III. "Male and Female He Created Them"

Man and woman have been created, which is to say, willed by God: on the one hand, in perfect equality as human persons; on the other, in their respective beings as man and woman. “Being man” or “being woman” is a reality which is good and willed by God: man and woman possess an inalienable dignity which comes to them immediately from God their Creator.1 Man and woman are both with one and the same dignity “in the image of God”. In their “being-man” and “being-woman”, they reflect the Creator’s wisdom and goodness.

In no way is God in man’s image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective “perfections” of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband.2

God created man and woman together and willed each for the other. The Word of God gives us to understand this through various features of the sacred text. “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.”3 None of the animals can be man’s partner.4 The woman God “fashions” from the man’s rib and brings to him elicits on the man’s part a cry of wonder, an exclamation of love and communion: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”5 Man discovers woman as another “I”, sharing the same humanity.

Man and woman were made “for each other”—not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be “helpmate” to the other, for they are equal as persons (“bone of my bones…”) and complementary as masculine and feminine. In marriage God unites them in such a way that, by forming “one flesh”,6 they can transmit human life: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”7 By transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents cooperate in a unique way in the Creator’s work.8

In God’s plan man and woman have the vocation of “subduing” the earth9 as stewards of God. This sovereignty is not to be an arbitrary and destructive domination. God calls man and woman, made in the image of the Creator “who loves everything that exists”,10 to share in his providence toward other creatures; hence their responsibility for the world God has entrusted to them.