C
centurionguard
Guest
**There are other areas within the topic of sexual ethics concerning Male and Female that I do find interesting strictly from a Christian anthropological level imbued in history and borrowed from mythological and philosophical reflections. First off is the “Bisexual Nature” of the human species as a biological fact and indeed with an understanding as being primordial whether as an actuality or hypothetical. The human person is normally male and female, and there exist the most powerful attraction between the two.
Is the sexual urge amongst human beings just for the propagation of the species as it is amongst the animals? Or does a sexual relationship between male and female human beings mean something more? Before answering these questions from the prospective of Christian anthropology it would be a good idea to fathom other human reflections upon this experience.
Ancient traditions tell us about the original human being (“for the sake of argument ADAM”) being both male and female. Both the Persians and Talmudic mythologies relate how God first created a two-sexed being and later divided that being into two…Adam and Eve. This theory is most clearly expressed in Plato’s “Symposium” wherein Aristophanes retells an ancient Greek myth about the original human beings, who were perfectly round, had four arms, four legs, and one head with two faces, looking in opposite ways. The human spheres possessed such marvelous intelligence and qualities that they rivaled the gods who, acting out of jealousy and fear by splitting the spheres in half in order to reduce their power. These original, spherical beings thus fell apart into two halves, one feminine and one masculine.
(“Ever since then, so the story goes, the two severed parts of the original human being have been trying to reunite”)
“And when one of them meets his or her other half,” Aristophanes informs us, the actual half of himself/herself,…the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other’s sight…even for a moment, as these are the people who pass their whole lives together, yet they could not explain what they desire of one another.”
Evidence of this same belief in the sexual duality of human nature is found also in Sacred Scripture. The book of Genesis, for instance, indicates that God Himself is an androgynous being, that is, someone who combines within his or her personality “both” male and female elements. In the first chapter of Genesis we read that “God created man in His image; male and female He created them.” (Gen 1:27”). Thus man and women (“together”) are the image of God, and not man alone, nor woman alone. In the second chapter of Genesis, then, we are told that when God wished to make woman, He put Adam into a deep sleep, removed a rib from his body, and made Eve from Adam’s rib (Gen 2:21-22). Clearly the original man, Adam, was thus both male and female. From this early division of the originality whole, bisexual human being comes the longing, through sexuality, for the reunion of the “severed halves”.
A quotation from Pope John Paul II exemplifies this same original unity of male and female:
(“In the mystery of creation…on the basis of the original and constituent “solitude” of his being…man was endowed with a deep unity between what is humanly and through the body, male in him and what is, equally humanly and through the body, female in him”).
The second chapter of Genesis continues; “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become “one” in flesh.” But even more so in the true bonds of love with God invited as an integral part of their marriage life they become “One in Spirit” which is what God intended marriage to be between husband and wife. The spiritual journey of the human soul that seeks union with God similarly echoes this theme.
**
Is the sexual urge amongst human beings just for the propagation of the species as it is amongst the animals? Or does a sexual relationship between male and female human beings mean something more? Before answering these questions from the prospective of Christian anthropology it would be a good idea to fathom other human reflections upon this experience.
Ancient traditions tell us about the original human being (“for the sake of argument ADAM”) being both male and female. Both the Persians and Talmudic mythologies relate how God first created a two-sexed being and later divided that being into two…Adam and Eve. This theory is most clearly expressed in Plato’s “Symposium” wherein Aristophanes retells an ancient Greek myth about the original human beings, who were perfectly round, had four arms, four legs, and one head with two faces, looking in opposite ways. The human spheres possessed such marvelous intelligence and qualities that they rivaled the gods who, acting out of jealousy and fear by splitting the spheres in half in order to reduce their power. These original, spherical beings thus fell apart into two halves, one feminine and one masculine.
(“Ever since then, so the story goes, the two severed parts of the original human being have been trying to reunite”)
“And when one of them meets his or her other half,” Aristophanes informs us, the actual half of himself/herself,…the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other’s sight…even for a moment, as these are the people who pass their whole lives together, yet they could not explain what they desire of one another.”
Evidence of this same belief in the sexual duality of human nature is found also in Sacred Scripture. The book of Genesis, for instance, indicates that God Himself is an androgynous being, that is, someone who combines within his or her personality “both” male and female elements. In the first chapter of Genesis we read that “God created man in His image; male and female He created them.” (Gen 1:27”). Thus man and women (“together”) are the image of God, and not man alone, nor woman alone. In the second chapter of Genesis, then, we are told that when God wished to make woman, He put Adam into a deep sleep, removed a rib from his body, and made Eve from Adam’s rib (Gen 2:21-22). Clearly the original man, Adam, was thus both male and female. From this early division of the originality whole, bisexual human being comes the longing, through sexuality, for the reunion of the “severed halves”.
A quotation from Pope John Paul II exemplifies this same original unity of male and female:
(“In the mystery of creation…on the basis of the original and constituent “solitude” of his being…man was endowed with a deep unity between what is humanly and through the body, male in him and what is, equally humanly and through the body, female in him”).
The second chapter of Genesis continues; “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become “one” in flesh.” But even more so in the true bonds of love with God invited as an integral part of their marriage life they become “One in Spirit” which is what God intended marriage to be between husband and wife. The spiritual journey of the human soul that seeks union with God similarly echoes this theme.
**