Love is for Life: Pastoral Letter of the Irish Bishops
PART I God's Plan For Love
(6.) MARRIED LOVE IN THE BIBLE
25. The Bible's teaching about love reinforces all that human experience
reveals about it. The first book of the Bible, Genesis, gives a profound
revelation about the nature of human love in its two accounts of the creation
of the first man and woman. In the first account, we read
- God said, "let us make man in our own image, in the likeness
of ourselves...".
- God created man in the image of himself,
- in the image of God he created him,
- male and female he created them.
- God blessed them, saying to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill
the earth and conquer it..." God saw all he had made, and indeed it
was very good. (Genesis 1: 26-31)
We note that the creation of male and female is described in verse. We could
call this mankind's first love-song.
26. The other biblical account of the creation of man and woman describes
how God made the man "out of the earth". In spite of all the splendour
of the earth's vegetation and all the variety of its animal species, the
man was without companionship, having no "helpmate suitable" for
himself. So, out of his rib as he slept, God fashioned the woman; and God
himself "brought her to the man" . On seeing her, the man breaks
into song:
- This at last is bone from my bones
and flesh from my flesh (Genesis 2:23)
This, the Bible goes on, is "why a man leaves his father and mother
and joins himself to his wife and they become one body" (Genesis
2:24). The narrative continues: "Both of them were naked, the man
and his wife, but they felt no shame in front of each other" (Genesis
2:25).
27. These colourful accounts of creation may seem naive to modern ears,
and suitable only to the mentality of a pastoral people; but these simple
word-pictures convey profound theological truths. Indeed, until the coming
of Christ, nothing more profound had ever been said about the relationships
of man and woman to God and to one another. Both of the accounts found in
Genesis stress the equality of man and woman. Only when woman is created
does man find "a helpmate suitable" for himself; and it is the
finding of an equal partner that evokes man's song of joy. Both man and
woman are made in God's image in their whole being, not just in their soul,
but also in their body. The male and the female body are, each in their
characteristic way, made in the likeness of God. Man and woman are made
for togetherness in married love. It is together, in the communion of marriage
and the family, that they are given by God the task of dominating the universe.
In communion with one another, they are given by God the blessing of fertility.
The mission to bring children into life and to dominate the earth are a
sharing by mankind in God's own work of creating and minding the earth.
28. The Bible teaches that sexuality is good; it comes from God; it reflects
the image of God. It fills the world with song: in each of the two biblical
accounts, the prose becomes song as soon as man and woman are introduced
to each other; and it is by God Himself that they are introduced. God looks
upon man and woman, and sees His image also in their sexuality; and it is
then that the Bible says: "God saw all that He had made, and it was
very good" (Genesis 1:31).
29. The human person, male or female, is made for companionship, for communion.
We are made for companionship with others. A special form of companionship
is marriage, which both gives companionship between equal partners, and
gives the special delight of bodily union. According to the Bible, man and
woman are each offered by God as a gift to the other. Man and woman are
each offered by self as a gift to the other; and the mutual gifting is in
view of union in the one flesh which is marriage. The union of marriage
is designed and made and blessed by God. It is a union of one man with one
woman, and is unbreakable. It forms a bond even closer than that between
a man and his own parents. In this union, the man and his wife belong to
each other in such close bodily and spiritual intimacy, and they share the
rights of intimacy so totally, that there can be between them in their intimacy
none of the sense of shame which would affect either of them in the presence
of any stranger.
30. The Bible's account of the Fall describes how, through the sin of the
first man and woman, the relationship of the sexes with one another is wounded
in all of its dimensions. It is wounded in the dimension of equal and reciprocal
communion by the introduction of male domination and of sexual discord.
It is wounded in the dimension of intimacy by the introduction of shame
and guilt. Nevertheless, even in this first book of the Bible, there is
anticipation of the Good News of the Gospel. There seems already to be the
indication that it is the woman who will be the instrument of restoration,
and will be that instrument precisely through a woman's childbearing and
the final victory of that woman's Offspring over the Serpent. (Genesis
3 :1-16) Thus the story of the Fall and original sin can be called also
the first Gospel, the promise of the Son of Mary who was to reverse the
Fall by the Redemption.
31. Already, therefore, in the first book of the Bible, in the story of
the first creation, we have the essential outline of the true relationship
between men and women and of the nature of marriage. Indeed here we already
have a biblical basis for genuine feminism. There is no foundation in the
Bible for male domination of women or for female aggressiveness towards
men.
Net publishing courtesy of the Newman Center at Caltech
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