When the Pharisees challenged Christ about the Mosaic teaching on divorce, He responded by returning to the beginning: “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’?”[1] Any study of woman’s identity and role must also go back to the beginning. The first chapter of Genesis says, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”[2] Both man and woman are created in God’s image and likeness, and so are equal yet distinct in their personhood, dignity, and value. In the words of Pope St. John Paul II, “[B]oth man and woman are human beings to an equal degree, both are created in God’s image.”[3] Individually, they image certain aspects of who God is; together, they image the self-giving, creative love of the Trinity. To quote The Catechism of the Catholic Church, “the respective ‘perfections’ of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God.”[4]

The second account of the creation of man found in Genesis 2 “helps us to understand even more profoundly the fundamental truth . . . concerning man created as man and woman in the image and likeness of God.”[5] After declaring that “it is not good that man should be alone,” God put Adam to sleep, fashioned Eve from his rib, and brought her to him.[6] Adam’s words at the sight of her are those of wonder and delight: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”[7] In her, man found another human person to receive as a gift, and to whom he could give himself in return. God’s declaration that something was “not good” is astounding; something was missing from the masterpiece that was creation, until Eve was made. Creation had also been increasing in beauty and complexity, making the position of woman in the structure of the narrative significant: “She is the crescendo, the final, astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish creation comes to a finish not with Adam but with Eve. She is the Master’s finishing touch.”[8]

God created Eve from Adam so that “man might love woman all the more, and cleave to her more closely, knowing her to be fashioned from himself.”[9] Dr. Alice von Hildebrand interprets this as “a sign of special dignity and preciousness,” for to be created from the body of another person is nobler than being created from dust.[10] Her position in being created from Adam’s rib is also symbolic and sacramental: it shows that “the woman should neither ‘use authority over man,’ and so she was not made from his head; nor was it right for her to be subject to man’s contempt as his slave, and so she was not made from his feet.”[11] She comes from Adam’s side as his equal. This image of woman coming, through God’s creative power, from the side of man is mirrored and fulfilled when the heart of Christ is pierced, and blood and water pour out for the life of the Church.[12]

After Adam’s naming of the animals, the author of Genesis observes that “there was not found a helper fit for him.”[13] Some view this term “helper” to mean servant or subordinate, but St. Edith Stein clarifies the original text:

The Hebrew expression used in this passage is barely translatable––Eser kenegdo––which literally means ‘a helper as if vis-à-vis to him.’ One can think here of a mirror in which man is able to look upon his own nature. . . . But one can also think of a counterpart, a pendant, so that, indeed, they do resemble each other, yet not entirely, but rather, that they complement each other as one hand does the other.[14] 

Eve is given to Adam to love and be loved, to safeguard relationship, and to stand beside him as king. In the Old Testament, whenever eser kenegdo does not refer to woman, it refers to God, when He is needed desperately, affirming the necessity of Eve and her role. [15]

“The words of the first man at the sight of the woman who had been created are words of admiration and enchantment,” says John Paul II, “words which fill the whole history of man on earth.”[16] Eve is captivating: breathtakingly beautiful. Countless works of art and literature speak to “that beauty––not merely physical, but above all spiritual––which God bestowed from the very beginning . . . on women.”[17] Beauty is her essence, and it serves her life-giving capacity. Beauty invites, speaks, nourishes, comforts, and inspires.[18] It roused the heart of Adam. It moved King Ahasuerus to hear Esther. It inspired such characters as King Arthur, Sydney Carton, and the Prince-turned-Beast. Such is God’s intent, and often her beauty is an aid to woman’s mission. In Dr. Alice von Hildebrand’s words, “[Woman’s] charm, loveliness, and beauty exercise a powerful attraction on the male sex, and it should be so.”[19] One of woman’s deepest and most sacred desires is to unveil her beauty, and to serve and minister through it.[20]

Eve reveals the heart of God in her beauty, but also in the profound mystery of her body and her heart. Mystery in this sense does not refer to something hopelessly confusing but something deep and profound, something with hidden glory to be explored. Woman’s mystery is first revealed physically. Unlike man, all of woman’s intimate organs are hidden within her body. Her biological structure “indicates that [her] reproductive organs are stamped by sacredness and belong to God in a special sense.”[21] Her soul is closely united with her body, and is similarly deep and sacred. Mystery, coupled with woman’s innate vulnerability, is meant to be inviting.[22] Through both, woman becomes a source of intimacy and communion—in a word, both gifts are relational. Far from being a source of shame (which it unfortunately can become), woman’s mystery was intended to be an icon of the mystery of God.

Woman’s beauty, mystery, and role as eser kenegdo all serve her fundamental vocation as mother and life-giver. She is relational to the core. From the beginning, when Eve was given the glorious title of “mother of all the living,” this has been her grace for the world.[23] In St. Edith Stein’s words, “woman’s primary vocation is maternal.”[24] “There is a metaphysical bond between womanhood and life,” says Dr. von Hildebrand, “and this is an honor indeed.”[25] Pope St. Paul VI calls women “you to whom life is entrusted at this grave moment in history,” and asks them to “reconcile men with life” in the face of inhuman technology.[26] Her body is made to support life. God created it with a space for another human being, and He uses her as the vessel in which He would craft a unique and unrepeatable person. It prepares monthly for the implantation of her offspring and it networks fat specifically so that she might be able to bear the strain of supporting another body with her own. Her bone structure is arranged for this purpose, and to her is given the primary role in parenting, at least while the child is very young and is so dependent on her physically. She is her child’s first educator. Chesterton refers to woman as “universal” because she is the one teaching the curious young child: “woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. . . . [O]ur race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common sense in the world.”[27]

Woman is a life-giver in more ways than just with her biological children: her ability to nurture, comfort, and heal extends beyond the domestic sphere. Her soul, mirroring her body, is “fashioned to be a shelter in which other souls may unfold.”[28] Her presence is an ambiance of order and beauty conducive to the development of full personhood in those she encounters.[29] She is metaphysically oriented towards the living, the personal, the concrete, and the whole, and her vocation “involves the total person in caring for, cultivating, helping, understanding, and encouraging the gifts of the other.”[30] God, the Author of all Life, has chosen to share this role with women. C. S. Lewis captures woman’s maternal heart in his description of Sarah Smith in The Great Divorce:

Every young man or boy that met her became her son –– even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter. . . . Those on whom [her motherhood] fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.[31]

 Interacting with her enhances one’s innate goodness and dignity. She reveals God’s heart for relationship; several times in Scripture, God’s love for Israel is described as maternal.[32] Woman embodies the tenderness and beauty of God whenever she acts as life-giver.[33]

God placed Adam and Eve in Eden in the fullness of their holiness, unity, and complementarity. One gift shared by both, and a pivotal part of their imaging God, is their free will, paradoxically revealed in their choice to reject Him.[34]The Tempter entered with a question that attacked man’s perception of God: “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?”[35] Eve responded, indicating the one forbidden tree of which they could not eat, lest they die. Satan then lied; he said that they would not die but would be as God, with the knowledge of good and evil. Then, tragically, “when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate.”[36] Eve was convinced that God was not a loving Father but a jealous master who was holding out on her. She was supposed to be Adam’s eser kenegdo, the life-giver beside him. She violated her sacred vocation and invited him to death.[37] However, Adam did not protect her from the serpent. He was standing beside her and did nothing.[38] While there is a difference in roles, the Fall was a fall of both man and woman, a fall of humanity as a whole, and so all human beings bear its effects.

Out of the two, the Enemy targeted Eve first. Why her? While there is some merit to the suggestion that it was because she was the more vulnerable of the two, and therefore the easier to defeat, it cannot be the only reason, since Adam was called to defend her. But the Enemy knew that she “has an enormous influence on her husband who . . . was enchanted when he perceived her,” and that “once seduced, Adam would follow suit.”[39] Woman’s God-given influence is powerful, but it has often become manipulation in the world east of Eden.

When God confronted Adam and Eve with their sin, woman was cursed with these words: “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”[40] Eve’s glory is her heart for relationship, and this is exactly where she suffers the consequences of sin. Her vocation as wife and mother comes with the sword of pain and heartache. Woman was given the additional consequence of being subject to the man, and “that he will not be a good master can be seen in his attempt to shift responsibility for the sin from himself onto his wife.”[41] Since the Fall, man’s kingship has deteriorated; he often misuses his strength and becomes a bully, or he goes passive, not offering his strength when needed. Woman becomes either controlling, desperate, or checked out, falling into emotionalism, sensuality, or self-centeredness instead of being a source of life.[42] Consider, as just one example, Catherine Earnshaw in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: shallow, petty, selfish, emotional, and manipulative. The sexes were created to complement each other, but man’s and woman’s gifts have created a cycle of brokenness in this sinful world. But glory to God—He fittingly brought redemption through a New Adam and a New Eve, a man and a woman that display the Creator’s original intention for those made in His image.

 

[1] Matthew 19:4-5 (RSVCE).

[2] Genesis 1:27.

[3] John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem (The Holy See: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, August 15, 1988), http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19880815_mulieris-dignitatem.html, 6.

[4] The Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Doublesday, 1995), 370.

[5] John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 6.

[6] Genesis 2:18, 21-22.

[7] Genesis 2:23.

[8] John and Stasi Eldredge, Captivating (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2005), 25. This is an excellent book on the heart of a woman, but it has its limitations. John and Stasi Eldredge are Protestant, and so do not mention the Blessed Mother, the pivotal figure in redeemed femininity.

[9] Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas, second and revised edition, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: London, Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1920), New Advent, 2017, https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1092.htm, Ia Q. 92 A. 2.

[10] Alice von Hildebrand, The Privilege of Being a Woman (Ave Maria: Sapientia Press, 2002), 16.

[11] Thomas Aquinas, Ia Q. 92 A. 3.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Genesis 2:20.

[14] Edith Stein, Essays on Women, Collected Works of Edith Stein, volume 2, ed. Lucy Gelber and Romaeus Leuven, trans. Freda Mary Ocen (Washington D.C.: ICS Publications, 2017), 61.

[15] Eldredge, 31, q.v. Deuteronomy 33:29, Psalm 33:20, 115:9-11, 121:1-2.

[16] John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 10.

[17] John Paul II, “Letter of Pope John Paul II to Women” (The Holy See: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, June 29, 1995), http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_29061995_women.html, 12.

[18] Eldredge, 37-41.

[19] von Hildebrand, 50.

[20] Eldredge, 8.

[21] von Hildebrand, 84.

[22] Vulnerability was created to be a good thing. This is not to dismiss the suffering women endure because of their vulnerability. Vulnerability is often taken advantage of, met with violence instead of respect. Consider, to use an extreme example, the physical vulnerability that can make women victims of rape or domestic abuse. Many women despise femininity precisely because they do not want to be vulnerable anymore. It is a cry of pain, and it leads to women shutting their hearts down out of self-protection. This is an area where God can come to heal and restore, and also where holy masculinity can help restore femininity. Man’s strength and protection creates a space for woman to be vulnerable and inviting.

[23] Genesis 3:20.

[24] Stein, 74.

[25] von Hildebrand, 61.

[26] Paul VI, “Closing of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: Address of Paul VI to Women” (The Holy See: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, December 8, 1965) http://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/speeches/1965/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19651208_epilogo-concilio-donne.html.

[27] G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With the World, Project Gutenberg, October 9, 2016, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1717/1717-h/1717-h.htm, III.3.

[28] Stein, 132.

[29] Ibid, 78.

[30] Ibid, 82.

[31] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009), Amazon, loc. 1109.

[32] Q.v. Isaiah 46:3-4, 49:14-15, 66:13, Psalm 131:2-3, Matthew 23:37.

[33] von Hildebrand, 96.

[34] John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 9.

[35] Genesis 3:1.

[36] Genesis 3:6.

[37] Eldredge, 47-48.

[38] Ibid, 48.

[39] von Hildebrand, preface to The Privilege of Being a Woman, x.

[40] Genesis 3:16.

[41] Stein, 63.

[42] Eldredge, 38.