Genesis, sex, and the Trinity. What a combination, eh? Most people wouldn’t think of putting the three together, but the creation stories in Genesis contain valuable information pertaining to the purpose of sex that can be used to defend the Church’s teachings on sexual morality. Let’s see what we can glean from these valuable texts.
Genesis 1 and the Trinity
In the first creation story, in Genesis chapter 1, God created light, land, the sea, plants, animals, and everything else but man by saying something to the effect of, “Let such-and-such appear.” However, when He was about to create man, He said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness,” and gave humans dominion over the rest of creation. Obviously, something important was happening here. God wasn’t just creating another creature; He was creating human beings, the pinnacle of creation, in His own image and likeness. But something else was going on as well. Notice that God said “our image and likeness,” not “my image and likeness.” We know that God is a Trinity, so this isn’t a problem for us, but it also conceals a deeper meaning. By saying “our image and likeness,” God indicated that we are made in the image of God not only as a single Being but also as a communion of Persons. Then again in verse 27 we read, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” Notice that Scripture connects being made in God’s image with being made male and female. There’s something about the male-female relationship that mirrors the Trinity, but what can it be?
To understand this, we must understand something about the Trinity. God the Father generates the Son, and the love between them is so strong that it actually is a third Person, the Holy Spirit. As three Persons in one Being, they are the Divine archetype of the human family. Knowing this, we can see how male-female relationships mirror the Trinity. Woman was created from man (as the second creation story tells us), and when a husband and wife love each other, their love produces a third person, a child, and they become three persons in one family. This is why sex is such a sacred gift: it is the way in which we humans can most closely imitate the Trinity. Thus, any misuse of the gift of our sexuality is a sacrilege, a mockery of the Trinity itself. This is a great revelation that God has given us, but to completely understand all of what Genesis teaches us about sex, we must also analyze the second story of creation.
Genesis 2 and Male-Female Complementarity
In Genesis 2:18, God for the first time says that something in His creation is not good. It is not good that man is alone, so He creates the animals and brings them to Adam so he can name them and possibly find a suitable partner. However, he cannot find a companion among them. What is God doing? Does he really think that Adam will find a partner among the animals? No, of course not. He is showing him that he is different from the rest of creation. Only he is made in the image and likeness of God. After Adam names all the animals and remains alone, God puts him into a deep sleep and makes a woman from his rib. Now, the fact that woman was made from man’s rib is important. Since one’s rib is in the middle of his body, it symbolizes the essential equality of man and woman. She was not made from Adam’s foot, which is below, or from his head, which is above. No, she was made right from his side. Man and woman are essentially equal, which is confirmed by Adam’s words in Genesis 2:23, “This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” By saying this, Adam was indicating that she was the same kind of being as he, from which it must follow that they are essentially equal. The next verse, verse 25, is the key to this chapter’s teachings on sexual morality. “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” It is because man and woman were made specifically for each other that they can totally give themselves to each other in sex (when they become “one flesh”), and Jesus tells us that this verse refers to marriage (Matthew 19:3-6). Thus, Genesis 2:25 teaches us two things: 1) Sex and love were meant to be between a man and a woman, not a man and a man or a woman and a woman, and 2) The proper context of sex is marriage. In addition, by becoming “one flesh,” a husband and wife become a communion of persons united by love (even if a child is not conceived), which is another reason why sex imitates the Trinity.
Next, verse 26 says, “And the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.” What could this mean? Let’s think about why we today are ashamed if people see us naked. Nakedness signifies that we hold nothing back from someone; they can see every part of us as we truly are. When a man and woman give their whole selves to each other in sex, they go back to this original nakedness; they are not ashamed to let each other know their whole selves as they truly are. This is significant for why the proper context of sex is marriage and why birth control is wrong, both of which we will discuss in the next section.
Three Issues
We have seen the basic teaching of Genesis chapters 1 and 2 on sexual morality, and now we will analyze them as they relate to three key issues in sexual morality: pre-marital sex, artificial birth control, and homosexuality.
Pre-Marital Sex
As we saw in the first section, sex is the act by which we humans most perfectly imitate the inner life of the Trinity, so it is extraordinarily sacred and must be treated as such. Therefore, our sexuality is not something to be used recreationally whenever we feel like having some pleasure. No, as Genesis 2:25 (as interpreted by Jesus) teaches us, sex was created for the marriage covenant. But why was sex created for marriage? Why can’t a couple have sex, say, on the night before their wedding? Why does God have to be so strict? This is where verse 26 comes in. The state of Adam and Eve before original sin was one of total commitment to each other. As their original nakedness shows, they gave their lives, their whole selves, to each other and held nothing back. This is the state in which we were made to be, and this is the state in which sex, which is a total giving of oneself (how can the two become one flesh if they hold anything back from each other?), was originally intended to be. God intended it to be a sign of the total love and commitment that each spouse has for the other. Thus, sex’s proper context is total commitment, which only comes in marriage. Up until one says, “I do,” the engagement can always be broken, and only after the wedding takes place is the couple ready to give their whole selves to each other in sex. Thus, once a couple makes that commitment to each other, it cannot be broken (just as the Trinity is never broken), and only then can they express their total commitment and giving of self in sex.
Artificial Birth Control
Sex is in imitation of the Trinity, and an essential part of the Trinity is that the love between the Father and the Son produces the Holy Spirit, but birth control takes this essential element out of sex. A couple that uses birth control lowers sex from the level of imitation of the Divine to a merely human act, which robs it of much of its dignity. In addition, they rob sex of its dignity as the way in which we actually become partners with God in creating another human being. When you take these two Divine elements out of sex, it becomes a merely human act, devoid of much of its splendor and beauty.
In addition, the partner that uses birth control doesn’t give himself completely to his spouse. In effect, he says, “I will give you everything I have but my fertility, which I will hold back and keep to myself,” in which case the two cannot truly be united as one flesh, and they do not catch a glimpse of the state of original nakedness, two things which are supposed to occur during sex.
Before we move on, there is one question we must answer. What about having sex between a woman’s fertile periods? How does that differ from artificial birth control? God has built into the female reproductive system periods of natural infertility, so this is not an attempt to control or change sex. The woman doesn’t hold her fertility back because at that time she has no fertility to give. Granted, the couple’s love does not produce another person, but they don’t artificially change the sexual act and rob it of its potency. Rather, it is a natural occurrence that God has built into the female reproductive system; He didn’t intend for sex to produce a child all the time. Artificial birth control, however, forsakes the procreative purpose of sex altogether. We are to be open to procreation if it happens, and we are always to give ourselves totally to our spouses, and that includes our fertility. However, to use a woman’s fertility cycles as a means of artificial birth control is also wrong (unless you absolutely cannot raise another child) because it also abandons the procreative purpose of sex.
Homosexuality
The second creation story tells us that men and women were made for each other and that sex was made to be between a man and a woman, which implies that homosexuality is contrary to God’s plan for human sexuality. But why?
As we saw with birth control, for sex to be complete, the two spouses must give themselves totally to each other, which includes giving their fertility. However, in homosexual unions, this cannot happen. In fact, not only is a mutual exchange of fertility impossible, but even only one partner giving his fertility is impossible. A man cannot give his fertility to another man, and a woman cannot give her fertility to another woman. Similarly, a man cannot accept another man’s fertility, and a woman cannot accept another woman’s fertility. A man’s sexual organs are made to be used with a woman, and vice versa. Thus, only a man and a woman can give themselves totally to each other in sex and imitate the Trinity by becoming one flesh, so any homosexual “sex” (which isn’t real sex) perverts the meaning of sexuality and the body.
In addition, Scripture specifically teaches that it is as man and woman (not man and man or woman and woman) that we imitate the Trinity, and homosexual sex cannot produce a child, which is essential to the imitation of the Trinity. The question, then, is what about a sterile heterosexual couple? Since they can’t produce a child, why can they still have sex? Even though their sexual organs don’t function properly, the couple is still using them properly. A homosexual couple, however, is using their sexual organs improperly. This is a big difference that must be noted. It is not wrong to have sex if your body has a defect, but it is wrong to have defective sex.
Conclusion
As we have seen, the Catholic Church’s teachings on premarital sex, artificial birth control, and homosexuality are firmly rooted in rational, logical, Scriptural grounds. God gave us our bodies and our sexuality for a reason, and to use them in any other way is to insult God and smack Him in the face. Sexual immorality is a distortion and a perversion of the incredibly wonderful gifts of our bodies and our sexuality, and the better something is, the worse it is when it is used contrary to God’s will.