God's Plan for Marriage in Creation

God’s act of creation is an act of love, and every act of love is a call for a return of love. Love is therefore the fundamental vocation of man. We want to return God’s love and be fully united but we cannot ever be totally content until we reach God. So in Genesis God says “It is not good that man should be alone. “I will make him a helpmate” (2:18). A helpmate or a helper in English may seem of some lower order but the Hebrew translating word ezer is used frequently for God as our mighty helper and so certainly implies nothing inferior or secondary. “So from the soil God fashioned all the wild beasts and all the birds of heaven. These he brought to the man to see what he would call them. The man gave names to all cattle, all the birds of heaven and all the wild beasts.” (2:19-20) For the Hebrews, to give something a name meant two things - that they had power over the thing to be named and that they understood its nature fully. These two conditions are fulfilled with man’s relation to animals. However since “no helpmate suitable for man was found for him” God made man fall into a deep sleep and took one of his ribs and built it into a woman (2:21-22) The idea of a rib may refer to a Sumerian word ti which means life. The idea is that it is life of man that becomes the woman. On seeing her, Adam exclaims “This at last is bone from my bone and flesh from my flesh. This is to be called woman, for this was taken from man”(2:23). The Hebrew word for man used here is ish and for woman is ishsha. These are not two different words, but the same word with masculine and feminine endings. It means that the man cannot name the woman but only call her by his name! He cannot name her firstly because he has no power over her as he has over animals, and secondly his knowledge cannot penetrate to her being, for the spirit of life that came from God is within her and he can never fully penetrate this. She is his equal and he finds fulfillment in her. It is not the total satisfaction and fulfillment that man can find only in God, whose name the Hebrew was not even to say out loud, but it is a satisfaction that takes away much of the loneliness and restlessness he felt before. Because she has the same divine spirit of life, he can find something of the divine in her and she in him. True love between them is an intuitive glimpse of the divine in each other. This is presented in Genesis as the first and most fulfilling human relationship. ”This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body”(2:24). Other relationships, even with parents, are put in second place so that this one may be complete. Man and woman meet as two human beings (both spirit and flesh). Their sexuality is part of their being and their ability to relate. ”Now both of them were naked..but they felt no shame in front of each other”(2:25). Humans are created in the image and likeness of God (1:26) which is not physical. It expresses a deep reality that we alone have received the divine spirit and long for the infinite. For most human beings, it is in relationships with others that they find their deepest satisfaction. Marriage offers to two persons the opportunity to know and love each other at a depth that nothing else on earth can quite offer. Because God is within the other, marriage may be called a voyage of discovery of the infinite. The word “enthusiasm” comes from two Greek words en (within) and theo (God) and so means the “god-within” When a person is really enthusiastic, it seems as though there is a God-within inspiring that person. The married couple can face each other with the enthusiasm of love as they embark on the discovery of God within each other. God however respects our individuality and does not take over our whole personalities in such a way that it does not matter who one marries because one would not be loving that person in himself/herself but only God-within. There is only one God, but God has many images. It is the incarnate reality of a particular image of God with whom a person falls in love. Men and women strive for the infinite but they belong to this earth so it is a genuine human love they feel for a fellow human being. It is simultaneously human and divine love they seek in each other.. This total love for one another makes a person vulnerable, open to hurt by the other. Thus every act of infidelity is an injury to the other, who is building his or her whole life on trusting another and on finding both human and divine love in that other. Promiscuity is the failure to find real satisfaction in anything beyond what can be seen and touched. It is a failure to find God within others. The giving of one’s body to another is always something of a lie, unless it is part of the total giving and commitment of all of oneself forever. Pre-marital sex and adultery (seeking sexual gratification of a married person outside marriage) are wrong because, in varying degrees, they contain this lie. Adultery also hurts the spouse whose spouse is involved in the sexual act and promotes a masked polygamy. * The above text contains excerpts from "Marriage, Divorce & Nullity" by Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, published by Dave Communications, copyright (c) 1984: