There are two things in which every person is a self-proclaimed expert: Religion and Politics. In these two areas it does not seem necessary for a person to learn or accept anything from his predecessor; his expert and infallible opinions of these matters are rather infused within himself. Though he breaks with every tradition of his forefathers, any one of these pseudo-doctors agrees adamantly upon one thing shared between nearly every other opinion in the world, namely, that there is something wrong with the world. Staying up all night (or at least very late) and “solving the world’s problems” is a favorite pastime of mine, a pastime which I am not alone in enjoying: it is a very common practice enjoyed by many. The peculiar thing about these late-night excursions to free the world from the effects of the Fall is that inevitably, no matter how many people are involved in the conversation or how many conclusions are arrived at which definitively affirm “That’s what’s wrong with the world!”, the problems never seem to get fixed; on the contrary, they often seem to take a turn for the worse.
This outcome of not solving the world’s problems is not peculiar to these conversations. No one really expects the world to be fixed merely by talking about it, but with all the programs and systems and charities at work in the world, movements from “just talk” to obvious attempts at “fixing” or “alleviating” a problem, one might be justifiably confused as to why the world continues in its worldy ways (no pun intended). This confusing state is very aptly captured and described by Governor Nix in Tomorrowland, a 2015 movie produced by Disney, when he says that “…[the] earth [is] crumbling all around you. You have simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation! Explain that one!”
Obviously talking about what is wrong with the world late at night will not fix the world; we wake up the next morning to find the world right where we left it the night before. Apparently the systems and programs set up on industrial levels to fight the problems in the world are not enough to cure the world of hunger, the need for healthcare, injustice, war, death, or really any problem at all. What is the problem?! The problem is that there is no problem, at least not in the same way we have been talking about. There is no ONE problem to which we can point to, the simple removal of which will effectively “fix” the world. “The poor will always be with you” speaks our Savior, a prophecy which is realized more and more as time goes on. The true problem is one which the world is incapable of even pointing to (let alone fix), because it exists in a reality which the world has all but forgotten, and speaks a language which is completely, even essentially foreign to the world. The problem is - bear with me - the absence of something truly Feminine.
I recognize instantly that this is a loaded statement. Perhaps it would be more accurately stated as the absence of the truly Masculine because of the eviction of the truly Feminine. It seems clear, even obvious, to any who care to look that it is not Femininity that is under attack but Masculinity. Countless examples lend themselves readily to confirm this assertion. Modern media (including commercials) paint men as bumbling idiots and numbskulls, interested in beer and football, who become dopey and even more useless (if that was possible) as soon as he comes across a pretty face. Laws, especially governing family matters, are heavily weighted to favor women. A friend once told me that when she was taking her self-defense course, she was told that all a woman has to do in a courtroom is say that “he made me feel threatened”: give that room a feminist judge and that man, guilty or not, will be serving heavy jail time. There is clearly an attack and a very big absence of the truly Masculine, to be sure. How can there possibly be an absence of Femininity? To answer this, I would like to bring us back to the creation of Man in the Garden of Eden.
In the second story of Creation, after having given all the animals of the earth a name and encountering them all, Adam finds no suitable partner for himself. This passage is translated countless different ways, all vividly describing that Adam realized a problem with the world (remember, this world was created pronounced “good,” and as yet had not been stained by Sin). However, though Adam realizes that there is no “suitable” partner for himself, he does not cognate just what the suitable partner would look like, or what that partner would be. The “suitable partner” for Adam is she who completes him, and who makes Man “in the image of God”: Eve.
What does it mean to be created in the Image of God? The Image of God is not a picture, or a replication, but a stark reality of living participation in the Divine Nature “insofar as he or she is a rational and free creature capable of knowing God and loving him, (JPII, on the Dignity and Vocation of Women)" and also by the fact that he is in need of relationship with other physical, living, rational creatures, whom God has created, for “It is not good for Man to be alone”. God is a rational Person, but He is also in a perpetual communal relationship with Himself in the Trinity. He is perpetually and intrinsically, as part of His Nature, encountering other Personhood. Our great opportunity for existing as full participants in the Image of God comes from our encounter with other Human Beings, who share in the Divine Image to the same extent as we ourselves do. We are called to live in a relationship with persons of our own Nature, just as God is in a relationship with Persons who share His own Nature.
When Adam beheld Eve for the first time, Adam was rendered awestruck, and realized in a moment what had been missing. He recognized immediately who Eve was, and experienced a sense of catharsis and realization of what he had been missing, as seen in his emphatic words: “This now is bone of bone and flesh of my flesh” (some translations have Adam as saying “aha” or “at last”). Eve completes Adam and makes the Divine Image possible in Man because she is an essential sharer in Adams nature (Man), while simultaneously existing as completely other from him. Adam would have remained “alone” in the garden if Benjamin had been created instead of Eve, for Benjamin would not have been truly outside of Adam: intrinsically they would have been the same. Eve is the only possible new creation who completes man, bringing Adam outside of himself through an encounter with a person who is intrinsically other.
Eve brings Adam outside of himself and completes him, much like the way in which Pieper says Intellectus brings man outside of himself and completes his knowledge, which is primarily Ratio. According to ancient philosophy, Ratio is “the power of discursive, logical thought, of searching and examination, of abstraction, of definition, and drawing conclusions (Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture).” This form of reasoning has always been considered, and indeed is self-evidently a form of work. An example of Ratio would be the logical steps followed in a geometrical proposition, or the deduction of a detective at a crime scene. This form of understanding is necessary, for knowledge “is certainly quite impossible without work, without the labor improbus of discursive thought”: Ratio is “the properly human element in our knowledge.” It is active, and is the leader of human reason.
However, Ratio is not its own end and by itself remains incomplete; rather, it leads the reason towards something outside of itself. Man is not purely physical, nor is he complete in himself but “reaches out beyond the sphere of the ‘human,’ touching on the order of pure spirits.” The knowledge at which Ratio is aimed and which completes it is Intellectus, which is “understanding in so far as it is the capacity of simplex intuitus, of that simple vision to which truth offers itself like a landscape to the eye… [it is] beyond the sphere allotted to man.” Intellectus is, unlike Ratio, not work, but is instead passive, beholding and understanding truth and beauty in the same way as our eye perceives light, or our ears sound. Ratio is aimed at attaining this form of knowledge as its true end.
Man’s knowledge is both Ratio and Intellectus simultaneously. “The discursive element is fused with ‘intellectual contemplation.’” Ratio is human reason proper and is prior to and necessary for understanding; it is true work. However, Ratio leads the reason outside of itself and through contemplation encounters its fulfillment through Intellectus, which is beyond the sphere of humans and exists as a true image of Divine knowledge. As the crown and glory of understanding, Intellectus gives Ratio the means of fulfilling its end through a relationship with itself as intrinsically other but still sharing the same fundamental nature of understanding and knowledge. Traditionally, wisdom (Sophia) was depicted as female for this very reason. In the physical world, the male was concerned with the practical completion of tasks while the female traditionally brought the male outside of himself and reminded him of what he had forgotten, that there was more to his life than his tasks. In a word, then, true “Femininity” might be said to be a sense of transcendence, of something which brings Man (not just men) outside of himself to a point wherein he can experience the metaphysical.
The natural world in one sense can be said to tend towards the Masculine inasmuch as it is called to work, to till the earth and subdue it. However, after the Fall it holds a tendency to confine itself in its own sphere of work and the daily grind, to reduce itself to logical theories and formulaic solutions. In the fight to “empower” women, which boils down to nothing more than women trying to be more like what they perceive men to be, the truly Masculine has become isolated. Too many people are trying to define and rise to be powerful, successful, and monetarily comfortable: all good things in themselves, but they are seen to be specifically Masculine traits. And it is not good for Man to be alone. The Masculine only finds its fullness within the context of and in relation to the existence of the Feminine. So, here at the end, we find it is not merely an absence of the Feminine after all but the besieging and abandonment of the Masculine because of the absence of the Feminine in all of us.
