehow three levels of responsibility and therefore of moral activity? The interpersonal human level; the level which explicitly implies the relationship with the Creator; and the level which implies dependence with regard to Christ the Savior. Human ethics (we will sometimes call it "lay" ethics), religious ethics, Christian ethics.