For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and is united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery (Ephesians 5:31-32).
This article discusses:
- The import and meaning of two becoming one in marriage, a “2/1 Person,” and that a 2/1 Person is much more than a physical union.
- The supernatural nature of this death-nullified, mystery, and the role of this earthly 2/1 Person in leading spouses to eternal happiness.
- Mystery: of the 2/1 Person and of a procreated child, a child who truly is “one flesh,” a forever embodiment of the love of two people.
One Flesh
A human person is an ensouled body, an embodied soul – you can’t have one without the other. The “One Flesh” resulting from a sacramental, covenantal marriage is not simply a physical-union, nor is it simply and entity of two physically intimate spouses. The 2/1 Person of a marriage is a totally new individual entity, the result of divine design.
“One flesh” appears in both the Old and the New Testaments: Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19: 5-6; Mark 10:8; 1 Corinthians 6:16; and Ephesians 5:31. In Genesis this is a description of the union between Adam and Eve: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Gen 2:24).
Rather than saying “united,” some translations say that the man “cleaves” to his wife. This word is the translation of a Hebrew word, “dabaq,” which means “glue.” A 2/1 Person is much more than two people holding hands and making goo goo eyes at each other. In sexual intercourse, the two spouses literally become one body. Several times in the Bible, the marriage does not come into being, the 2/1 Person does not exist, until the two are united physically. See, e.g., Gen. 24:67-regarding Issac and Gen.29:21-30, Jacob. But there is so much more to the unified 2/1 Person.
St. Paul makes the point that the 2/1 Person of marriage is “one body” when he speaks about two people joining together who are not married – a man and a prostitute:
Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. Or know you not, that he who is joined to a harlot, is made one body? For they shall be, saith he, two in one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord, is one spirit (1Cor. 6:15-17).
The 2/1 Person is not simply the bodies of two spouses. In a 2/1 Person, souls, spirits, minds, wills and bodies are joined, meshed, intertwined, conglomerated, combined, and joyfully together in a reality that transcends this world.
The 2/1 Person, Natural Sign, Supernatural Reality
The oneness, goodness, truth and beauty of the 2/1 Person are beyond relationship, beyond physical intimacy. The 2/1 Person is not simply a “We’re really good buddies” friendship. It is a new reality that points beyond the physical and proclaims a reality beyond the material world. The 2/1 Person “transcends” earthly existence. How this transcendence operates, what it does in the lives of the spouses, is akin to the role of what philosophers call the “transcendentals”.
Transcendentals
The word transcendentals is based on the Latin word transcendentalia from the verb transcendere which means “to exceed.” Unlike things that can be directly perceived by the senses such as heat and light, a transcendental is an ultimate property of being, of a reality that that exists beyond the material world. Transcendentals are objective properties. For their existence they do not depend on the customs of a particular culture or someone’s personal beliefs or religious doctrine.
Truth, goodness, unity (oneness), and beauty are generally accepted as transcendentals. These exceed, “transcend,” time, place and physical being.
The 2/1 Person, each spouse individually, and the two spouses together can be together and do things that transcend their worldly union. These can be “marriage transcendentals” for them and for all in their lives on this earth.
How a 2/1 Person Transcends This World
One does not see “Goodness” walking around. One does not speak with “Truth.” One does not experience “Unity” as an individual. One experiences goodness in the creations of God and in the actions of human beings . One comes to know truth in God’s creation and in what others say and do. One appreciates beauty in the universe, in art, and in the presence and actions of others.
For a 2/1 Person there are many things that are “marriage transcendentals.”
In a 2/1 Person joy-filled union often the two who are in love are literally unaware of time – together “they lose track of time” – this marriage transcendental is a very real hint for each spouse of timeless eternity.
A covenantal, sacramental union transcends mere social contracts or legal agreements and each spouse knows the other has entered into this covenant – until the death of one of them.
There are numerous aspects of a 2/1 Person, gestures, words said, actions done by each of the spouses individually, and done by them together that are “marriage transcendentals.” These are beyond number. For example:
- Quietly the spouses simply look into each other’s eyes and, without words, smile, wherever they are.
- They walk together, in no hurry, holding hands.
- They exude playful joy in whatever they are doing together.
- One spouse says, “What would you like to do?” when confronted with any situation.
- When one spouse arrives, the eyes of the other spouse begin to sparkle.
- Simply put, they are with each other and they want to be with each other, wherever they are, whatever they are doing, paying attention to the other, looking out for the other, caring for each other. If this means it is the 2/1 Person against the entire world, this is of no never mind to them – they are happy, joyful.
- One person, temporarily alone, pauses in thought and knows the other is thinking about their love
These actions, these gestures, these words tell each spouse and all those who witness them that there is love, there is heaven, and there is a God, the God who made each of us, God our Daddy, God who loves each and every one of His precious children.
Death, End of the 2/1 Person: The Final Marriage Transcendental [or is it?]
The 2/1 Person is not forever. Death makes this point as only death can-and this is part of the divine plan, the divine design for each and every 2/1 Person.
The depth and temporal extent of the grief one person feels when a spouse dies is, paradoxically, God’s way of teaching us about heaven, joy, and the eternal nature of being with Him, partaking in the divine nature in a way beyond and categorically different from that of the unity that is a 2/1 Person.
Francis Thompson speaks of how God teaches us through loss:
All which I took from thee, I did’st but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in my arms
The overpowering, gut-wrenching, beyond pain feelings of a surviving spouse after the dissolution of a 2/1 Person is so profound, so forceful, so crushing precisely because God our loving Papa wants the surviving spouse to fully understand His divine desire to have us happy with Him forever. In the beginning of this grief this is little solace to the one going through it, but the grief does make one realize the “forever” nature of seeing God for eternity. God is saying “I really really really want you with me.”
Mystery: The 2/1 Person, Their Child
St. Paul has told us the 2/1 Person is a mystery. In 1929, Dietrich Von Hildebrand said this about a child:
There is no greater mystery in the natural order of things than the fact that this closest of all unions procreates a human being with an immortal soul (although the soul, in each case, is a direct creation of God), and that this act brings a new being into existence destined to love God and to adore Him, a new being made after His image .(Marriage; p. 26, emphasis added).
These mysteries are living transcendentals. One will end on this earth. One will not.
A child is truly “one flesh,” one person; and the entirety of the one flesh is the result of the love of the husband and wife. A child is much more than a “marriage transcendental.” A child will live forever, here and in heaven. In heaven the sons and daughters of mothers and fathers will be their sons and daughters- eternally.
When there is a child, in His goodness God has seen to it that, when one spouse dies, the child remains. There is no more comforting thing for a grieving spouse than to be with a child who is the embodiment of her or his love for the other spouse. The child is the eternal transcendental born of the 2/1 Person.
