Physical Union is Sacred

God creates woman for man, to be his helpmate. "It is not well that man should be without companionship; I will give him a mate of his own kind." 

(Genesis 2:18-19)

The Divine creation of the two sexes is here suggested as essential for the point of view of fellowship. A helpmate does not mean servile inferiority, but rather that through differences, like a bow and a violin, they would compliment each other. Sex is not only the Divinely-will manner in which mankind will increase and multiply; it is also to be the basis of mutual helpfulness. Not to every husband and wife is given the privilege of having a Pentecost of the flesh through birth of a new physical body, but to every one is given the companionship, which God wills should be His lot in earth.

Mutual helpfulness implies an interpretation of ideals. Nietzsche once said that before a man get married, he should ask himself: "Would I be willing to talk to this woman all the days of my life?" This brings up the question of merging personalities. There are only two genders, but there are millions of different personalities. The body by its very physical nature is incommunicable.

Two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Animals never get inside of one another's mind by mating, for there is no mind to penetrate. But there is something in a human which is communicable, and which can get inside of another personality, and that is his mind, attitudes, his ideals, and his moods. A mere physical content can throw personalities back into their solitude and isolation in a way, which happens after a conversation.

God ordained that the unity in the flesh be not transitory, or spasmodic, but enduring until death. The body symbolizes and intensifies the union of souls. Because there is unity in spirit, in ideals, and in love, the bodies concretize and intensify that union The happiness of marriage depends upon common denominators, and the most common denominator of all is the love of God expressed in a common liturgy, a common faith, where in a husband and wife received the same bread and is made one Body in Christ. When this is lacking, the love of human lacks the best inspiration. They are like two Leibnitz' atoms, which bumps and hit one another but have no windows through which one can look out on the other. Man and woman marry to make one another happy, but they never can do this until they have agreed on what's happiness.

There is no solitude worse than the solitude of the one who is bound to love in a dual life, or of those epidermal unities drive them back to themselves in greater loneliness that before. But God intends that there should be a growing-together. What started as a passion of love becomes an act of love and then habit the soul of each moves the body of each; and finally, the body and soul of each to Himself, and therefore closer to each other. The growth they know, even if God has not blessed them with children, is a growth in God. A marriage need not have children to be divinely blessed marriage, for children depend on the Will of God, cooperating with husband and wife.

Marriage exists for the sake of intimacy, and as such, is ordained to intimacy. Feuerbach said, "A man is what he eats." In a higher order, a person becomes that which is taken into his body becomes unified with that body. In like manner, the person who has this mysterious martial communication with another body becomes "personalized" to some extent by that body, and also with that personality. The sentiments and the affections of one become the sentiments and the affections of the other in a great moment of identification. As speaking common language unites people, and as people are united through sharing the same ideals, so in marriage, people are united in a more binding way by this new knowledge of sex. From this point of view, quite part from the fruit of love in the child - this knowledge, which has of the other, is not discursive - like that which comes from reason. It is rather more intuitional, in the sense of being more immediate. Marriage, by its very nature, tends to this unity, through communication of the flesh with flesh. The very fact that God made a woman as the helpmate of man means that He intended that spiritual impregnation is closely associated with physical impregnation; one without the other is contrary on His Divine Purpose. To use the physical basis of unity, while deliberately rejecting the mental unity that implies, is to poison that mysterious food which comes clean from the hands of God.

"Because of our soul's yearning that we meet
And mix in soul through flesh, which yours and mine
Wear and impress, and make their visible selves,
All of which mean, for the love of you and me,
Let us become one flesh, being one soul."

*********************************************************************************

No copyright infringement intended. Credits of the article goes to my grandpa's sister. Photo borrowed from google search.