GENERAL AUDIENCE –Wednesday, 12 September 1979
1 Last Wednesday we began the cycle of reflections on the answer that Christ the Lord gave to those who questioned him about the unity and indissolubility of marriage. His Pharisee questioners, as we recall, appealed to the law of Moses; Christ, instead, referred back to the “beginning”, quoting the words of the Book of Genesis.
The “beginning”, in this case, concerns what is dealt with in one of the first pages of the Book of Genesis. If we wish to analyse this reality, we must certainly turn first of all to the text. Indeed the words spoken by Christ in his conversation with the Pharisees, reported to us in chapter 19 of Matthew and chapter 10 of Mark, form a passage which in turn belongs to a well-defined context, without which they can neither be understood nor rightly interpreted.
This context is given by the words; “Have you not read that the Creator from the beginning made them male and female…?” (Mt 19:4), and refers to the so-called first account of the creation of man, set within the cycle of the seven days of the creation of the world (Jan 1:1-2.4). The context closest to the other words of Christ, taken from Genesis 2:24, is instead the so-called second account of the creation of man (Jan 2:5-25), but indirectly it is the whole third chapter of Genesis. The second account of the creation of man forms a conceptual and stylistic unity with the description of original innocence, of man's happiness and also of his first fall. Given the specific nature of the content expressed in the words of Christ taken from Genesis 2:24, one could also include in the context at least the first sentence of the fourth chapter of Genesis, which deals with the conception and birth of man from earthly parents. That is what we intend to do in the present analysis.
2. From the point of view of biblical criticism, it must be recalled at once that the first account of the creation of man is chronologically later than the second. The origin of the latter is far more remote. This older text is described as “Yahwist”, because it uses the term “Yahweh” to name God. It is hard not to be struck by the fact that the image of God presented there has fairly marked anthropomorphic features (among other things we read that “…the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his (Jan 2:7). Compared with this description, the first account, that is, precisely the one held to be chronologically more recent, is far more mature both as regards the image of God and in the formulation of the essential truths about man. This account comes from the priestly tradition and at the same time the “Elohist” tradition, from “Elohim”, the term it uses to name God.
3. Since in this narrative the creation of man as male and female, to which Jesus refers in his answer according to Matthew 19, is set within the rhythm of the seven days of the creation of the world, one could attribute to it above all a cosmological character; man is created on the earth and together with the visible world. But at the same time the Creator commands him to subdue and have dominion over the earth (cf. Jan 1:28): he is therefore placed above the world. Although man is thus closely bound to the visible world, the biblical narrative nevertheless does not speak of his likeness to the rest of creatures, but only to God (“God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him…” (Jan 1:27). In the cycle of the seven days of creation a clear gradation is evident (Speaking of non-living matter, the biblical author uses different predicates, such as “separated”, “called”, “made”, “placed”. Speaking instead of beings endowed with life, he uses the terms “created” and “blessed”. God commands them: “Be fruitful and multiply”. This command refers both to the animals and to man, indicating that bodily nature is common to them [cf. Jan 1:27-28]. Yet in the biblical description the creation of man is essentially distinct from God's preceding works. Not only is it preceded by a solemn introduction, as though it were a deliberation of God before this important act, but above all man's exceptional dignity is highlighted by the “likeness” to God whose image he is. In creating non-living matter God “separated”; he commands the animals to be fruitful and multiply, but the difference of sex is underlined only with regard to man [“male and female he created them”], while at the same time blessing their fruitfulness, that is, the bond of persons [Jan 1:27-28]; man, on the other hand, is not created according to a natural succession, but the Creator seems to pause before calling him into existence, as though withdrawing into himself to take a decision: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” (Jan 1,26).
4. The level of that first account of the creation of man, even though chronologically later, is above all theological in character. This is shown especially by the definition of man on the basis of his relationship with God (“in the image of God he created him”), which at the same time contains the affirmation that it is absolutely impossible to reduce man to the “world”. Already in the light of the first sentences of the Bible, man can be neither understood nor fully explained by the categories drawn from the “world”, that is, from the visible complex of bodies. Nevertheless man too is a body. Genesis 1:27 states that this essential truth about man refers both to the male and to the female: “God created man in his own image… male and female he created them” (The original text reads: “God created man [ha-adam – a collective noun: “humanity”?], in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male [zakar – masculine] and female [uneqebah – feminine] he created them” [Jan 1:27]. It must be acknowledged that the first account is concise, free from any trace of subjectivism: it contains only the objective fact and defines objective reality, both when it speaks of the creation of man, male and female, in the image of God, and when shortly afterwards it adds the words of the first blessing: “God blessed them and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth; subdue it and have dominion””(Jan 1,28).
5. The first account of the creation of man, which, as we have observed, is theological in nature, conceals within itself a powerful metaphysical charge. Let us not forget that this very text of the Book of Genesis has become the source of the deepest inspiration for thinkers who have sought to understand “being” and “existing” (perhaps only the third chapter of the Book of Exodus can bear comparison with this text) (“Haec sublimis veritas”: “I am who I am” [Ex 3:14] has been the object of reflection for many philosophers, beginning with Saint Augustine, who held that Plato must have known this text because it seemed to him so close to his own conceptions. The Augustinian doctrine of the divine “essentialitas” exercised, through Saint Anselm, a profound influence on the theology of Richard of Saint Victor, Alexander of Hales and Saint Bonaventure. “Pour passer de cette interprétation philosophique du texte de l'Exode à celle qu'allait proposer saint Thomas il fallait nécessairement franchir la distance qui sépare “l'être de l'essence” de “l'être de l'existence”. Les preuves thomistes de l'existence de Dieu l'ont franchie”.
The position of Meister Eckhart is different: on the basis of this text he attributes to God the “puritas essendi”: “est aliquid altius ente…” [cf. E. Gilson, Le Thomisme, Paris 1944 [Vrin], pp. 122-127; E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, London 1955 [Sheed and Ward], 810]). Despite some detailed and vivid expressions in the passage, man is defined there first of all in the dimensions of being and existing (“esse”). He is defined in a way that is more metaphysical than physical. To the mystery of his creation (“in the image of God he created him”) there corresponds the perspective of procreation (“be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth”), of that becoming in the world and in time, of that “fieri” which is necessarily linked to the metaphysical situation of creation: of contingent being (“contingens”). It is precisely in this metaphysical context of the description in Genesis 1 that the reality of the good, that is, the aspect of value, must be understood. Indeed, this aspect recurs in the rhythm of almost every day of creation and reaches its climax after the creation of man: “God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Jan 1:31). One can therefore say with certainty that the first chapter of Genesis has formed an incontestable point of reference and a solid basis for a metaphysics and also for an anthropology and an ethics, according to which “ens et bonum convertuntur”. Undoubtedly, all this has its significance also for theology and above all for the theology of the body.
6. At this point we break off our considerations. In a week's time we shall take up the second account of creation, that is, the one which, according to biblical scholars, is chronologically older. The expression “theology of the body”, just used, deserves a more precise explanation, but we shall leave this to another meeting. First we must try to go more deeply into that passage of the Book of Genesis to which Christ appealed.
