Man and Woman, Greek and Hebrew, Body and Spirit
We are reading Ephesians 5 this week.
Coincidentally this morning, I came across a review of Origen’s Revenge: The Greek and Hebrew Roots of Christian Thinking on Male and Female, by Brian Patrick Mitchell. I don’t endorse everything in the review (as always with links) and I haven’t read the book. Still, from an LDS standpoint, it sounds fascinating. Mr. Mitchell apparently does a deep dive into the Greek philosophical approach to men and women, which basically saw women as knock-off men. Or else men as the higher “spirit” sex and women as the lower “body” sex. From which much evil follows, including in Christianity.
Time for a second look at “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?”
The Proclamation on the Family is both a timely and practical warning against contemporary evils but also, I and you have been realizing, a profound doctrinal statement. The sexes are real, and good. Sex is real, and good. The body is eternally meaningful. You are your physical being. And so on. Deeply rewarding.
A gentile friend of mine once said, “I got so misogynist that now I love and respect women.” He meant he’d spent so much time figuring out the ways in which women could not be counted on to act like men that he had eventually absorbed that they weren’t men.
P.S. The official JG position is that the best lens to understand the sexes is sex. At this time we refuse to elaborate.
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Sute
October 9, 2023
“The official JG position is that the best lens to understand the sexes is sex. ”
Exactly. The biological imperatives involved in driving the reproductive process shape us at such a fundamental level across our development cycle. And it evolves within us as we age and that imperative towards reproduction becomes less time sensitive.
I’m always amazed at the people who claim little difference between the sexes when you have on one hand a woman’s body is constantly in some hormonal & physical state of rather extreme reproductive preparation. Meanwhile men are typically bombarded with their own imperative to ensure they reproduce as frequently as possible.
Not saying those natural states must be heeded in the way they occur to us any more than ssa must be heeded as it occurs. But obviously those biological realities shape us in ways we never grasp.