WEBVTT 00:00:05.520 --> 00:00:10.580 So father asked about pope Francis picking up the phone, so I I thought I'd actually start. 00:00:11.280 --> 00:00:17.935 I'm gonna be both reading bits of the paper and doing slides, so multitasking, it's a challenge. 00:00:17.935 --> 00:00:21.695 So please, be, be patient with me. 00:00:21.695 --> 00:00:29.480 But so to tell you the story of, my appointment to the synod, since father asked. 00:00:29.480 --> 00:00:33.020 I don't know how I knew he was going to ask, but, I guess I did. 00:00:34.680 --> 00:00:45.045 It was the summer of twenty fifteen, and I just finished preparing my classes for the fall and went down to, our campus at Catholic University. 00:00:46.225 --> 00:00:53.765 And in my faculty mailbox was a large bulky white envelope, which I pulled out and found it was from the Holy See. 00:00:54.625 --> 00:01:14.295 I opened it and on the top of the packet letter from that man, cardinal Lorenzo Baldessari, the secretary of the Synod of Bishops, which told me that you have been appointed as an expert auditor for the twenty fifteen Synod of Bishops, from the October seventh through twenty eighth. 00:01:15.555 --> 00:01:21.575 And it went on in the last line of the first paragraph said, the holy father thanks you for accepting this invitation. 00:01:24.950 --> 00:01:33.850 At that point, my first thought was I thought it was a different group headquartered in Italy that made offers that couldn't be refused. 00:01:36.645 --> 00:01:38.005 First thought's not always the best. 00:01:38.005 --> 00:01:41.945 My second thought was, oh my goodness, what am I gonna do with my classes for three weeks? 00:01:42.325 --> 00:01:45.065 My third thought was, I'm going to Rome. 00:01:47.045 --> 00:01:53.510 And by the time a couple months rolled around a bit later, I was actually kind of excited about the prospect. 00:01:54.210 --> 00:02:06.465 So the last words that I texted to my wife Claire and my children before taking off for Europe, were the words of Martin Freeman as Bilbo running down the lane of the Shire, I'm going on an adventure. 00:02:08.445 --> 00:02:09.345 And it was. 00:02:09.565 --> 00:02:19.180 It was a chance to see the church up close, the leadership of the church praying, discerning, working together period of time. 00:02:19.180 --> 00:02:21.940 That view is the general one of the general assembly sessions. 00:02:21.940 --> 00:02:24.180 You're looking down basically from where I sat. 00:02:24.180 --> 00:02:26.680 The holy father was with us most of the time. 00:02:27.780 --> 00:02:32.355 At least when we were in the general assembly, when we were in our small groups, he he wasn't with us. 00:02:32.355 --> 00:02:41.895 But, the little circular minorities that one bishop said to me should be translated minor circuses, but that's that's another conversation. 00:02:43.990 --> 00:02:53.930 One of the issues that came up, it was certainly on a lot of the bishops radar at the synod was the issue of what, some people call gender ideology. 00:02:55.510 --> 00:03:02.745 Recent recent magisterial teaching has drawn attention to the challenges posed for Christian faith by that ideology. 00:03:05.045 --> 00:03:08.265 For the sake of initial description, what do I mean by that? 00:03:08.325 --> 00:03:23.370 It can be described as the view that gender should be somehow understood as socially or personally constructed, meaning of sexual difference as opposed to sex, which is the biological largely minimal difference between men and women. 00:03:24.405 --> 00:03:33.545 There's been a lot of statements and I'll I'll mention very quickly a couple of them, from the church, drawing our attention to this challenge. 00:03:36.300 --> 00:03:50.480 But it raises the question, at least for me, does the church also give us a more positive account of how we can address a culture in which the number of genders on Facebook is over 70, at this at this point? 00:03:51.405 --> 00:03:52.285 Maybe higher. 00:03:52.285 --> 00:03:54.785 I'd I'm not on Facebook, but that's what I understand. 00:03:55.885 --> 00:04:11.260 At first glance, the language of complementarity might seem to be kind of an unlikely candidate to help because it's been criticized from a whole host of quarters, as inadequate to a task like this. 00:04:11.260 --> 00:04:20.735 It's been rejected for denoting a faulty view of the human person in which individuals are seen as incomplete apart from the opposite sex. 00:04:21.195 --> 00:04:27.295 Feminist thinkers have criticized it as a kind of code for ongoing gender apartheid on the part of the church. 00:04:27.835 --> 00:04:32.095 Separate but equal in theory means separate and unequal in practice. 00:04:32.940 --> 00:04:45.200 Others have complained that the sexual binary which it implies fails scientifically and theologically in light of the actual diversity of sexual makeup and behavior of the human and animal world. 00:04:45.745 --> 00:05:02.830 These thinkers, some of whom identify as members of the LGBTQ community, instead see a rainbow of diverse sexual colors shining through male, female, intersex, transgender, transsexual, and gay people in the way they embody and live out their sexual makeup. 00:05:03.210 --> 00:05:23.295 Some Catholic authors have actually argued that the meaning of the term complementarity employed by the Magisterium should be revised to include some of these diverse forms of human sexuality, taking into account things like sexual orientation complementarity and not simply, they say, reproductive tech complementarity. 00:05:24.395 --> 00:05:33.580 Finally, some scholars have criticized the term as kind of a late arrival on the scene to magisterial teaching basically being coined by Saint John Paul the second. 00:05:34.680 --> 00:05:39.020 A response to all of those objections is beyond the scope of what I can do here. 00:05:39.720 --> 00:05:43.165 Furthermore, a lot of them have been effectively dealt with by others. 00:05:43.625 --> 00:06:05.710 Sister Prudence Allen in her historical research on the concept of women, men in western tradition has, shown that what she calls integral sex complementarity overcomes the concerns about human beings being seen as fractional beings or being a shield for ongoing equality that some feminist thinkers worry about. 00:06:06.090 --> 00:06:19.845 The work of Joan Roughgarten in evolutionary biology, which attempts to paint sex in the natural world, evolutionary biology which attempts to paint sex in the natural world in the hues of the LGBTQ rainbow and replaced Darwinian sex selection with what she calls social selection. 00:06:20.490 --> 00:06:28.750 It's been appropriated by a few theologians, but it's been heavily criticized by many other people on scientific, philosophical, and theological grounds. 00:06:29.370 --> 00:06:54.730 The proposal by Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler to add sexual orientation complementarity to the language used by the church, adopts an orientation essentialism not well supported by science, collapses personal identity into desires, ignores Christian moral freedom, and yields doctrinal conclusions at odds with Catholic teaching, as the USCCB's doctrine committee pointed out. 00:06:55.670 --> 00:07:00.730 It's the last objection to complementarity that I'm going to focus on here. 00:07:00.790 --> 00:07:21.810 The idea that it's a relatively recent concept introduced to the church's vocabulary kind of being made up of whole cloth in magisterial teaching particularly by Pope John Paul the second to kind of retrench traditional ideas about the sexes in the face of new twenty and twenty first century questions. 00:07:22.990 --> 00:07:40.075 Contrary to that, I'm going to argue that the creation accounts of Genesis actually provide a biblical foundation for the equality and complementarity of men and women, and that this language can therefore frame a positive response to the challenges of our own day. 00:07:41.335 --> 00:07:53.460 The what I'm gonna do is first, briefly mention, because these are probably familiar to you, some recent statements by the church on gender equality, gender ideology. 00:07:54.800 --> 00:08:01.755 Going to note briefly that the language of sexual complementarity predates the pontificate of John Paul the second. 00:08:01.755 --> 00:08:03.695 It's not a John Paul the second term. 00:08:04.635 --> 00:08:13.055 But then I'm gonna spend most of my time looking at the roots of complementarity in the actual text of the creation accounts of Genesis. 00:08:13.835 --> 00:08:22.850 If time allows, I'll offer you a few final thoughts about the relationship between language and doctrine in history and the way those work together. 00:08:24.030 --> 00:08:28.110 So we have a series of recent statements from the church. 00:08:28.110 --> 00:08:38.575 This from the Pontifical Council for the Family on Marriage and de facto unions, warning us about some of the dangers of of gender ideology. 00:08:40.235 --> 00:08:45.780 Again, I'm not going to spend a lot of time here because of constraints of time among other things. 00:08:46.320 --> 00:08:53.040 If you are not aware of this statement, I really would encourage you to take a look. 00:08:53.040 --> 00:09:02.035 This is this is, in my mind, the most profound diagnosis of how we got to our point as a cult this as a culture. 00:09:02.255 --> 00:09:06.995 It's the final Christmas address of Pope Benedict the sixteenth to the Roman Curia. 00:09:07.550 --> 00:09:12.830 You can see, by the way, that I failed PowerPoint school because you're not supposed to put a lot on slides. 00:09:12.830 --> 00:09:18.930 I routinely ignore that, especially with long, really important quotes like this one. 00:09:19.310 --> 00:09:36.390 But citing Gilles Bernheim, the chief, rabbi of France, pope Benedict traces our much of the roots of our gender confusion to, the work of existentialist feminist writers like Simone de Beauvoir. 00:09:36.770 --> 00:09:40.550 Her idea that one is not born a woman, one becomes so. 00:09:43.250 --> 00:09:50.385 These words, he said, lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term gender as a new philosophy of sexuality. 00:09:51.325 --> 00:09:58.465 According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature that man has to accept and personally make sense of. 00:09:58.685 --> 00:10:04.140 It's a social role we choose for ourselves while in the past it was chosen for us by society. 00:10:04.920 --> 00:10:16.895 And the other thing I would point out to and it's too much here to to cite fully, Benedict Pope Benedict does point us back to Genesis by way of contrast. 00:10:17.195 --> 00:10:23.355 Again, it's it's it's profound in only the way that Pope Benedict, can be profound. 00:10:23.355 --> 00:10:29.750 So, if you have not seen this statement, it's it's certainly worth seeing. 00:10:29.750 --> 00:10:40.330 The other, recent statement I would draw your attention to is, from a text of Pope Francis, his apostolic exhortation on the family of Morris Letizia. 00:10:42.225 --> 00:10:53.765 In section 56, he echoing some of his predecessors concerns, he makes a further and I think very helpful, distinction. 00:10:56.430 --> 00:11:05.090 He says so I'm at the end of this quote again, another failed, failure from PowerPoint school. 00:11:05.470 --> 00:11:16.885 Pope Benedict says, it needs to be emphasized that biological sex and the socio cultural role of sex that is gender can be distinguished but not separated. 00:11:17.745 --> 00:11:19.925 That's a very helpful statement. 00:11:20.065 --> 00:11:29.170 We can distinguish the way we're socialized into understanding our maleness and femaleness and as opposed to the the biological reality. 00:11:29.550 --> 00:11:37.970 But when we separate those completely, as Pope Benedict said, we basically dissolve the very concept of human nature and our own status as creatures. 00:11:41.365 --> 00:11:45.545 Let me say a word about the roots of this idea of complementarity. 00:11:47.445 --> 00:11:53.660 The the notion that complementarity was invented by Pope John Paul the second is not accurate. 00:11:55.000 --> 00:12:00.380 That's also a statement made by, Michael Lawler and Todd Salzman in some of their work. 00:12:00.680 --> 00:12:10.785 It's true that the term or some or some equivalent of it appears only in Catholic thought and magisterial teaching in the twentieth century. 00:12:11.165 --> 00:12:18.545 It's also true that the Polish pope gave one of the most developed articulations of the idea over the course of his pontificate. 00:12:19.260 --> 00:12:23.200 But his articulation had ecclesial and philosophical precursors. 00:12:24.940 --> 00:12:47.245 One can find the term itself complementarity or equivalent usages to it in speeches of Pius the twelfth, Saint John the twenty third, the documents of the second Vatican council, and blessed pope Paul the sixth, who will be, it looks like, Saint Pope Paul the sixth by the end of this year, all prior to the usage of John Paul the second. 00:12:47.820 --> 00:12:53.120 Philosophically, the term emerged in the phenomenological personalism of the twentieth century. 00:12:53.980 --> 00:13:08.125 Catholic converts, who were also students of Edmund Husserl, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and Edith Stein, both employed and articulated what can only be called an account of sexual complementarity. 00:13:08.505 --> 00:13:29.220 In his groundbreaking treatment of love in his work on marriage, Daia, in 1929, Von Hildebrand stated quote, it would be incredibly superficial to consider as mere biological difference the distinction between man and woman, which really shows us two complimentary types of the human species. 00:13:30.255 --> 00:13:36.035 Edith Stein used a had a very similar concept using domestic categories and language. 00:13:36.255 --> 00:13:44.915 She wrote, the insistence that sexual differences are stipulated by the body alone is questionable from various points of view. 00:13:45.360 --> 00:13:54.820 If anima equals form a corpus, then bodily sexual differentiation constitutes an index of differentiation in spirit. 00:13:55.600 --> 00:13:58.815 Second, matter serves form, not the reverse. 00:13:59.275 --> 00:14:04.895 That strongly suggests that the differences in the in the psyche is the primary one, unquote. 00:14:04.955 --> 00:14:06.415 So that's Edith Stein. 00:14:07.355 --> 00:14:14.530 Those ideas would be developed further in the long and very fruitful pontificate of Saint John Paul the second. 00:14:14.910 --> 00:14:27.455 The Polish pope referred to complementarity numerous times in his teaching ministry, in the catechesis that we've come to know as the theology of the body, reflecting on the creation accounts of Genesis. 00:14:28.075 --> 00:14:33.695 He emphasized the basic unity and difference of the sexes reflected in their bodies. 00:14:33.755 --> 00:14:38.815 Quote, he wrote, their unity denotes above all the identity of human nature. 00:14:39.420 --> 00:14:49.040 Duality on the other hand shows what on the basis of this identity constitutes the masculinity and femininity of created man, unquote. 00:14:49.660 --> 00:14:55.675 So male and female are two distinct personal expressions of a common human nature. 00:14:56.535 --> 00:15:03.115 These distinct forms of personal existence are expressed through the two distinctive forms of human embodiment. 00:15:03.895 --> 00:15:19.290 He wrote, quote, masculinity and femininity express the two fold aspect of man's somatic constitution and indicate the new consciousness of the meaning of the body, a reciprocal enrichment, unquote. 00:15:20.205 --> 00:15:26.465 Complementarity, he would further write, pertains to the very existence and self awareness of the person. 00:15:26.845 --> 00:15:39.680 Quote, the knowledge of man passes through masculinity and femininity, which as it were, two are two incarnations of the same metaphysical solitude before God and the world. 00:15:40.220 --> 00:15:47.120 Two reciprocally completing ways of being a body and at the same time of being human. 00:15:47.785 --> 00:15:52.045 As two complementary dimensions of self knowledge and self determination. 00:15:52.905 --> 00:15:58.585 At the same time, two complementary ways of being conscious of the meaning of the body. 00:15:58.585 --> 00:16:08.410 So for John Paul the second, if the body expresses the person and there are two fundamental forms of human embodiment, then there are two fundamental ways of existing as a person. 00:16:08.950 --> 00:16:15.050 Men and women have their own originality, their own unique way of existing as persons. 00:16:16.395 --> 00:16:19.775 His mature position would oops. 00:16:20.555 --> 00:16:21.915 I'm behind on my slides. 00:16:21.915 --> 00:16:23.595 That's the that's the longer quote. 00:16:23.595 --> 00:16:34.970 By the way, that man and woman here is the the translation of the Theology of the Body, Katechesis by Mikhail Walstein in 2006, which is the better translation. 00:16:35.830 --> 00:16:39.610 The older English translations use the L'Zervato Romano edition. 00:16:39.990 --> 00:16:48.455 So you have text translated by newspaper staff over five years, which is why you have the same Italian word translated three or four different ways. 00:16:48.595 --> 00:16:53.255 So use Volstein if you're gonna do serious study of the theology of the body. 00:16:56.850 --> 00:17:02.550 His mature position would extend complementarity to every dimension of the human person. 00:17:03.170 --> 00:17:05.830 Womanhood and manhood, he wrote, are complementary. 00:17:06.530 --> 00:17:11.350 Not only from the physical and psychological points of view, but from the ontological. 00:17:12.475 --> 00:17:18.255 So men and women are distinct in their very being, in the act of personal existence. 00:17:19.515 --> 00:17:31.470 The Vatican's position paper for the nineteen ninety five Beijing conference on women differentiated that reality further speaking of biological, individual, personal, and spiritual complementarity. 00:17:34.010 --> 00:17:43.255 So clearly, John Paul the second has a robust, very highly developed, very rich understanding of the complementary differences between the sexes. 00:17:43.255 --> 00:17:48.875 The way in which they are two unique expressions of a common nature of humanity. 00:17:50.260 --> 00:18:06.215 But is he just picking up fragments from previous ecclesial statements from the phenomenological personalism which he himself studied, when he worked on Edmund Husserl's thought, if and studied the work of Max Scherr, another Husserl student? 00:18:06.995 --> 00:18:09.815 Or can this idea be traced back further? 00:18:10.595 --> 00:18:16.375 In particular, does complementarity have a biblical reference, a biblical foundation? 00:18:16.880 --> 00:18:24.180 Or is it simply a modern idea that the church developed and employed to do to engage a particularly modern set of questions? 00:18:25.040 --> 00:18:36.205 Again, I'm going to argue that the idea of complementarity, while not named as such in scripture, can be located in the teaching of the creation accounts of Genesis. 00:18:38.985 --> 00:18:52.160 So I'm gonna say a little bit about the two accounts of creation drawing on biblical scholarship, drawing a bit more on the teaching of Saint John Paul the second, but looking primarily at the text itself. 00:18:53.820 --> 00:19:04.125 So the first will take them in the canonical order, even though the first creation account as it occurs in the text, most scholars think is the newer of the two. 00:19:04.745 --> 00:19:09.805 While generalizations about consensus in modern biblical scholarship are fraught with peril. 00:19:10.185 --> 00:19:11.165 That's an understatement. 00:19:11.465 --> 00:19:13.405 You can just underline that. 00:19:13.930 --> 00:19:22.110 There's much agreement in the literature that the opening chapters of Genesis contain not one but two accounts of the creation of the world and humanity. 00:19:22.810 --> 00:19:32.045 The first, a newer, usually called the priestly or p account, is comprised of the first chapter and the opening verses of chapter two. 00:19:33.065 --> 00:19:45.920 The over and second account often designated the yahwist because of its use of God's proper name, is made up of the rest of the second chapter and the story of human sin in chapter three. 00:19:46.860 --> 00:19:58.595 These two accounts were juxtaposed by a redactor who was responsible for the final shape of the text and the way in which the two accounts stand in relation to one another. 00:19:59.695 --> 00:20:08.035 The first account is a poetic and theological statement regarding God's creative activity and not a narrative per se. 00:20:08.520 --> 00:20:15.100 Though the literary device of seven days which structure the text give it something of the feel of a narrative. 00:20:15.880 --> 00:20:24.140 The text emphasizes the order and wisdom with which God creates the visible world and the transcendent nature of his creative activity. 00:20:24.915 --> 00:20:32.295 The creation of humanity occurs on the penultimate or sixth day of creation and in many ways is the climax of the story. 00:20:32.755 --> 00:20:39.200 A somewhat literal translation of the relevant verses which I have here on the slide can be rendered as follows. 00:20:39.660 --> 00:20:45.200 So I'm gonna translate again a little bit more literally than most English translations do. 00:20:45.580 --> 00:21:01.575 And Elohim said, let us make Adam in our image as our likeness that they may rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the tamed beasts, and all the earth, and all the creeping things of the earth. 00:21:01.955 --> 00:21:05.815 And Elohim created the Adam in his image. 00:21:06.350 --> 00:21:10.450 In the image of Elohim, he created him or it. 00:21:10.590 --> 00:21:13.090 The Hebrew pronoun can be rendered either way. 00:21:13.550 --> 00:21:16.050 Male and female, he created them. 00:21:16.910 --> 00:21:18.690 And Elohim blessed them. 00:21:19.045 --> 00:21:33.385 And Elohim said to them, be fruitful, be many, and fill the earth, and subjugate it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the heavens, and all the living things that creep up creeping on the earth. 00:21:34.730 --> 00:21:40.010 Of particular importance for my purposes here, I'm gonna emphasize four things. 00:21:40.010 --> 00:21:43.870 One, the semantic range of the term adam in the text. 00:21:44.570 --> 00:21:52.845 Second, the meaning of the term image in the original Hebrew and its relevance for understanding the dignity of humankind in general. 00:21:53.545 --> 00:22:01.645 Third, the specific application of this understanding to male Hebrew zakar and female Hebrew nekeba. 00:22:02.630 --> 00:22:04.650 And four, the blessing of fertility. 00:22:05.110 --> 00:22:07.930 So that's what I'm gonna try to highlight in this text. 00:22:08.630 --> 00:22:16.730 So first, the Hebrew word adam usually rendered as man, human, or humankind in our modern English translations. 00:22:17.795 --> 00:22:27.815 The first use of this term in this text should be understood in the sense of the older inclusive English usage, man meaning mankind. 00:22:28.915 --> 00:22:35.540 In other words, corresponding to homo not we're in classical Latin, but still as a singular entity. 00:22:36.320 --> 00:22:44.260 Yet the text also indicates a collective sense of the term in so far as adam is comprised of both male and female. 00:22:45.165 --> 00:23:01.740 The second story of creation which takes the form of a narrative adds to this semantic range by using the term Adam to describe an individual character that is the man, and you can look at Genesis two seven, who is later given the name Adam. 00:23:02.200 --> 00:23:18.855 So to conflate the teaching of the two accounts just for a moment to highlight that semantic range, we could say that God creates man, humankind, as male and female and the first man, individual human, comes to be called man. 00:23:20.115 --> 00:23:21.895 So you you get the idea. 00:23:21.955 --> 00:23:25.495 Adam is being used in a a a variety of ways. 00:23:26.220 --> 00:23:30.480 So Adam is used in both a singular and a collective sense. 00:23:30.780 --> 00:23:41.455 In this latter regard, it can be described as a form of corporate personality, not uncommon in biblical thought, in which the whole is understood to be summed up or contained in the individual. 00:23:42.075 --> 00:23:46.655 An idea that's gonna feature in the New Testament and Saint Paul's Christology as well. 00:23:48.475 --> 00:24:00.710 Second point, there's a wealth of biblical commentary and philosophical theological reflection on the concept of the Imago Dei, which is the cornerstone in Judeo Christian conceptions of human dignity. 00:24:01.490 --> 00:24:14.915 Within the horizon of the text, the meaning of the Hebrew word selem, image, is specified by the two fold command to exercise dominion within creation, verses twenty six and twenty eight. 00:24:15.455 --> 00:24:18.355 It does not indicate physical resemblance. 00:24:19.500 --> 00:24:24.560 Instead, humanity represents God in something of his divine authority within creation. 00:24:25.180 --> 00:24:30.000 Adam is God's royal representative or steward within the visible world. 00:24:30.380 --> 00:24:40.465 But as God uses his own authority to care for and sustain creation, so his human representatives are called to exercise their stewardship in similar fashion. 00:24:41.085 --> 00:24:45.585 Stewardship is neither untrammeled license nor military power. 00:24:46.045 --> 00:24:47.985 Dominion is not domination. 00:24:49.430 --> 00:24:54.970 But there is a second meaning of image, selem, embedded in the structure of the text. 00:24:55.510 --> 00:25:04.570 The twofold directive to have dominion in twenty six and twenty eight form an inclusio, highlighting verse 27 which falls in between them. 00:25:05.325 --> 00:25:10.945 This serves to bring into focus a second dimension of the idea of image, the idea of relationality. 00:25:12.125 --> 00:25:16.065 This is indicated first in the text by the duality of male and female. 00:25:16.525 --> 00:25:29.380 The Hebrew terms kar and nikaba denote the concrete physical differences between the sexes which make them capable of receiving the blessing of fertility in verse verse 28. 00:25:29.920 --> 00:25:33.940 The relationality of male and female is the basis of human community. 00:25:34.795 --> 00:25:42.335 But the more theologically basic form of relationality to which the text points us is indicated by the next day of creation. 00:25:42.875 --> 00:25:50.370 The relationship between humanity and its creator encapsulated in the worship of the seventh day, the Sabbath day. 00:25:51.330 --> 00:26:00.550 Throughout scripture, six is used as a number associated with incompletion, imperfection, and human beings apart from God. 00:26:00.770 --> 00:26:07.725 While the number seven often denotes perfection, completion, and is at times associated with God himself. 00:26:08.985 --> 00:26:18.925 Though all of the parts of creation are present by the end of the sixth day, all the pieces are there, creation remains fundamentally and radically incomplete. 00:26:19.950 --> 00:26:28.450 It is completed by God's rest in which he contemplates and appreciates that which he has called into existence. 00:26:29.310 --> 00:26:37.785 The way in which humans enter into this divine activity of rest, which gives life and wholeness to creation is through worship. 00:26:38.725 --> 00:26:45.465 Created with the beasts on the sixth day, humanity is created for the worship of the seventh day. 00:26:46.020 --> 00:26:54.840 When Adam fails to do this, he or they revert to his or their origin and become in truth bestial. 00:26:56.260 --> 00:27:01.160 Look at the story of king Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel four twenty five to 34. 00:27:01.645 --> 00:27:06.545 It is an encapsulation of this teaching of the first account of creation. 00:27:07.965 --> 00:27:12.545 Constraints of time, prevent us from looking at it here. 00:27:14.180 --> 00:27:24.340 The vocation of Adam as created by God is not only to be his stewards but also priests of the created world, speaking the praises of God on behalf of what he has made. 00:27:24.340 --> 00:27:35.635 So human beings represent God to creation and represent creation to its creator in giving praise and worship to who made it. 00:27:36.495 --> 00:28:00.305 Read within its historical the historical context of the ancient world, excuse me, one of the most stunning aspects of the teaching of the first account of creation is the attribution of this dual vocation of royal representation and priesthood to women as well as men. 00:28:00.925 --> 00:28:23.420 Rather than being at the bottom of the cosmic hierarchy in the universe as in the Babylonian creation myth of the Enuma Elish, where human beings are are created from the blood of a god slain in cosmic warfare to do the menial tasks in the god in the universe which the gods do not do not want to do, namely to clean up the gods' mess and to feed them through animal sacrifice. 00:28:24.565 --> 00:28:32.665 Adam as male and female is the pinnacle of creation, as god's royal representatives called to relate directly to god in worship. 00:28:33.365 --> 00:28:45.410 The attribution of the image of god to both sexes provides a theological foundation to the equal dignity of women and men in a world where this reality was neither understood nor expressed. 00:28:46.270 --> 00:28:53.010 Any biblically derived understanding of sexual complementarity has to deal with this foundational principle. 00:28:54.505 --> 00:29:03.805 The sacred text also points us toward the fact that there is something in the relation of men and women in their very concrete physicality that images God. 00:29:04.265 --> 00:29:06.205 Francis Martin puts it well. 00:29:06.690 --> 00:29:15.670 In this light, he writes, we can appreciate that sexual difference is the bodily symbolic expression of the relational nature of human beings. 00:29:16.770 --> 00:29:24.835 Pease and the priestly author's insistence of joining the two notions of image and male and female must have a reason. 00:29:25.295 --> 00:29:32.755 The human being, the totality with a particular stamp of male and female is relational at every level of existence. 00:29:33.695 --> 00:29:42.190 Adam images God, that is makes his power and authority present and interacts with God in the relating of men and women. 00:29:42.810 --> 00:29:50.590 So something about the relationship of the sexes themselves participates in this in the image of God. 00:29:50.825 --> 00:29:57.165 In the reciprocity of male and female, what the later theology would call their communion with each other. 00:29:57.305 --> 00:29:59.485 We have the basis for human community. 00:30:00.265 --> 00:30:06.365 That is made explicit in the text with the blessing of fertility articulated in verse 28. 00:30:07.120 --> 00:30:15.620 Genesis one twenty eight draws together the two basic meanings of image that I've identified, dominion and the relationality of male and female. 00:30:16.320 --> 00:30:18.240 God blesses the pair. 00:30:18.240 --> 00:30:26.455 The Hebrew word for this blessing, barak, as used in this account, indicates something that becomes life giving within creation. 00:30:27.075 --> 00:30:41.260 Hence, sea creatures and birds in Genesis one twenty two, later the Sabbath in Genesis two three, and here the union of male and female is so blessed and becomes a source of life within the created world. 00:30:41.880 --> 00:30:50.700 One way in which men and women exercise their dominion within the created world is by coming together to generate new human life in the image of God. 00:30:51.125 --> 00:30:54.185 They therefore share in God's own creative activity. 00:30:54.645 --> 00:31:01.465 As Saint John Paul the second would put it, procreation is quote, a renewal of the mystery of creation, unquote. 00:31:01.925 --> 00:31:10.250 The Hebrew scriptures are careful never to project sexuality and sexual reproduction onto God, unlike many of the gods of the ancient Near East. 00:31:10.790 --> 00:31:20.650 Sexual differentiation and reproduction are a gift of God to his creatures with which reflect his own creative activity even while being different from it. 00:31:21.055 --> 00:31:27.235 The blessing is not constitutive of the image of God in Adam, but follows on it. 00:31:28.015 --> 00:31:40.050 To summarize some of what we've pulled out of this text, the text underscores the dignity of both sexes made in the image of God and so far as both are depicted as priest stewards of God's creation. 00:31:40.750 --> 00:31:45.330 The same time the account makes clear that Adam is only complete as male and female. 00:31:45.815 --> 00:31:54.555 In a fundamental way, the sexes are oriented toward one another and stand in relation to one another as well as their to their creator in God's design. 00:31:55.095 --> 00:32:05.050 Their complementary difference is the basis of all human community, most obviously in the exercise of their shared fertility. 00:32:05.050 --> 00:32:27.575 The second account, believed by most or many scholars at least to be some centuries older than the one that precedes it in the current canonical form of the text, Like the first account, much of the imagery of the text is symbolic, but unlike the first account, this account does take the form of a narrative and the order of creation unfolds differently than the first. 00:32:28.220 --> 00:32:35.600 One of the key differences is in the first account, the creation of man and woman in the image of God is described simultaneously. 00:32:36.620 --> 00:32:42.800 While in this account, Adam is created first, but his solitude is problematized in the narrative. 00:32:43.725 --> 00:32:57.905 After the repeated insistence in the first account of creation that everything God made was good or very good, the declaration in Genesis two eighteen of God that it is not good for Adam to be alone is jarring. 00:32:58.850 --> 00:33:08.230 Presumably, whoever did the final redaction of these texts saw what appeared to be a sharp contradiction and left it because of the importance of what it signals and introduces. 00:33:09.250 --> 00:33:15.745 Adam here denotes a singular individual rather than the collective or corporate personality of the first account. 00:33:16.045 --> 00:33:20.625 Equally striking is the solution that God proposes to the solitude of Adam. 00:33:21.005 --> 00:33:23.905 I will make him a helper who matches him. 00:33:24.445 --> 00:33:36.080 The Hebrew word is literally translated helper, But as scholars have noted, it does not carry connotations of being less than, as it can in our modern English idiom. 00:33:36.460 --> 00:33:42.080 In fact, the term is used in the Psalms to describe God as the help or helper of Israel. 00:33:42.675 --> 00:33:47.335 Obviously, God is not less than the people whom he has called and formed. 00:33:47.795 --> 00:33:56.215 Likewise, woman who will be the realization of God's proposed solution for the solitude of Adam is in no way less than the man. 00:33:56.680 --> 00:34:01.660 She is the divinely given help to Adam to realize God's plan. 00:34:02.120 --> 00:34:10.535 To this idea of the fundamental equality of the sexes, the modifying adjective, kenegdo, adds the idea of complementary difference. 00:34:11.075 --> 00:34:17.255 The term can be translated as facing, corresponding to, or matching him. 00:34:17.635 --> 00:34:23.255 The sense communicated by the text is that she helps him realize his vocation within creation. 00:34:23.840 --> 00:34:26.660 He cannot do this as a solitary being. 00:34:28.160 --> 00:34:35.460 The following verses, verses 19 to 21, deal with God's creation of animals who are then given names by Adam. 00:34:35.855 --> 00:34:38.435 In biblical thought, naming is a sign of superiority. 00:34:38.655 --> 00:34:43.155 You recognize the kind of thing it is, articulate that with your mind. 00:34:43.935 --> 00:34:50.515 So those creatures like Adam are living beings, but none proved to be the is there the help that he needs. 00:34:52.170 --> 00:34:56.010 Again, human beings need other human beings. 00:34:56.010 --> 00:34:58.510 We are created for communion with others. 00:34:59.210 --> 00:35:03.790 That points us to the first sense of complementarity within the Yahweh's text. 00:35:04.410 --> 00:35:13.215 The help which God provides to Adam enables him to overcome solitude through communion, and in doing so realize his humanity. 00:35:14.315 --> 00:35:18.495 God acts to resolve the problem of Adam's solitude through intervention. 00:35:19.560 --> 00:35:35.575 Casting a deep sleep on Adam, the same sleep that precedes God's covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15, God forms a woman from the man as he had formed Adam from the earth or Adama in Genesis two seven and then leads her to the man. 00:35:35.875 --> 00:35:40.275 His response is also dramatic, a poem of joy for God's gift to him. 00:35:40.275 --> 00:35:41.735 This is verse 23. 00:35:42.035 --> 00:35:45.415 This one at last is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. 00:35:45.635 --> 00:35:53.430 This one shall be called Isha, woman, for out of ish, man, this one has been taken. 00:35:55.170 --> 00:36:00.150 The poetic declaration has two elements which are relevant to our concerns here. 00:36:00.530 --> 00:36:04.975 The first is the word play in the Hebrew text which our English translations capture. 00:36:05.595 --> 00:36:10.975 This one shall be called woman because out of man she's been taken. 00:36:11.195 --> 00:36:18.940 For the first time in the text we have gender specific words employed instead of just adam, man, the man. 00:36:19.320 --> 00:36:30.620 That's led some scholars, both ancient and modern, to argue that adam is created as androgynous and then is only sexual sexually differentiated by God's subsequent creative act. 00:36:30.935 --> 00:36:35.995 There's reasons in both the language of the text and the narrative structure to reject that reading. 00:36:36.615 --> 00:36:43.915 Other scholars read this declaration as Adam naming woman in the way that he had just named the animals in the previous verses. 00:36:44.740 --> 00:36:49.400 That reading seems to overlook the strong note of equality present in the text. 00:36:49.620 --> 00:36:54.840 It also misses a fundamental difference between this declaration and the naming of the animals. 00:36:55.220 --> 00:37:03.695 In this case, Adam doesn't simply assign a name to another, he recognizes himself in a new way through her. 00:37:04.155 --> 00:37:11.760 As Saint John Paul the second suggests in his catechesis on the body, this can be read as the discovery of the spousal meaning of the body. 00:37:12.080 --> 00:37:15.860 He recognizes the meaning of his body in her femininity. 00:37:16.640 --> 00:37:20.580 She in turn recognizes the meaning of her body in his masculinity. 00:37:21.680 --> 00:37:27.460 The body bears witness to the complementarity of the sexes in their encounter with one another. 00:37:28.145 --> 00:37:33.685 But this encounter in mutual recognition is not all Adam's poetic declaration discloses. 00:37:34.385 --> 00:37:47.200 The second important aspect of Genesis two twenty three for what we're doing here is the use of covenantal language in the text in this verse and the ones before and after it. 00:37:47.420 --> 00:38:01.785 The language of bone and flesh in two twenty three, the deep sleep, tardema in 21, and the verbs to leave, Hebrew azav, and to cling, Hebrew devak in 24, all have covenantal connotations. 00:38:02.805 --> 00:38:13.470 The relationship of man and woman and their complimentary bodily differences are ordered to and in a sense fully realized in the covenant of marriage. 00:38:14.170 --> 00:38:22.430 This designation of marriage as a covenant deeply intimated in the text will be made explicit in other texts in the Hebrew scriptures. 00:38:23.275 --> 00:38:32.095 One could say that the complementarity of the sexes described in the second account of creation is again fully realized in marriage. 00:38:32.715 --> 00:38:47.910 It's here that the problem of human solitude is overcome through friendship or communion And it is here that the full significance of the sexually differentiated body can be realized in the covenant of marriage in which the two become one flesh. 00:38:49.730 --> 00:38:55.175 To summarize, the teaching of both, but to add a couple new elements. 00:38:56.435 --> 00:39:07.950 Both accounts of creation offer strong affirmations of the basic equality of women and men in their fundamental humanity and in their creation by God. 00:39:08.650 --> 00:39:16.670 With this basic equality, these texts also affirm a variety of ways in which women and men might be said to be complementary to one another. 00:39:17.210 --> 00:39:20.670 The first might be called a complementarity of totality. 00:39:21.475 --> 00:39:30.455 The idea articulated in the first creation account that humankind, adam in the collective sense, is only complete as male and female. 00:39:31.155 --> 00:39:33.735 A second could be called procreative complementarity. 00:39:34.530 --> 00:39:42.150 That is the way in which the bodily differences of male and female enable them to receive God's blessing of fertility. 00:39:43.010 --> 00:39:46.470 A third could be called the complementarity of alterity. 00:39:47.225 --> 00:39:54.285 The way in which the threshold of solitude is crossed by going out from oneself in order to relate to others. 00:39:54.825 --> 00:40:00.365 We realize our humanity in fellowship and friendship, and we do this as embodied persons. 00:40:01.065 --> 00:40:08.890 To use more philosophical language, we become an I when we recognize and give ourselves to a vow, another. 00:40:09.750 --> 00:40:23.785 To conflate the teaching of the two accounts and also to employ language of Saint John Paul the second, he wrote, quote, man became the image of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons. 00:40:24.965 --> 00:40:31.300 We image God most fully in communion and going out from ourselves in friendship and in love. 00:40:31.760 --> 00:40:45.725 A fourth sense we can identify in the text could be called spousal complementarity, which adds to the previous idea the dimension of the sexually differentiated body and the way in which this makes possible the covenant of marriage. 00:40:46.825 --> 00:40:49.325 Two further points deserve mention here. 00:40:49.705 --> 00:40:58.525 The first is that these various senses of complementarity discerned in the creation accounts of Genesis do not stand in isolation from one another. 00:40:58.820 --> 00:41:03.560 They are textually and canonically juxtaposed and in many ways interconnected. 00:41:04.340 --> 00:41:13.480 We might say that they complement one another in helping us to understand the equality and complementary differences of human beings who are male and female. 00:41:14.325 --> 00:41:16.025 The second is more significant. 00:41:16.965 --> 00:41:30.380 The remainder of the second account of creation makes it clear that both the equality and all of these senses of complementarity that I've identified are attacked and destabilized by human sin. 00:41:31.080 --> 00:41:36.380 A full examination of that claim would require another talk, another paper. 00:41:36.600 --> 00:41:40.940 However, a couple of brief explanatory remarks can be made here. 00:41:41.335 --> 00:41:57.860 To the strong notes of the fundamental equality of women and men sounded in both accounts of creation can be juxtaposed Yahweh's words to the woman after the sin of the first pair in Genesis three sixteen, your urge will be for your husband and he shall rule over you. 00:41:58.560 --> 00:42:15.575 Commenting on this text, Saint John Paul the second states, women become the object of domination and male possession, which brings about the loss of stability of that fundamental equality which the man and woman possess in the unity of the two in marriage. 00:42:16.595 --> 00:42:22.535 In other words, the relationship of the sexes now becomes characterized by a struggle for power and control. 00:42:23.555 --> 00:42:37.010 Men fallen men use their physical strength and women's vulnerability, particularly during pregnancy, birth, and childcare to exploit rather than care for women even if those women are their wives. 00:42:38.190 --> 00:42:43.945 But the various senses of complementarity identified above are also destabilized by sin. 00:42:44.405 --> 00:42:57.910 The ideas of complement of a complementarity of totality and alterity are undermined by shame, fear, and the awareness of vulnerability that colors human perception and relationships after sin. 00:42:58.130 --> 00:43:06.390 After their sin, Genesis three seven says their eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked, and so they made fig leaves to cover themselves. 00:43:06.770 --> 00:43:07.010 Why? 00:43:07.010 --> 00:43:08.310 Because now they're vulnerable. 00:43:08.370 --> 00:43:10.450 They're they experience shame. 00:43:10.450 --> 00:43:11.590 They experience fear. 00:43:11.825 --> 00:43:15.845 They realize that they are vulnerable to be exploited by others. 00:43:17.585 --> 00:43:21.925 Fallen human beings are alienated from one another in profound ways. 00:43:22.625 --> 00:43:28.720 Procreative complementarity too is destabilized as indicated by Yahweh's declaration to the woman. 00:43:28.940 --> 00:43:31.680 I will intensify your toil and childbearing. 00:43:32.300 --> 00:43:34.480 In pain shall you bring forth children. 00:43:35.500 --> 00:43:42.615 The original blessing of fertility is not removed, and the man and woman are not directly cursed, unlike the ground and the serpent. 00:43:43.155 --> 00:43:52.055 But East Of Eden, childbearing is fraught with pain and peril for women, as work is marred by toil and human life is marred by death. 00:43:52.850 --> 00:44:05.510 Finally, spousal complementarity is fractured by the alienation of human beings from one another, the disordering of their sexual drives, and the struggle for domination that infects male female relationships. 00:44:06.485 --> 00:44:19.385 The marriage covenant remains, but the Hebrew scriptures treatment of issues such as divorce, polygamy, adultery, and other forms of sexual sin make clear that it's it is fractured in fundamental ways. 00:44:20.050 --> 00:44:39.975 These features of the account in Genesis three are at once an etiological explanation of life in the world as we know it, and at the same time, a profound theological diagnosis in the symbolic language of the text of the impact of sin on human relationships in general and those between men and women in particular. 00:44:40.835 --> 00:44:46.455 A couple of thoughts by way of conclusion, and I'm gonna abbreviate a little bit here in the interest of time. 00:44:47.750 --> 00:44:53.910 What I've tried to show is that the idea of complementarity was not invented by Saint John Paul the second. 00:44:53.910 --> 00:45:03.235 It was developed by Catholic proponents of phenomenological personalism in the early twentieth century and had already been deployed in magisterial teaching prior to his pontificate. 00:45:04.175 --> 00:45:09.955 Certainly, the Polish pope used the term widely and deepened and developed it in the course of his teaching ministry. 00:45:10.335 --> 00:45:21.020 Unsurprising, given the amount of attention he devoted to issues of marriage and the family, the human person, the dignity of women, and the relationships of women and men. 00:45:21.880 --> 00:45:30.905 But beside that historical clarification, I've argued that a a deeper and more substantive claim, The idea of complementarity has biblical foundation. 00:45:31.605 --> 00:45:42.265 In particular, the creation accounts of Genesis bear witness to the reality of equality and multiform complementary complementary differences between men and women. 00:45:42.500 --> 00:45:51.640 And this language can therefore ground a positive articulation of sexual difference in terms of our own contemporary questions and issues. 00:45:53.780 --> 00:46:00.695 It's I'll I'll I'll note just in passing, the relationship between scripture, doctrine, language is complex. 00:46:01.235 --> 00:46:03.975 We use doctrinal language that isn't found in scripture. 00:46:04.355 --> 00:46:13.080 When we say that the person of the son is consubstantial with the Father when we profess the creed, homosios in the Greek. 00:46:13.080 --> 00:46:14.860 That language isn't in scripture. 00:46:15.160 --> 00:46:15.400 Right? 00:46:15.400 --> 00:46:23.260 It's language that the church used as a philosophically precise way to articulate the biblical witness of Christ's divinity. 00:46:24.105 --> 00:46:32.365 So sometimes we use language to respond to a set of issues to encapsulate and articulate scriptural insights. 00:46:32.745 --> 00:46:36.205 I think that's what's going on here in the case of complementarity. 00:46:40.420 --> 00:46:51.080 It's been things like external historical developments and social forces that have spurred us to a deeper reflection on equality and difference between women and men. 00:46:51.435 --> 00:46:56.575 The term is not found in scripture, but that doesn't disqualify it from doctrinal use. 00:46:57.035 --> 00:47:11.150 What I've tried to show is that it is a very apt way to capture the basic equality of the sexes as well as the way in which differences between the sexes serve to invite and sustain new forms of reciprocity between them. 00:47:11.690 --> 00:47:15.950 One does not have to deny or dissolve difference in order to achieve equality. 00:47:16.795 --> 00:47:22.015 One need not see difference as polarized or polarizing to maintain unity. 00:47:22.635 --> 00:47:32.520 The language of complementarity extends on the anthropological level, the Trinitarian resolution of the ancient philosophical problem of the one and the many. 00:47:33.720 --> 00:47:39.500 Both equality and difference are equally basic in God and in the human person. 00:47:39.960 --> 00:47:49.995 So our common humanity exists in two irreducible personal forms because male and female he created them. 00:47:49.995 --> 00:47:50.735 Thank you. 00:47:56.955 --> 00:47:58.155 I'll just Yeah. 00:47:58.155 --> 00:47:58.655 Absolutely. 00:47:58.955 --> 00:48:00.975 We have some time for a few questions. 00:48:03.360 --> 00:48:04.480 Floor is open. 00:48:04.480 --> 00:48:05.440 Yes, please, father. 00:48:05.440 --> 00:48:15.135 You alerted, to the, idea that, especially the first chapter of Genesis has a sort of language reminiscent and resonant with other parts of the Bible? 00:48:15.135 --> 00:48:20.995 Like Leviticus, it concerns itself with discussion of conditions of worshiping God, worldly. 00:48:21.375 --> 00:48:21.875 Mhmm. 00:48:22.655 --> 00:48:25.635 We make a mistake about what it means to be man and woman. 00:48:26.095 --> 00:48:27.475 What does that do to our worship? 00:48:31.080 --> 00:48:54.995 That's that's that's an interesting question, because clearly what the structure of Genesis one intimates with male female created in the image of God and but then the whole of creation, including humanity perfected in the worship of God on the seventh day, I I I mean, I think there's a reciprocal relationship. 00:48:55.135 --> 00:49:04.520 In in a certain sense, we become fully the image of God when we worship the one who made us, when we recognize him and acknowledge him. 00:49:04.580 --> 00:49:21.035 That's that's when creation turns back to the one who made it and speaks his praises and that's so that in a sense, worship is perfective of we we fully realize the image of God in us. 00:49:21.035 --> 00:49:24.495 To to use more pastoral language, maybe we could say worship is healing. 00:49:24.955 --> 00:49:38.960 When we really encounter God, come to know him and worship him, that can heal the broke our broken sense of who we are including our self-concept and our concept of ourselves as male and female. 00:49:38.960 --> 00:49:50.355 But, certainly, having a struggle with that recognition of self-concept can be a limitation for people to know and encounter god. 00:49:50.735 --> 00:49:55.680 I think of the the language of the second Vatican council, the pastoral constitution on the church. 00:49:56.140 --> 00:49:58.880 Without the creator, the creature itself disappears. 00:49:59.740 --> 00:50:04.640 We become opaque to ourselves when we lose touch with God. 00:50:05.580 --> 00:50:16.135 In another place, Gaudium et Spes says, Christ fully reveals humanity, man, to himself and makes our vocation clear. 00:50:16.595 --> 00:50:22.260 So we can only fully know ourselves in knowing and encountering God and worship is an integral part of that. 00:50:22.420 --> 00:50:41.315 So confusion about ourselves can hold us back, but I and to to sound a very pope Francis note for a a moment, the encounter with God, a genuine encounter with God can start to bring about that healing and including the healing of our self-concept. 00:50:42.655 --> 00:50:45.075 Because, again, worship is perfective. 00:50:45.455 --> 00:50:48.835 Worship helps us be what God created us to be. 00:50:51.550 --> 00:50:52.370 Great question. 00:50:52.430 --> 00:50:53.810 Really interesting question. 00:50:56.830 --> 00:50:57.730 Yes, please. 00:50:57.950 --> 00:50:59.550 A more philosophical question. 00:50:59.550 --> 00:51:05.865 Early on, you referenced the ontological distinction between male and female Mhmm. 00:51:06.025 --> 00:51:07.145 In one of your quotes. 00:51:07.145 --> 00:51:17.990 That's The in light of that, the form of human being, human being, qua human being, is it male, female, neither, or both? 00:51:19.570 --> 00:51:20.390 Great question. 00:51:20.530 --> 00:51:44.080 I think the language Saint John Paul the second gives us would, incline us to articulate this, identify this as saying, there is one human nature which exists in two irreducible personal forms in male and female. 00:51:44.080 --> 00:52:06.235 So male and female are the two, I'll use slightly different language, the two personal expressions of the one nature of humanity or put more sharply philosophically, sexual difference is accidental to the level of human nature because human nature is possessed by both men and women, but it's essential to actually existing human persons. 00:52:06.695 --> 00:52:17.370 So it it's therefore, I would suggest going extrapolating a little bit from what John Paul the second gives us, it's a relation constitutive of human personhood. 00:52:17.670 --> 00:52:43.610 It's a relation at the bake base of our personhood, which then enables us to enter into other human and sacramental relations to become a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, a mother, a father, whether through blood or through, religious profession, holy orders, marriage, creates new relations based on that fundamental relationality of male and female. 00:52:44.630 --> 00:53:01.935 So the identification that we have, especially with John Paul the second, of, sexual difference as exist as on the level of the existence of the person, but not dividing us on the level of nature, I think is the is the key to articulate that. 00:53:02.715 --> 00:53:04.175 Really, really good question. 00:53:07.835 --> 00:53:08.635 Yes, please. 00:53:08.635 --> 00:53:17.480 Something similar Cornelius to the problem of God and, Jesus. 00:53:18.660 --> 00:53:19.140 K. 00:53:19.140 --> 00:53:20.900 Say a could you say a little more? 00:53:20.900 --> 00:53:26.115 What you were you know, There's one gun. 00:53:26.115 --> 00:53:26.615 Yes. 00:53:27.235 --> 00:53:29.415 And yet there are two personal expressions. 00:53:30.195 --> 00:53:32.135 Well, three personal expressions. 00:53:32.195 --> 00:53:33.155 So but no. 00:53:33.155 --> 00:53:33.555 You're right. 00:53:33.555 --> 00:53:35.895 The language analogy to malice Right. 00:53:36.195 --> 00:53:39.710 But you can the same conceptually. 00:53:39.930 --> 00:53:40.810 Exactly right. 00:53:40.810 --> 00:53:41.930 And the lang no. 00:53:41.930 --> 00:53:42.810 Excellent point. 00:53:42.810 --> 00:53:46.430 So the lang notice the language we're using is Trinitarian language. 00:53:46.810 --> 00:53:47.310 Right? 00:53:47.370 --> 00:53:48.510 Nature, person. 00:53:48.890 --> 00:53:54.235 The language of person by the way, the ancient world did not have a concept of that word. 00:53:54.235 --> 00:53:55.295 It's not in scripture. 00:53:55.835 --> 00:54:00.015 It's not in classical, philosophy or thought. 00:54:00.075 --> 00:54:10.280 When Cicero said persona, he meant grammatical person, in legal incorporation, or the mask worn by a actor in a stage production. 00:54:10.980 --> 00:54:17.540 But a uniquely existing individual who exists in relation to other it's not there in the age. 00:54:17.540 --> 00:54:22.455 That came out of early Christian reflection on the mystery of the trinity. 00:54:22.995 --> 00:54:31.495 In God we have one God who exists in three persons, whom we can know and name through their relations of origin to one another. 00:54:31.940 --> 00:54:33.640 Even nature is in two persons. 00:54:34.340 --> 00:54:34.820 Yes. 00:54:34.820 --> 00:54:43.140 But you can make the analogy, extended and John Paul the second certainly did this because when let's let's take the analogy of marriage. 00:54:43.140 --> 00:54:52.645 You have male and female who come together, who give themselves to each other in love, and then their love is concretized, embodied in a third who proceeds from them. 00:54:52.645 --> 00:54:59.785 So the I vow of marriage gives rise to a we, the child, who's in a sense the fruit of the parent's love. 00:55:00.630 --> 00:55:10.410 Analogously please note, analogy, fourth lettering council, whenever we use human and divine language, we're there's similarity but even greater dissimilarity. 00:55:10.790 --> 00:55:11.110 Right? 00:55:11.110 --> 00:55:14.870 So, okay, we're all I I don't want this going out as heresy anywhere. 00:55:14.870 --> 00:55:15.110 Right? 00:55:15.110 --> 00:55:29.045 But but so within the trinity, the father and son give themselves to each other in an eternal communion of love and the holy spirit is breathed forth, Saint Augustine says, as the gift of their mutual love to one another. 00:55:29.700 --> 00:55:42.845 So we have that triadic structure of love realized perfectly within God, but then, you know, imaged, imperfectly reflected in human marriage and the family. 00:55:42.845 --> 00:55:52.545 So that's why John Paul the second would call both the trinity and the family a communion of persons when you have relationships that are characterized by love and self gift. 00:55:54.045 --> 00:55:55.185 Great, great question. 00:55:55.485 --> 00:55:56.305 Yes, Chris. 00:55:57.840 --> 00:56:11.060 So I I think, in the LGBTQ, movement, there has been a move away from the binary. 00:56:11.600 --> 00:56:11.840 Mhmm. 00:56:11.840 --> 00:56:12.160 Right? 00:56:12.160 --> 00:56:23.265 So in second wave feminism and Mary Neely and Rosemary, in fact, Rutherford, there there wasn't, there there wasn't a rejection of male and female. 00:56:23.405 --> 00:56:23.725 Right? 00:56:23.725 --> 00:56:32.340 And the social constructionist was built around kind of throwing off those what they considered, roles that were assigned to them by society. 00:56:32.340 --> 00:56:32.660 Right. 00:56:32.660 --> 00:56:37.720 But we seem to be in a new place, right, where that's not really the aim. 00:56:38.100 --> 00:56:41.355 The aim is to completely overcome the binary. 00:56:41.355 --> 00:56:59.200 Kind of radical postmodernity position to, like, a kind of radical postmodernity position there? 00:56:59.260 --> 00:57:04.060 I mean, I I I this is why, again, I can't stress enough. 00:57:04.060 --> 00:57:08.815 Benedict's last, address, Christmas address to the Roman Curia. 00:57:08.815 --> 00:57:28.290 I think in terms of a philosophical diagnosis, I think Pope Benedict nailed it, because once you separate gender and sex as de Beauvoir and others did, and it becomes simply a social construct, then the next step is simply saying, no, it's not created by society, it's personally created. 00:57:28.830 --> 00:57:38.815 You've you've effectively dissolved the concept of human nature and its relation to the human body person, So now it's simply whatever I want it to be and whatever I want it to mean. 00:57:38.815 --> 00:57:41.715 So we become self creating subjects. 00:57:42.175 --> 00:57:42.495 Right? 00:57:42.495 --> 00:58:00.680 And so there's any so desires become identities and the number of possible identities multiply, because we've lost the sense, this is Benedict's point, of ourselves as creatures made by a creator, made in his image as male and female. 00:58:00.680 --> 00:58:12.515 When we lose that, we we get the kind of gender babble, tower babble that we're starting to see in our culture and society around us, I think. 00:58:13.455 --> 00:58:18.860 But the key is that, in a sense, the dissolution of human nature and of our own creatureliness. 00:58:20.520 --> 00:58:21.320 Yes, father? 00:58:21.320 --> 00:58:43.470 The question of why though, is this seems to be that seem under the law or the stuff that these notions of woman pre creation, but actually rejection Sure. 00:58:45.390 --> 00:58:45.890 Rejection. 00:58:46.030 --> 00:59:01.465 And no, I I I don't dispute that, which is why Catholic new feminist writers have argued that the key to retrieving and rebuilding a a healthy anthropology is reuniting sex and gender. 00:59:02.565 --> 00:59:03.685 And this is Pope Francis. 00:59:03.685 --> 00:59:03.925 Right? 00:59:03.925 --> 00:59:06.025 They can be distinguished but never separated. 00:59:06.405 --> 00:59:10.265 We have to hold these together to think about the human person. 00:59:11.910 --> 00:59:20.570 So there's a great collection of essay if you guys wanna do some philosophical heavy lifting by Michelle Schumacher called Woman in Christ Toward a New Feminism. 00:59:21.590 --> 00:59:43.500 Really good heavy hitting philosophical essays on the complementarity of male and female, but a couple of the essays by Michelle Schumacher herself and a couple of her contributors really take on that task of how do we bring these two things that second wave feminism drove this wedge in between. 00:59:43.500 --> 00:59:45.120 How do we bring them back together? 00:59:46.060 --> 00:59:48.480 I think that's our one of our challenges today. 00:59:48.620 --> 00:59:50.640 Well, we thank you for Thank you, father.