God Made Them Male and Female
by John Young
Currently there is a minimizing of the differences between men and women. This is shown in the choice of words, as when a mother or father is shown on the television screen with the word "parent" underneath. Why not put "mother" or "father" as the case may be? Again, the word "person" is often used though it is clear that a man is meant, or a woman. Reference will be made to the "persons in a football team." The word "they" is employed, even when the resulting sentence is awkward and inelegant, to avoid saying "he" or "she."
A wife will be depicted at a job in the workplace, while a husband is seen cleaning the house. If one is dubious about women firefighters, or says women in the army should not be sent into battle, one is accused of sexism.
Back in the sixties (I think) there was a popular television series called Father Knows Best, starring Robert Young and Jane Wyatt. The married couple in the show were essentially equal, with appropriate give-and-take when disagreements occurred, but the father was head of the house and generally had his way in the end, and it was generally the right way. A healthy and well-adjusted relationship existed between the parents and children, and the family was happy. But today such a series would be frowned upon by the people who control the media.
Radical differences between the sexes
In this article I want to look at the radical character of the male/female difference. Maleness and femaleness are more than accidental differences (using accidental in its philosophical sense). Two things of the same substance (the same nature or quiddity) will differ in any number of accidental ways. Two human beings differ in size, skin color, strength, mental power, capacity for affection and so on. We might, therefore, suppose the difference between male and female to be in the accidental order, but a particularly deep accident.
Were it not accidental, it might be argued, it would have to be substantial; but that can't be so, for it would mean men and women would belong to different species. Recall Aristotle's ten categories, of which substance is the first and the other nine are accidents. Substance names the nature or essence: it is what the thing essentially is, what the definition of that thing expresses. Man, rabbit, oak tree are substances — each is a specific kind of thing. And each has accidents or attributes — such as color or shape.
Men and women are of the same nature or species. So it seems that the distinction between them must be in the order of accidents, although clearly at a much deeper level than accidents like color. But that doesn't go far enough. The difference goes into the substantial order.
To understand this it is necessary to see what it means to say that man is a composite of form and matter — indeed we must see this if we are to understand what we are. I'll sketch that truth in the next few paragraphs.
All material things agree in being material, but they differ in the kind of thing they are. There is a substratum called matter that is actualized differently in different things. When a tree, say, is burnt down, it becomes something else, but this is not a complete replacement of one thing by another — of a living tree by a heap of ashes. There is a continuity between the two; a substratum. In the terminology of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, there is an underlying matter that receives a determination called a form. First the tree existed — a substance of matter and form, then through the agency of a fire the form was lost and the matter acquired a new form — that of ashes.
To use the old example of a statue: the marble from which the statue will be carved is potentially a statue but actually is simply a block of marble; it is in potency to receiving a determination that will constitute it a statue of, say, Julius Caesar. That determination is the shape that the sculptor will impose on the marble. So the marble is the matter, the shape is the form. They must be united into one thing, otherwise there will be no statue.
In general, then, matter names the determinable, the potential. Form names the determining, the actualized principle. The illustration of the statue of Julius Caesar is an example of what is called an accidental form, because the marble is already something in its own right, and the sculptor only gives it a new shape. But when we speak of the matter and form of water or a tree or a horse or a human being we are speaking of a substance — an entity existing in its own right, and not on the superficial level of shape or color.
Coming to man, the form that makes him human is the spiritual soul. It is the soul that determines the matter to be human. The soul is a form (that is, a determining principle) that actualizes matter to make a body that is living and human. Neither matter nor spirit alone constitutes a human being; each human person is a composite of both, and the two constituents are so united as to be one being. As Aristotle says, to ask whether body and soul are one "is as meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one, or generally, the matter of a thing and that of which it is the matter."1
The philosophical conclusion is confirmed by the Church. Without deciding secondary differences found within scholasticism, the Church teaches infallibly that the soul is the essential form of the human body.2
This is implied by the teaching of Genesis that God "formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being."3 Dust signifies man's bodily side, the breath of life signifies the soul. His spiritual aspect is implied in the earlier statement that he is created in the image of God, with dominion over the animals. He is seen as a single being, not as two things, a body and a spirit, in some kind of accidental union.
The biblical understanding is sometimes contrasted with the "Greek" view, namely dualism. Actually there were three general positions among the Greek philosophers: a materialist view of man as simply matter; a dualist view held famously by Plato; and the Aristotelian position of man as essentially body and soul forming a single entity. This third position is in accord with the biblical understanding.
Now we come to a consideration bearing directly on the question of male and female. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, each soul is individualized by the matter it informs. Just as the statue of Caesar is this statue because the shape is in this block of marble, my soul is this soul because of the condition of the matter it informs. Souls are not like a series of car engines that can be placed in any one of a line of bodies of that particular model.
Each human soul is created directly by God when the organized matter is ready to receive it. From what modern science tells us about DNA this seems to be the moment when sperm and ovum unite to form a new organism. Created from nothing by God,4 the soul is so intimately united with the aptly organized matter that they constitute a single being: this individual human person.
The point I want to stress here is that the conformity of soul to body implies a uniqueness of the soul derived from the condition of the matter it informs. Had the matter been different at the moment its organization made it fit to receive a rational soul, the soul God created would have been a different soul. And its aptitudes would have differed to some extent.
But the organized matter receiving the soul is either male or female. So the soul itself, determined by the matter, is distinguished by that fact. This is not to suggest that the biological differences are somehow present in the soul, as though some souls were biologically male, others female. The human soul is a spirit, having no matter in it. But the implications of being male or female are more than biological; they pertain to the whole being. And because this soul is the form of this body, it follows that there is a modality or aspect to the soul of a man other than the modality belonging to the soul of a woman.
Put it this way: if we take sexuality as more than biological parts, and view it as belonging deeply to the whole person, it extends to the spirit or soul and is not confined to the body. I heard an outstanding Thomistic philosopher in Australia, the late Dr. Austin Woodbury, SM, express it this way: "Sexuality extends from the tip of the toes to the top of the soul."
Being male or female is not in the order of contingent accidents, like size or shape. Nor is it even in the order of properties (proper accidents), like sense or intellect. It is deeper still, and more pervasive. It is a mode of the individual substance. That is, it is a manner deeply characterizing the individual, while not placing it in a different species. The difference between men and women is more than physical and more than psychological. It is ontological, extending to the depths of their being.
We know the soul is changed by the three sacraments that impress a character: baptism, confirmation and holy orders. Each of these leaves a permanent character on the soul.5 It may be helpful to use this to illustrate the influence the physical organism has at the moment of the soul's creation. But this physical aspect is more radical than the sacramental character, for the matter individualizes the soul.
Corollaries
From the aptness of this soul for this body we can draw some interesting corollaries. One is that each of us had only a single chance of existence. Had a child been conceived a little earlier or a little later, and therefore from a different sperm and ovum, it would not have been the same child. Not only would the body have been different; there would have been a different soul. So each of us is very contingent; we could not have come into being at another time. We had to have the parents we actually had, and the same grandparents, and the same great-grandparents, and so on back to the beginning of the human race.
At times we may complain, somewhat humorously, about the mess Adam and Eve got us into by committing original sin. Well, they certainly got the human race into a mess, but not the people who exist and have existed. All the individuals would have been different ones in the changed circumstances of a world without original sin.
Another corollary is that reincarnation is ruled out. Because body and soul are made for each other the soul can't inhabit a succession of bodies, like a person moving from one house to another. Reincarnation requires that the soul or spirit be an independent complete entity that happens to inhabit successive bodies; the true person exists in the spirit. A third corollary is that between death and the general resurrection the human person, strictly speaking, does not exist. The person is a complete thing, consisting essentially of body and soul united; the separated soul is only part of the person. Intellect and will are properties of the soul, so we will know and love; but we will not be whole again until our bodies rise at the end of the world. In a popular sense the person will go on existing, but in the technical sense (in accord with Boethius' classical definition of the person as "an individual substance of a rational nature"6), we will only become persons again at the general resurrection.
Complementary
While the distinction between male and female pervades one's whole being, each sex is made to complement the other. We see this exemplified in those happy marriages where the couple remains very close and lives for each other. The expression "soul mate" describes this, as does the scriptural expression "two in one flesh." The relationship is essentially different from the friendship between two people of the same sex, and it is different precisely because of the complementary character of the two sexes.
The naturalness of lifelong marriage is clear; the attraction of a man and a woman for each other, and their mutual fulfillment, demands a permanent union. If this is destroyed by divorce, each spouse is damaged. When death separates a loving husband and wife the survivor feels that something is lacking to his or her completeness.
The complementary character of man and woman is seen in traits that tend to predominate in one or the other. Regarding interest in persons and in things, women tend more than men to emphasize persons. They go more than men for the concrete over the abstract. They usually show greater empathy. Their skills are more inclined toward the verbal than the non-verbal than are those of men. They are usually more receptive, while men are more assertive.
Therefore, the view of the husband as head of the house is not a result of a historically conditioned custom that could be changed without harm. On the contrary, it is based on what man and woman are. So St. Paul was able to say: "Wives, be submissive to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church."7 Paul's perspective is supernatural, but it is the elevation to a higher order of a natural reality pertaining to marriage.
Any idea that the husband should dominate his wife is ruled out by the Apostle's comparison with Christ and the Church, and by his insistence, in verse 28, that husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. Pope John Paul II points out that authentic conjugal love "presupposes and requires that a man have a profound respect for the equal dignity of his wife."8
The husband has no right to autocratically impose his will, but in cases where agreement cannot be reached it is usually the husband's view that should prevail in matters regarding the family's welfare. But in practice the situation differs from case to case — some husbands haven't got much sense!
In the past women have often been victimized and not allowed scope for the development of their talents — a situation that still prevails in many countries. Partly as a reaction to this, today we find, especially in Western cultures, a drive to obliterate natural differences and to see women as equivalent to men in everything — which means, logically, the obliteration of the woman's specific qualities.
The radical distinction, yet complementarity, of men and women helps explain the virulence with which militant homosexuals insist that the homosexual condition is natural, refusing any rational discussion of the issue. Some of them want legislation to ban public expression of the statement that homosexual actions are intrinsically unnatural, and they are having alarming success in this endeavor.
When a way of life is so profoundly unnatural as this, those who practice it are tempted to use every means to conceal the truth from themselves and can't bear to hear the truth from others. By extension they will tend to be hostile to marriage and to family life. Legislation for same-sex "marriages" helps them maintain their delusion that their way of living is normal and good, for such legislation is an implicit endorsement.
The Thomistic concept of the human soul as the form of the body, with the corollaries that follow, gives the rational grounding of the common-sense view of what we are as male and female. It deepens our understanding of the biblical doctrine of human nature.
End notes
- Aristotle, De Anima, Bk. II, Ch. 1, 412b, 7.
- Council of Vienne, DS 902; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 365.
- Genesis 2:7.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 366.
- Ibid., 1121.
- Boethius, De Duabus Naturis c. 3.
- Eph. 5:22-23.
- Familiaris Consortio, n. 25.
Mr John Young, B. Th., is associated with the Cardinal Newman Catechist Centre in Merrylands, N. S. W., Australia. He has taught philosophy in four seminaries and published many articles. He is the author of Reasoning Things Out (Stella Maris Books, Fort Worth, Texas), an introduction to philosophy. His latest book is The Natural Economy (Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, New York). His last article in HPR appeared in December 2006.
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