Male and Female, Adam and Eve – A Brief Meditation

As Scripture affirms, God created male and female, and within this creation He imbued male and female not only with a fundamental equality rooted in the equal sharing of His image but also with real and true distinctions and beautiful differences.

In God’s pristine creation before the Fall there was no confusion in the fundamental identities and vocations of male and female. Adam knew he was Adam, a man created from God’s own hand from the dust of the earth. Eve knew she was Eve, a woman, fashioned by God’s own hand from one of the ribs of Adam.

Adam, as man, knew how fitting and right is was to have Eve from his side by his side different though she was and exclaimed, “Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” Eve, as woman, knew how fitting and right it was to be the helpmate for Adam, as God created and called her to be such for man. Thus, Adam and Eve both knew themselves as individual persons and as a union, the essential and distinct two forms of humanity: male and female.

Moreover, male and female are united in mutual mission – to praise God and to be fruitful and multiple/subdue the earth and to be self-gift to another. And yet they are distinct to the other in how male and female exist, how they carry the mission to completion, and how they give themselves totally in the inseparable union to the other.

This was clear from the beginning between the first man and woman and continues to today between all men and women in both physical and spiritual ways.

Image: Ethiopian icon of Adam and Eve. Public Domain