The metaphysical role of men and women in this world, and the next

Most versions of Christianity - and indeed of world religions - do not have any metaphysical role - that is any ultimate, fundamental, essential, necessary role - relating to the role of sex differences (i.e. the division of Man into men and women) that are concerned with the ultimate metaphysical nature and destiny of God's creation. 

This is evident in ideas that sex is often seen as merely a temporary and expedient factor of this ephemeral earthly mortal life; and the belief that sexuality and sex differences will be dissolved away in the life to come. The idea is that we will all be a single kind of being; perhaps differing in appearance and individual character - but most Christians (other than Mormons) do Not see men and women as having a different 'role' in Heavenly life.  

In this earthly world, there are all kinds of - apparently opposed - ideas of sexuality, which are nonetheless all rooted no deeper then observations regarding human psychology. Human psychology is affected by 'nature and nurture' and also by many other things such as illnesses, toxins, genetic problems (including, I believe, cumulative and cross-generational mutation accumulation), drugs and others. 

From a psychological perspective, therefore, many different conclusions can be reached; according to selection of the evidence and prior ideology. 

These range from sexuality being a matter of individual choice, and 'therefore' a matter of indifference to the bureaucratic state - to its being a relatively-sharp binary divide, with one sex as superior, and the other sex inferior; when judged by various criteria. For instance women are (on average and when interfering factors are controlled) healthier, live longer, and are more conscientious; while men are stronger, more intelligent and more creative.    

But here we come up against the fact that in this mortal life - in this material and entropic world - we are always dealing with change, with 'imperfection' and corruption (leading towards death and material destruction in general). So that we almost never get any clear, coherent and stable answers from analyzing the material appearances of things. 

Different attitudes are aware of different sets of data, and the same set of data lead to different conclusions - yet the prior metaphysical assumptions that structure this ephemeral world into data, concepts, and persons are themselves seldom acknowledged or brought to awareness. 

This is a particular problem when we are trying to understand ultimate and spiritual matters. Far too often these get mixed up with worldly factors, and worldly expediency, as well as with short term social and personal agendas. 

Metaphysics then gets reduced to psychology and social policy. 

When this happens, observations are being put before the assumptions that make them possible - which is incoherent, and an error. People then try to generate expedient (and changeable) metaphysical assumptions that seem to sustain whatever it is they want to do, how they want to live, what makes them feel better. 

The result is a mess! 

At the back of everything, the question towards which other questions lead - is the nature of God the creator, God's relationship with Men, and God's purposes in creation.

If, at the end of the line, God is one; then this implies that unity - i.e. one sex (i.e. no sex) - will be the ideal of theosis. 

However things may be in his earthly mortal life; the ideal of Heavenly life will be tending towards the God-like state of no sex differentiation. 

And if God is one and a man in His nature, then it follows that men will be ideal, and woman secondary. Our ideals will tend towards the masculine; and the feminine will be judged by masculine criteria. 

But if, as I believe, God is ultimately two, a dyad; and if that dyad is a man and a woman - then sex difference and sexuality is irreducible, and ideal. 

When one understands that the two-fold division into man and woman goes all the way down, then in an ultimate and eternal sense (not expedient, not temporary, not due to limitations of knowledge nor accidents of entropy) - both man and woman are ideal types, and (again ultimately) the role and behaviour of men and women ought to be regarded in itself, by its own role and criteria. 

(It is the primordial love between our Heavenly Parents that began creation. That is, indeed, creation itself.)

If God is a dyad, and if we are children of God; then man and woman are both finally irreducible; and each is incomplete in some ultimate sense.   

If God is a dyad; then the closer than men and women come to being like God the creator, then the more important will sexual difference become; until, at some point in divinization, men and women will need to become a dyad - if theosis is to continue towards God-like-ness.

Such matters of ultimate metaphysics do not have any direct 'applications' to mortal life. In other words; we cannot read-off social policy from metaphysics. 

On the other hand, some polices are ruled-out by metaphysics - such as the mainstream sexual revolution agenda, and the current gender agenda. 

And the metaphysical understanding does dictate that we do not unthinkingly, and in all situations, judge men and women by the same criteria. Men and women are both human, but neither is the totality of human; so there will surely be situations in which we need to regard men and women as different in kind. 

And when there is a difference in kind, it is wrong to assume that there is no difference, nor should we assume that both men and women can be evaluated and regulated using the same concepts or mechanisms. 

On the contrary, we need to be mindful that men and women are like two separate but intertwined 'species' inhabiting the same niche. While we need to do separate things much of the time and especially at the lower levels of expedient functionality; the more spiritually advanced and ultimate are our considerations - the more aware we need to be that men and women are necessary parts of that harmonious loving creativity of interpersonal interaction which characterizes God's creation as it will be manifested in Heaven.  

However we may be forced to manage affairs with expediency  in this temporary and corrupt mortal life; we ought, therefore, to strive for an ultimate understanding of the human condition which does not give primacy to either the man's or the woman's perspective; but should recognize that at the highest level there is a genuine and necessary complementarity of the two sexes.

What is the ultimate role of 'the feminine' in divine creation?

Many writers on theology (in many religions, including Christianity) believe that the masculine principle is primary in divine creation; the feminine being secondary, or perhaps inessential.  

Or else, they believe that such sexual differentiation is superficial, and that primarily/ originally there is no sex, no masculine or feminine - but a single creative principle that includes both. 

Others believe that sex is merely an earthly and mortal accident or expedient; and that the highest form of after-life entails loss of sexual differentiation (either as spirit, or as resurrected Man). 

But I regard God as a loving dyad of man and woman, masculine and feminine; and that original divine creation comes from this creative love. 

This dyadic quality is not a matter of 'equality' - it is simply that both man and woman are the actual basis of this divine creation that we all inhabit. 

A man and woman, who are coherent on the basis of love, were and are the true spiritual 'unit' of both divine and human creativity: thus God (the prime creator) is a Heavenly Father and Mother - both. 

The destiny of individual mortal men and women is a different question. Each person's mortal and resurrected destiny is unique - and we are not supposed to conform to a template, not be poured-into a standard human (or male, or female) mould. Love of God first, and fellow Man second, is mandatory for salvation - because only such persons want Heaven. 

Thus woman/ the feminine is Not subordinate to man/ masculine - both are absolutely spiritually necessary; just as (by analogy) both have been necessary for reproduction in this mortal life. 

We were not originally, nor will we ultimately become, de-sexed or a single sex. The dyad goes 'all the way down' to before creation; because dyadic love was what made creation possible. 

Ultimately; in absence of both - there cannot be love, therefore no real creation nor creativity. 

How do I 'know' this? Simply by having formulated the question; after which it 'answered itself' as these things do. I other words by 'intuition', by direct knowing. 

By contrast, when I asked other questions, when I formulated my understanding in other ways; I came up with answers that did not suffice - as became clear after a while.

This is not the kind of thing that anyone should accept from external sources - not from me, nor anybody else, nor institutions. 

We are supposed-to discern such matter for ourselves - and there is no substitute for this conscious choice. 

(Probably, it was not always thus - at times and among some peoples, it was right that Men be ruled spiritually by their environment or society or church - but here-and-now we must choose consciously.)

To know-for-ourselves, from experience, the nature and motivation of God is perhaps the primary task of Man here and now; given that almost-all external sources of such 'information' are deeply corrupted. 

At the very least, we need to exercise experiential direct personal discernment in relation to the external sources that we choose to accept as authoritative; for instance, choosing a denomination and church; and then choosing-between the conflicting views emanating from denominations and churches. The requirement for each individual person to discern is unavoidable. 

Having gone through this process of discernment - rooted in formulating a question such that the answer is coherently self-validating in ones actual and examined life - I don't really care what 'other people' say about the problem - and certainly will not abandon my direct knowledge of such matters on the basis of people pointing at 'authorities' whose authority to determine my spiritual life I do not acknowledge!

Others should do likewise. 

And what if/ when they come up with 'a different answer? What then?

What then depends upon each individual for himself or herself. Group-orientated policies and behavioural/ belief compulsions can have nothing to do with such matters. 

But whatever happens in each mortal life, we certainly should not attempt to avoid personal responsibility for deciding upon such matters. Salvation is between each Man and God (God would not have it otherwise!); and 'my' salvation depends on 'me' discerning the nature and motivation of God. 

What is God like? What does God want from creation?

I have had the privilege of reading in manuscript a collection from letters from William Arkle to a young friend and spiritual-disciple/ -colleague; spanning from the middle 1980s to near the end of Arkle's life (in 2000).  

These have provoked all kinds of thoughts on that vital matter which Arkle 'made his own': questions on the nature of God, and God's hopes and aims in creation. 

 

For all Christians; God is (or should be) a person, not an abstraction. 

We are God's children (that is related-to, descended-from God); and God loves us. 

Beyond this, there are differences of understanding; and there is indeed a difference in my understanding and that of Arkle. More precisely, in his early work, Arkle described what I believe is true: God is a dyad, Father and Mother in Heaven: God is our Heavenly Parents. 

This is also the understanding of Mormon thelogy; and it natually goes-with an understanding of each Human Being as - in his or her eternal primordial essence, and eternally in future - either a man, or a woman (never neither, nor both). 

This metaphysical reality does not necessarily map-onto what may happen to an individual man or woman in terms of biological sex and/or sexuality during this mortal, earthly incarnation - which has the nature of a temporary experience for us to learn-from. My understanding is that - whatever happens 'superficially' in mortal life - each of us eternally has been, and eternally will be, essentially (by the nature of our true and divine self) a man or a woman eternally. 

 

But by the 1980s, Arkle had apparently moved to a view of God as primarily both man and woman simultaneously (a He/ She); and this goes-with an idea of sex as relatively superficial to the essence of Human Being - and with reincarnation as potentially alternating (as 'required') between the sexes; neither being the essence of a Human Being. Or with sex (and marriage, and procreation) being 'discarded' when a Human Being has reached Heaven

(Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield also share this understanding of sex. And it also goes-with an understanding of spirit-form as both the past and future of Man: Man was a spirit, will become a spirit; and physical incarnation is an intermediate stage, for experience and learning only.)

Whereas by contrast; my view (and the Mormon view) is that physical incarnation is higher than spirit life: bodies are better. Including that God is embodied - i.e. God is physically-bounded and in the same as human form (or rather, causally vice versa); God is not an omnipresent spirit. 

So, for me, God is embodied, and indeed two bodies: God is a dyad: Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.

This matter of "what God is like", whether God is One or Two, is a vital to our metaphysics; because it decides our understanding of why God embarked on creation. Our inferred motivation of a unitary, solo God is very different from that of two Heavenly Parents, distinct but united by their mutual love. 

 

(Traditional Christian theology has it that God was utterly self-sufficient, and without needs (or desires). Trinitarian theology makes the love of this unitary God also be (somehow) sub-divided into the mutual love of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But either way, the creation of Men and everything-else by God is an ultimately gratuitous act - and Not a matter of God seeking greater satisfaction, Not a matter of God needing, wanting, desiring or yearning. I personally reject this line of reasoning on the basis that God is a person, like our-selves in an ultimate sense; and that God does have passions, wishes. In particular I regard Love as the primary passion of God, and I regard Love as having in its nature many aspects such as needing, wanting, desiring and yearning.) 

Arkle's inference, based on his understanding of God as unity and a real person - is that God before creation must have been lonely and bored. God's greatest need was for things to do, and people to do-things-with. 

From this, Arkle derives an understanding that creation is essentially a matter of overcoming loneliness and boredom; of creating Beings who can develop to become like himself, and of creating many other things 'for fun'. 

Arkle encapsulates this in the ideas that in making Men who can evolve towards full-deity God is literally Making Friends; creating Beings who - it is hoped - will become 'friends' at the same divine level as God. And secondly that all the other Beings of Creation are made as a kind of ultimate 'play'. So that for Arkle life is - at its highest, most divine - created life is about play with and among friends.  

It should be noted - and this comes through repeatedly in these late Arkle letters, that loneliness and boredom are negative motivations - therefore creation is a kind of cosmic therapy for the unitary God.  

My own view, based on God as the loving-dyad of celestial husband and wife, of Heavenly Parents; is that creation is a natural consequence of the existential nature of Love. Creation is the positively-motivated overflow and expansion of spousal love. 

This is nothing esoteric, but a motivation that has been experienced (albeit perhaps partially and temporarily, as is the nature of mortal life) by countless husbands and wives through Man's history. Parental love seeks its own increase through children; and through a creative attitude to life and living.

In different words, the spontaneous expression (consequence) of parental love; is to co-create (in harmony with God's already in-progress creating) an open-ended, expanding-and-harmonious world; in which the family lives creatively. 

In a nutshell, God is like the perfection of married love, and what God wants from creation is analogous to what a loving husband and wife want, given a husband and wife who are themselves members of loving families. 

Thus (in an eternal persepctive) God wants children, and loving-developing family relations; wants new family and friends (i.e. permanent friends, maintained in harmony by analogously-familial love); wants a whole created-world of other (increasingly creative) Beings of many kinds, natures, motivations - but (ideally, and in actuality in Heaven) all maintained in Harmony by their mutual love. 

 

Heavenly Parents and the dyadic/ one-creator God - an update

As I have often written, but not recently, I believe that God is dyadic - consisting of a Heavenly Father and Mother, a man and woman who are (in some sense) incarnate and not spirits. 

This is the Mormon understanding, and reading about Mormon theology was where I first came across it. 

I am not trying to persuade other people that I am right; but I shall here consider why I personally believe this, and what it is that I believe. 

In the first place it is due to what might be termed intuition; in the sense that when I first encountered this idea, my heart seemed to jump and warm; as if I was discovering something true, good and with great possibilities of more-good. 

There was an immediate and positive sense... not so much that this was true, but that I wanted this to be true - this came before my conviction that it was true.  

Following this I read more about Mormon theology, and realized that the dyadic, man-woman nature of our Heavenly parents was just part of an entire metaphysical understanding of creation (including procreation - the creation of beings including people) as something dynamic, interactive, developing, evolutionary, open-ended, and expanding. 

In other words, that creation itself was creative (and therefore creation was not, as I had previously assumed, a done-thing, a closed accomplishment, a finished totality - once-and-for-always.) 

I then began to explore the implications of these ideas for myself; using concepts I got from William Arkle (and his reflections on God's motivations for creation); and Owen Barfield, including Barfield's accounts of the 'polar' philosophy of ST Coleridge. 

I was also building on a longer-term fascination with 'animism' - with the (apparently innate and spontaneous) tendency to regard the world (the universe) as consisting primarily of beings - all of whom were alive, purposive, conscious - albeit in different ways, at different scales and timescales etc.

The motivation for creation, and why God should have created this kind of creation, was something I had found difficult to grasp (none of the usual explanations made much sense to me). But when I conceptualized God as the loving dyad of a man and woman, then it seemed obvious why such a combination would have wanted to create - including others who might eventually become like themselves.   

Furthermore, it did not seem possible that creation had arisen from any state of oneness of self-sufficiency, since this would make creation arbitrary; nor could creation arise from a tendency towards differentiation, because that would lead to meaningless-purposeless chaos. 

There must (I felt) have been some kind of original 'polarity' - in abstract and physics-like terminology, there would need to be at-least two different kinds of 'force', the interaction of which would be creation. Coleridge (also Barfield and Arkle) saw this in terms of a 'masculine'-tendency for expansion and differentiation; and a 'feminine'-tendency for one-ness and integration.  

But in terms of my (non-abstract) preferred metaphysics of beings and animistic assumptions; 'masculine' and 'feminine' simplifies to just a primordial man and a primordial woman; this would mean two complementary, unlike-but-of-the-same-kind, beings; the love of whom would lead to a desire for creation.  

(In the same kind of way that - in this mortal life - love of man and woman usually leads to a desire for procreation.)

At some point I validated this understanding by means of meditative prayer; by refining and asking a simple question, feeling that this question had 'got-through', and receiving a clear inner response.  

In summary; the above account is something-like the sequence by which I desired, concluded, became-convinced-by, the metaphysical assumption of God as Heavenly parents; by some such mixture of feelings, reasoning, and 'feedback'. 

All this happened a good while ago (about a decade); since when I have been interpreting things on the basis of this framework, and it seems to 'work', so far.

What the real-life, this world, implications are; include a reinforcement of the idea that the family is (and ought to be) the primary social structure; on earth as it is in Heaven; and a clarification of the nature of creation - starting with the primary creation by Heavenly parents and also including the secondary creation of beings (such as men and women) within primary creation. 

This metaphysics has further helped me understand both why and how love is the primary value of Christianity; i.e. because love made possible creation in the first place, and is the proper basis of 'coordinating' the subcreative activities of all the beings of creation.  

And it helped me understand how creation can be open-ended and expansile, without degenerating into chaos; because it is love that makes the difference.

Also, it helped me to understand the nature of evil; and how evil is related either to the incapacity for love or its rejection. Without love, the innate creativity of individual beings is going to be selfish and hostile to that of other beings: non-loving attitudes, thinking, and actions by beings, will tend to destroy the harmony of creation.  

I don't talk much about this understanding, and I often use the generic term 'God'; because it is difficult to explain briefly and clearly that the dyadic God of our Heavenly parents serves as a single and 'coherently unified' source of creation

But God is two, not one, because only a dyad can create, and creation must-be dyadic. 

And the dyadic just-is the one-ness of God the primal creator.  

Note added: It may be said, correctly, that the above does not depend on the Bible; but then neither does the metaphysics of orthodox-classical theology depend on scripture. We can find resonances and consistencies within the Bible - but assumptions such as: strict monotheism - creation ex nihilo (from nothing) by a God outside of creation and Time, the Athanasian Creed descriptions of the Trinity, God's omnipotence and omniscience, original sin... These are ideas that would not be derived-from a reading of scripture - the most that can be said is that someone who already ideas can find Biblical references that can be interpreted as consistent-with these assumptions. They are (apparently) products of philosophically sophisticated theologians who brought these ideas to Christianity from earlier and mostly pagan (Greek and Roman) sources. Also, these kinds of metaphysical assumption are theistic - to do with a personal god - but not specifically Christian. The salvific work of Jesus Christ (principally: making possible resurrected life everlasting in Heaven) was done within already-existing creation, and Christianity is not therefore an explanation of creation-as-such.   

Man and woman is primary - masculine and feminine are secondary abstractions

We live in an age of compulsive abstraction. Because of our 'materialism', our denial of the spirit - we cannot recognize primary reality which is specific Beings. 

Thus we ignore actual men and women and classify them instead under masculine and feminine attributes. 

At a metaphysical level of understanding (i.e. the primary assumptions concerning reality) - if we choose to define men in terms of the masculine, and women in terms of feminine; then we are implicitly asserting that the abstracts are a more fundamental reality than the actual Beings of men and women. I believe the opposite. 

The major (deliberately induced) cultural trend of recent generations is to privilege 'the feminine' - and to get women to identify with that abstraction; which, like all abstractions, is intrinsically imprecise, manipulate-able and unreal. 

Thus the feminine has been accorded many and contradictory attributes against which actual women are measured. This can be seen with clarity with the trans agenda - when imposed abstractions are so dominant as to erase all Being (as well as all biology). And society is being re-made (and destroyed) on that 'feminist' basis (along with other leftist 'isms'). 

And the backlash (including among traditionalist Christians, and I have mistakenly done this myself in the past) is to restore 'masculinity' as primary; and to measure actual men against this abstract set of properties. For instance actual men are supposed to 'shape-up' and match certain abstract attributes termed masculine. 

But/ and we need to be aware that biology and psychology are also abstractions! So we are not merely trying to replace ideological abstractions with scientific ones. To get to the root of matters, we need to get down to the level of primary metaphysical assumptions - which underlie all types of abstraction. 

So, I assume and believe that Beings are metaphysically primary; and that sex is real - the distinction between man and woman is real and primary. 

What I mean by this is that the soul of a Man is either a man's or a woman's soul. This is a fact that carries-through whatever happens in mortal life - which carries through attributes, biology, psychology and social roles. 

Further, that this fact is rooted in God; and that God is man and woman. Nit in terms of any abstractions of masculine and feminine tendencies or attributes; but that actual God is an actual man and woman: the dyad of Heavenly Father and Mother. 

And here I identify a serious deficit in my own thinking; which is that I do not take account of Heavenly Mother - and the implications for my own life and the world. 

There are numerous discussions of the 'feminine aspect' of Christianity - for example how it was traditionally lacking, of how it has been provided by the Blessed Virgin Mary. This in crucial ways - such that the actual lived Catholic (both Roman and Orthodox) Christian religion of people in significant times and places - its daily practice and motivating vitality - has sometimes (quite often) been driven primarily by Mary; despite what seem like the lack of theological and scriptural grounds for this.

The phenomenon of Mary has often been analyzed in terms of psychology, or even of societal balance - but my contention is that it is an abstract derivation of the primary fact of Heavenly Mother - co-creator of reality.

To give proper status to Heavenly Mother must therefore be rooted in going back to ultimate questions of metaphysics; of the beginning of things, of creation, of  the nature of mortal men and women. Only then can we begin to address secondary matters such as rituals and sacraments, who is prayed-to and how, the aims of meditation and mysticism - and the roles of men and women in the world today. 

I am suggesting that I (and 'we') set-aside our broodings over the abstractions of masculinity and femininity; and perhaps start by the recognition that we are all men or women at the level of our souls - we always were since we were Men and always will be through eternity; whether that eternity be in Heaven, or in some other state or place. 

'Human beings' are thus of two kinds of Being: men and women; and that applies to (originates in) God; and also in angels. Procreation is therefore as an aspect of divine creation - and indeed the prime purpose of divine creation - since creation is for the making of men and women who are (it is divinely intended) rise to become gods. And it was to make this possible that Jesus Christ was. 

It is at this deepest of levels that we (or at least I) need to address this burning and unavoidable societal discourse of 'masculinity' and 'femininity' - and the psychological/ biological definitions of men ad women in this mortal life.   

Metaphysical polarity explained and illustrated

If polarity is to be the basic, fundamental, metaphysical principle of reality (as Coleridge and Barfield have convinced me) - then we need to understand how polarity works; understand this abstractly and also with an illustrative example.

The benefit of a metaphysics of polarity is that it explains both dynamic creativity and novelty - leading to an 'evolutionary' understanding of reality; and also it explains permanent order and the stability of itself.

For creativity there must be dynamism.

For dynamism there must be opposition in the system, opposition of two qualitatively-different forces.

Because they are qualitatively-different - the forces cannot be made one. 

For opposition to be perpetual, neither force must ever prevail.

If neither force ever prevails, this implies that the two opposed forces must be linked - such that strengthening one force also strengthens the other.

If the opposed forces are linked, they may be regarded as one force.

But the one force of a polarity is a two (dyad) that are one in a way that cannot, in principle, ever be unified into a single entity (because that would not be dynamic); nor can the two parts of the dyad ever be separated (because then the two would not be one).

An imaginary, illustrative example of a dyadic system 

A 'double star' consisting of two qualitatively different spheres - e.g. one iron, one copper - which orbit one another, at different velocities - and in orbiting they generate vortices that themselves become autonomous and generate dyadic-dissimilar star systems...

But the double star system has the property that it cannot be broken or combined; such that if the two  stars were to be forced together (to try and make them one) they would merely make a hybrid, an alloy; and if one of the stars was pulled away from its dyadic orbit, then it would be either iron or copper, but not the iron copper dyad.

So the double star can exist perpetually as a dynamic dyad, creatively giving rise to further dyads - and that dyad cannot be unified, nor can it be broken.

Another example - the man-women sex difference

Men and women are qualitatively different; they form a dyad in (ideal, celestial) marriage; this dyad is the whole-human and is creative - that is, generative of new and qualitatively different offspring who are always either male or female.

A man and a woman cannot be combined - if they were 'forced' together the result is a hybrid, or defective (hence uncreative), or neither one nor the other.

If men and women are forcibly separated, the result is not a full human being - but a partial (maimed) deficient entity; kept apart there can be no creative generation of further men and women.

With a man and a woman as an un-unifiable and unbreakable dyad; humankind can be perpetual. 

Patriarchy, Feminism and Complementarianism defined - the ultimate nature of the relationship between men and women

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1. Patriarchy: Men lead. In all situations in private and public life, it is right and necessary that men take leadership. The male sex is primary; therefore, in an ultimate sense, society and reality should be, and will be, organized around the needs of men.

2. Feminism: Women should be privileged. In all situations and circumstances in private and public life, it is right and necessary that women are privileged. The female sex is primary; therefore, in an ultimate sense, society and reality should be, and will be, organized around the needs of women.

3. Complementarianism: Men and women have distinct roles and responsibilities. In some situations it is right and proper that men lead and are privileged, in some situations that women lead and are privileged.

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Due to its unfamiliarity, complementarianism requires further explanation:

The sexes are complementary, two different parts of a single whole. But not two 'halves' whatever that might mean - rather, two different but necessary elements.

Complementarianism entails that each sex alone (and therefore, each individual person) - while it can survive (for a while), is in some ultimate (metaphysical) spiritual sense incomplete; and the fullness of spiritual development therefore requires both sexes (and therefore at least two persons - one man and one woman) in a dyadic fashion.

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Note that I utterly reject the meaningfulness and possibility of Equality of the sexes - because Equality just-does mean Sameness - and the sexes just-are Different (or else we would not be having this discussion).

(In fact, not just sexes but people are different. And people who are different deserve and require different treatment. 'Sameness' is never more than expedient, contextual and approximate.)

I know that sameness is not what Equality is 'supposed to' mean; but I am saying that this sameness is, in fact, what Equality does mean - or else sometimes Equality is just an alternative word for Feminism.

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Other (more subtle, more nuanced) meanings of Equality cannot be held - the other-meanings will be too slippery, they will inevitably slide-into the meaning 'sameness'.

Equality is a falsehood, a fake abstraction, and to impose Equality is impossible - therefore Equality is evil in practice, because it is false, and to impose falsehood is impossible, and to try and impose an impossibility is necessarily to do evil.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=equality

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Both Patriarchy and Feminism are ultimately accepting that one or other sex will dominate overall; and the disagreement is over which sex will dominate; and which will be (therefore) subordinate.

History tells us that (like it or not) Patriarchy is socially-sustainable, for many dozens of generations, for many thousands of years.

Feminism is, by contrast, very recent, with only a few generations track record. But objective social analysis over the past century or two shows us that Feminism is parasitic, uncreative, self-destroying as a general policy - hence it is unsustainable over the long term.

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Therefore,  Patriarchy, Feminism and Complementarianism are, I think, the only actually possible relationships between the sexes - and, of these, only Patriarchy and Complementarianism are viable.

The question then is, of Patriarchy and Complementarianism , which is true and which is best?

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If the relationship between the sexes is to be anything more than mere social expediency (something that can be wrangled-over and experimented-with indefinitely) then we need to look deeper into the justification for social arrangements - to ask 'why?' - and this leads back as far as the mind can reach. 

My argument here is that Complementarianism is true and right; and I can argue that this is backed up by historical evidence (but this depends on how it is interpreted) and also that it feels right (but others may feel differently). The only decisive kind of argument is one based on reality: are men and women really complementary, or not?

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Until Mormonism, Complementarianism lacked an explicit metaphysics, theology and philosophy. Mormonism has thrived for eight generations and seems to be well set, but complementarianism does not have the long track record of sustainability which is seen for Patriarchy.

However, I suggest that Complementarianism does seem to be an unarticulated 'norm' towards which Patriarchy tends in actual practice.

I mean by this that the religion, the ideology, the law, may be Patriarchal - asserting male domination in every situation - but under stable conditions and with social development, tacitly but effectively women come to dominate some areas of life; and this can be seen as validating the reality of Complementarianism.

*

The most important question about Patriarchy and Complementarianism is: which is true? Is it that men are naturally leaders and naturally dominant in all situations; or are there domains in which women are naturally leaders and naturally dominant?

And - given that various social arrangements are possible - what is the Good, right, and proper form of social arrangement? Specifically, what is the best social arrangement from a Christian perspective?

*

Ultimately, this refers back to the ultimate purpose of human life, both to salvation and also to the possibility of what is variously termed spiritual progression, theosis, sanctification - which is the divinization of Humankind, to become Sons and Daughters of God.

For mainstream Christians, from this ultimate perspective, Men and Women are interchangeable; either a man or a woman considered in isolation can be saved, and either a man or woman can in isolation go through the fullest process of divinization.

More exactly, for (most) mainstream Christians, there is no pre-mortal life, so sexuality is only an attribute of mortal life - people are born either a man or a woman; but in eternal life sexuality is stripped away and people are neither men nor women.

*

So, for mainstream Christians, sexuality is a temporary expediency, not fundamental, not structural to our divine natures - indeed sexuality and sexual difference is a rather negative, earthly hence not-Heavenly thing. This ultimately accounts for the chronic negativity Christianity has displayed towards the body, sexuality, marriage and family - so powerfully documented for me in the works of Charles Williams - and the tendency to give highest status to the solitary celibate ascetic.

For mainstream Christians, social sexual arrangments are merely a matter of expediency - and considerations of expediency lead to Patriarchy.

It is NOT that the social structures of Patriarchy are actually based-upon and built-upon the ultimate structure of the mainstream understanding of the Christian religion - but rather it is that Patriarchy is socially expedient compared with Feminism, and mainstream Christianity does not conflict with this.

*

But for Mormons the situation is different. Men and women can be saved individually to eternal life and can undergo very considerable spiritual progression; but to attain the very highest level of divinization requires the dyad of a man and woman together in a celestial marriage.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/on-reality-of-complementarity-of-sexes.html

Thus, for Mormonism, sex is is not so much biological as metaphysical: part of the very structure of reality. Sex goes back to pre-mortal life, to pre-existence. Indeed, it (probably) goes back to before we were made spiritual children of God. So the eternal seeds or potentialities which were 'pre-spirit-human' were either male or female.

The implication is that Mormonism does conflict with Patriarchy, and does imply by contrast a system which treats the sexes as complementary.

Mormonism fundamentally contradicts the kind of Patriarchy which has been seen in human history (and including sometimes in Christian history) and which is argued-for by some modern Christians where all men dominate all women, and all women are submissive to all men, in all circumstances.

*

The situation envisaged by Mormonism is complex and contextual - but the basic complementarity is between (male) Priesthood and (female) Motherhood.

In practice, on earth and during mortal life - not all men are priesthood holders, not all women are mothers; and it is conceivable that men might be called mothers or be made to function biologically as mothers, and women might be called priests and enact priestly roles; but in reality and in principle and ultimately and over eternity - these are the proper and sexually differentiated roles of men and women.

Social organization ought-to reflect the difference; and men ought-to dominate those aspects of life pertaining to priesthood functions, while women ought-to dominate those areas of life pertaining to motherhood.

The precise definitions and details of what this complementarity of Priesthood and Motherhood means in practice and how it may be implemented are not important, and indeed are not prescribed - what I want to clarify now is that this is an example - it is the primary example - of complementarity.

No doubt there are others.

*

Spiritual implications of the metaphysical complementarity of men and women

If, as I assume, all persons are either men or women; and this goes back to our primordial origins in the eternity of pre-mortal life and forward to the eternity of post-mortal life; then the consequences are vast - and largely unexplored.

There is no generic human - all individuals are part of a person and unity and wholeness come from the loving dyad of a man and woman.

What seems like (or is promoted as) a battle of the sexes, or vying for domination between sexes, or patriarchy versus feminism, is actually and properly (merely) a process of experiencing and learning. The ultimate reality of the situation towards which divine destiny is tending is the dyadic love of a man and woman true marriage: this is the only completion and wholeness of human life.

Now, when it comes to the situation of an individual in mortal life - this is bound to have some vital relevance; although it may not be (in fact, by design) the most important or prominent aspect of a specific individual's life.

(We each have different and unique primary needs for learning in this life - some lives end very quickly - even in the womb; some lives are constrained by serious handicap or disease or situation; some lives are celibate - more are unmarried; the sexes may be segregated or pitted against one another - or individuality crushed by society; and many cultures have-been and are actively hostile to even an approximation of true-divine marriage.)

Due to the radical incompleteness of each sex, the relationship between men and women goes far, far beyond the realm of reproduction - and includes all the highest and most important aspects of thinking.

It isn't just that men and women think differently, have different abilities and dispositions; it is that only when there is a dyadic fusion of both a man and a woman, then the fullness and truth of perception, insight, knowledge and creativity can be.

(This applies to individual persons - a man and a woman; and it also applies if or when there is a true, organic, familial society - the men as a real group, and the women as a real group, will have analogous complementarity. The 'social organism' is intended, destined, to be complementary also.)  

The male and female principle in Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene

For an idea of what I intend by the "male and female principles", see this book review and the quotations from Owen Barfield and DE (Doris Eveline) Faulkner Jones. A terse summary of their argument is provided by Faulkner Jones:

One might call the special gift of women 'creative receptivity', and it should be used in close co-operation with the 'creative activity' of men... An example of the harmonious working-together of the male and female principles in social life is medicine in the nineteenth century. New discoveries were revolutionising medical work when there emerged in Florence Nightingale a woman powerful enough to feel deeply, and comprehend fully, the importance of these discoveries and of medical work in general. It was through her work in founding and organising nursing as a profession for women that the new medical ideas, generated through the male creative intellect, could be applied beneficently and systematically, on a wide basis, to all the classes of the community. Without the steady, loving, systematised, daily and hourly attention of trained nurses, the most brilliant surgical or medical treatment would fail.

Of course I am here comparing the cosmically great reality of Jesus and Mary, with the micro-cosmically specific instance of the male founders of modern medicine and Florence Nightingale and her nurses. 

But I would like to suggest that Jesus was - inevitably - specifically a man, hence male - and therefore essentially engaged in "creative activity"; therefore in need of a woman and the female principle of "creative receptivity" in order fully to fulfil the potential of his work. 

In the Fourth Gospel (for my understanding and explanation of this scripture, see here) we have a vivid and human portrait of Jesus provided by an eye-witness; and it can be seen that Jesus's character is distinctively that of a man. Jesus is neither androgynous, nor a fusion of man and woman: he is archetypically male. 

By contrast, of the five episodes that feature Mary Magdalene; the first is the marriage feast at Cana, which I believe to be a (later redacted) version of the marriage of Jesus and Mary; but it provides no information as the bride's behaviour or character. 

However, the next four descriptions of Mary Magdalene all mention archetypically female, indeed wifely, behaviour: these are:

1. Mary weeping at Jesus's feet at the resurrection of Lazarus, her brother - expressing direct sadness and empathy for the here-and-now situation;

2. Mary anointing Jesus's feet in Bethany and wiping them with her hair - demonstrating her knowledge of Jesus's divine status, and a focus on the present moment - and "indifferent" to larger and abstract masculine issues such as "the poor". 

3. Mary's presence at the foot of the cross during the crucifixion: being-present, while Jesus dies, i sympathetic participation.

4. Mary's discovery of the empty tomb, and her later first-witnessing of the resurrected Jesus; Mary apparently visited the tomb alone, and with no functional purpose other than - again - to be there, to participate in Jesus's condition. When she meets, and then recognizes, the resurrected Jesus; she desires primarily to touch him - again, an archetypically female response to the situation.   

None of Mary's behaviours are surprising, but in their here-and-now immediacy and care, they do emphasise the contrast with Jesus's own "Big Picture" words and behaviours. 

Mary's behaviours emphasize too that "creative receptivity" which is missing from, and complementary to, and necessary to the completion of, the masculine creative activity of Jesus.

This is one reason why I consider that Mary Magdalene later became one of the dyad that is the Holy Ghost; our guide (masculine active creativity) and comforter (feminine receptive creativity). 

If I were to draw any tentative lessons from this analysis for this, our mortal lives; and for the ideal relationship between a man and a woman towards which we might strive; such lessons would be along the lines of understanding the ultimate and spiritual nature of these male and female characteristics. 

Is incarnation into mortal life a 'random' process? (Mormon theology compared with mainstream)

We are incarnated into this mortal life - and each person finds himself or herself in a different situation: different times in history; different places on the planet; different sex, class, race; different parents...

There seems to be only two basic possibilities:

1. That the allocation of souls to bodies is a random process. We are equally likely to end up anywhere.

2.  God 'places' us into some specific situation.

The first 'random' possibility implies that our situation and sex is a matter of indifference to God and to our-selves - one situation is as good as another. This choice is pretty much entailed by the mainstream Christian belief that each soul is created some time between conception and birth - each soul starts out identical, so there is no point or purpose in placing a specific soul in one place rather than other.

The second 'placing' idea implies that we have different needs in mortal life - and this implies that souls are different at the point of incarnation, which also implies that we have a pre-incarnation existence. This doctrine of pre-existence has been non-mainstream for Christians since about the time of Augustine of Hippo - but is held by Mormons among others.

This is a good example of the way that metaphysical assumptions affect theology. Mainstream Christians are pretty-much compelled to assume that our situation in life is random, and meaningless - in now way is our actual life-situation 'tailored' to our spiritual needs.

Whereas Mormons, and others who believe in pre-existence, are compelled to assume that God must have placed us into our specific life-situation with at least some regard for what situation will benefit us; and potentially this placing would be highly-exact (although human free will or agency will surely make it impossible for the placing to be fully-exact - since any niche would be changed by the choices of the people around it).

Aside: the question of sexual identity - man or woman - is another point of disagreement between mainstream and Mormon. The mainstream view sees the human soul as newly-created from-nothing - and sexual identity therefore as secondary, and in principle it might be male, female of something-else, or nothing. This links with God being neither man nor women, but containing both.

But for Mormons it is doctrine that every person is either man or woman - nothing else is possible in a deep and ultimate sense (whatever the effects of disease or environment), and this identity goes all the way down and back to eternity. Furthermore God is a dyad of Man and Woman: Heavenly Father and Mother; Jesus was a man; angels are either men or women etc...

It can be seen that Mainstream and Mormon Christianity, while both being genuinely Christian, are based upon distinct metaphysical assumptions.

And these basic assumptions lead to big differences in  how we personally regard our specific situation in life: for Mormons our situation is meaningful because designed for our needs; whereas for mainstream Christians our situation (and indeed our sex) is random.

The Dyadic Holy Ghost

Since I regard God the Creator as dyadic, our Heavenly Parents, Father and Mother (actual, and presumably eternally incarnate, persons)...

And since I regard Jesus Christ's marriage to Mary of Bethany (Mary Magdalene) as a vital and transformative aspect of His work of the Second Creation...

Then it seems to follow - and has a intuitive rightness - that the Holy Ghost is also dyadic, and a consequence of the eternal commitment of Jesus and Mary in love (their "celestial marriage"). 

I think this is necessary because ultimate creativity comes from the eternal dyadic love of our Heavenly Parents (that is, the concept of creation includes (and/or arises from) love, as it includes freedom and agency - as distinguishable but inseparable aspects).  

Thus the Holy Ghost is both guide and teacher, and comforter; and it may be that these aspects reflect Jesus Christ the man and Mary Magdalene the woman; after their death, resurrection and ascension. 

In other words (bearing in mind these are emphases, not separate domains), the main theme of Jesus Christ in the Holy Ghost is to contribute discernment and purpose in a long-term, strategic way; while Mary contributes immediate help, here and now, in a tactical way. 

Jesus shows us the path, Mary keeps us upon it. 

Of course this cannot (even in principle!) be proved from the Gospels; yet the account of Mary in the Fourth Gospel strikes me as compatible by what I have just said - and from other traditions in Christianity. 

By my understanding, Mary Magdalene makes five appearances in the The Fourth Gospel: 1, implicitly in Jesus's Marriage at Cana (a passage that seems clearly tampered-with, including by deletions), in the resurrection of Lazarus (Mary's brother), the episode of the ointment on Jesus's feet in Bethany, at the foot of the cross and after Jesus's resurrection. 

Mary's concerns in the latter four episodes are very immediate, supportive, "caring" - and indeed it seems possible that Mary had a role in the resurrection of Jesus in a way analogous to John the Baptist's role in the divine but mortal transformation of the pre-baptism Jesus into Jesus Christ*. 

I get this from the hints contained in the reported conversation between the resurrected Jesus, and Mary, when she was the first to meet Jesus after his death, thus.

John 20: 14... she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. [15] Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. [16] Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. [17] Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.  

It strikes me that Jesus may here be talking of their future eternal union - to include the spiritual emanation of the Holy Ghost, available to all who follow Jesus - to happen (only) after Mary's death and resurrection. 

In very general terms - to include Mary Magdalene/ of Bethany in the Holy Ghost is a further development and explication of the deadly rejection of the feminine that afflicted Christianity from early-on (and which I blame of the monotheist philosophers who captures and continue to torment Christin theology!)

The progressively increasing emphasis on Mary the mother of Jesus in Catholic practice, I take to be a theologically-distorted - but nonetheless spiritually very valuable - manifestation of the reality of Heavenly Mother, and the wife of Jesus Christ. 

The fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary is mainly called-upon for aid and comfort in the difficulties of everyday living, fits with my understanding of the role of the divine feminine in general, and Mary Magdalene in her marriage-into the Holy Ghost specifically.   

Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, rediscovered the Christian feminine in God; but the CJCLDS have since neglected and suppressed this aspect of Joseph's revelation - and have chosen not to develop it, while never denying it. 

I am strongly of the view that an explicit inclusion of Heavenly Mother in the fundamental concept of God; and probably too a personal womanly aspect of the Holy Ghost; has (belatedly) become an all-but essential quest or project - for us, here and now. 

This is not something Christians can get off-the-peg or from any external source; but something each needs to work-through for himself - by the usual external and internal means of spiritual guidance. 

*Note added: This is easily (negatively or positively) misinterpreted in terms of divided stereotypical sex roles. I mean much more and almost the opposite; which is that the dyad of a man and woman eternally co-committed in love, can do something that neither can do alone - or, at least, one person can do less, and less well. That is something like a harmony of strategic purposive wisdom with immediate help. By analogy (very approximate) it is a bit like the benefit of being loved and looked-after by two people, a man and a woman, each with distinctive perspectives and capacities, eternally combined in love; who completely share divine purposes and method. This would be better than any conceivable single person, with only a single perspective and vision. That this is two persons creates and sustains a dynamic and growing aspect to the situation - whereas a single person would tend towards inertia and stasis. That this is two persons, rather than more than two, should be seen as an extra gift and potentiality added to the situation of single person - rather than a limitation.   

Married relationships - Patriarchy, Feminism or Dyadic (the Mormon experience)

Yesterday I was re-reading this-blog commenter 'Lucinda's excellent 2015 article from the Mormon Blog - Millenial Star. I certainly agree with the substance of what Lucinda says, but I noticed that there was a 'hang-up' in the comments about nomenclature.

For example, disputes about about the 'real meaning of Patriarchy; or (elsewhere) I have seem 'complementary' used as a synonym for 'de facto feminism'. I don't intend to quibble over this - but will make my meaning of these and other terms clear, as we proceed.

My general stance is that there was a long history of Patriarchy in human society, but around about 1800 there was a change in Western human consciousness (or human instincts) concerning the ideal way that men and women ought to relate - particularly in marriage.

This was a part of the Romantic movement in thought - and I regard Joseph Smith and the Latter Day Saints (beginning with the production of the Book of Mormon and the formation of what became the CJCLDS in 1830) as part of this Romantic movement.

My belief is that this Romantic movement in thought ought to have led to a new kind of dyadic (or complementary - in the original sense of that word) relationship between men and women. Mormonism bases this upon the solid metaphysical assumption that men and women are incomplete parts of the 'whole' human being; and that the divine ideal of the complete (i.e. fully divine) Man is a 'celestial' (i.e. dyadic and eternal) marriage of a man and woman.

This divine idea, then, ought to be reflected in our earthly ideals. However this has not yet happened.

In mainstream secular Western culture, we have instead had materialistic feminism; which is an incoherent, Leftist (hence destructive, evil motivated) perversion of the truth of the underlying spiritual ideal. Yes, we had the impulse for a New relation between men and women; but No - not feminism - which foments perpetual resentment and (even pragmatically) simply does not work. So not feminism - then what?  

What of Mormonism? My interpretation is that Mormonism was diverted by adverse circumstances first briefly into polygamy under Joseph Smith (multiple spiritual, not physical, spouses for men and women - intended to bind the Saints into a single extended family); then (under Brigham Young) into several decades of Patriarchal polygyny (plural wives for the senior Mormons) - and from about 1900 the current pattern of an ideal of eternal monogamy.

Current Mormonism is regarded as highly 'Patriarchal' by comparison with current secular norms; especially because only men are priests and there is an ideal of men as leading the household and women being mothers and homemakers. But spiritually there is a strong element of dyadic complementarity to Mormonism, which is evident by comparison with Conservative Evangelicals.

And ultimately this is related to the Evangelical concept of God as a man; while the Mormon God is a Heavenly Father and Mother. But the womens' role in the CJCLDS has always been much more important than in traditionalist mainstream Christian churches; with the Mormon Relief Society a very early feature, and a full range of 'parallel' women's organisations (and significant local, national and international positions of responsibility) within the church.

Thus, the true underlying position of Mormonism is that men and women are complementary 'partners' in their marriage. When this is made into a regulatory generalisation, into official guidance, it comes-out very much like Patriarchy; since on-average this broadly reflects the situation for the majority of men and women.  If we must have 'laws' then these must be 'patriarchal' - because the feminist alternative is much worse.

But in an ideal situation, the dyad of earthly spouses would be able mutually to find their own, perhaps unique, complementary compatibility; based on their own specific natures and dispositions, and the way that an individual marriage evolves over time - with age, with fortune, how many children or their absence, with diseases and disasters etc.

In this sense, all solid and lasting marriages on earth must sometimes be complementary, when circumstances dictate; but for the Romantic view of men and women this is the ideal, not just a regrettable necessity. 

Dyadic marriage, with each man and woman forging a flexible and complementary, permanent and committed, relationship, is - I believe - the proper and truly Romantic ideal for modern men and women; on earth as we hope it shall be in Heaven.

Why categorize evil? Why categorize Good?

 A couple of profoundly-clarifying posts by WmJas Tychonievich have led to the following thoughts. 

Good and evil are not symmetrical - not mirror images - because Good is positive divine creation; while evil is 'various ways' of being opposed to divine creation. Thus Good is primary, and evil cannot exist without Good. 

(This is why I habitually capitalize Good, and make evil lower case - subliminally to emphasize their qualitative difference in kind.)

The reason that I have suggested considering evil as Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic is a matter of expediency - it need not reflect and actual categories or distinction in the real world. It is a (more, or less) useful way of understanding evil. 

The reason for doing it was becuase Ahrimanic evil was not being recognised consciously as evil. I think most people spontaneously feel that Ahrimanic evil is indeed evil - i.e. the modern workplace and mass media makes people feel bad (e.g. afraid, resentful, despairing). 

But they do not consciously recognize it as necessarily evil by nature and motivation because they do not understand that Good is rooted in God and divine creation; and even if Christians have become transfixed by ancient lists and exemplars of Luciferic sins (murder, torture, rape, arson, theft etc) which are not what it at issue in a totalitarian Matrix of omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

OK so much for evil; but why divide and differentiate Good? I think that a categorization of Good ought to reflect actual, natural reality - rather than being merely expedient. 

And this seems especially important in this Ahrimanic age, when we so often categorize to kill: categorize in order to destroy that which is alive, organic, conscious, purposive...

Lists of virtues, laws of behaviour... these Now (however it was in the past) function to short-circuit thinking from our real and divine self - and to make us bureaucratic functionaries, being instructed by checklists and flow-charts. 

All language, and all concepts, are merely 'models' of real-reality; but we should only be categorizing Good in so far as this is really based-on the categories of real-reality. 

Good is rooted in divine creation, which is rooted in love - so Good is ultimately a unity of motivation. For a Christian Love is Good and it is the single Good.  

Indeed, the purpose of Jesus making possible our resurrection to eternal life is that we may each become able to contribute, each in our unique way - from our unite nature, to the single harmony of many unique goods - to help-make a creation that is always (but always differently and changing) Good. 

But WmJas reminds me that (as we both know, from our acceptance of Joseph Smith's Mormon revelations) behind the integrated harmony of divine loving creation are Two divine beings: our Heavenly Father and Mother. 

God is a dyad, and the single harmony of creating comes from the love of our Heavenly Parents; who are therefore, two qualitatively-different kinds of being that is Good. 

In a sense Heavenly Father and Mother can each be understood (i.e. can be abstractly modelled in language) as what Wm terms Ahuric /Seeking-Good  and Devic Avoiding-evil; or active versus passive* Good - or (as I now think of them) man-good and woman-good.  

Mormon theology has it that sexual difference (male and female) is an essential characteristic of individual pre-mortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose. God the Father is not a self-sufficient 'monad' of Goodness. Instead - God is two kinds of Goodness. 

Instead "God" is a dyad of Heavenly parents, a man and a woman. It is their love (and love is always between Beings) that is the cause of creation: thus all creation is loving-creation. 

(I will now modify, summarize and expand on some comments from Wm Jas.) 

This implies that there are two complementary types of good. No being, no person (not even Jesus) can fully embody both. And, as Wm says, Jesus was indeed an exemplar of positive, active Good - but not so for the negative, passive* kinds of Good (which are instead represented in Catholic Christianity by the figure of Mary his mother). 

Since sexual difference is an essential pre-mortal characteristic. This difference comes before observable chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, motivations, abilities and behaviours. Sexual difference therefore reflects a fundamental division of primordial Human Beings - into promordial men, who are (insofar as they individually are Good) are orientated towards positive Good; and women who are orientated towards the avoidance of evil.

And that causal primary division of ultimate nature is usually reflected, or approximated, in the 'sexual dimorphism' of anatomy, physiology and behaviour of mortal incarnate humans. 

(...Remembering that this mortal life is individually tailored for our unique personal learning requirements - so no specific generalizations apply universally.) 

In sum: it is legitimate to state that really there are two qualitatively different kinds of Good - and that these are the two characteristic Goods of our Heavenly Parents. These are reflected in their Heavenly Children as we observe them - mortal men and women; and will be reflected in Heaven. 

That is the reality - and we can then summarize, model, and in general try to capture these reality-differences in language - but these linguistic descriptions will never be more that partial and distorted representations. 

The reality is in the distinction between the two persons of our Heavenly Father and Mother.

*Passive and negative are wrong terms - for reasons described in the comments. In truth, I think the distinctive complementary qualities of good in a man compared with a woman are irreducible; because this sexual difference of human Beings is primary (hence irreducible). 

Positive and Negative theology

I first came across the idea of a Positive (as well as a Negative) Christian theology in the writings of Charles Williams - he also called it Romantic Theology and the Via Affirmativa or the path of affirmation of images. The general idea was that Christian theology had typically been a path of negation, denial, asceticism, celibacy - but that there was also a (neglected) path focused on romantic love, art and poetry, richness of imagery etc. Williams regarded these as equal alternatives.

But it is hard to see how they could be equal, since they are so different - alternatives, yes, but in real life one or other of such vastly different paths is surely to be preferred; one or another must become the focus of societal aspiration and organization - one cannot aim both at being a celibate, solitary ascetic hermit or monk; and also at being a husband and father engaged with 'the world'.

Charles Williams knew (so far as I can find) nothing about Mormonism - and he would likely have found it to be boring or unpleasant if he had known anything - but Mormonism has for a long time been advocating and practicing something pretty close to Positive Theology: a Christian 'way' focused on marriage, family and engagement; and with no tradition of monasticism or the eremitic (reclusive) life.


Fundamentally I believe there are very different aspects of human psychology at work behind the positive and negative paths. The negative path aims at the relief of suffering, and the positive path at making life more fulfilling.

To feel the desire for the Christian negative path seems to me a desire to escape the sufferings of this world and live, instead, in a state of static bliss - absorbed in a permanent communion with God (who is, in essence, an abstract entity about which nothing positive may be asserted): doing nothing, simply being.

In the negative path, Love is seen as a sameness, a fusion of wills, the loss of barriers and all strangeness.

And there is no sex - indeed there are no sexes: maleness and femaleness are lost.


To desire the positive path is to wish that the best things in life be amplified and sustained - it also stems from the concern that static bliss would (sooner or later) become boring; and the conviction that the only thing which is not, ultimately, boring is actual, real, other-persons.

The dyadic goal of Mormon salvation can be seen in this light - the ultimate bliss is not the state of an individual soul in permanent communion with God, it is a man and woman in a permanent and divine Loving relationship at the centre of a network of loving relationships including God the Father and Jesus Christ (who are solid persons).

The difference between this version of the positive ideal and the negative ideal is profound - because in a permanent and eternal dyadic and sexual relationship between husband and wife, there would not be a desire for fusion and sameness but rather a delight in fundamental and complementary difference.


Sexual difference, and sexuality, both entail difference - a you and a me: not communion nor fusion nor loss of self nor consciousness. Instead a perpetual delight that 'we' are not the same, but 'fit together'. There needs to be the perpetual possibility of being delight-fully surprised; which means that there can never be full communion. Indeed if communion is full, it renders void the separateness and necessity of the dyad.

If a husband and wife become one, they stop being husband and wife.

There is indeed a desire for surprise, for open-ended possibilities. Once static bliss is put aside as a goal; it becomes essential that eternal life be interesting, rewarding, creative and (in some sense) progressive or evolutionary - changing, growing, developing without end-point or end. Otherwise - if life were static, or merely cyclical - it would become predictable and boring, and we would prefer a state of blissful loss of self.


It seems to me that Heaven must either be mostly like either the Negative or Positive ideal and that God would have a preference between these goals for Man - but I do not see why Heaven would have to be exclusively the one or the other.

So I see the Positive Way as primary, and God's first wish for us, and the basis upon which eternal life and Heaven are organized. But I see the Negative Way as an option available (on Earth and in Heaven) to those who - more than anything - wish to escape from suffering and hope to lose-them-selves in blissful communion with the divine.


Note added: Charles Williams descriptions of Positive Theology are at least difficult to understand, and probably fundamentally incoherent - this is because Positive Theology is metaphysically Pluralist - or at least implies this; while Charles Williams was very much a Monist who sought always to reduce apparent dichotomies (e.g. Good and evil) to unity.

If relationship is an ultimate goal and possibility, then there must be at least two irreducible entities to have the relationship - because if Man and Woman can be reduced to one, and Man with God can be reduced to one, then reality is One; and Positive Theology merely an indirect and off-route means to the same end as that which Negative Theology aims-at directly: viz oneness.

So Mormons - as pluralists - are the true Romantic theologians; and Charles Williams is fundamentally and ineradicably confused!

Heavenly Mother - Why and Not

'God' is a dyad of Heavenly Mother and Father, they are co-creators and parents of all. The metaphysical reality is that all persons are male or female and there is no-one who is neither or both.

The whole person is therefore neither man nor woman - each being incomplete - but a dyad of the two complementary persons man and woman; sealed in an eternal loving relationship.

Traditional Christianity - for good reasons - has focused on God the Father, but the time has come for change. While we might continue to refer to 'God' as tacitly implying the two personages, this is coming to seem evasive, and even dishonest.

Of course the potential for being misunderstood, and deliberately misrepresented, is vast - it is a hazardous, dangerous doctrine; but that applies to Christianity in general - and so, where there is need, hazard does not deter.

The key fact is the grounding in the dyadic and complementary metaphysics; this is the basic assumption, which is attested by direct intuitive knowing and coherence, not by empirical 'evidence'. It is thus metaphysical assumption rooted in faith and personal knowledge which clarifies and protects the concept of Heavenly Mother.

What she is, is a matter that need attention, now.

*

What she is not?... She is not the same as the Father, not another name for the Father, certainly not an equal to the Father. Complementarity means dissimilarity: two complementary things are not the same, are not equal - their quality is that both in combination are needed to make the whole, the unit.

Heavenly Mother is a part of the dyad of God - not a Goddess; she is not any kind of revival - because she has never been acknowledged nor known up to now. She is of the future, not the past.

She is nothing to do with feminism, and is indeed ultimately the opposite of feminism. She is not in any way 'for women' rather than or in preference to being for men (any more that the legitimate Queen of a nation is for the women of that nation more than the men! Or that mothers are for their daughters more than their sons. Nonsense!).

She is not a 'balance' yet not a take-over either... Heavenly Mother is a fact and a necessity.

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Heavenly Mother is a mystery - because divine; but she is a person we already know, from our long pre-mortal lives as her sons and daughters; we have known her for as long as we consciously knew anything.

If, for good reasons, we have been focused on Heavenly Father (and the reality of our Mother awaited the Mormon revelations of the middle 1800s) - then why do we need her now?

We need her now because the unilateral focus on the Father is preventing our divinely-destined spiritual progression. Where we are now (culturally, individually) is nihilism, despair and death; but we cannot (and should not) go back (which is why all attempts have failed); yet going forward is blocked by a partial and distorted understanding which cuts to the root; progression entails acknowledging the fullness of fundamental understanding, and building-upon that.

At some deep and intuitive level we know this, or we can know it - each for himself or herself - for the asking (serious asking). And we can find out more, and as much as we need, by addressing questions in prayer and meditation and listening for the responses - observing the responses.

(This is not really a matter of 'worship' because the incremental collapse of that concept is representative of the reasons why our Heavenly Mother's time has come. It is instead a matter of acknowledged reality, followed by love; and of conversation, communion, communication.)

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This is not a matter of capturing Heavenly Mother in definitions, any more than this is helpful for our Father; because persons are known, not defined.

There is no need and little value from dividing-up the powers and responsibilities of our Heavenly parents any more than our real parents - yes they are different, and rightly; but no, the difference is not a consequence of, nor captured by, legal categories.

Persons are primary; loving relations are the cohesion and source of organisation.

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How important is this - is it necessary? Since the idea of Heavenly Mother is unsafe, will be deliberately and carelessly misunderstood and misrepresented, will be a reason for hatred and loathing... is she not better set-aside, down-played, kept-quiet about?

That is a decision you need to make for yourself. You need to feel that Heavenly Mother is something we need to know - now: urgently; and which honesty requires that we know - openly, explicitly; knowledge the lack of which is poisoning us in many ways.

The impulse is there, the impulse is in our hearts and unfolding in Western culture. If the impulse is refused and kept  unconscious; it will nonetheless emerge in distorted and inverted forms (like feminism, like misogyny, like resentment and competitive exploitation between men and women).

But if Heavenly Mother is acknowledged and takes her place explicitly and joyously as a completion of our knowledge of God and the basis of our mortal lives; then the destined new era of consciousness may commence.

Mary Magdalene and the role of women in Christianity - mundane and cosmic

The role of women in religion can be examined from the point of view of the extent to which it is mundane - i.e. to do with the conduct of mortal life in this world; or cosmic - i.e. concerned with eternal matters and existence outwith this mortal life. 

A cosmic role for women could be a religion where the creator was a woman, or when one or more of the god's was a woman - and there are also other possibilities. 

My main interest is in Christianity. In historical Christianity we can see a cosmic role for the mother of Jesus in both the Eastern and Western Catholic churches. 

And Mormons regard God the creator as a dyad of man and woman - Heavenly Parents who manifested divine creation and (in some literal sense) procreated Men. 

Other types of Christianity among Protestants have essentially zero cosmic role for women; and this applies to Judaism and Islam.  

As regards a mundane role for women - this is seen in terms of supernatural help with everyday life. This could range from a theologically formal role of female saints and other holy women in helping with various problems of life; to all kinds of unofficial, popular and folk beliefs of the same kind; that shade-off into superstitions and "luck" (and may occur even in what are officially strictly monotheistic religions). 

At a further remove, there is the matter of women's role in the various churches. In some religions women have a essential role in churches, but in historical Christianity this has not been the case. 

Sometimes all essential church roles were restricted to men, but in all instances women were inessential to the work of the church. The religion can be conducted entirely without participation of women. 

Another vital aspect relates to Jesus Christ. 

When it comes to a cosmic role for women in the life and work of Jesus Christ, historical Christianity has either had none; or has focused exclusively on the mother of Jesus whose role is probably only of explicitly cosmic significance relatively late in the history of the Roman Catholic Church - with the doctrine of immaculate conception. 

Even the mundane role of women in the usual versions of the life of the adult Jesus during his ministry is minor to the point of being inessential. 

This is (variously) a consequence of taking either the whole-Bible, or the whole-New-Testament (or Synoptic Gospels, or Pauline Epistles) as the major basis for Christian assumptions, and also of deriving core assumptions of church authority, tradition and a lineage of theology and practice dating back to Church Fathers. 

However, my understanding of Christianity is focused upon the Fourth Gospel, regarded as the earliest and most authoritative source of knowledge. 

As such, I see a potentially cosmic role for Mary Magdalene; who I believe to have been the wife of Jesus, and brother of Lazarus - whom I regard as the author of the Fourth Gospel.

Here - in brief - is what I regard as the description of Mary Magdalene's cosmic role in the work of Jesus Christ - using the Fourth Gospel (see this link for further discussion and more detailed referencing): 

The Marriage at Cana (Chapter 2) is a rather garbled and tampered-with account of Jesus's marriage to Mary Magdalene - and it was the time of his first miracle. 

I assume that Jesus became aware of his divinity at the time of his baptism by John; but he did not perform a miracle until he was married to Mary; which marriage therefore implicitly has a cosmic dimension, far beyond any mundane earthly ceremony. 

Jesus encounters Mary on the way to resurrection of Lazarus (Chapter 11) - his profoundest and greatest miracle - the first resurrection. 

Then again at the episode of the mysterious episode of the anointing of Jesus's feet by Mary (Chapter 12) - when he realized and announced that his death was imminent.  

Mary Magdalene was present (with Jesus's mother, other women, and Lazarus) at Jesus's death on the cross (Chapter 19); and was then the first to meet him two days later when resurrected (Chapter 20). 

I take these descriptions - bracketing Jesus's death and resurrection - to imply that Mary had some cosmic role in these unprecedented and eternally significant events. 

The last we hear of Mary and Jesus is when he tells her: I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. 

Which I regard as an anticipation of the continuation of their eternal, cosmic marriage in Heaven, after Jesus's ascension and Mary's resurrection. 

On the reality of complementarity of the sexes (and the non-subordination AND non-equality of the sexes)

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To say that the sexes are complementary is true - but it does not mean what most people think it means. Complementarity is both true and also represents an extremely radical re-framing of ultimate reality.

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Complementary means each sex is incomplete without the other, the two sexes fit together like differently shaped halves of a puzzle; and the proper and highest unit of humanity is a dyad.

Complementarity means that neither sex is dominant overall - and that in specific contexts sometimes one, sometimes the other sex will be subordinate.

(This is not a mathematical equality of complementarity - simply that there is at-least-one vital domain of life where domination and subordination relations are reversed.) 

Thus, with complementarity, there are domains of life in which women are properly and ultimately dominant over men - this sets complementarity qualitatively apart from theologies of patriarchy, or ideologies of male dominance.

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Theologically, complementarity is a natural consequence of Mormon metaphysics which regards men and women as radically incomplete when individual (although saved as individuals); and completed by the dyad of celestial marriage which is necessary for the highest levels of theosis/ sanctification/ spiritual progression.

Indeed, Mormon metaphysics envisages all men and women as having been originally (before we became Sons and Daughters of God, before we were born to earthly parents as incarnate mortals) eternally-existing essences or seeds of being ('intelligences') which were either male or female.

So, no matter how far we go back in time or project forward; men and women have been, are and will be distinct, incomplete and complementary - this is an aspect of the basic structure of reality.

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But Mormon complementarity does not sit comfortably with any mainstream Christian metaphysics, which has it that each soul is both saved and undergoes theosis as an individual unit - i.e. for classical theology the unit of humanity is a unit - and which therefore regards the dyad of marriage as a temporary earthly expedient which is necessarily dissolved by death, and Heaven as a sex-less kind of place.

For classical Christian theology, no-sex and unsexed is regarded as a higher state of being than the distinction-between and eternally-sealed union of man and woman.

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Therefore, in mainstream discourse there are only three possible relations of the sexes, the domination either of 1. men, or of 2. women, or else 3. absolute sexual equality; but Mormonism adds the fourth possibility of radical, ultimate, metaphysical, dyadic complementarity.

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Linked with:
 
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/should-wives-submit-to-their-husbands.html