Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Mensch als Mann und Frau: Abbild der göttlichen Hierarche (Trinität, Relation); der Mensch als Ereignis der Bezogenheit (Relationalität); Zölibat, Priester (Fußnote)

Kurzinhalt: Just as the Persons of the Trinity are not free to enter into any sort of relationships they would like to have with one another, so men and women may not enter into any sort of sexual relationships they would like to have.

Textausschnitt: MAN: HIERARCHICAL IMAGE OF THE HIERARCHICAL GOD

96b Our creation in the image of God, we might therefore suppose, entails an analogous reading of person at the human level. This means, first, that just as the Persons of the Trinity are communal and relational, so are we. Therefore, the individual human being, considered solely in himself, cannot be the image of God. Moreover, it is not even enough that man be male and female to image God, since male and female considered solely as male and female do not necessarily entail relationality. Once we understand, however, that the man and the woman are created as gift for one another ("It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him", Gen 2:18), it becomes apparent that the man and the woman are called to enter into a relationship with one another and to achieve within that relationship the fullness of what it means to be a male person and a female person, respectively. (Fs)

97a Not just any relationship will do, however. They are explicitly called to enter into a marital relationship. "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Gen 2:24). Only in marriage does the man become husband and the woman wife, and these are the specific relations they are called as male and female to be. Moreover, only the marital relations of husband and wife are able to effect or bring into existence that sacramental bond which constitutes the third element in their imaging of the triune God and make irrevocable until death their marital relationship to one another.1

97b That they are sexually differentiated is crucial to their imaging of God, because they are called to image not only the plurality of Persons but also the distinction or differentiation of relations within the Godhead. The relation of husband to wife is different from that of wife to husband in a way that is analogous to the difference between, say, the relation of Father to Son and the relation of Son to Father. The relation of husband cannot be reduced to that of wife, and vice versa. By the same token, the husband and the wife, like the Persons of the Trinity, are also non-interchangeable, that is, the male cannot do those things appropriate to the relation of wife per se, just as the female cannot do those things appropriate to the relation of husband per se. (Fs)

98a Third, and again this point cannot be stressed too much, their sexual differentiation is also crucial to the fact that they, like the Persons of the Trinity, are ordered specifically to one another, male to female and female to male. Just as the Persons of the Trinity are not free to enter into any sort of relationships they would like to have with one another, so men and women may not enter into any sort of sexual relationships they would like to have. The woman is created specifically for the man, as gift to the man, just as he is created for the woman, as gift to her. This is reflected, first in the fact that she is specifically created to be a "helper fit for him" and, second, in the fact that Adam, which means "humanity", does not become and is not referred to as male until the point at which Eve is created as female. Furthermore, she is created for him as the gift of wife, just as he is created for her as the gift of husband. That each is sexually ordered to the other in this way and no other is apparent in the fact that only the spousal relationship of husband and wife can effect that bond which constitutes the permanence of their relationship even as it makes that relationship an image of the trinitarian communion of love.2

Fußnote 2/15
15 Once we understand that men and women are created to enter into the ordered relationship of husband and wife, it becomes easier to see why Christ is male and why the ordained priesthood is open to males only. For, as Ephesians tells us, the "profound mystery" at the heart of God's plan for our redemption is the covenantal union of Christ and the Church, a union which is anticipated in the creation of the first man and woman. 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church" (Eph 5:31-32). The marital union of Christ and the Church is, as the New Covenant, the fundamental and irrevocable image of the triune communion of love. Christ's maleness, therefore, is not the disclosure of some divine maleness (in God there is no gender), but the disclosure of Christ's relation with the Church. He is male because he is the relation of bridegroom. The priest, who is the sacramental sign of Christ and in whose Person he acts, must therefore be capable of entering into that relation which vis a vis the Church is explicitly male. To think that a woman can do this is to suppose that male and female are not relationally ordered to one another, but simply interchangeable with one another.
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98b Fourth and finally, both the man and the woman are fully human, but at the same time each is radically dependent upon the other, since each images God not in himself or herself, but only in the "unity of the two". Indeed, just as in the Trinity, the three Persons are persons only by virtue of the fact that they are related to one another; so analogously the male and the female are persons only by virtue of the fact that they too are related to one another. In the words of Cardinal Ratzinger, "relativity toward the other constitutes the human person. The human person is the event or being of relativity.3 (Fs)