At the beginning of the new millennium, the perspective about the family, or what the family is in the so called post modern society's assumption is still very confused. This confusion is felt at the family level through an unknown identity, purpose and responsibilities. Excluding God from every small detail of our life, we are excluding the Live, Identity and Purpose of our lives. Being Christians, God is always the origin, the sustainer and the finality of humankind with all aspects of what to be human means. Concerning family the Christian theology regarding it can be an answer for what this concept means, or how important the family is in Christian assumption, since God is present in the couple's life from the beginning of the human creation. God did not created the family, but he created man and woman, and throughout this, the family and the marriage have its origin in the humankind creation. Because of this, I will try to develop, logically and theo-logically, the nature of family and its liturgical and social beginning as marriage, from the perspective of the creation of human being.
The source of the family is to be found in the creation of human being: „have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them as male and female... So they are no longer two but one flesh" (Matt. 19:4-6). „So God created humankind...male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:27).
Two important elements are to be evoked here. The one is that God created humankind as male and female, two hypostasis of the same nature. This differentiated human unity is a conjugal unity. Human being is a conjugal being. The first couple is a conjugal couple. The Eden marriage has its bases in the dualistic human nature1. Humankind „transcends the male-female distinction, because the latter is initially not the separation of two individuals that are henceforth isolated from one another"2. On the contrary, the duality of the human being express the unity of humankind. God did not separate them, but united them through the act of creation.
The second one is that man and woman have been blessed by God. Creation is an entire liturgical ceremony, and the final act of it is the blessing of God. God's blessing is a liturgical blessing. It is a blessing that had place through the act of creation, but in a full sense of a blessing, took place after the creation as a result of the goodness of married union and for the perpetuation of this goodness in their daily life. The blessing is for both of them, for the couple, and not for each separately. So „God blessed them, and God said to them..." (Gen. 1: 28). God blessed the couple not as an act separated from creation, but as an affirmation of the creation of the couple.
The second story about human creation (Gen. 2:7-23) is narrated in a different way, but is speaking about the same thing: creation of human being3.
The creation of man is related in the verse 7 and the creation of the woman in the verse 21 and 224. There is a difference between creation of the man and of the woman, which can be understood as non-marriage, since they are not created together in the same act. But this does not mean that there are two creations, or two steps of creation. Adam indeed was created before Eve but in a different act, not in different creations, since the goodness of creation of human being is affirmed only after the creation of Eve. So, the act of coming together is a different stage of the same creation, but not separated from it. If, „the coming together of man and woman -their marriage-constitutes a unity ("they become one flesh„, 2:24) ... - and the perfecting of humanity itself"5, is also part of creation of humanity, then the marriage is also part of it, and not an act which took place after. As Paul Evdokimov said, „the advent of Eve is the great myth of the nuptial consubstantiality of man and woman"6, so their coming together, as part of creation, is their marriage.
If creation of woman is only a background of marriage and, the marriage took place only after the fall, means that marriage is not a natural order, a given one, but is an order of sin, introduced by human beings in their life7.
Marriage from the beginning is a human institution, because the subjects of marriage are human persons (not angels or gods), but God is not absent from this, since he is not absent from human salvation history, especially when we speak about the pre-fall period. It is a human institution, but at the same time a divine order. Conjugal union finds its root in the creation of humankind. Being so, is also constitutive to human person.
„So God created humankind in his image" (Gen. 1:27). „Imago Dei" is an important theological and social aspect of marriage. Cappadocians Fathers developed the idea that human person is alone in all creation in bearing in himself (herself) the divine image8.
But this idea is not common only for Cappadocians Fathers. In another way of emphasizing this, the idea is present also in other writings. Saint Augustine, in Sermons III (51-94) on the New Testament, wrote: „After all you can't say you are not a creature. You are looking for a likeness? Are you going to look for it in animals? You were talking about God, remember, when you were looking for some kind of likeness ... Are you going to search in the sun, in a star? Which of these, I ask you, was made after the image and likeness of God? You can look for something altogether more familiar and better than these in yourself. It's man (woman) you see, that God made after his image and likeness"9. But, what this image and likeness means?10
When we speak about God, we speak about him as love. Without this love we can not explain creation. But love supposes communion of persons. Love can not be where is selfishness, love supposes giving. Therefore supreme love is to be understood in the Trinitarian concept of God. Divine love introduced two elements: triune God (persons) and one God (ousia). Each divine person is a mutual giving, is subsisting in the other and in the perihoresis of the Three. This perihoresis is expressed by relationship. Perihoresis means that the persons exist for communion, and more than this, through communion. Is not an existence like a need of the other, is an existence like a fulfillment through the other, not in the sense of that God needs the Son or Holy Spirit for his one fulfillment, and without them is not complete. The fact that the divine persons are complete in them, and they are three hypostasis (full hypostasis) of the same nature makes they to be totally transparent to one another. In a full love they are giving one to the other in a totally interior act for the other. Every divine person lives his own way of being not as his, but as the others.
Ousia, God's mode of being, which is one, is expressed by this diversity of persons. God is one in his nature and this nature is fully present in the three persons because God is not static, but mobile (kineo) and this mobility embrace the other two persons in a movement inside of the same ousia, which is contained totally in all the three persons. The common term, also for ousia and hypostasis is perihoresis. Therefore we can not speak about ousia without speaking about hipostasis in the same time.
The ousia being one and the love being perfect, and they are perfect and total hypostasis of the same ousia in the same way, they are also equal with one another. Then, „his image and likeness" means: „...man (woman) is the image, not of the Son alone or of the Father alone, but of the Father and of the Son together, and also of course in consequence of the Holy Spirit too. Genesis is speaking: "Let us make man, it says, after our image and likeness (Gen 1:26)"11.
There are other theologians who do not accept that the author of Genesis spoke about image of God in Trinitarian understanding.12 Because, the Trinitarian understanding of God is very important for the Orthodox Churches, and because I am an Orthodox theologian I will use this understanding and not others.
From human perspective, the imago Dei is multidimensional and can not be limited to one defined characteristic. Imago Dei is expressed by: participation in divine life, realization of the Trinitarian mode of existence through relationship, and through unity, equality and differentiation of human kind
Participation in divine life. God's presence in human life is not ended with the act of creation. The reason of creation is God's love and, this love is impossible to be tasted without full and free participation in it. The human participation in divine life is a participation in divine love, because love is divine life.
This divine love is what is defining us as persons and is realized through communion with God throughout participation in the Trinitarian personalism of God. Man and woman as fullness of human hypostasis are realized and revealed in the existential fact of full participation in divine life. „Man (and woman) was not seen as autonomous and self-sufficient-his (her) very nature was seen as being defined by an internal relationship with God, not by opposition to grace... Imago Dei is not simply a form of participation in divine life but, more specifically, a sharing in the Creator's freedom and self-determination. The image of God is not, therefore, a static givens, but a potentiality and openness of man/woman: a potentiality for a growth in God..."13.
Therefore the definition of an image is „through contact with its model, and God is immediately present in his activities, the imago Dei means first of all that the inmost core of human being is ontologically connected to God. Thus, we are created to enter into communion with God and participate in the divine life"14.
At the level of the family this experience is realized through the experience of God in one another. „There is no relationship between human beings so close as that of husband and wife, if they are united as they ought to be"15. Man and woman as a family are transparent to one another and are participating to one another life and love and also are participating in God's love through the other love. It is the transcendence of human love toward the divine love. It is the transcendence of us toward divine Thou, who makes us to be us. This is love through participation in God's love.
Realization of the Trinitarian mode of existence through relationship. We sow that Trinitarian mode of existence is expressed by perihoresis and love. And also we sow that perihoresis and love are the Trinitarian mode of existence through mobility (kineo) inside of God's ousia.
When I spoke about this, I spoke about a move ad intra to communicate love to the other persons. God is not reduced only at ad intra movement. In God is also a move ad extra to meet and to embrace our love, not like a need for his own fulfillment, but like a sign of his own fulfillment of love.
We can realize divine mode of existence only if we participate at this kineo ad extra of him. In this way, marriage is saved by our own reduction, like people who are created. The measure of marriage is not anymore a human one, but is an image of Trinitarian mode of existence, which is in contrast and, in the same time an alternative to the individualistic understanding of human person.
Accepting and embracing his offer of love, which is offered through the movement toward us, we can realize the divine way of being. This is to be understood as communion with God, who opens the communion with one another as human beings.
The communion with God, from human side is also a movement ad extra, which gives the content of the movement ad intra of our nature. The movement ad intra of our nature, like a movement to embrace the other hypostasis, is in the same time a movement ad extra, because the bases of a full human hypostasis is only in connection with a divine hypostasis, and we are embracing God throughout a human hypostasis. The fact that we are many hypostasis of the same ousia, is also a natural calling to union with a divine hypostasis.
„God's mode of being constitutes existence and life as a fact of love and personal communion"16. But also human being constitutes life as a fact of communion, first with God, and second among us.
The most important expression of relationship is koinonia, communion, which contain the fact that we are „in the image of God, beings-who-relate"17. For human beings, relation is also an ontological one: „to be and to be in relation are identical"18. This ontology of relation is one of the theological bases for family. Man and woman are not defined by their individual existence, but by their relation, like a permanent openness to one another and through this, to God. The openness to God, at this stage, is an effect of their openness to one another, because it is the cause of this openness, like a basis, which gives the true meaning for man and woman relation, but also like a fulfillment of their relation. Therefore the one who reveals our human relation is the relation with God, and being so, in man-woman relation we discover God's presence in the other. Then the human relation is an „icon" of Trinitarian mode of existence. God himself is our archetype. „The partnership of marriage confirms the relational view of the person ... The genesis text which affirms male and female alike are made in the image of God, confirms that the image of God is to be understood relationally... Marriage draws on the divinely created structure of human relations"19. The mystery is that: the family relation is „the mirror" for the God-family relation.
Unity, Equality and Differentiation. Both male and female were created in the image of God. This means that the female images the divine as much as the male, since both of them are created in the same image.
From creation, we „understand that as human hypostases, Adam and Eve each contain within themselves the whole of the composite human nature; they are each one fully human, constituted at one and the same time of soul and body"20.
But, also there are two acts of the same creation. The woman was created as a hypostasis from within the hypostasis of Adam and, not from an abstract human nature. „She was made for man, made so that together they could complete the essential quality of their hypostatic existence: to move out of themselves in ecstasis in order to give themselves wholly to the other, to love absolutely intimately, and to be loved absolutely intimately in a holy, loving union"21. The fulfillment of creation of humankind through the creation of woman is the archetype of the complementarity and completion. Male and female are two different persons containing the same nature. „Their roles in life are not identical, and that likeness to God pertains not only to what they have in common but also to what remains distinctive about them"22. Completion is the expression of unity and diversity in the same time. The unity is expressed by nature, diversity by persons.
The diversity of persons can be understood as an element of non-equality between man and woman. The second narration of creation is telling us that man was created first and then the woman, from his rib. "Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being (Gen. 2: 7). This way of creation, that God created first the man and after that he created the woman (Gen. 2:18; 21-23), can be understood as a relation of subordination from woman side23.
The fact that the goodness of creation is affirmed only after the creation of woman (Gen 2:18; Gen.1:28), and not separately for each of them, is showing that they are not created for the purpose of subordination or non-equality but, for completion.
Concluding all these issues, we are not saying that God created the family, but throughout creation, the Creator gave us the posibility to live as couples, to live Him in the couple's live, and He is the One Who have blessed the family from the origin of it. So, „God created us male and female- two beings, two poles of the same humanity totally equal but different. If they are not different, there is no completion; if they are not equal, then sexuality is not true love"24. The meaning of the family is given by the relation of the couple with God. God is the Creator of human being as man and female, and through creation, He put in us His likeness, and the meaning of it, for both, male and female, can be an answer for how to live a life as a couple in a secularized post modern society.
Rezumat
In societatea secularizata, in care fiinta umana isi gaseste din ce in ce mai greu sensul si scopul fiintarii sale, ceea ce defineste familia este din ce in ce mai greu de determinat. De aceea, teologia, acum mai mult decat oricand, este singura care poate oferi o alternativa viabila nu numai in privinta conceptualizarii ideatice, dar si in ceea ce priveste realitatea practica imediata a familiei, ca institutie ce isi desfasoara viata de zi cu zi in societatea secolului XXI, dar si in relatie permanenta cu izvorul vietii si al mantuirii.
Articolul de fata isi propune dezvaluirea conceptului de familie, plecand de la crearea omului, si de la ceea ce inseamna chipul si asemanarea cu Dumnezeu in viata cuplului crestin.