AND THE TWO SHALL BE ONE

Tragedies end in death; comedies end in marriage. This is an aesthetic truth that lovers of drama, especially Shakespearean drama, know well. But it is also an intensely and essentially human truth known to cultural anthropologists who study the myths and rituals of both primitive and modern societies. In the tragic vision of life, whether it be expressed in ancient warrior legends, tales of scapegoat kings, or movie Westerns, the protagonist inevitably ends up cut off from his society, his family, and his comrades. Even, perhaps especially, in stories where the hero does something to save his civilization, he nevertheless finds himself isolated from his society, either because he is killed, maimed, or sent into an (often self-imposed) exile. In the comic vision, expressed alike in fairy tales, mating rituals, and melodramas, the story ends with the hero being integrated into, rather than isolated from, his society. And in most cases, that integration comes in the form of a climactic wedding between a male hero who had previously prided himself on his radical independence and a female heroine who teaches the cocky, overly self-reliant hero that without her—and the community she embodies—he is incomplete.
Most people take for granted that the tragic vision is necessarily wiser, more serious, and more mature than the comic, but this is a misunderstanding. It is true that most of Shakespeare’s great tragedies were written after his comedies, but the bard did not end his career with Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. In his final (and, I would argue, most mature) creative period, Shakespeare wrote a number of romances—Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest—that follow a strange, hybrid structure. The first half of each play is tragic in scope, beginning with exile, loss, and death; but then, through some surprising, unexpected twist, the plays end in the comic vein, with reconciliation, integration, and a wedding. Despite the strong critical prejudice in favor of literature that is dark, despairing, cynical, and nihilistic, there is nothing childish, simple-minded, or falsely sentimental about the happy ending. Many of the greatest and most “serious” works conceived of by the human imagination—The Odyssey, The Oresteia, The Divine Comedy, The Brothers Karamazov—have happy endings.
Indeed, the Bible itself boasts a comic finale that is gloriously, unapologetically happy. In the manner not of a Greek tragedy but of a Shakespearean romance, the Bible begins with death and exile (the Fall of Man) and ends with a marriage. The modern reader, obsessed with images of “doom and gloom,” might easily overlook the fact that the Book of Revelation does not conclude with the Battle of Armageddon or the Great White Throne Judgment but with the Great Marriage of Christ (the Bridegroom) and the Church (the Bride). It is this gala event, this celebration of the conjugal union of God and his people, that signals the coming of the new heaven and the new earth, that restores—and surpasses—the bliss of Eden, and that ushers in that glorious new age when the dwelling of God shall be with men.
Now, I am well aware that the Great Marriage, like the harps, seals, white robes, and golden censer described in Revelation (5:8, 6:1, 7:9, 8:3), is meant, in part, to be taken metaphorically. Nevertheless, I would argue that the Bible’s proclamation of a climactic wedding between Christ and his Church exists in a realm that, if not quite literal, is certainly far more than symbolic. Numerous metaphorical-symbolic titles are ascribed to God in the Bible (Shepherd, Landlord, Rock, Fortress, and so forth), but the title of Father stands out amongst all of them. The New Testament, particularly the teachings of Jesus, makes it clear that we are to address—and conceive of—God as Father, not merely as being like a Father. In the same way, the Wedding Feast described in the last two chapters of Revelation reveals truths about the nature of God, man, and heaven that are far deeper and more essential than those expressed by the harps, seals, and robes.
I do not choose my analogy lightly. Scripture offers us two basic metaphors for understanding the relationship between God and his people (Israel in the Old Testament; the Church in the New). In the former, God is Father and we are his son; in the latter, God is Bridegroom and we are his bride. Freud would have us believe that the Fatherhood of God is merely a manmade notion, a psychological projection of our earthly relationship with our own biological father. That the truth might, in fact, be the opposite—that earthly fatherhood is a reflection, an imitation of the divine and eternal Fatherhood of God—seems not to have occurred to the materialistic Freud. In our own day, there are many who would reduce marriage to a social contract or a business partnership or an institution for facilitating the self-actualization of two radically egalitarian, and therefore non-merge-able, egos. For those who hold such a reductive view of marriage, the biblical image of the Wedding Feast will appear to be nothing more than a quaint, sentimental metaphor, a projection onto God of a bourgeois, out-of-date, sexist notion of matrimony.
But what if the reverse is true? What if the Great Marriage embodies something primary, essential, originary? What if it offers a key—perhaps the key—to unlocking the mystery that lies at the heart of marriage, and therefore at the heart of sexuality and the complementary nature of masculinity and femininity? If it does, then we who live in an age of rampant sexual and gender confusion need to pay special attention. The preservation of human society, culture, and civilization may just depend upon it.

Mystery upon Mystery

In his letter to the church at Ephesus, St. Paul makes it clear that human marriage is indeed both a reflection and a prophecy of the Great Marriage. After forging a clear relational link between husband/wife and Christ/Church (of which more later), Paul goes on to define the essence of marriage and to ground that essence in the Great Marriage: “‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32-33; NIV throughout).
Although Paul’s definition of marriage, like that of Jesus himself (Matthew 19:4-6) is identical to that given in Genesis 2:24, it is worth noting that both add a caveat that intensifies the nature of the two-into-one bond: Jesus by proclaiming that the marriage union is for life; Paul by explaining that it foreshadows the eternal union between Christ and the Church. At the heart of all three passages—not to mention the Great Marriage—lies the biblical faith that two separate things (husband and wife, God and man) can become one while still remaining two.
Indeed, I would argue that this faith in the possibility of a synthesis that unites but does not obliterate the elements it fuses marks the central and most distinctive teaching in all of Christian theology. Jews and Muslims are willing to accept the humanity of Jesus but reject his divinity; Hindus are willing to accept his divinity but only because they believe that all things are, ultimately, divine. But the New Testament presents Jesus as the Only-Begotten, Incarnate Son, fully human and fully divine, 100% man and 100% God. Significantly, human beings, though we do not share Jesus’ unique God-Man status, do share something of his unique incarnational nature: for we are not souls trapped in bodies or bodies covering souls, but “enfleshed” souls—fully spiritual even as we are fully physical. And, wonder of wonders, our dual nature—100% flesh, 100% spirit—will persist in heaven.
Though Christians often imagine that in heaven they will be bodiless spirits flitting through space, such is not the orthodox teaching of the Church. God already has creatures who are pure spirit (the angels), even as he has creatures who are pure body (animals). We, the amphibians of the universe, were meant to be—and to remain—creatures of a hybrid nature. Thus, even in heaven, we will be cloaked in Resurrection Bodies like unto the one that Jesus bore after his Resurrection. Many imagine that when the Second Person of the Trinity “agreed” to the Incarnation, he was only making a pledge that would last for 33 years. But that is not the case. Now and for all eternity, Jesus will remain fully human and fully divine; like us, he will forever bear a Resurrection body. When the Word became flesh (John 1:14), it was not for an age but for all time.
But the centrality of the incarnation, of the two into one, does not stop here. The wonderful truth that is revealed to us through the more-than-symbolic symbol of the Great Marriage is that in heaven we will be one with God, and yet continue to remain ourselves. I can think of no doctrine more antithetical to Christianity than the Eastern concept of the One Soul. The absolute obliteration of personhood taught by those who view heaven as a spiritual nebula into which all souls are finally sucked is profoundly incompatible with the Christian promise of “the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). The consummation toward which the Christian life moves is not annihilation but glorification, not the extinction but the perfection of the human person. Only in heaven shall we be fully ourselves, but we shall only be fully ourselves for we shall be, simultaneously, one with the Incarnate Bridegroom. Christ will take us fully into himself, but he will not devour us; he shall be with us and in us and through us, but without violating our ontological integrity.
How is this possible? It is possible because the Great Marriage, of which earthly marriage is a reflection, is itself a reflection of an even higher and greater reality: the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one and yet three; each Person of the Godhead has his own unique integrity, and yet all three share in the same divine substance. What the mystery of the Incarnation is in our world, the mystery of the Trinity is in that eternal realm which is without beginning or ending. Indeed, I would theorize that the 2-in-1 nature of the Incarnate Christ is, in part at least, an extension into our spatiotemporal realm of the 3-in-1 nature of the Triune Godhead. Mystery upon mystery upon mystery, and yet the mystery is ever the same: the two (or three) which is also one; perfect diversity in the midst of perfect unity that is held in a perfect and eternal state of active suspension. Not the dialectic of Hegel and Marx, in which the poles of thesis and antithesis are collapsed, often violently, before the synthesis can emerge, but a divine fusion in which the once opposed elements yet remain.
Such is the incarnational, 2-in-1 nature of the Triune God, of Jesus Christ, and of heaven (the Great Marriage), a paradoxical reality/truth that is reflected on the earth in at least two ways. Paul describes both of these ways in his Epistle to the Ephesians. The first is found within the Church: “This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus” (3:6). The second is found within the marriage union of male and female and has already been quoted above (5:32-33-). In both cases the two elements (Jew and Gentile, male and female) are, like the persons of the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, and Christ and the Church, to be united but not collapsed. The resulting union is complementarian rather than egalitarian, dynamically equivalent rather than blandly inclusivist; it results not in sameness but in true uniqueness, not in a nebulous equality but in an exact correspondence.
It is only once we have understood the fullness and richness of the incarnational nature of God and his creation that we can begin to fathom the mystery inherent in masculinity, femininity, and the union of the two in marriage.

Bone of my Bone

The first poem spoken on this earth by a human being was a love poem, a celebration of the complementary natures of male and female. It was spoken by Adam when his eyes first fell upon the strange and wonderful creature that God had just fashioned from his rib:

“This is now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called woman,
for she was taken out of man.” (Genesis 2:23)

The simultaneous unity and division, oneness and “two-ness” of male and female inspires in Adam a burst of creativity that combines awe with thankfulness. Earlier, Adam had been invited and authorized by God to give names to the animals (verse 19). In his poem, he practices that right again, but in a far more personal and intimate way. The name of this new and beautiful creature, so like himself and yet so different, will be linked directly to his own. She will not be, like the dumb beasts, a thing outside of himself, but an extension of his very being and nature.

Like so many artists after him, Adam, the first poet, will use his art to build bridges, to forge connections, to uncover sympathetic links. As the incarnational nature of God, Christ, Man, and Heaven imbues the marital and sexual union of male and female with transcendent and eternal meaning, so does it infuse the arts with a vision of unity in diversity, similitude in dissimilitude. The rich complementarity of the sexes, though it may not be the literal inspiration for all of the highest works of art, lies at the core of the creative impulse. The synthesis of universal and concrete, general and particular, idea and image finds its parallel in the union of husband and wife, masculine and feminine, even as the artist’s drive to impregnate his material with his own vital creative seed finds its parallel in the sexual act.
It is precisely because of the complementarity of the sexes, because they are so perfectly fitted for one another, that Adam’s poem is followed immediately by that very definition of marriage that, we saw earlier, both Jesus and Paul quote: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (2:24). Inasmuch as “one flesh” refers to the union of husband and wife, it reflects the 2-in-1 incarnational nature of Jesus Christ; inasmuch as it refers to the sexual act—and thus to the conception of a child, a third being who shares in the same substance as the father and mother who conceived him but who yet possesses his own separate integrity—the “one flesh” points as well to the 3-in-1 triune nature of the Godhead. (Roman Catholics have traditionally viewed the Holy Family—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—as a type of the Holy Trinity.)
I said a moment ago that Genesis 2:23 records the first poem spoken on the earth, but it is not the first poem recorded in the Bible. That designation belongs to Genesis 1:27, which the New International Version correctly prints in poetic form:

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

Here too we find the same fittedness of the sexes; both are distinct, both are equally created in the image of God, and yet both belong together. As if to drive home the link between this verse and Genesis 2:23-24, Jesus subtly combines the two in his definition of marriage:

“Haven’t you read,” he replied [to the Pharisees who were questioning him about divorce], “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

Marriage is not a business partnership that can be dissolved when profits start to decline. The husband and wife are so fitted together that their union makes of them a unity; it is precisely because they were made uniquely male and female that they join, for life, to become one flesh. Indeed, there is a strong suggestion that the oneness that existed before they were made male and female (when Eve was still in the bosom of Adam, if I may be permitted to use such strong Trinitarian/Incarnational language with reference to the sexes) is in some ways restored through the marriage bond.

Beyond Androgyny

“Unity arises out of polarity,” writes Karl Stern in The Flight from Woman (1965),

The highest expression of this is the idea that man is androgynous (male-female) in his origin and his final destination. The most famous presentation of this idea is found in Genesis when God created man in His image, “male and female”—before the separation of Eve out of the body of Adam. This, according to Christian tradition, indicated the androgynous nature of the Godhead Himself—meaning, again, that here polarity in union is the expression of fullness of being.

I quote this passage from Stern as it appears in Leanne Payne’s seminal study, Crisis in Masculinity (1985). The fact that Payne quotes and agrees with Stern might make it seem at first that Payne and Stern are feminists who, by suggesting that Adam was androgynous before Eve was “removed” from him, would breakdown all distinctions between masculine and feminine. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Immediately after quoting Stern, Payne clearly distinguishes her own (and Stern’s) complementarian position from that of feminists who would dismiss masculinity and femininity as mere social constructs:

We should also remember that there is a false androgyny, proclaimed especially by certain feminist and homosexual activists. These people proclaim that there are no significant differences between male and female, that biological facts and imagery simply do not matter. Even some Christian feminists come near to saying that. [In the two decades since Payne wrote her book, many have said it!] But their view is misguided and not in correspondence with reality.
Masculinity and femininity are attributes of God, and we, in His image, are most surely—in our spiritual, psychological, and physical beings—bipolar creatures. Our Creator, holding all that is true and real within Himself, reflects both the masculine and the feminine, and so do we. The more nearly we function in His image, the more nearly we reflect both the masculine and the feminine in their proper balance—that is, in the differing degrees and aptitudes appropriate to our sexual identities as male and female.

Androgyny, when used in the context of God and of the pre-Eve and post-Resurrection Adam, need not connote an egalitarian sameness or a neutered sexlessness. It should connote instead a state that refines and perfects, rather than eliminates, the masculinity and femininity we are familiar with. Too often, C. S. Lewis argues in Chapter 11 of Miracles, modern man speaks of God in negative terms: as incorporeal or impersonal. As if God were like a man with his body and personality removed! God is neither incorporeal nor impersonal; if anything he is trans-corporeal and trans-personal. Many make a similar mistake when they speak of the ultimate origins (arche) and final end (telos) of our distinct but complementary sexual natures.
Indeed, in Chapter 16 of Miracles, Lewis makes clear the link between the modern misunderstanding of the nature of God and of the nature of sexuality. It is not “necessary to suppose,” he explains,

that the distinction of sexes will disappear [in heaven]. What is no longer needed for biological purposes may be expected to survive for splendour. Sexuality is the instrument both of virginity and of conjugal virtue; neither men nor women will be asked to throw away weapons they have used victoriously. It is the beaten and the fugitives who throw away their swords. The conquerors sheathe theirs and retain them. “Trans-sexual” would be a better word than “sexless” for the heavenly life.

Modern/postmodern feminists (whether they be secular or Christian) tend to use the term androgyny as, finally, a synonym for sexless; Stern, Payne, Lewis, and, I would argue, the true biblical and patristic tradition cleave to the higher meaning intimated in the passage by Lewis. Of course, we must keep in mind that Lewis uses the word transsexual in a way that is directly contrary to its usage today. The modern notion of a transsexual as someone who desires to have, or actually goes through, a sex change operation is undergirded by a belief that male and female, masculine and feminine are not real, essential states of being but simply choices that we make.

Lewis (and Payne) will have none of it: masculinity and femininity are true essences that run far deeper than our corresponding genitalia. Masculinity and femininity will no more be collapsed by heaven’s lack of need for sexual reproduction than the persons of the Trinity will be collapsed when, the Great Marriage having been effected, we no longer need a mediating Savior (the Second Person of the Trinity) to intercede between a holy God and a fallen humanity, or a sustaining Spirit (the Third Person of the Trinity) to indwell the Church and protect and guide her through her sojourn in the earthly wilderness.
Lewis and Payne, however, are by no means the only recent apologists for the traditional, orthodox position regarding the complementary nature of the sexes. The orthodox position has also been gloriously—dare I say definitively—explained and defended by Pope John Paul II in his magisterial The Theology of the Body. Based on a series of weekly general audiences delivered between 1979 and 1984, The Theology of the Body is essential reading not only for traditional Catholics but for Evangelical Protestants (like myself) who have become alarmed by the growing number of Christians who have accepted and even propagated a revisionist view of the sexes that is out of step with the Bible, with sacred tradition, and with objective reality itself.
Though he does not use the word “androgyny” (and, indeed, I will henceforth cease using it myself since the word, like “trans-sexual,” has been too far corrupted to be reclaimed in a positive or helpful way), the Pope makes it clear that the corresponding natures of masculinity and femininity were somehow contained in pre-Eve Adam. “If we admit,” he writes,

a significant difference of vocabulary, we can conclude that man (’adam [in Hebrew]) falls into that “sleep” in order to wake up “male” and “female.” In Genesis 2:23, we come across the distinction ’is—’issah [Hebrew for man/woman] for the first time. Perhaps, therefore, the analogy of sleep indicates here not so much a passing from consciousness to subconsciousness, as a specific return to non-being (sleep contains an element of annihilation of man’s conscious existence). That is, it indicates a return to the moment preceding the creation, that through God’s creative initiative, solitary “man” may emerge from it again in his double unity as male and female.

Adam immediately recognizes the physical homogeneity he shares with Eve (but does not share with the animals he has just named), and he celebrates this recognition in his poem (Genesis 2:23). In fact, the Pope argues, Adam utters his poem “as if it were only at the sight of the woman that he was able to identify and call by name what makes them visibly similar to each other, and at the same time what manifests humanity.” That is to say, the man does not gain full awareness of his own body until he gazes on the body of the woman.
But the correspondence of is and issah goes deeper than merely the body; there is a correspondence of consciousness as well that works together with the physical complementarity. The “knowledge of man,” the Pope explains,

passes through masculinity and femininity. These are, as it were, two “incarnations” of the same metaphysical solitude before God and the world. They are two ways of “being a body” and at the same time a man, which complete each other. They are two complementary dimensions of self-consciousness and self-determination and, at the same time, two complementary ways of being conscious of the meaning of the body.

As Genesis 2:23 already shows, femininity finds itself, in a sense, in the presence of masculinity, while masculinity is confirmed through femininity. Precisely the function of sex, which is in a sense, “a constituent part of the person” (not just “an attribute of the person”), proves how deeply man, with all his spiritual solitude, with the never to be repeated uniqueness of his person, is constituted by the body as “he” or “she.”

Over the last several decades, feminists have convinced the public at large to substitute the word “gender” for “sex” when referring to male and female. They do not like the word “sex,” for it suggests too close a link between body and soul, external genitalia and internal consciousness. “Sex” suggests essential, hard-wired differences; “gender” suggests only social differentiation. Nevertheless, despite this linguistic subterfuge, the fact remains that sex is not merely an “attribute” but a “constituent part” of male and female persons. We are male and female, masculine and feminine; we do not simply appear to be.
The Pope is quite bold in speaking of male and female as two “incarnations.” By using a word that refers supremely to the perfect union of the dual natures of Christ, he suggests that the link between the male/female body and the masculine/feminine “self-consciousness and self-determination” is far more than skin deep. These two dimensions of self-consciousness are not intrinsically foreign to one another, but they are also not exactly equivalent; rather, they complement and complete each other.

Together they make up the fullness that is man.

Man vs. Humanity

As a modern academic, I know that I am not “supposed” to use the word “man” to refer to the human race. The same politically-correct agenda that replaced “sex” with “gender,” insists that the word “man” be replaced by a gender-neutral euphemism like “human” or “humanity” or “humankind.” This insistence is a very recent one; it began slowly in the late 1970’s and did not really catch on until the late 1990’s. It will, I feel confident, eventually pass away, for it marks an unnatural imposition upon language rather than a natural growth within language.
Indeed, as proof of this, I note that, beginning about the year 2002 (at the exact same time when the banishment of the word “man” had really settled in) Americans began, quite spontaneously, to make wider and wider use of the word “guys” to refer to a mixed group of males and females. Like the word “men,” the word “guys” now plays double duty to refer specifically to males (guys as opposed to girls) and to a group composed of both guys and girls. Even in the South, where the word “y’all” has long served as the second person plural pronoun, more and more people—both young and old—have replaced “y’all” with the previously “Yankee” word “guys.” As a parallel to this phenomena, it should also be noted that the 1980’s egalitarian fad of professional women keeping their maiden names (and thus refusing to be included within their husband’s name) has greatly decreased over the last decade.
Does it ultimately make a difference whether we use the word man or humanity to refer to the human race? Obviously those who have pushed forward the gender-neutral agenda believe it does, or they would not have worked so diligently to change the speech patterns of an entire nation. Unfortunately that agenda has been so widespread and so carefully coordinated that many people (both men and women) who would normally have opposed it have slowly given in, considering the change to be an inevitable one. But there are good reasons why they should not give in, reasons that touch upon the complementary nature of the sexes and the incarnational nature of marriage.
For those who consider the Bible to be an authoritative document inspired by God, there really should be no question as to whether “man” (or “mankind”) is the proper word for designating the human race. “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them ‘man’” (Genesis 5:1-2). In Hebrew, the last phrase reads, “he called them adam.” That is to say, God, from the beginning, refers to the human race by the name of the first man, Adam. Separately, we are man and woman, male and female, Adam and Eve, but collectively, we are adam: man/mankind. Though both Adam and Eve sinned by eating of the fruit, it is “in Adam” that we will die as sinners (1 Corinthians 15:22). In the beginning, God made us (adam; man) in his image; in our fallen state, we are still contained in adam. But praise be to God, Christ has become the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45) that we might bear the likeness of Christ, he who is the “second man” (1 Corinthians 15:47-49). The Incarnate Christ became both a specific man (the last Adam) and a member of the human race (adam, man, mankind). Jesus was not just a generic “human,” but a son of Adam, Abraham, Jacob, and David.
“After the creation of the woman,” the Pope writes in a note to his discussion of how adam falls asleep and reemerges as is/issah,

the Bible text continues to call the first man ’adam (with the definite article) thus expressing his “corporate personality,” since he has become “father of mankind,” its progenitor and representative, just as Abraham was recognized as “father of believers” and Jacob was identified with Israel—the Chosen People.

Though some academics since about 1980 (and only since 1980) might balk at the idea, it is simply a fact that the human race since Adam has considered the male to be the representative human being, just as Abraham has been considered the representative father of those who believe. That does not mean that the female is somehow of less value or worth than the male; it is rather to affirm that woman, who was taken out of man, is also contained within man.

In a similar way, I would argue, orthodox Christians have traditionally viewed God the Father as the representative person of the Trinity. When we say God, we think first (and should think first) of the Father, not of the Son or Spirit, even though Son and Spirit are fully and equally members of the Godhead! Though Father and Son are equally God, the Son was begotten of the Father and is, in that sense, contained in the Father. Indeed, in order to emphasize the primacy of God the Father, Eastern Orthodox theologians have always insisted that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, and not from the Father and Son. The Orthodox Church in no way subordinates Son or Spirit—they affirm fully the equal God-head of all three persons of the Trinity—but they understand that the Father is primary and, in a way we cannot fully understand through human logic, the source of the Trinity. God is our name for the Father, but it is also the collective name for the three persons who make up the Trinity. Thus we speak of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. In the same way, it is most proper to designate the two “persons” of the human race as Man the male and Man the female.
But it is not only in the mystery of the Trinity that we find a strong rationale for continuing to use the word “man” to designate the human race. We find a rationale, as well, in the Great Marriage. Though Christ and his Bride shall be made one through that glorious, apocalyptic event, it is the Church that will be contained in Christ, and not Christ in the church. Even now, the Church is contained within Christ; in fact, like an earthly wife, Christ’s Bride adopts her husband’s name and calls herself Christian. Furthermore, as the marriage of male and female and of Christ and the Church is described in the Bible as a great mystery, so is the marriage of Jew and Gentile that was effected by the formation of the Church heralded by Paul as a mystery (Ephesians 3:6). Jew and Gentile are now considered to be of equal value and worth in the eyes of Christ; nevertheless, the blessings (and cursings) of God, asserts Paul, are given first to the Jew and then to the Gentile (Romans 2:9-10). And they are meted out thusly despite the fact that “God does not show favoritism” (Romans 2:11). More vitally, when Paul makes his famous analogy of the fig tree, he makes it clear that it is the Gentiles who have been grafted into Israel, and not vice versa (Romans 11:17-21). We (the Gentiles) are contained within Israel as the feminine is within the masculine or the Church within Christ.
After my wife and I had spoken our vows and our wedding ceremony was complete, our minister had the two of us turn and face the congregation. He then joyously introduced us to the congregation using a formula that is still used in most weddings today: I now present to you Mr. and Mrs. Louis Markos. Alas, I have been to a few (egalitarian) weddings where this most joyous of proclamations—a proclamation which is also a prophecy as it points forward to the Great Marriage—was not spoken. Instead of gazing upon Mr. and Mrs. John Smith, we in the pews were called to look at two discrete individuals still named John Smith and Jane Doe. I am deeply disturbed by weddings ceremonies that end thus. They make me respond as a devout Roman Catholic might respond when he visits a low Protestant Lord’s Supper and awaits the mystery that never comes. The bread and wine remain only bread and wine: no mystical transformation occurs, no taking up of the elements into the body and blood of Christ—in the place of Real Presence, only a continuation of the “same old same old.”
In the Catholic Church, the marriage ceremony is more than a vow before God: it is a full sacrament, on par with baptism and the Eucharist. As one of the seven sacraments, marriage, like the other six, marks an event in which a spiritual grace is mediated and expressed through a physical enactment or manifestation. Marriage, along with the other sacraments, is profoundly incarnational: it draws together heaven and earth, even as it draws together the masculine and the feminine. In the Eucharist, the bread becomes the body of Christ while yet remaining physical bread; in like manner, the wine remains wine while it is simultaneously transformed into the blood of the Lamb. Bread and body, wine and blood: the two held in a mystical tension that merges without devouring or obliterating.
Yes, in Christ, we—male and female, Jew and Gentile—are of equal worth and value (thus Paul can proclaim in Galatians 3:28 that in Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Gentile); but such unity, as we’ve seen by analogy to the Great Marriage, the Incarnation, the Trinity, and the sacraments does not therefore collapse the members of the union.
The two shall become one, but they shall still be two.
That is the mystery.

Louis Markos (http://fc.hbu.edu/~lmarkos) is a Professor in English at Houston Baptist Univ. He is author of From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics (IVP); Pressing Forward: Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the Victorian Age (Sapientia); Lewis Agonistes: How C. S. Lewis can Train us to Wrestle with the Modern and Postmodern World (B&H).