It was the dawn of the fifteenth century since the Savior's birth, and Christine de Pizan was beginning to write faster and faster. A decade or so earlier, at twenty-five, the plague's theft of her husband Etienne had left her a widowed mother of three, supporting her likewise widowed mother. Natives of the Republic of Venice, her father Tommaso had moved the family to Paris when Christine was not yet four, to become a court astrologer for the French king Charles V. With no other means of support once Tommaso and Etienne were taken by the reaper, in the 1390s Christine had turned to writing, with the backing of Queen Isabeau, who rose in prominence in public affairs as her husband King Charles VI slipped ever deeper into near-incapacitating mental illness.
As she was reading one day, she says, Christine began to wonder “how it happened that so many different men – and learned men among them – have been and are so inclined to express... so many wicked insults about women.”1 Hadn't even Boccaccio, in his celebration of famous women, said that women are “endowed with tenderness, frail bodies, and sluggish minds by nature”?2 This constant barrage began to make Christine feel self-conscious, ashamed of her womanhood, to the point where she “finally decided that God had formed a vile creature when he made woman. … As I was thinking this, a great unhappiness and sadness welled up in my heart, for I detested myself and the entire feminine sex, as though we were monstrosities in nature. … And in my folly, I considered myself most unfortunate because God had made me inhabit a female body in this world.”3 But then God gave her grace to let go of that folly and to write this book in defense of womankind.
Ten years after she finished that book, Christine watched as her adopted homeland of France, already beset by civil war, was invaded from across the channel. The English king Henry V inflicted defeat after defeat on the French, so that five years into the invasion, in 1420, he strong-armed Charles VI and Isabeau into giving Henry their daughter Catherine in marriage and, with her, a claim to the throne for their future son – thus disinheriting Charles and Isabeau's own son, the rightful crown-prince Charles, who struggled to fight on through the lonely years against the English and their Burgundian allies.
But then, in the spring of 1429, the French holdouts found a new defender, of the unlikeliest sort: a teenage peasant girl, who had lived all her days since infancy under this black cloud of violence. Jehanne d'Arc – Joan of Arc – was convinced she'd been raised up by God himself to rescue France from her darkest hour. She had difficulty persuading these skeptical soldiers, who were deeply doubtful of this little girl. Joan had already started wearing men's clothing, believing the Lord had commanded her through his angels and saints.4 Dubbing herself 'the Maiden,' she wrote to the English invaders, announcing that she had “come here from God the King of Heaven to restore the royal blood,” and ordering them to “go back to your own countries, for God's sake,” or else “wherever I find your people in France, I shall make them leave, whether they want to or not; and if they will not obey, I shall have them all killed. I am sent from God, the King of Heaven, to boot you all out of France.”5 Adding a layer of armor over her manly clothes, Joan carried a standard, inspired the troops, and advised the commanders. With this maiden's help, the French broke the siege on Orleans and began retaking a town here, a town there. In July 1429, she stood beside the disinherited prince as he was at last crowned and anointed King Charles VII of France in the cathedral at Reims. The war had only begun.
That very month, Christine de Pizan wrote her final poem, a celebration of Joan's story. “This is God's doing who counseled her, who received from him more courage than any man,” she wrote. “Oh, what an honor to the female sex!”6 Christine didn't live to see the day, less than a year later, when Joan would be a prisoner of war, put on trial by judges who lamented that “this woman – utterly disregarding the honor due the female sex, throwing off the bridle of modesty, and forgetting all feminine decency – wore the disgraceful clothing of men, a shocking and vile monstrosity.”7 In the official charges against Joan, one was that she “steadfastly refuses to carry out other tasks proper to her sex, in all things behaving more like a man than like a woman.”8
For these and other alleged offenses, Joan was bound to a stake and burned alive in May 1431, never seeing her twentieth birthday on the earth. It would be a quarter century before, in 1456, the verdict would be revisited and reversed; her reputation as a holy woman has only grown in the centuries since, and today she's counted among the patron saints of France. But in the aftermath of her life, still we're left with these two voices: the men who judged her a discredit to women, and the woman who lauded her an honor to women.
When we last left off in Genesis, we saw that the human being, entrusted with priestly and royal work to do in the garden, was in solitude. And that was the one thing God saw as an ugly stain on his wonderful creation: “It is not good that the human should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). So, as we heard last week, God paraded in front of the human all the living creatures, allowing the human to exercise dominion by discovering and defining them with names of his choosing (Genesis 2:19-20). But none were able to be the human's partner, none able to complete him or complement him, none to equal him or deliver him.
So what Genesis pictures next is pretty amazing. “The LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on the human” (Genesis 2:21). That expression, 'a deep sleep,' is the same word we find elsewhere describing the trance that a prophet went into during a vision from God, as when Daniel collapsed “into a deep sleep with my face to the ground” (Daniel 8:18; 10:9). Perhaps we're meant to take what follows as what God shows him in a dream, displaying less the outer events than the inner meaning of God's work.9 This is a moment of divine revelation.
“And while he slept, he took one of his sides and closed up its place with flesh” (Genesis 2:21). I know, I know: we're used to hearing that God took one of Adam's 'ribs.' But the word in Genesis is actually 'side' – a common architectural word. The tabernacle had sides (Exodus 26:20), the temple had sides (Ezekiel 41:5), the ark of the covenant had sides (Exodus 25:12). So so does the human body. And it's just such a side – a crucial element of the structural integrity of humanity itself – that God grabs hold of here. It's not just any flesh and bone the Lord seizes on, but the flesh and bone closest to the man's heart, without which he's utterly exposed.10 So God yanks out an entire side from the human being, rips him apart, and stitches what's left of him back together. There's a lot more missing now than one slim and measly bone. This is a deep symbol. It'll take time to unpack.
But what happens next? “And the side that the LORD God had taken from the human, he built into a woman, and he brought her to the human” (Genesis 2:22). She's not sculpted from dust and mud, at least not directly. No, she's built – again, that language of construction. She's built like a home is built, like a city is built, like an altar is built. And the materials are no inert earth, but the very stuff of human life itself. Her origin is a thing of awe and wonder. Nothing taken from man is left out, nothing more needs be added. The joyous completeness of humanity is present when they meet face to face, as man and woman (Genesis 2:23). It's only in meeting the woman that the other human is able to recognize and name his own identity as a man.11
And the first lesson we ought to take from this holy tale is the divine truth that there are such things as men and women. In wiser ages, this wouldn't have needed to be said. How we got here instead is a long and sordid story. But our culture has broken apart human nature to the point it can imagine that bodies and persons can be at a mismatch – that the body you have can be a lie that needs to be conformed to 'who you really are,' your inner self, the story you want to tell, the role you perform.12 But the truth is, we don't just happen to inhabit a certain kind of body; we're each body-and-soul as one seamless thing. The body reveals the person. Our genes, our anatomy, our lives all bear witness – even if imperfectly – to the essential deep truth of who we are.
From Genesis, in agreement with all human experience, we know that “God chose to create two sexes” – when he surely could've done otherwise, could've made us however he wanted, still he chose this way as the most fitting.13 God created “two modes of being human,” “two different ways of being a human person,” “two original modes of being persons”: the male mode, as a man, and the female mode, as a woman.14 God acted “by creating male and female, each sex being plainly evident in the flesh,”15 a truth “readily recognizable at birth for 99.98% of human beings” and discernible with patient investigation for the few remaining outliers.16
Biologically, a male animal is the one whose body is geared toward contributing the smaller sex cell to the reproductive process, and a female animals is the one whose body is geared toward contributing the larger sex cell.17 That's true “among all plant and animal species that reproduce sexually,” not just us.18 So a man is the kind of human who could have a potential for fatherhood, biological or otherwise, and a woman is the kind of human who could have a potential for motherhood, biological or otherwise.19
God created two modes of being human, but not a third. Neither a generic unsexed humanity nor a third sex is provided for here. In Genesis, “human sex is strictly binary, male and female.”20 And so “binary distinctions between men and women” are culturally a “human universal.”21 Nor is there a prospect for Adam to become Eve, or Eve to become Adam, or either to become some new invention of their own devising. Manhood and womanhood are priceless gifts from God, and they cannot be exchanged; there is no returns policy. All the cosmetic alterations and hormonal replacements cannot delete the truth encoded in the DNA in just about every cell in a man's or woman's body. The fact that we're created as bodily beings “puts a limit on choice, a limit on self-improvisation, a limit on social construction.”22 We have bodies, and they mean things. And one thing our bodies mean is that your maleness or your femaleness is absolutely inseparable from who you are; it cannot be stripped off of what it means for you personally to be human.23
A second lesson God has for us is that men and women are, in some ways, different. Now, to say with the old phrase that “men are from Mars and women are from Venus”24 is an exaggeration; men and women are much more alike than alien to each other, and communication between us hardly takes an interplanetary connection. But we're designed differently, so on average we think and feel and act differently. There's a real biology to this: medical practitioners know, for instance, that “women are more susceptible than men to depression, osteoporosis, asthma, lung cancer due to smoking, and autoimmune disease,” while “men are generally at greater risk” of “cardiovascular disorders such as hypertension, arrhythmias, and heart failure.”25
Male and female brains tend to form some differences in the sizes of brain regions and the ways in which those regions are connected, even in the womb. Then, even as newborns, boys tend to gravitate more toward things, while girls tend to gravitate more toward people and to show more empathy.26 Already in early childhood, boys tend to gain advantages in more abstract reasoning, while girls tend to gain advantages in concrete reasoning and verbal skills.27 In one study, a typical two-year-old girl knew 40% more words than the typical boy of the same age.28 “Girls are also more physically flexible than are boys and have an advantage in fine-motor coordination.”29 Already at this stage, psychologists find “broader sex differences in social motives, behaviors, and personality” that manifest throughout “many different kinds of relationships.”30 And as they grow into their teen years and beyond, their bodies, brains, and often behaviors will tend to diverge more and more.
Genesis suggests that the woman, as a woman, is “fit for the man” – literally, she's both like him and the opposite of him, and vice versa (Genesis 2:20).31 Theirs is “a balance of sameness and difference between the sexes,” offering a “fruitful tension.”32 Men and women are “complementary opposites..., different in ways that make them natural partners.”33 Sex differences are “arranged purposefully to correspond to the difference of the other, so that maleness points to femaleness, and vice versa.”34 So “both femaleness and maleness always have a positive character, each confirming the goodness of the other.”35 They give each other meaning and fit together to form a social whole.
Christine suggested that God had “ordained man and woman to serve him in different offices, and also to aid and comfort one another, each in their ordained task, and to each sex God has given a fitting and appropriate nature and inclination to fulfill their offices.”36 These differences are God-given, she thinks, because men and women each have unique ways to contribute to God's service – distinctly but together. “In the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor man independent of woman” (1 Corinthians 11:11). To recognize their complementary differences is “an opportunity for mutual enrichment, as well as a responsibility that we have toward persons, to help them become perfect,” to become the fullest men or fullest women God invites them to be.37 So society shouldn't think with only a male mind, or feel with only a female heart. Men and women each need freely to contribute to society's thinking, feeling, and acting. The more we artificially suppress the contributions of either women or men, the less fruitful our society is able to be.
The third lesson is that men and women are equally valuable – not something that taken for granted in the world Genesis was written in. The ancient Greeks, for instance, told a tale where the human race was originally only men, and the first woman, Pandora, from whom “the tribe of women comes,” was created by the gods “as an evil for mankind.”38 Greek philosophers suggested that a female is essentially “a deformed male,” and that the male is always “better and more divine” than the female.39 For that reason, they held that “the relationship of male to female is that the one is by nature superior, the other inferior, and the one is ruler, the other ruled.”40
Unfortunately, that legacy held on through the centuries. Even Jewish writers somehow came to imagine that “a woman is inferior to a man in all respects,”41 created like Pandora as “the starting point of a blameworthy life” whose very existence made humanity less like God than when there was only a male.42 In this tradition – sadly adopted at some level by many Christians – men became identified with strength and reason and other good qualities we might have, with women becoming symbols of weakness, of emotion, and so on. Hence the need, they thought, for women to be ruled, reflecting a natural ordering of the soul's lower faculties to its higher ones. In this mentality, the only real help women were capable of offering to a male world was by having babies; if not for that need, some thought, God should've just made a second man and skipped women altogether.43
So, since the prevailing common sense became that “woman is by nature subordinate to man,”44 even female writers in the Middle Ages often bought into the belief that women were “inferior by nature.”45 Today, in some circles, the distortion runs in the other direction, with some believing men are inferior by nature – less sensible, less open, less adaptable, less capable – or simply stained by a collective male guilt.46 Christine, a standout in her era, didn't buy either. She could see that women “have minds skilled in conceptualizing and learning, just like men,” and can have “enormous courage, strength, and boldness to undertake and execute all kinds of hard tasks, just like those great men... have accomplished.”47 Christine recognized what too many in her time refused to see: “the endless benefits which have accrued to the world through women.”48 Neither was she dismissive of or hateful toward men and the benefits that accrued to the world through them.
So what does Genesis show us? First, Adam isn't Eve's maker – something pretty obvious to Adam, who wasn't even awake for the procedure.49 Neither, of course, was she his maker. Second, the woman isn't pictured coming from the crown of his head or the soles of his feet, as if God were establishing a clear pecking order.50 He might as well be split down the middle. She comes from his side, his torso, beside his very heart. And that's the point: she originates on his level. As Christine put it, a woman “should stand at [man's] side as a companion, and never lie at his feet like a slave.”51 For “God has never held, nor now holds, the feminine sex – nor that of men – in reproach.”52 “There is not the slightest doubt,” she says, “that women belong to the people of God and the human race as much as men.”53 And so, whether men or women, we bear “the same human nature, and with equal fidelity and dignity.”54 Neither man nor woman is the 'normal' or 'privileged' or 'default' way to be human, as if the other were a deviation, a deformity, a defect. “Women don't have to act like men to be considered human, any more than men have to act like women to be considered human.”55
Then there's that word God uses for what Adam needs – a “helper” (Genesis 2:18). Too often, people misread this as a sidekick, a supporting player whose very identity is subordinate to the man's. But you know who Israel has as a helper? “Blessed is he whose helper is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God” (Psalm 146:5) – same word! A helper is someone or something that relieves distress, rescues from danger, even saves from death.56 If you want a more concrete image of what that looks like, you could do worse than Joan of Arc.
God provides the woman to be the man's helper, who is, in her nature, like him, equal to him – an equal partner in all the royal and priestly work that God put humanity here to do. She's his equal partner in subduing the earth and exercising dominion, in serving God in worship, in guarding and stewarding the holy garden. A society that neglects the active help of women or of men is a society that needs saving. A society in which men and women forget we're fundamentally allies in a common cause is a society toying with its own death. Because we are by nature each other's helpers, rescuers, deliverers from a dark and lonely plight.
And as if that weren't enough, remember that “God created the human in his own image..., male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). A woman is no less the image of God than a man is, nor is a man less the image of God than a woman is. Both are equally embodied reflections of God in the world, here on earth to let creation reverence its Creator and to spread blessing and life and hope wherever we go. As one gender studies scholar put it, in Genesis 1 and 2 “there is no hierarchy of value, no dynamic of superiority and inferiority. Sexual differentiation is not a mishap, but cause for celebration and wonder.”57
Have we been celebrating it, then? Have we been struck by wonder at “the beauty of the difference between man and woman,” and at the profound strength of their equality?58 It's a delightful thing when we embrace each other as equals, celebrate manhood and womanhood as equal in dignity, equal in being faithful to the image of God, equal and complementary in the Lord – for male and female, men and women, are “one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). May we this week receive gratefully this gift of our manhood or our womanhood from God's hands. May we this week enrich each other with our special contributions. And may we, as men and women, help one another in this holy mission we share, in Christ's name. Amen.
1 Christine de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies 1.1.1, in Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards (Persea Books, 1982), 3-4.
2 Giovanni Boccaccio, On Famous Women, preface, in Giovanni Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women, translated by Guido A. Guarino (Rutgers University Press, 1963), xxxvii.
3 Christine de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies 1.1.1, in Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards (Persea Books, 1982), 5.
4 Joan of Arc, testimony given 27 February 1431, in Daniel Hobbins, tr., The Trial of Joan of Arc (Harvard University Press, 2005), 66-67.
5 Joan of Arc, Letter to the English, quoted in Maud Burnett McInerney, Eloquent Virgins: From Thecla to Joan of Arc (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 211.
6 Christine de Pizan, Tale of Joan of Arc 26, 34, in Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, ed., The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan (W. W. Norton, 1997), 256-257.
7 Pierre of Beauvais et al., preface to trial record, 1431, in Daniel Hobbins, tr., The Trial of Joan of Arc (Harvard University Press, 2005), 33.
8 Jean d'Estivet, article 16, read into the record on 27 March 1431, in Daniel Hobbins, tr., The Trial of Joan of Arc (Harvard University Press, 2005), 131.
9 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 2.12, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:105.
10 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 101.
11 Antonio Malo, Transcending Gender Ideology: A Philosophy of Sexual Difference, translated by Alice Pavey (Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 97.
12 Andrew T. Walker, God and the Transgender Debate: What Does the Bible Actually Say About Gender Identity? (Good Book Company, 2017), 25-26.
13 Mark A. Yarhouse, Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture (IVP Academic, 2015), 37.
14 Antonio Malo, Transcending Gender Ideology: A Philosophy of Sexual Difference, translated by Alice Pavey (Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 76; Prudence Allen, “Gender Reality vs. Gender Ideology,” in Paul C. Vitz, ed., The Complementarity of Men and Women: Philosophy, Theology, Psychology, and Art (Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 74; Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory (Ignatius Press, 2022), 38.
15 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 14.22, in The Works of Saint Augustine I/7:129.
16 Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory (Ignatius Press, 2022), 127.
17 Anne Campbell, A Mind of Her Own: The Evolutionary Psychology of Women, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2013), 17.
18 Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory (Ignatius Press, 2022), 124.
19 J. Budziszewski, “The Meaning of Sexual Differences,” in Paul C. Vitz, ed., The Complementarity of Men and Women: Philosophy, Theology, Psychology, and Art (Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 29.
20 Lawson G. Stone, “Garden of Delights and Dilemmas: The Old Testament on Sex,” in Jerry L. Walls, Jeremy Neill, and David Baggett, eds., Venus and Virtue: Celebrating Sex and Seeking Sanctification (Cascade Books, 2018), 6.
21 Anne Campbell, A Mind of Her Own: The Evolutionary Psychology of Women, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2013), 25.
22 Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory (Ignatius Press, 2022), 83.
23 Deborah Savage, “Woman and Man: Identity, Genius, and Mission,” in Paul C. Vitz, ed., The Complementarity of Men and Women: Philosophy, Theology, Psychology, and Art (Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 105.
24 From the title of John Gray, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships (HarperCollins, 1992).
25 Bohuslav Ostadal and Naranjan S. Dhalla, Sex Differences in Heart Disease (Springer, 2020), ix.
26 David C. Geary, Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences, 3rd ed. (American Psychological Association, 2021), 303-30; Paul C. Vitz, “Men and Women: Their Differences and Their Complementarity: Evidence from Psychology and Neuroscience,” in Paul C. Vitz, ed., The Complementarity of Men and Women: Philosophy, Theology, Psychology, and Art (Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 187-188.
27 Paul C. Vitz, “Men and Women: Their Differences and Their Complementarity: Evidence from Psychology and Neuroscience,” in Paul C. Vitz, ed., The Complementarity of Men and Women: Philosophy, Theology, Psychology, and Art (Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 190-193.
28 David C. Geary, Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences, 3rd ed. (American Psychological Association, 2021), 326.
29 David C. Geary, Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences, 3rd ed. (American Psychological Association, 2021), 301.
30 David C. Geary, Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences, 3rd ed. (American Psychological Association, 2021), 341.
31 Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 87; Lawson G. Stone, “Garden of Delights and Dilemmas: The Old Testament on Sex,” in Jerry L. Walls, Jeremy Neill, and David Baggett, eds., Venus and Virtue: Celebrating Sex and Seeking Sanctification (Cascade Books, 2018), 11.
32 Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory (Ignatius Press, 2022), 39.
33 J. Budziszewski, “The Meaning of Sexual Differences,” in Paul C. Vitz, ed., The Complementarity of Men and Women: Philosophy, Theology, Psychology, and Art (Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 14.
34 Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory (Ignatius Press, 2022), 41.
35 Antonio Malo, Transcending Gender Ideology: A Philosophy of Sexual Difference, translated by Alice Pavey (Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 86.
36 Christine de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies 1.11.1, in Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards (Persea Books, 1982), 31.
37 Antonio Malo, Transcending Gender Ideology: A Philosophy of Sexual Difference, translated by Alice Pavey (Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 91.
38 Hesiod, Theogony lines 570, 590, in Catherine Schlegel and Henry Weinfield, tr., Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days (The University of Michigan Press, 2006), 41.
39 Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals II.1 732a and II.3 737a, in C.D.C. Reeve, tr., Aristotle: Generation of Animals, History of Animals I, Parts of Animals I (Hackett Publishing, 2019), 72, 82.
40 Aristotle, Politics I.5.3 1254b, in Trevor J. Saunders, tr., Aristotle: Politics, Books I and II (Clarendon Press, 1995), 7.
41 Josephus, Against Apion 2.201, in Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary 10:284.
42 Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation 21 §151, in David T. Runia, tr., Philo of Alexandria: On the Creation of the Cosmos According to Moses: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Brill, 2001), 87.
43 Augustine of Hippo, Literal Meaning of Genesis 9.5 §9, in Works of Saint Augustine I/13:380; Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.92, a.1, in Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae 13:35-37.
44 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.92, a.1, ad 2, in Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae 13:39.
45 Isotta Nogarola, Dialogue on the Equal or Unequal Sin of Adam and Eve (1451), in Margaret L. King and Diana Robin, Isotta Nogarola: Complete Writings (University of Chicago Press, 2004), 150.
46 For instance, Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), 4, 7, argue that “in our time, surprising though it might sound, belief in the full humanity of men has been dangerously undermined by stereotypes based on ignorance and prejudice,” a prejudice ('misandry,' hatred of men) they detect “in almost every genre of popular culture – books, television shows, movies, greeting cards, comic strips, ads or commercials, and so on,” especially from the 1990s onward.
47 Christine de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies 1.14.3, 1.27.1, in Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards (Persea Books, 1982), 37-38, 63.
48 Christine de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies 2.30.1, in Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards (Persea Books, 1982), 142.
49 James McKeown, Genesis, Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 2008), 34.
50 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.92, a.3, in Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae 13:43: “The woman should never 'have authority over the man' [1 Timothy 2:12], and therefore she was not formed from his head; nor should she be despised by the man as though she were merely his slave, and so she was not formed from his feet.”
51 Christine de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies 1.9.2, in Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards (Persea Books, 1982), 23.
52 Christine de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies 1.48.1, in Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards (Persea Books, 1982), 97.
53 Christine de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies 2.54.1, in Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards (Persea Books, 1982), 187.
54 J. Budziszewski, “The Meaning of Sex Differences,” in Paul C. Vitz, ed., The Complementarity of Men and Women: Philosophy, Theology, Psychology, and Art (Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 13.
55 Deborah Savage, “Woman and Man: Identity, Genius, and Mission,” in Paul C. Vitz, ed., The Complementarity of Men and Women: Philosophy, Theology, Psychology, and Art (Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 106.
56 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1990), 176.
57 Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory (Ignatius Press, 2022), 40.
58 Antonio Malo, Transcending Gender Ideology: A Philosophy of Sexual Difference, translated by Alice Pavey (Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 192.
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