less benign than the stereotypes of the past. Even the deeply spiritual view of
the sexes we get in the Writings can be made into something shallower, more
static and less living than the reality described; and in the Church we must
take care to remember how complex and various the relationship between the
sexes is. It is dynamic and mysterious, not cut and dried; and this is its beauty.
Doctrine is the stuff of life, not abstract and rigid theory. Caricatures based
on doctrine are still caricatures (although of a higher kind than the grossly
sensual and distorted depictions of male and female which are common today).
But the distinction between the ways in which the male and female minds
work, although manifested subtly and with great variety, is real, definite and
pervasive; “nothing whatever in them is alike.”
This is not something natural science can discern from without, judging by
external appearances; but the truth of it, revealed by the Lord in the Writings,
can be confirmed and illustrated by observation – including a growing body
of scientific studies of the brain and differences in behavior between the two
sexes. Recent studies have shown that various maladies, such as ADHD and
heart attacks, for example, are manifested differently in females than in males.
And the value of different schools for boys and girls is being rediscovered by a
growing number of educators in the world around us.
The doctrinal point, though, is not just that men and women are different,
but why they were created this way. It is in order that a man and a woman
may be brought together in a marriage, in which each of them will enter into
a degree of human perfection, wholeness, fruitfulness and happiness that
neither could achieve alone. The sexes are not just different, but different in such
a way that they complement each other.
One illustration used in the Writings is how the heart and lungs work
together in the body: the heart corresponding to the will, the lungs to the
understanding. (Conjugial Love 223) Without blood from the heart, the lungs
(and the body generally, of course) would not live; but the heart needs the
lungs to enrich its blood with oxygen and other nutrients from the air, and
to remove impurities from the blood as it circulates through the lungs. In a
corresponding way, the affections flowing from a person’s will are purified
and nourished by truths in the understanding. (See Part 5 of Divine Love and
Wisdom). This anatomical fact gives us a clue as to how male and female work
together spiritually.
An angel husband from the Most Ancient Church, in which this
correspondence was perceived, told Swedenborg:
Her life is in me, and my life is in her. We have two bodies, but one soul. The union
between us is like the union of the two tabernacles in the breast which are called
the heart and the lungs. She is my heart and I am her lungs. But since when we say
heart here we mean love, and when we say lungs we mean wisdom, therefore she
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