In human love there are two poles: man and woman. In Divine love there are two poles: God and man. From this difference, finite in the first instance, infinite in the second, arise the major tensions of life. The difference in the God-man relationship between Eastern religious and Christianity is that in the East man moves toward God; in Christianity, God moves first toward man. The Eastern way fails because man cannot lift himself by his own bootstraps. Grass does not become a banana, through its own efforts. If carbon and phosphates are to live in man, man must come down to them and elevate them to himself. So if man is to share the Divine Nature, God must come down to man. This is the incarnation.

The first difference in the man-woman relationship can be understood in terms of a philosophical distinction between intelligence and reason which Saint Thomas Aquinas makes and which has saved his followers from falling into errors like those of Henri Bergson. Intelligence is higher than reason. The angels have intelligence but they have no reason. Intelligence is immediacy of understanding and in domain of knowledge is best explained in terms of "seeing". When a mind says, "I see", he means that he grasps and comprehends, Reason, however, is slower. It is mediate, rather than immediate. It makes no leap, but take steps. These steps in a reasoning process are threefold: major, minor, conclusion.

Applying the distinction to man and woman, it is generally true that man's nature is more rational and woman's more intellectual. The latter is what is generally meant by intuition. The woman is slower to love because love, for her, must be surrounded by a totality of sentiments, affections and guarantees. The man is more impulsive, wanting pleasures and satisfactions, sometimes outside of their due relationship. For the woman, there must be a vital bond of relationship between herself and the one she loves. The man is more on the periphery and rim and does not see her whole personality involved in his pleasures. The woman wants unity, the man, pleasure.

On the more rational side, the man often stands completely bewildered at a "woman's reasons". They are difficult for him to follow because they are not capable of being broken down analyzed, torn apart. They come as a "whole piece"; her conclusions obtrude without any apparent basis. Arguments seem to leave her cold. This is not to say who is right, for either approach could be right under different circumstances. In the trail of Our Blessed Lord the intuitive woman, Claudia, was right, and her practical husband, Pilate, was wrong.

He concentrated on public opinion as a politician; she concentrated on justice, for the Divine Prisoner in her eyes was a "just man". This immediacy of conclusion can often make a woman very wrong as it did in the case of the wife of Zebedee when she urged Our Lord to allow her sons to sit at the right and left side when He came into the Kingdom. Little did she see that a chalice of suffering had to be drunk first, for the Divine Reason and Law has dictated that "no one would be crowned unless he had struggled".

A second difference is between reigning and governing. the man governs the home but the woman reigns. Government is related to justice; reigning is related to love. Instead of man and woman being opposites, in the sense of contraries, they more properly complement each other as their Creator intended when He said: "It is not good for man to be alone", In the old Greek legend referred to by Plato, he stated that the original creature was a composite of man and woman and, for some great crime against God, this creature was divided, each going its separate way but neither destined to be happy until they were reunited in the Elysian fields.

The Book of Genesis reveals that original sin did create a tension between man and woman which tensions is solved in principle by man and woman in the New Testament becoming "one flesh" and a symbol of the unity of Christ and His Church. This harmony, then, should exist between man and woman, in which each fills up, at the store of the other, his or her lacking measure in quiet and motion.

The man is normally more serene than the woman, more absorbent of the daily shocks of life, less disturbed by trifles. But, on the other hand, in great cries of life, it is the woman who, because of her gentle power of reigning, can give great consolation to man in his troubles. When he is remorseful, sad and disquieted, she brings comfort and assurance. As the surface of the ocean is agitated and troubled but the great depths are calm,so in the really great catastrophes which affect the soul, the woman is the depth and man the surface.

The third difference............

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Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless.

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Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
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Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -