A Systematic Theology of the Holy Family:
Trinity and Nuptial Mystery as the organizing patterns of science and doctrine
Summary
Taking the Nuptial Mystery and the Holy Trinity as interpretive keys for three levels of scientific inquiry:
- Physics
- Ethics
- Biology
Elements of Contribution to Theology
- Updating Aristotelian metaphysics to map with modern physics
- Here we deal in the scientific and masculine contribution to our theological worldview
- Developing Catholic ecclesiology towards a renewed understanding of the hierarchical relationship between family & Church & state
- This is the educational philosophy section of our research
- Extending Aquinas' anthropology to a modern understanding of mind; particularly offering a spiritual amendment to human emotion
- Marian themes permeate this section, as the scientific endevour has largely abandoned the context of feminine created/receptive being
From Development in the Theology of Woman: |
| ||
This study remains incomplete for at least three reasons. First of all, the historical development of the theology of woman cannot be fully apprehended aside from the congruent developments in male gender-identity, which have only been given a cursory glance. For the author, this also implies the need for development in Josephology. But it can be taken for granted that, prior to the twentieth century, the mainstream of academic history evoked an undeniably male flavor. Nonetheless, “masculine” and “feminine,” insofar as they can be considered as abstract principles, have direct reference to one another and are largely (not exhaustively) defined by one another. In order to avoid the hierarchy which ensues in all dichotomous reasoning, they require a third term which can bear the weight of their conflict. Inevitably, that third term must be a form of free moral charity, whether it is instantiated in secular family politics, or in a religious concept like “one-flesh” union. “Man” and “woman” are terms of relation, like the names for the Persons of the Trinity. Herein lies the second short-coming of this essay, that it does not sufficiently explore the possible points of contact between the masculine-feminine dialectic and trinitarian theology. Finally, and most conspicuously perhaps, the author has mostly ignored the effects of Mariological developments on the doctrine of woman in general. It will have to suffice for now to state that Mary’s special status in salvation history has been treated by the Church from opposite and oscillating perspectives: as experientially inimitable, an unclassifiable anomaly, as well as a safeguard against the depreciation of woman’s dignity. Yet, the paradox of Mary as mother and virgin is the inspiration for John Paul II’s elevation of spiritual motherhood as the ontological designation of the female sex.
John Paul’s successor Pope Benedict XVI offered “six reasons for not forgetting” that Mary gives “equilibrium of faith” to Catholic Christianity, especially as “conqueror of all heresies:” 1) Mary defends orthodox Christology, 2) Mary expresses the integration of Scripture with Tradition, 3) as a Jewish woman, Mary unites Church and synagogue, 4) Marian devotion balances mind with heart, 5) Mary gives a face to the Church and makes the Faith relational rather than abstract, and finally, 6) Mary reveals the essence of femininity and its indispensable role in the Church.[1]
Thus St. Mary is our pattern of Faith, both in the reception and in the study of Divine Truth. She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she developes it; not enough to submit the Reason, she reasons upon it; not indeed reasoning first, and believing afterwards, with Zacharias, yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing.[2]
Mary conceives in her womb what she first conceives in her spirit. The Immaculata conceives the immaculate Christ by the power of the “uncreated Immaculate Conception.”[3] Hence, Mary of Nazareth is daughter, mother, and spouse of God. Here the complementary pattern of masculine and feminine generation approaches the mystery of trinitarian Love. In the revelation of creation and salvation it is clear: Adam precedes Eve in the external order of nature, but Eve precedes Adam in the internal order of desire. Similarly, the material universe preceded supernatural humanity and Mary’s redemption preceded Christ’s Incarnation. “What is last in execution is first in intention;” every act of the divine missions increases the Father’s perfection, as from perfection to perfection within perfection. The paradox continues with the doctrine of completed Revelation, which is yet made more perfect in its articulations through history, from Tradition to Scripture to Magisterium and back. “In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”[4]
The “nuptial meaning of the body” functions to illustrate a broader geometrical argument against violations of space, a principle continuous with the conservation of energy. The feminine path is the path of least resistance for the female body-soul. This does not mean that she cannot travel in masculine directions, but it does mean that she will never fit in the masculine as well as a male body-soul can. Language evokes images because the brain itself organizes by geometric networks of connecting “words.” Hence it is important to consider the shape that a word conveys because that shape will become a pattern in the neural web. The same is true for sentences, for theses, and for disciplines. For example, Buckminster Fuller suggested that the English word “line” be replaced by “vector:” “The mathematician's ‘straight line’, defined as having length but no width, simply cannot be demonstrated. All physical ‘lines’ upon closer inspection are actually wavelike or fragmented trajectories: even a ‘line of sight’ is a wave phenomenon, insists Fuller; ‘physics has found no straight lines.’ But forces exist, and they pull or push in a line, which can be modeled by a vector.”[5] “Vector” reflects an image closer to the intended meaning of the word “line.” Perhaps the word “feminine” need not always conjure an image of the nearest female, but it should remind one of the innocent Eve and the Virgin Mary, because these are the patterns of association God has chosen for his own ideal of the feminine. These are the images that organize one’s thoughts about the feminine according to the mind of Christ. Every created entity submits to the analogy because it is ontological. However, to say that every individual female is ontologically feminine is not to say that this unique and personal relationship is utterly communicable. Sexual complementarity is not the image of two parallel lines. It is more like a double helix, that is, two parallel vectors forming a single vector, braided around each other so as to maximize interconnection and minimize the use of space. Mathematically, every braid can be braided again because once braided it then implies the emergence of another symmetrical side. The pattern is thus intelligible and unintelligible at the same time, trans-finite, like the Trinity.
In order to expose the danger of an over-simplified binary definition of gender (the quintessential danger of human existence), linguist Deborah Tannen uses the term “complementary schismogenesis.”[6] In masculine and feminine language styles (not exclusive to either sex, but distributed along the expected bell-curves), the stubborn assertion of a masculine style can result in the alienation of those with feminine styles. A pure masculine style communicates on the assumption of hierarchy, while a pure feminine style communicates on the assumption of equality (this sketch is somewhat simplistic, but hierarchy is related to power, logic, and action, while equality is related to connection, emotion, and receptivity). Healthy communication requires awareness of ambiguity in terminology and polysemy in meaning. A ‘masculine’ activity like boxing might be implemented by two males to bring about a ‘feminine’ disposition between them like companionship. A ‘feminine’ exercise like shopping might be used by two females to set up a ‘masculine’ hierarchy of status, like who knows the best stores. This polysemy between masculine and feminine can be endless. What is critical to note is that when one or the other communication style loses an interior reference to its complement, it can become sinisterly dichotomous:[7]
For a simple example of complementary schismogenesis in conversation, imagine that one person is talking slightly louder than the other. If their styles are similar, one or the other or both might adjust their level of loudness so they’d end up more or less the same. But if their ideas about how loud it’s normal to speak are different, each speaker will be made uncomfortable by the other’s volume. The slightly louder one might try to encourage the softer one to speak up by getting a little louder—to set a good example. And the slightly softer one might try to encourage the louder one to speak more softly by setting a good example of softer speech. As each tries harder to remedy the situation, one gets louder and louder while the other gets softer and softer until one is shouting and the other whispering. Each unintentionally provokes the other to intensify the offending behavior.[8]
Thus, one must be able to transport up or down a level of complementarity in order to best serve the other and meet him or her in charity. This is the ‘vector’ of identity; it may have a set (ontological) direction based on biological sex, but it is neither static nor unbroken, and is ultimately a piece of a larger vector. But the masculine and feminine traits cannot be maximally expressed without being anchored in and drawn out by each others’ contraries. Hence, there is an overriding significance of unity and communion in the theologically correct understanding of sexual complementarity. Constant reconnecting with the other (God, spouse, friend, nature, etc.) returns one to one’s self with a fuller identity-image.
Although feminist theologians are trending away from the binary view of sexuality, there is an important sense in which the common denominator of reality will always be relationally binate. The simplest, fastest, most energy-efficient language is binary code. Why binary? Because every possible truth can be communicated through an interaction of contraries that is open to relationship with other pairs, multiplied exponentially. 0 is to 1 as 01 is to 11 as 011 is to 111, and this can continue for infinity multiplied by infinity. What is infinity multiplied by infinity? A pantheistic Trinity. At least that was what many neo-Scholastics accused Georg Cantor of when he discovered this trans-finite set theory. But it is accepted today as a basic mathematical principle. What is often overlooked is that there is a hidden third term that really makes every binary into a trinity, since each coupling is always open to an ‘other’ coupling that transcends the original dimensions of the first pair. In binary code, every number has an infinite set of infinite reciprocals. Philosophers know this same paradox as the one and the many. In linguistics it is called the polysemy of language. The key is to think of the third term as a new logic, as in the logic of childhood, incarnation, or sacrament. The point is not to mathematize relationships, but quite the contrary, to raise the most basic form of reason into the analogy of Holy Family. The nuptial unity of reality flows from the basic shape of its poles, masculine and feminine, which exist on multiple dimensions, in physics, in nature, in the individual, in the couple, in the Church, in society, and, with necessary distinctions, in God Incarnate. Of course, the analogy terminates before God as Trinity, since the Godhead “prior to” creation had no parallel masculine or feminine relations.[9] Hence, the infinite sets of sexual pairs do not begin with God per se, but with Christ’s human nature and God’s covenantal condescension. The male then is not meant to be a sign of aseity or the Godhead, though it is a sign of Christ. Yet, Mary is a truly symmetrical complement to Christ’s perfection in so far as she remains first among contingent beings.
Alfred North Whitehead orchestrated an especially ingenious system for understanding reality as multi-leveled societies of bi-polar entities. Buckminster Fuller accomplished similar feats with his “synergetic geometry.”[10] Cross-disciplinary dialogue in trinitarian theology is important here, as a proper understanding of complementarity will be much helped by a proper understanding of third terms as vestiges of Holy Spirit. Christian theologians should wish to avoid a bipolar schematization of sexuality as much as they avoid binitarianism in the Trinity. The problem of de-subjectifying the Holy Spirit is well documented.[11] Firstly, participation of the created universe in the reality of God can only be analogical. “Being is God’s good gift and we can speak of Being’s kenotic self-donation in beings. Infinity is depicted not as negating human finitude but, more positively, as divine excess, as that fullness and fecundity that creates and sustains, taking on and transforming the contingent human condition.”[12] Analogical participation makes for a genuine encounter with the living Lord, so that God’s being must remain transcendent of and also ordained to the nuptial categories. It is particularly the Holy Spirit’s economic mission that entails the stitching together of time and eternity, humanity and Godhead.[13] The Second Vatican council “exhorts Christians, as citizens of two cities, to strive to discharge their earthly duties conscientiously and in response to the Gospel Spirit.”[14] Renunciation of certain freedoms cannot be avoided, even in Christ, for to create is to sacrifice and to die is to Resurrect. Through baptism, the Holy Spirit indwells in the human soul as the energy and impetus of a will that dances from Love to Love in freedom, which is always also the fulfillment of the individual. Hence, the third ‘person’ of the nuptial analogy can be called reciprocal-generative-freedom. Openness to the life of the literal or metaphorical ‘child,’ and acceptance of the responsibility entailed, cannot be severed from the union of masculine and feminine itself, as this diffusion is simply what Charity does, in imitation of Divine excess. Sarah Coakley articulates this trinitarian vision in her recent systematic endeavor into the theology of desire. Her understanding of the gender binary mirrors the point here made:
The Christian tradition has, of course, been constantly tempted to figure the difference of gender straightforwardly on the latter difference: to align ‘masculinity’ with God and ‘femininity’ with the world (and so to subordinate women to men, while tacitly undermining their status as fully redeemed). More recently, some feminist theology has attempted – in reaction – to model gender on the former difference – straightforwardly toemulate a trinitarian ‘equality in difference’. The position proposed here is that neither of these more familiar alternatives is possible, nor even obviously mandated by the complex authorities of Scripture and tradition. Rather, in the case of human gender there is a subtle transformation of both models caused by their intersection: the ‘fixed’ fallen differences of worldly gender are transfigured precisely by the interruptive activity of the Holy Spirit, drawing gender into trinitarian purgation and transformation. Twoness, one might say, is divinely ambushed by threeness. This is not, I must strongly underscore in closing, a theory of a ‘third gender’, or a theory either of the insignificance, or obliteration, of gender. On the contrary, it is a theory about gender’s mysterious and plastic openness to divine transfiguration.[15]
Christian anthropology, therefore, continues to develop a more sophisticated understanding of human esse, always in the image and growing in the likeness of God. Too often, personal identity and social status have been established by contrary dispositions of sexual desire or different physical generative capacities. If human beings were merely sexual creatures, if they were only upright animals, than patriarchy would be inevitable (even if women became men). It is not so. The locus of identity depends on the end of existence. If one exists only for this world, then total self-determination and sexual amorphism might be sensible for the person. But if it is true that the highest end is to share in the knowledge and love of the Father God, then conformity to that end must by definition influence the identity of individuals as their essential and final cause. In most feminist gender theories, it is assumed that one must detach from restricting social mores in order to discover identity and purpose within the self. In the Scholastic framework it was taught that one must detach from the concupiscence of self in order to discover and discern objective realities. While the former has more complex content, it has a faulty method. The latter was built on outdated science, but had a superior hermeneutic. When Aquinas explicated the cooperation of intellectus and ratio within the mens, the actus purus of non-contingent Being, and the subsistent relations of the trinitarian Persons, he was allowing nuptial analogy to form his mental patterns and his systematic theology. He remains an indispensable reference point for modern theology. Conception in the heart precedes birth in word and deed. God formulates the balance between masculine and feminine on infinite levels, in each human psyche, in each human relationship, in each marriage, in each community, in the Church, in the ecosystem, and in science. Since the promise of diversity is everlasting, the limitations of each expression should incite no envy.
In conclusion, the author proposes a trajectory for future development in theological anthropology and systematic theology as a whole. The scientific paradigm has matured immensely in the last fifty years. Some scientists allege that humans and animals can no longer be strictly divided on the basis of self-awareness, rational thought, emotive powers, or even language. Supposedly, these characteristics exist on a continuum from single-cell to human, and may not be qualitatively different from one to the next.[16] In like manner, the earth’s ecosystem is not a reality distinct from human embodiment. Many thinkers today, including eco-theologians, stress the dire necessity of building sustainable and synergetic relations with nature, a plea that contradicts entrenched habits of ‘Enlightenment’ domination (different from Biblical “dominion”). “No adequate theological anthropology can ignore the importance of the ways we think about our place in the world nor can it avoid the implications of a mistaken sense of disconnection between humans and the natural world.”[17] Neuroscience is another related field that has much to contribute to the theology of the human person. Despite the popularity of strictly empiricist philosophies within this community, there are also many scientists who argue convincingly for forms of “emergent monism” not unadaptable to a Christian metaphysics.[18] Work in fractal geometry by Benoit Mandelbrot and Stephen Wolfram present models of integral complementarity in nature and mathematics, reinforcing the self-propelled fruitfulness of polarity and unity in cohabitation.[19] Personality theory and biochemical physiology are other fields that can contribute to the theology of the body as well. “The Christian cannot simply stand by and ignore these issues. They all raise theological questions. Indeed, they demand theological responses.”[20] The trajectory here proposed is to seek resolution in some or all of these issues through the ordering principle of generative complementarity.
John Paul II’s theology of sexuality is no reiteration of ancient Greco-Roman misogyny. It is not primarily an argument for the conservation of space or energy – very crudely realized in the geometrical interlocking of male and female bodies (though this fact is not without significance). The ontological orientation of the female to femininity, the so-called feminine genius, may be in a woman’s soul, in her body, in her personality, and in her vocation in very different manners, with different shapes and, therefore, different kinds of “spouses.” The paradox of the feminine genius lies in its attention to the personal encounter, which necessarily preempts the abstraction of masculine and feminine categories. Thus from the feminine perspective in particular, a definition of woman eludes idealization, as the individual person or concrete moment is experienced as mystery and dignity first. Nevertheless, a human being is a spirogenetic or incarnate mystery, and therefore, woman is capable of and called to communicate herself for the sake of love, just as God has ordained himself to be ‘for us.’ The subtle interplay of freedom and determination in Catholic sexual teaching awaits specialized theological and pastoral excavation through this feminine and Marian hermeneutic.
Finally, it is the author’s thesis that the nuptial analogy provides the best trilateral pattern for all networks of human science because its neural image is the only conceivable picture of a non-contingent Love that is Reality itself (not to mention it is also the favored analogy of the sacred page). Some psychoanalysts have even made the argument that sexual complementarity should be as primary a logical principle as non-contradiction.[21] Through this method, one might work toward a systematic theology of the Holy Family. The Catholic faith is a divine Love affair so ontologically intimate as to be one nature, ‘one flesh,’ one idea, one system, one spirit, and one God, simultaneously and infinitely diffused by this single source and then infinitely interrelated to each expression. What is of greatest importance for the trinitarian nuptial analogy of masculine-feminine-fruitfulness is that God has chosen it, God has sacramentalized it, specifically in Matrimony and Holy Orders. As the essentiality of the spousal mystery becomes more and more realized through these sacramental portals, so the tripartite nature of Love-Reality is being gently unveiled. For this reason, the normalizing of the spousal analogy is a Christian moral imperative. This is the point at which the light of the Catholic faith outshines all other suns. The Bethlehem star-child is really a quasar, drawing a whole universe of trinities into its singularity, ultimately eclipsing all distinctions except for persons, who if they are human, are everlastingly male or female. Any creature that does not follow this design of I AM, in fact, does not exist. Only one can lead the perichoretic dance and he calls himself ‘Our Father.’
[1] Fr. Johann G. Roten, “Benedict XVI and Mary” (February 20, 2013): http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/benedictmary.html
[2] John Henry Newman, “Sermon XV,” in Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford (London, New York: Longmans, Green, 1900), 313.
[3] See, H. M. Manteau-Bonamy, Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit: Marian teachings of St. Maximiliam Kolbe (Libertyville, IL: Marytown Press, 2001).
[4] Essay on Development, 40.
[5] Amy C. Edmondson, A Fuller Explanation: the synergetic geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Boston, MA: Birkhauser, 1987), 9.
[6] Deborah Tannen. That's Not What I Meant!: how conversational style makes or breaks relationships (New York, NY: Harper, 2011),129-31.
[7] It might be said that Satan is an archetype of masculinity cut off from the feminine by pride. Lucifer’s “masculinity” is perverted because it looks for no complement, it asserts itself against God’s will like a determined principle even more unyielding than gravity.
[8] That’s Not What I Meant!, 129-30.
[9] Referring here to the apophatic nature of the Blessed Trinity.
[10] See, Amy C. Edmondson, A Fuller Explanation: the Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Boston, MA: Birkhauser, 1987), and Marc A. Pugliese The One, the Many, and the Trinity: Joseph A. Bracken and the Challenge of Process Metaphysics (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2011).
[11] See, Thomas G. Weinandy, The Father's Spirit of Sonship: Reconceiving the Trinity (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995), and, Gavin D’Costa, Sexing the Trinity: Gender, Culture and the Divine (London: SCM, 2000).
[12] Declan Marmion and Rik Van Nieuwenhove. An Introduction to the Trinity (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 218.
[13] “Here lies the particularity of the Spirit’s hypostasis in the Trinity, according to [Colin] Gunton. The Spirit makes the triune communion a free perichoresis, where the one and the many, being and relationship, person and substance coincide as one God. The Spirit is the agent of freedom and particularity in the Trinity, as Gunton correctly reminds contemporary theology. He brings to our attention that the Spirit wipes away separation and crosses the boundaries between beings without dissolving their mutual integrity. The Spirit creates and protects particularity in the face of homogenization. He transfers the relation with the other from a relation of subversion into a relation of self-designation. He is constitutive of the particular relations of the Son to His Father and to His church. The Spirit transforms Jesus’ historical relations into particular relations, which reveal one and the same Son of God. Similarly, the Spirit grants freedom to the people of God, a freedom that, according to Gunton, ‘derives from their institution into a new, particular, framework of relationships.’ Pneumatological particularization makes the church a community of a distinct nature.” Najeeb G Awad, “Personhood as particularity: John Zizioulas, Colin Gunton, and the trinitarian theology of personhood,” Journal of Reformed Theology 4, no. 1 (January 1, 2010): 19-20.
[14] Gaudium et spes, 43.
[15] Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay 'on the Trinity' (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2013) Chapter 1, section 8, para 5.
[16] Anthropology, 140. This issue is highly debated.
[17] Ibid., 144.
[18] See, Anthropology, 144-48, and Amit, Goswami, Richard E. Reed, and Maggie Goswami, The Self-aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World (New York, NY: Putnam's Sons, 1995), Andrew B. Newberg, and Mark Robert Waldman. How God Changes your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 2009), Dean Radin, Supernormal: science, yoga, and the path to extraordinary psychic abilities(New York, NY: Deepak Chopra Books, 2013), and John Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity : the Christian encounter with reality (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).
[19] See, Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science (Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media, 2002).
[20] Anthropology, 154.
[21] See, Jane Alexandra Cook, Sex, Metaphysics, and Madness: Unveiling the Grail on Human Nature and Mental Disorder (Bern: Peter Lang, 2013).
John Paul’s successor Pope Benedict XVI offered “six reasons for not forgetting” that Mary gives “equilibrium of faith” to Catholic Christianity, especially as “conqueror of all heresies:” 1) Mary defends orthodox Christology, 2) Mary expresses the integration of Scripture with Tradition, 3) as a Jewish woman, Mary unites Church and synagogue, 4) Marian devotion balances mind with heart, 5) Mary gives a face to the Church and makes the Faith relational rather than abstract, and finally, 6) Mary reveals the essence of femininity and its indispensable role in the Church.[1]
Thus St. Mary is our pattern of Faith, both in the reception and in the study of Divine Truth. She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she developes it; not enough to submit the Reason, she reasons upon it; not indeed reasoning first, and believing afterwards, with Zacharias, yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing.[2]
Mary conceives in her womb what she first conceives in her spirit. The Immaculata conceives the immaculate Christ by the power of the “uncreated Immaculate Conception.”[3] Hence, Mary of Nazareth is daughter, mother, and spouse of God. Here the complementary pattern of masculine and feminine generation approaches the mystery of trinitarian Love. In the revelation of creation and salvation it is clear: Adam precedes Eve in the external order of nature, but Eve precedes Adam in the internal order of desire. Similarly, the material universe preceded supernatural humanity and Mary’s redemption preceded Christ’s Incarnation. “What is last in execution is first in intention;” every act of the divine missions increases the Father’s perfection, as from perfection to perfection within perfection. The paradox continues with the doctrine of completed Revelation, which is yet made more perfect in its articulations through history, from Tradition to Scripture to Magisterium and back. “In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”[4]
The “nuptial meaning of the body” functions to illustrate a broader geometrical argument against violations of space, a principle continuous with the conservation of energy. The feminine path is the path of least resistance for the female body-soul. This does not mean that she cannot travel in masculine directions, but it does mean that she will never fit in the masculine as well as a male body-soul can. Language evokes images because the brain itself organizes by geometric networks of connecting “words.” Hence it is important to consider the shape that a word conveys because that shape will become a pattern in the neural web. The same is true for sentences, for theses, and for disciplines. For example, Buckminster Fuller suggested that the English word “line” be replaced by “vector:” “The mathematician's ‘straight line’, defined as having length but no width, simply cannot be demonstrated. All physical ‘lines’ upon closer inspection are actually wavelike or fragmented trajectories: even a ‘line of sight’ is a wave phenomenon, insists Fuller; ‘physics has found no straight lines.’ But forces exist, and they pull or push in a line, which can be modeled by a vector.”[5] “Vector” reflects an image closer to the intended meaning of the word “line.” Perhaps the word “feminine” need not always conjure an image of the nearest female, but it should remind one of the innocent Eve and the Virgin Mary, because these are the patterns of association God has chosen for his own ideal of the feminine. These are the images that organize one’s thoughts about the feminine according to the mind of Christ. Every created entity submits to the analogy because it is ontological. However, to say that every individual female is ontologically feminine is not to say that this unique and personal relationship is utterly communicable. Sexual complementarity is not the image of two parallel lines. It is more like a double helix, that is, two parallel vectors forming a single vector, braided around each other so as to maximize interconnection and minimize the use of space. Mathematically, every braid can be braided again because once braided it then implies the emergence of another symmetrical side. The pattern is thus intelligible and unintelligible at the same time, trans-finite, like the Trinity.
In order to expose the danger of an over-simplified binary definition of gender (the quintessential danger of human existence), linguist Deborah Tannen uses the term “complementary schismogenesis.”[6] In masculine and feminine language styles (not exclusive to either sex, but distributed along the expected bell-curves), the stubborn assertion of a masculine style can result in the alienation of those with feminine styles. A pure masculine style communicates on the assumption of hierarchy, while a pure feminine style communicates on the assumption of equality (this sketch is somewhat simplistic, but hierarchy is related to power, logic, and action, while equality is related to connection, emotion, and receptivity). Healthy communication requires awareness of ambiguity in terminology and polysemy in meaning. A ‘masculine’ activity like boxing might be implemented by two males to bring about a ‘feminine’ disposition between them like companionship. A ‘feminine’ exercise like shopping might be used by two females to set up a ‘masculine’ hierarchy of status, like who knows the best stores. This polysemy between masculine and feminine can be endless. What is critical to note is that when one or the other communication style loses an interior reference to its complement, it can become sinisterly dichotomous:[7]
For a simple example of complementary schismogenesis in conversation, imagine that one person is talking slightly louder than the other. If their styles are similar, one or the other or both might adjust their level of loudness so they’d end up more or less the same. But if their ideas about how loud it’s normal to speak are different, each speaker will be made uncomfortable by the other’s volume. The slightly louder one might try to encourage the softer one to speak up by getting a little louder—to set a good example. And the slightly softer one might try to encourage the louder one to speak more softly by setting a good example of softer speech. As each tries harder to remedy the situation, one gets louder and louder while the other gets softer and softer until one is shouting and the other whispering. Each unintentionally provokes the other to intensify the offending behavior.[8]
Thus, one must be able to transport up or down a level of complementarity in order to best serve the other and meet him or her in charity. This is the ‘vector’ of identity; it may have a set (ontological) direction based on biological sex, but it is neither static nor unbroken, and is ultimately a piece of a larger vector. But the masculine and feminine traits cannot be maximally expressed without being anchored in and drawn out by each others’ contraries. Hence, there is an overriding significance of unity and communion in the theologically correct understanding of sexual complementarity. Constant reconnecting with the other (God, spouse, friend, nature, etc.) returns one to one’s self with a fuller identity-image.
Although feminist theologians are trending away from the binary view of sexuality, there is an important sense in which the common denominator of reality will always be relationally binate. The simplest, fastest, most energy-efficient language is binary code. Why binary? Because every possible truth can be communicated through an interaction of contraries that is open to relationship with other pairs, multiplied exponentially. 0 is to 1 as 01 is to 11 as 011 is to 111, and this can continue for infinity multiplied by infinity. What is infinity multiplied by infinity? A pantheistic Trinity. At least that was what many neo-Scholastics accused Georg Cantor of when he discovered this trans-finite set theory. But it is accepted today as a basic mathematical principle. What is often overlooked is that there is a hidden third term that really makes every binary into a trinity, since each coupling is always open to an ‘other’ coupling that transcends the original dimensions of the first pair. In binary code, every number has an infinite set of infinite reciprocals. Philosophers know this same paradox as the one and the many. In linguistics it is called the polysemy of language. The key is to think of the third term as a new logic, as in the logic of childhood, incarnation, or sacrament. The point is not to mathematize relationships, but quite the contrary, to raise the most basic form of reason into the analogy of Holy Family. The nuptial unity of reality flows from the basic shape of its poles, masculine and feminine, which exist on multiple dimensions, in physics, in nature, in the individual, in the couple, in the Church, in society, and, with necessary distinctions, in God Incarnate. Of course, the analogy terminates before God as Trinity, since the Godhead “prior to” creation had no parallel masculine or feminine relations.[9] Hence, the infinite sets of sexual pairs do not begin with God per se, but with Christ’s human nature and God’s covenantal condescension. The male then is not meant to be a sign of aseity or the Godhead, though it is a sign of Christ. Yet, Mary is a truly symmetrical complement to Christ’s perfection in so far as she remains first among contingent beings.
Alfred North Whitehead orchestrated an especially ingenious system for understanding reality as multi-leveled societies of bi-polar entities. Buckminster Fuller accomplished similar feats with his “synergetic geometry.”[10] Cross-disciplinary dialogue in trinitarian theology is important here, as a proper understanding of complementarity will be much helped by a proper understanding of third terms as vestiges of Holy Spirit. Christian theologians should wish to avoid a bipolar schematization of sexuality as much as they avoid binitarianism in the Trinity. The problem of de-subjectifying the Holy Spirit is well documented.[11] Firstly, participation of the created universe in the reality of God can only be analogical. “Being is God’s good gift and we can speak of Being’s kenotic self-donation in beings. Infinity is depicted not as negating human finitude but, more positively, as divine excess, as that fullness and fecundity that creates and sustains, taking on and transforming the contingent human condition.”[12] Analogical participation makes for a genuine encounter with the living Lord, so that God’s being must remain transcendent of and also ordained to the nuptial categories. It is particularly the Holy Spirit’s economic mission that entails the stitching together of time and eternity, humanity and Godhead.[13] The Second Vatican council “exhorts Christians, as citizens of two cities, to strive to discharge their earthly duties conscientiously and in response to the Gospel Spirit.”[14] Renunciation of certain freedoms cannot be avoided, even in Christ, for to create is to sacrifice and to die is to Resurrect. Through baptism, the Holy Spirit indwells in the human soul as the energy and impetus of a will that dances from Love to Love in freedom, which is always also the fulfillment of the individual. Hence, the third ‘person’ of the nuptial analogy can be called reciprocal-generative-freedom. Openness to the life of the literal or metaphorical ‘child,’ and acceptance of the responsibility entailed, cannot be severed from the union of masculine and feminine itself, as this diffusion is simply what Charity does, in imitation of Divine excess. Sarah Coakley articulates this trinitarian vision in her recent systematic endeavor into the theology of desire. Her understanding of the gender binary mirrors the point here made:
The Christian tradition has, of course, been constantly tempted to figure the difference of gender straightforwardly on the latter difference: to align ‘masculinity’ with God and ‘femininity’ with the world (and so to subordinate women to men, while tacitly undermining their status as fully redeemed). More recently, some feminist theology has attempted – in reaction – to model gender on the former difference – straightforwardly toemulate a trinitarian ‘equality in difference’. The position proposed here is that neither of these more familiar alternatives is possible, nor even obviously mandated by the complex authorities of Scripture and tradition. Rather, in the case of human gender there is a subtle transformation of both models caused by their intersection: the ‘fixed’ fallen differences of worldly gender are transfigured precisely by the interruptive activity of the Holy Spirit, drawing gender into trinitarian purgation and transformation. Twoness, one might say, is divinely ambushed by threeness. This is not, I must strongly underscore in closing, a theory of a ‘third gender’, or a theory either of the insignificance, or obliteration, of gender. On the contrary, it is a theory about gender’s mysterious and plastic openness to divine transfiguration.[15]
Christian anthropology, therefore, continues to develop a more sophisticated understanding of human esse, always in the image and growing in the likeness of God. Too often, personal identity and social status have been established by contrary dispositions of sexual desire or different physical generative capacities. If human beings were merely sexual creatures, if they were only upright animals, than patriarchy would be inevitable (even if women became men). It is not so. The locus of identity depends on the end of existence. If one exists only for this world, then total self-determination and sexual amorphism might be sensible for the person. But if it is true that the highest end is to share in the knowledge and love of the Father God, then conformity to that end must by definition influence the identity of individuals as their essential and final cause. In most feminist gender theories, it is assumed that one must detach from restricting social mores in order to discover identity and purpose within the self. In the Scholastic framework it was taught that one must detach from the concupiscence of self in order to discover and discern objective realities. While the former has more complex content, it has a faulty method. The latter was built on outdated science, but had a superior hermeneutic. When Aquinas explicated the cooperation of intellectus and ratio within the mens, the actus purus of non-contingent Being, and the subsistent relations of the trinitarian Persons, he was allowing nuptial analogy to form his mental patterns and his systematic theology. He remains an indispensable reference point for modern theology. Conception in the heart precedes birth in word and deed. God formulates the balance between masculine and feminine on infinite levels, in each human psyche, in each human relationship, in each marriage, in each community, in the Church, in the ecosystem, and in science. Since the promise of diversity is everlasting, the limitations of each expression should incite no envy.
In conclusion, the author proposes a trajectory for future development in theological anthropology and systematic theology as a whole. The scientific paradigm has matured immensely in the last fifty years. Some scientists allege that humans and animals can no longer be strictly divided on the basis of self-awareness, rational thought, emotive powers, or even language. Supposedly, these characteristics exist on a continuum from single-cell to human, and may not be qualitatively different from one to the next.[16] In like manner, the earth’s ecosystem is not a reality distinct from human embodiment. Many thinkers today, including eco-theologians, stress the dire necessity of building sustainable and synergetic relations with nature, a plea that contradicts entrenched habits of ‘Enlightenment’ domination (different from Biblical “dominion”). “No adequate theological anthropology can ignore the importance of the ways we think about our place in the world nor can it avoid the implications of a mistaken sense of disconnection between humans and the natural world.”[17] Neuroscience is another related field that has much to contribute to the theology of the human person. Despite the popularity of strictly empiricist philosophies within this community, there are also many scientists who argue convincingly for forms of “emergent monism” not unadaptable to a Christian metaphysics.[18] Work in fractal geometry by Benoit Mandelbrot and Stephen Wolfram present models of integral complementarity in nature and mathematics, reinforcing the self-propelled fruitfulness of polarity and unity in cohabitation.[19] Personality theory and biochemical physiology are other fields that can contribute to the theology of the body as well. “The Christian cannot simply stand by and ignore these issues. They all raise theological questions. Indeed, they demand theological responses.”[20] The trajectory here proposed is to seek resolution in some or all of these issues through the ordering principle of generative complementarity.
John Paul II’s theology of sexuality is no reiteration of ancient Greco-Roman misogyny. It is not primarily an argument for the conservation of space or energy – very crudely realized in the geometrical interlocking of male and female bodies (though this fact is not without significance). The ontological orientation of the female to femininity, the so-called feminine genius, may be in a woman’s soul, in her body, in her personality, and in her vocation in very different manners, with different shapes and, therefore, different kinds of “spouses.” The paradox of the feminine genius lies in its attention to the personal encounter, which necessarily preempts the abstraction of masculine and feminine categories. Thus from the feminine perspective in particular, a definition of woman eludes idealization, as the individual person or concrete moment is experienced as mystery and dignity first. Nevertheless, a human being is a spirogenetic or incarnate mystery, and therefore, woman is capable of and called to communicate herself for the sake of love, just as God has ordained himself to be ‘for us.’ The subtle interplay of freedom and determination in Catholic sexual teaching awaits specialized theological and pastoral excavation through this feminine and Marian hermeneutic.
Finally, it is the author’s thesis that the nuptial analogy provides the best trilateral pattern for all networks of human science because its neural image is the only conceivable picture of a non-contingent Love that is Reality itself (not to mention it is also the favored analogy of the sacred page). Some psychoanalysts have even made the argument that sexual complementarity should be as primary a logical principle as non-contradiction.[21] Through this method, one might work toward a systematic theology of the Holy Family. The Catholic faith is a divine Love affair so ontologically intimate as to be one nature, ‘one flesh,’ one idea, one system, one spirit, and one God, simultaneously and infinitely diffused by this single source and then infinitely interrelated to each expression. What is of greatest importance for the trinitarian nuptial analogy of masculine-feminine-fruitfulness is that God has chosen it, God has sacramentalized it, specifically in Matrimony and Holy Orders. As the essentiality of the spousal mystery becomes more and more realized through these sacramental portals, so the tripartite nature of Love-Reality is being gently unveiled. For this reason, the normalizing of the spousal analogy is a Christian moral imperative. This is the point at which the light of the Catholic faith outshines all other suns. The Bethlehem star-child is really a quasar, drawing a whole universe of trinities into its singularity, ultimately eclipsing all distinctions except for persons, who if they are human, are everlastingly male or female. Any creature that does not follow this design of I AM, in fact, does not exist. Only one can lead the perichoretic dance and he calls himself ‘Our Father.’
[1] Fr. Johann G. Roten, “Benedict XVI and Mary” (February 20, 2013): http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/benedictmary.html
[2] John Henry Newman, “Sermon XV,” in Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford (London, New York: Longmans, Green, 1900), 313.
[3] See, H. M. Manteau-Bonamy, Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit: Marian teachings of St. Maximiliam Kolbe (Libertyville, IL: Marytown Press, 2001).
[4] Essay on Development, 40.
[5] Amy C. Edmondson, A Fuller Explanation: the synergetic geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Boston, MA: Birkhauser, 1987), 9.
[6] Deborah Tannen. That's Not What I Meant!: how conversational style makes or breaks relationships (New York, NY: Harper, 2011),129-31.
[7] It might be said that Satan is an archetype of masculinity cut off from the feminine by pride. Lucifer’s “masculinity” is perverted because it looks for no complement, it asserts itself against God’s will like a determined principle even more unyielding than gravity.
[8] That’s Not What I Meant!, 129-30.
[9] Referring here to the apophatic nature of the Blessed Trinity.
[10] See, Amy C. Edmondson, A Fuller Explanation: the Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Boston, MA: Birkhauser, 1987), and Marc A. Pugliese The One, the Many, and the Trinity: Joseph A. Bracken and the Challenge of Process Metaphysics (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2011).
[11] See, Thomas G. Weinandy, The Father's Spirit of Sonship: Reconceiving the Trinity (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995), and, Gavin D’Costa, Sexing the Trinity: Gender, Culture and the Divine (London: SCM, 2000).
[12] Declan Marmion and Rik Van Nieuwenhove. An Introduction to the Trinity (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 218.
[13] “Here lies the particularity of the Spirit’s hypostasis in the Trinity, according to [Colin] Gunton. The Spirit makes the triune communion a free perichoresis, where the one and the many, being and relationship, person and substance coincide as one God. The Spirit is the agent of freedom and particularity in the Trinity, as Gunton correctly reminds contemporary theology. He brings to our attention that the Spirit wipes away separation and crosses the boundaries between beings without dissolving their mutual integrity. The Spirit creates and protects particularity in the face of homogenization. He transfers the relation with the other from a relation of subversion into a relation of self-designation. He is constitutive of the particular relations of the Son to His Father and to His church. The Spirit transforms Jesus’ historical relations into particular relations, which reveal one and the same Son of God. Similarly, the Spirit grants freedom to the people of God, a freedom that, according to Gunton, ‘derives from their institution into a new, particular, framework of relationships.’ Pneumatological particularization makes the church a community of a distinct nature.” Najeeb G Awad, “Personhood as particularity: John Zizioulas, Colin Gunton, and the trinitarian theology of personhood,” Journal of Reformed Theology 4, no. 1 (January 1, 2010): 19-20.
[14] Gaudium et spes, 43.
[15] Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay 'on the Trinity' (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2013) Chapter 1, section 8, para 5.
[16] Anthropology, 140. This issue is highly debated.
[17] Ibid., 144.
[18] See, Anthropology, 144-48, and Amit, Goswami, Richard E. Reed, and Maggie Goswami, The Self-aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World (New York, NY: Putnam's Sons, 1995), Andrew B. Newberg, and Mark Robert Waldman. How God Changes your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 2009), Dean Radin, Supernormal: science, yoga, and the path to extraordinary psychic abilities(New York, NY: Deepak Chopra Books, 2013), and John Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity : the Christian encounter with reality (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).
[19] See, Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science (Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media, 2002).
[20] Anthropology, 154.
[21] See, Jane Alexandra Cook, Sex, Metaphysics, and Madness: Unveiling the Grail on Human Nature and Mental Disorder (Bern: Peter Lang, 2013).