Why didn’t God make both genders at once?

[JanSobieskiIII]

Right. It’s like God took a whole and split it in half (rough analogy).

Hence children shall leave their parents and cleave to each other as one flesh.

 

[ModernCatholic]

No. In God, we see the perfect Father that all Father’s need to role model but there was no perfect mother for all mothers to imitate because God himself isn’t a mother. Until Mother Mary of course! :wink:The Father is the head of the family and the mother is the heart, as God intended it to be. Jesus and God can be compared to mothers, fathers, little children, giraffes, etc. It doesn’t change what they are, it is just to make an image in your head of what something they do is like. God is not male nor female and is a Father but not a Mother. Fatherhood is not a gender-based role meaning God who is genderless can still be a Father however he intended in us for only men to be Fathers and for women to have an equally important and unique role.

 

[Elizabeth3]

Well, roughly speaking that seems to make sense but I think theologically it’s not thought of as 1/2 + 1/2 = 1 so much as 1 + 1 = 3. Being equal requires that each be 1 (whole and complete in themselves) and yet there are differences so that 1 + 1 can become 3 and that third is equal to the first two and yet is his own unique person unto himself and different from the others.

Each of the Persons of the Trinity is a complete but unique Person but it seems that both equality and differences are what make for the fullness of relationship rather than just three equal persons that are exactly the same. God seemed to have deemed it fit that we experience this equality and difference as well in order to more fully reflect Him and the relationships among the three Persons.

 

[Elizabeth3]

In God, we see the perfect Father that all Father’s need to role model but there was no perfect mother for all mothers to imitate because God himself isn’t a mother.

I’ve come to see motherhood not as something that has no place at all in God’s Fatherhood but that human motherhood is a reflection or emphasis of certain aspects of God’s Fatherhood since every good thing comes from Him. I agree that God is truly and only Father and isn’t a mother. However, I think the qualities of both human fatherhood and motherhood all come from the Father to whom everything and everyone returns. Women shouldn’t shy away from studying the Fatherhood of God in relation to how to be a better mother if that is what they seek to learn because I think everything we need to know can be understood in light of the Fatherhood of God.

Mary’s perfect motherhood is the supreme model (second to Christ) of how to “magnify” our Lord and God as women and mothers (both spiritual and physical). We can, and many do, seek to understand our own motherhood by her example.

 

[Wesrock]

Gender is part of language and the use of gendered pronouns to identify the sex of the person being referenced. “Gender roles” are “gender roles”. Gender =/= gender roles.

 

[ModernCatholic]

Yes, I agree! That is why God compares himself (themself) to women and mothers in many ways because both men and women are created equally in the image of God and so both do reflect the image of God. God definitely has qualities associated with both human mothers and fathers because humans all have an image of God in them. However, Fatherhood is a calling which is especially linked to God the Fathers role and is also something that God intended only men to do; because Fathers are so integral to the family. I was so happy when I found out about this teaching of the Church because I was growing up in a time and place where the basic gist was everyone is special but girls are more special. Basically since womanhood was being ‘redefined’ to mean 'anything a man can do plus more!’ I was glad to find out that men are actually equal to women but yet are different in a unique and also beautiful way. Somehow I was able to see the supreme gift of mothers to be able to love their children in such a special and unique way that isn’t the same as how fathers can (fathers and mothers can love their child equally as much but a mother has a special mothers bond to their child that fathers can’t have—not to say that fathers can’t love as much!), mostly because of the fact that women get to actually formulate a whole human being with all the dignity God blessed it with inside their womb for 9 months. I sometimes felt as though men were so detached from this familial bond but that was because I had never experienced what a good father was like. I wasn’t able to detect, however, the fact that men and fathers are in fact the initiators of the love which results in children and that Father’s have a stronger emphasis on the role of being the image of God the eternal Father in their house. The father is what gives the family dignity and the kids should always be able to look up to their father to see a good role model of what God the Father must be like. And in the end God both initiates and brings forth his love and us—both motherly and fatherly characteristics. But he’s still actually just a Father. It’s the amazing mystery of the Catholic faith!

 

[TheOldColonel]

He tried to make them at the same time, but Eve was 20 minutes late because she broke a heal.

 

[catholic1seeks]

Since our human bodies probably evolved over time and are due to natural processes (under God’s divine providence, of course), then we shouldn’t expect the creation account in Genesis to give a detailed biological explanation.

Rather, the point of Genesis is theological. The point, among other things, seems to be that man and woman are complementary, and that they need each other, and were made for relationship. Man is not an island.

So there is not objection, since God more than likely did not create man than woman in the exact word-for-word Genesis states. That doesn’t make Genesis untrue; we just have to read it with proper context in mind.

What I find more problematic are Paul’s words, in commentary on Genesis, when he says that “woman was made for man.”