An Unnoticed Body-Person Dualism: A Rejoinder to Lawler and Salzman

Abstract

Michael G. Lawler and Todd A. Salzman argue that same-sex relationships can be genuinely marital in a sacramentally relevant sense. In an earlier critique I argue that their thesis is premised on an implicit dualism which de-personalises the body, and further argue that they fail to take account of “one flesh union” as key to Catholic-Christian marriage. In reply Lawler and Salzman claim that their thesis makes no appeal to a dualistic account of human embodiment; they also propose an understanding of “one flesh union” that can accommodate same-sex marriage. The present paper illustrates how an unnoticed body-person dualism continues to misdirect Lawler and Salzman’s understanding of marriage, in particular, now, by skewing their appropriation of the “one flesh union” idea. Lawler and Salzman’s dualist version of “one flesh union” is alien to the scriptural and hylomorphic meaning of that key moral principle. Through their revisionist version they advance an un-somatic account of marriage divorced both from the human person as a bodily being sexed as male/female, and from the personal significance of sexual-bodily union. Their implicit body-person dualism prevents them from recognizing that “one flesh union,” properly understood, involves a real somatic union of a male-female couple through sexual intercourse. Such bodily union is inherently marital-personal in significance and is thus a necessary condition for the multi-levelled, comprehensive union that is marriage.

Michael G. Lawler and Todd A. Salzman argue that same-sex relationships can be genuinely marital in a sacramentally relevant sense. But Lawler and Salzman’s Response ¹ to my Critique ² of their Initial Article ³ further evidences their dualistic approach to the key principle underlying the Christian account of marriage and sex ethics: one flesh union. Since it is a dualism both denied by them and directive of their downstream positions on marriage, this rejoinder focuses on highlighting and critiquing it. Section 1 examines their scriptural argument; Section 2 engages the metaphysical dualism implicit in their account of marital union as it bears upon the meaning and role of both sexual intercourse and sexual embodiment; Section 3 answers objections raised by Lawler and Salzman [henceforth “LS”] as well as by Gareth Moore; and Section 4 challenges dualist-inclined critics/appropriators of the one flesh principle to consider the logical implications of their reasoning. ⁴

Scripture

New Testament overview

In LS’s Response, the section “New Testament on Marriage and Sexuality” opens by claiming—through approving (and partial mis-)quotation of Lisa Sowle Cahill—“Only twice does Jesus direct his concern toward [sexuality]” (LS cite Jn 8:1–11 and Mt 5:31–32; Cahill also cites Mt 19:3–9, presumably equating it with Mt 5:31–32 in order to nonetheless arrive at “twice”). ⁵ To these three quite distinct instances one should at least add Mt 5:27–30 (on adulterous lust, and quite possibly masturbation [viz. “eye” and “hand”] also); Mt 15:19 (on porneia, meaning sexual immorality in general, and moicheia, meaning adultery specifically, as “defiling”); Mk 7:22 (which adds to the Matthean defile list aselgeia, meaning sexual licentiousness or libertinism); Mt 19:10–12 (on celibacy for the Kingdom), and Mt 19:18 (on the command against moicheia). LS’s error could be the sort of unimportant mistake all scholars make. But it may also evince a tendency to sub-consciously minimise the seriousness with which Jesus approached sexual morality and marriage. And if a soft-pedalling of Jesus’s teachings on this score is occurring, the question arises whether a distortion of the contents of his teaching might also be occurring. I shall argue that in LS’s case it is.

Notwithstanding their error, LS are correct that the New Testament does not provide a “systematic code of sexual ethics.” ⁶ This can be said of any ethical or doctrinal issue, of course. It does not at all follow that the New Testament’s understanding of marriage and sex ethics is unprincipled, and thus liable to undergo unconstrained development. Its many mutually consistent teachings pertaining to sex coherently express a foundational principle. It is a principle taught as decisive by Jesus in perhaps the most technical Torah debate he has with the Pharisees (Mt 19:3–9). And it is the same principle upon which Paul’s teachings on sex ethics are based (1 Cor 6:12–20, used as a launch for 1 Cor 7). The principle is one flesh (mian sarka). A Christian understanding of marriage and sex ethics must be rooted in this principle and be consistent with the New Testament norms it animates. After a total omission of one flesh in their Initial Article LS now recognise this requirement, which is why they devote a full section of their Response to its scriptural meaning.

One flesh as multi-levelled

Some of what LS say about scriptural one flesh is sound. They point out that its general scriptural presentation is not limited to sexual union but incorporates other dimensions of marriage also. So while sexual union is “one facet” of the marital reality expressed by the term, that reality is “not only” and “not just” a sexual union. ⁷ Implied by these statements, of course, is that one flesh union includes sexual union, i.e., that sexual union is an aspect of one flesh union. ⁸ (From this it might seem that LS now accept a core argument of my Critique. However, inconsistently, they go on to deny that sexual union is intrinsic to one flesh union. See in particular the below sub-sections, “One Flesh per Mt 19:4-9” and “LS’s unnoticed body-person dualism”.)

In claiming that one flesh connotes the wider marital relationship and “not just” sexual intercourse, LS assume that they thereby undermine my position, for they understand it as proceeding on the assumption that one flesh is “exclusively” and “narrowly” sexual in significance. ⁹ Not so. No part of my Critique asserts or presupposes the idea that marital one flesh refers exclusively to sexual intercourse in marriage. My introduction of the key idea speaks to how marriage is a sexual-type union, “The bond of marriage, according to Jesus, is a one flesh union: a unique sexual-type union contingent upon the bodied complementarity of male and female.” ¹⁰ The key point is that marriage is a sexual-type union, which is both true (since marriage is not a platonic union) and the sufficient premise for my case. Neither there nor anywhere else in my Critique do I assert that marital one flesh union is exclusively, reducibly sexual in meaning by virtue of only encompassing sexual intercourse. Hence, in the footnote to my introductory statement on one flesh, after asserting that one flesh connotes sexual union, I immediately add in parenthesis, “which is not to say that the term excludes other aspects of marital union.” ¹¹ And in the article’s very abstract I refer to the “nature of marriage” as a one flesh union. ¹² Other statements in my Critique further indicate that I understand one flesh to have a wider marital meaning beyond (but not divorced from) sexual intercourse. ¹³ So while throughout I invoke one flesh as a signifier for sexual intercourse specifically, that invocation is no denial of the wider marital meaning conveyable by the term. My Critique’s insistence on the essential and centrally important sexual dimension to one flesh is a corrective prompted by how in their Initial Article LS implicitly deny unitive marital significance to the act of consummation and to sexual intercourse more generally. Therein they associate consummating intercourse solely with the procreative (not unitive) good of marriage, and reduce spouses’ intercourse to the question of their (in)ability to “propagate the human race.” ¹⁴ These and other of their framings present sexual intercourse as extrinsically, instrumentally related to the marital qua unitive good. It is that presentation my Critique attempts to correct by appeal to Jesus’s teaching that marriage is a one flesh union.

To be as clear as possible, then: one flesh connotes sexual union and therefore marital intercourse; not: one flesh connotes only sexual union and therefore only marital intercourse. The general scriptural meaning of one flesh is multi-levelled. It certainly includes the sexual union of sexual intercourse (see the below sub-sections, “One Flesh per Mt 19:4-9” and “Inherent hetero-sexuality of one flesh”). Thus a perfectly appropriate semantic use of one flesh is as a signifier for sexual intercourse specifically. Yet one flesh’s semantic range is not restricted to sexual intercourse. On account of the hylomorphic understanding of persons presupposed by scripture, whereupon “flesh” (basar) can refer to the whole person and not just his physical dimension, two persons becoming one flesh works as a descriptor for wider marital union also. That is to say, one flesh can refer both to the union that is marital intercourse and to the marital relationship as a whole. It is a matter of both-and, not either-or. Note that this intrinsically related, multi-levelled meaning to one flesh only makes full sense on the basis that marriage is an inherently sexual-type union. And further note, that the level that is sexual union is not a merely physical union operating on a reductively physical level. Since “flesh” connotes the whole bodied ¹⁵ person (see, e.g., Mt 16:17, 24:22), and since being bodied is essential to human personhood, a union of bodies is in principle a personal-type union (see below sub-section, “Hylomorphic account of one flesh”).

One flesh per Mt 19:4–9

LS have reason to perceive a difficulty for their thesis in the foregoing line of thought. If scriptural one flesh union centrally and essentially (but not to say exclusively) concerns sexual union then in order to theologically justify the idea of same-sex marriage it would have to be shown that scriptural one flesh union includes not just male-female reproductive-type intercourse but also sex acts, like anal and oral sex, that are inherently non-reproductive in kind (henceforth: “same-sex acts” ¹⁶ ). This is not a task promising easy accomplishment. Unsurprisingly, therefore, LS argue that in Mt 19:5–6 Jesus intends by one flesh not marital-sexual intercourse at all but the wider marriage relationship exclusively. Citing 19:6 (“what God has joined together let man not separate”), they claim that this (supposed) prohibition of divorce “clearly refers to the one flesh union of marriage, not the one flesh union of sexual intercourse that occurs in marriage.” ¹⁷ Jesus excludes sexual intercourse from his invocation of one flesh, allegedly. ¹⁸ If true, this would make the case for same-sex marriage much easier to sustain. But Jesus does not decouple the sexual and wider marital meanings of one flesh the way LS suggest. ¹⁹ His reasoning in Mt 19:4–9 actually requires one flesh to mean not just marriage in its wider relational sense but (marital-type) intercourse also, and perhaps even principally. Even if the moral object of Mt 19:6 is divorce qua separation its injunction is used as a supporting premise for the concluding proposition at Mt 19:9 which describes post-divorce re-marriage as “adultery.” Adultery on the Jewish and Christian understanding refers centrally and in the first instance to sexual intercourse with someone who is not one’s spouse or is married to someone else. So at Mt 19:9 Jesus is effectively saying—in light of the injunction at Mt 19:6—that supposedly “marital” intercourse in the form of post-divorce re-marriage is actually the commission of adultery. For Jesus’s reasoning to make integrated sense the act of adultery must be included within the meaning of “separating” one flesh per 19:6. Thus Jesus’s appeal to one flesh at Mt 19:5–6 certainly includes sexual intercourse as an intentional object. 1 Cor 6:16 supports this. Here Paul assumes that his Christian readership will naturally understand one flesh as referring to intercourse: “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’” It is hard to credit that Paul’s and his Christian readers’ understanding of one flesh was badly at variance with Jesus’s, which it would have to have been if, as LS suggest, Jesus’s understanding did not include sexual intercourse. This somatic-realist interpretation of one flesh coheres with its appearance at Eph 5:31. There the author’s citation of Gen 2:24 is made in support of the injunction issued to husbands to love their wives “as their own bodies” (hōs heautōn sōmata: Eph 5:28). Literal bodies are meant (Eph 5:29), so one flesh must function in a somatic-realist sense for citation of Gen 2:24 to properly substantiate the injunction. Indeed, the Genesis text conveys a somatic-based meaning to one flesh. The aetiological “why” man and woman become one flesh is rooted in the idea of a primordial physical origin of woman from man (Gen 2:21–23). Unless the aetiology of Gen 2:21–23 is largely irrelevant to Gen 2:24, and unless the invocations of “flesh” at Gen 2:23, 24 possess non-overlapping senses, the unity implied by “one flesh” at Gen 2:24 must include physical union. That such union has a strongly sexual dimension is implied not just by invocation of “male”/“female” but also by how the text immediately adds that the couple were “naked” and felt “no shame” (Gen 2:25).

Though my required premise has been established, viz., that one flesh according to Jesus includes sexual intercourse as a referent, the following consideration is nonetheless worth offering. It is highly unlikely that Jesus prohibits divorce merely qua separation (as distinct from divorce qua permission to re-marry) at Mt 19:6. The word used here for “separate” is chōrizetō. Though it can be used for divorce it is not the term Matthew uses at 19:8–9 (or 5:31–32) when Jesus specifically speaks of legal divorce (which is apoluó). Now if at 19:6 Jesus prohibits divorce his next breath at 19:8 has him implicitly oppose Moses whom he presents as permitting divorce. Such opposition is difficult to countenance given that (i) Jesus launches his entire discussion (19:4–6) by extensively citing Torah; (ii) throughout Matthew Jesus is presented as a Mosaic-type figure ²⁰ ; (iii) the Pharisees at vv. 3 and 7 clearly want to oppose Jesus to Moses, and nowhere else in Matthew does Jesus fall headlong into a Pharisaic trap; and (iv) Jesus has earlier professed fidelity to the minutiae of Torah detail (5:17–20) and thus, implicitly, to Moses. If Jesus did prohibit divorce qua separation then Paul, who was conversant with many of those present at the episode recounted in Mt 19:3–9, sanctions the permissibility of breaking the Lord’s commandment under the guise of faithfully transmitting it: “A wife must not separate [chōristhēnai] from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband” (1 Cor 7:10–11). Furthermore, although the early Church was steadfastly opposed to post-divorce re-marriage it did permit divorce qua separation in various circumstances. ²¹ And, finally, if divorce qua separation is prohibited at Mt 19:6 then the teaching at 19:9 is rather misleading since it indicates that adultery—via intercourse pursuant to post-divorce re-marriage—is the moral wrong at issue, which in turn implies that divorce qua separation is not the locus of the wrong. Together all this strongly suggests that Jesus’s teaching in his debate with the Pharisees, inclusive of 19:6, concerns the adulterousness of post-divorce re-marriage, not the impermissibility of divorce qua separation. If this is correct then “do not separate” at 19:6, in referring to one flesh, refers not to the wider marital relationship (e.g., a common home) but to marital intercourse specifically. Intercourse with another, not separation as such, is what “separates” one flesh. And this makes perfect sense of 19:9. Prior to Jesus a socially pervasive assumption among Jews was the fundamentally contractual nature of marriage. Hence a man could divorce a wife upon provision of a divorce certificate (Mt 5:31, 19:7) and thereafter re-marry. The idea that in doing so he could be guilty of adultery made no sense unless his sexual body—his sexual self—ontologically and morally belonged to his wife (1 Cor 7:4) and that central to their marriage was a real, personal one flesh union of sexual bodies. Thus if a husband had intercourse with any other he would be “separating” the marital one flesh union—which is adultery. Given, e.g., Jn 6:51–58, Catholics in particular should be alive to the idea that Gospel invocation of “flesh” can involve profound personalist realism.

Inherent hetero-sexuality of one flesh

Since scriptural one flesh union centrally and necessarily involves the union that is sexual intercourse, a theological argument for same-sex marriage must demonstrate that same-sex couples can instantiate one flesh union through their sexual behaviour together. Unless same-sex acts genuinely instantiate one flesh union then sexual relationships part-founded on such acts cannot be marriage as proposed by Jesus. LS wish to evade precisely this demonstration by construing Mt 19:5–6 the way they do. That construal errs and thus their theological case is badly undermined. A supplementary strategy of theirs is to argue philosophically that marital union is not part-constituted by sexual union. But before moving to more philosophical ground it is important to illustrate, even if only briefly, how inherently hetero-sexual is the scriptural presentation of one flesh.

If in fact one flesh encompasses same-sex acts it could only be accidentally, not essentially, related to male-female union. If so it would have been intended as a sexually amorphous concept, extendable to any type of sexual behaviour, and thus not intrinsically, exclusively related to male-female sexual differentiation. But this is untenable. At Mt 19:4 Jesus cites Gen 1:27 (“at the beginning the Creator made them male and female”) while at Mt 19:5 he cites Gen 2:24 (“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”). Clearly illustrated is the context within which one flesh is understood: creation of male and female and their marital—and hence sexual—union together. Everything is normed according to the fleshly, sexual complementarity of man and woman. That hetero-sexed fleshliness is emphasised further in the backdrop Genesis texts: “Be fruitful and increase in number” (Gen 1:27), and, “this at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman for she was taken out of man” (Gen 2:23). It is also obvious from the context of Jesus’s teaching: marriage, divorce, and adultery—each understood per male and female sexual relations. Subsequently, Paul invokes one flesh only in the context of male-female sexual relations (1 Cor 6:16: “he” and “her”) even though he has been writing of sexual immorality generally, including about male-male sex (1 Cor 6:9). Furthermore, like the role of one flesh in Mt 19:4–9 and its background Genesis text, the citation of one flesh at Eph 5:31 is made in emphatically hetero-sexed terms, too. Little wonder one flesh union did not appear anywhere in LS’s Initial Article on behalf of same-sex marriage.

Aside from a positive case in favour of one flesh’s inherent hetero-sexuality there is available a negative case against the idea that one flesh pertains to same-sex acts. Consider, inter alia, how (i) alongside one flesh in Gen 2:24 Torah also contains Lev 18:22 (a moral commandment in its entirety, and not normatively contingent upon ritual-purity rules); (ii) Jesus at Mt 5:17 professes to fulfil, not abolish, Torah, and two of the six “antithetical” demonstrations of same concern sexual morality (Mt 5:27–30, 31–32); (iii) porneia per the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15:19–21 (promulgated for Gentiles but by Christian-Jews) very likely refers to Lev 18 as a whole, ²² including 18:22, which is not only significant in itself but also suggests how a first-century Jewish mind would understand Jesus’s reference to porneia at Mt 15:19; (iv) Paul, in passing on and applying what he received, wrote inter alia Rom 1:24–27 and 1 Cor 6:9–20 to Christians living amidst a pagan, sexually libertine culture in those respects not very dissimilar to ours; and (v) nowhere in the relevant materials—Old Testament, Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, Philo, Josephus, Rabbinism, Church Fathers, etc.—is there the slightest suggestion that same-sex acts could constitute one flesh union (all the evidence runs in the other direction by virtue of how consistently such acts are judged as contrary to God’s commandments and the divinely created natural order). LS might wish to say in response that many people today hold a different view concerning the morality of same-sex acts, perhaps adding that the moral horizons of Jesus and the early Church were limited by their socio-religious context. But, in terms of sexual morality, their wider socio-religious context resembled ours in crucial respects, and they differed from it precisely in terms of how seriously they took one flesh as the governing principle for sex ethics and marriage. Early Christian opposition to same-sex acts cannot be dismissed as unimportant to the meaning of one flesh when there is good reason to think that such opposition was itself part-predicated on one flesh’s meaning.

Text and context rhyme. “Male and female” is not rhetorical window dressing on the lips of Jesus or in the text of Genesis; it is the exclusive referent of one flesh and the sole underpinning duality that makes one flesh a reality. To argue the contrary is to be committed to a deeply un-theological entailment, viz., that hetero-sexual difference is irrelevant to the nature of marriage. Left out of such a picture is the creative act of God in making humanity “male and female.” On this view God’s supreme creative act is divorced from the nature of marriage even though marriage is presented by both Genesis and Jesus as enshrined within the created order. How can “male and female” be irrelevant to sacramental marriage if God “made them male and female and said on account of this [Heneka toutou] a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh” (Mt 19:4–5)? It is a crucially important question which LS silently pass over.

Metaphysics of Sexual Union

In light of the foregoing it is no surprise that to sustain their thesis LS ultimately bypass scripture in their Response. The positive case for the marital, one flesh quality of same-sex relationships is not to be found principally within their scriptural exegesis (pp. 321–28) but within their philosophical anthropology of marriage and sex (pp. 328–33). That case rests on dualist presuppositions, I will argue. By assuming that sexual qua bodied union is not intrinsic to marital union LS can present a de-sexualised account of one flesh, one congruent with how they interpret Mt 19:5–6. This allows LS to deny the necessity of sexual union for marital union, and to ignore the fact that, unlike same-sex acts, male-female intercourse really does render the couple one flesh by virtue of co-operating as one body. Though denied by them, operative in LS’s overall approach is an implicit rejection of the idea that human persons are essentially bodied beings.

Before unpacking the role LS’s unnoticed dualism plays in their reasoning I first offer a hylomorphic account of two persons becoming one flesh. Thereafter I proceed to explain why a dualistic disassociation of person from body is committed to denying the personal-marital relevance of one flesh sexual union. It is then possible to demonstrate that LS’s construal of sex vis-à-vis marriage proceeds dualistically, which is what allows them to appropriate the one flesh idiom (but not the actual concept as scripturally and hylomorphically understood) in a manner supportive of same-sex marriage.

Hylomorphic account of one flesh

There is a way by which two persons somatically operate as one flesh or one body in a limited but real manner. Though a complete individual in almost all respects, a man is reproductively incomplete per his maleness, just as a woman is per her femaleness. Neither is somatically whole per their reproductive dimension. They operate as a reproductive-type whole only by co-operating in the act of sexual intercourse. In a limited yet more-than-merely-metaphorical manner they operate jointly as one bodily whole. Their bodies function as a duality-in-unity, i.e., as one body. One complements and completes the other per the reproductive-type activity they jointly perform. This ascription of real somatic union does not involve a misapplication of the concepts of unity and oneness. A team is composed of various individuals yet performs together as a unified whole (as one) in relation to a joint co-operative activity intentionally oriented towards a common end (the team winning). Similarly (though somatically), a body is composed of many distinct individual organs yet those organs operate as a unified whole (as one body) in relation to a joint co-operative activity biologically oriented towards a common bodily end (health/life of the individual). And the same goes with male-female coupling in the reproductive-type act that is sexual intercourse: the individuals act as a unified somatic whole (as one body) in relation to a joint co-operative activity biologically (and thus somatically) oriented towards a common bodily end (reproduction). ²³ In reproductive-type activity the subject of the action is male and female as a unit—they form a single organism with respect to this function. ²⁴ So they act as one body: one flesh. In no other sex act does this occur since in no other sex act do individuals act as a somatic whole in relation to a joint co-operative activity biologically oriented towards a common bodily end. Rather, in such acts a non-reproductive part of one person’s body stimulates the genitalia of another’s to orgasm. Body part rubs body part in order to (one-sidedly) simulate the pleasure and affectivity of intercourse. No real bodily union is enacted. The couple do not become one body, they do not achieve one flesh together, and thus their sexual activity cannot constitute a marriage—a union—of their bodied selves.

Now, on the assumption that hylomorphism is true and dualism thus false, one’s body is both essential to one’s person and intrinsically constitutive of one’s person. For the individual human person, soul and body are comprehensively integrated so that they form a union which itself is a single nature. As the Catechism explains,

The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body: ²⁵ i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature. ²⁶

And so, “[t]he human body shares in the dignity of the ‘image of God’: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul.” ²⁷ This unified, souled body is the “whole human person.” ²⁸ It follows that one’s body is identical to oneself. You and I are souled bodies. We are neither outside nor inside nor beside our bodies—we are our bodies. This claim coheres with the Boethian and Thomist understanding of “person” as “an individual substance of a rational nature.” In the case of human persons the “individual substance” is a (rationally) souled body—and neither a soul simpliciter (which is a subsistent but not a completely substantial reality, unlike a person) nor the thoroughly un-Thomistic idea of an un-souled “body” (which would be no body at all, just an unintegrated mass of material particles). So the human person is a particular type of body—one with rational, immaterial powers like intellect and will, certainly, yet a body nonetheless. Unfortunately, in a culture so dominated by dualist and physicalist presuppositions these and related statements are susceptible to being misunderstood. They do not mean, for example, that a person is “only” or “exclusively” a “body” (with the contemplated idea of “body” approximating to de-personalised, abstracted materiality, i.e., a dualist conception of “body” as reductively physical). Nor do they mean that soul or reason is not also essential to human personhood. It is a question of both-and, not either-or. Your body is not and cannot be a “body” in the physicalist-dualist sense of a mass of bio-particles. Your body necessarily is a rationally souled body, and thus your body is identical to the person identifiable as “you.”

The key entailment for present purposes is this. If the body is inherently personal by virtue of being intrinsic to (human) personhood such that a person is a body, and if during sexual intercourse male and female bodies co-operate jointly as one body, then in sexual intercourse the bodily union equates to a union which is, in principle, a union of persons and thus a personal-type union. Bodily union is personal-type union; the act of bodily union is an act of persons. Two persons become one in a real way in virtue of their bodied persons becoming one. Their distinct individuality perdures alongside a somatic-based personal union. So, taking “flesh” in its scriptural sense as connoting “person” (and not just the material constituents or physical garbing of persons), it can be truthfully said that in sexual intercourse a male-female couple become one flesh in a real, personal sense. They form personal-type union through and on account of bodily union. A hylomorphic account of personhood and bodiment—which for human persons is always sexual bodiment—can explain how two really do become one in sexual intercourse. Of course, this itself is a philosophical claim. It is, however, perfectly compatible with and indeed the rational presupposition of the one flesh teaching at Gen 2:21–25, Mt 19:4–9, 1 Cor 6:9–20, and Eph 5:28–31. The philosophical and theological claims are mutually illuminating. Scriptural one flesh teaching supports the idea that one flesh, in referring to sexual intercourse, is an inherently personal-type union. Hence its being intrinsically related to marital union. This position is only really intelligible and only credibly defensible on hylomorphic, non-dualist grounds. So the hylomorphic account of sexual bodiment is implicit within scriptural one flesh teaching. This in turn comports very well with the scriptural understanding of “flesh” as referring to the bodied person. And the hylomorphic account allows us to see why the scriptural term one flesh is entirely appropriate for designating both marital union and sexual intercourse: the union of sexual intercourse is, in principle, a marital-type union on account of being a marriage of bodies.

Dualist denial that sexual union is personal-type union

On a dualist understanding, the human person is not a body. Rather, in central-case dualism the person is to be identified exclusively or primarily with one, or some combination, of self-consciousness, mind, continuity of memory, will, etc. On this view the body is not essential to personhood and thus not centrally, intrinsically constitutive of personhood. This is not to say that dualism necessarily denies all importance to the body or that it is committed to denying the body any role as a component of an “aggregate” view of personhood. Dualists can accept that persons have bodies as important and valuable appendages instrumentally necessary for certain functions (e.g., reproduction). Here the body is both extrinsic to and an instrument of the person. A more nuanced iteration of dualism, one attempting to accommodate hylomorphic insights, might even argue that a body is a necessary but insufficient part (or condition) of personhood, with the other necessary component being mind or a mental property of some sort (e.g., an immediately exercisable capacity for rational thought) which is extrinsically related to and (in principle) fully functional apart from the particular body in question. This “aggregate” ²⁹ dualism certainly approximates to hylomorphism more closely than the dualism of, say, Descartes, for whom the personal “I” is identified with thought abstracted from corporeality. Yet even here the person is not a body (still less a particular, unique body). Rather, the person is constituted by an amalgamation of two quite different substances or properties: a body (separate, not just conceptually or functionally distinct, from mind) and a mind or mental property (separate, not just conceptually or functionally distinct, from body). On this view the body is not intrinsically personal and the person is not identical to his body. In itself the body is sub-personal; there remains a sense in which it is both extrinsic to and an instrument of the person. There is thus a dualism between body and person: they are substantially different things.

Now for dualism, since persons are not bodies, a bodily union cannot itself be a personal-type union. Thus, on dualist presuppositions, bodily union cannot itself equate to a union of persons. Personal union could figuratively express itself in bodily union, like how marriage is figuratively expressed by the physical act of mutually exchanging rings. Or personal union could instrumentally use bodily union to support and sustain itself, like how a marriage is supported and sustained through use of suitable accommodation for the spouses. But bodily union is not an intrinsically personal-type union and cannot equate to personal union. Thus it cannot instantiate, enact, or re-new marital union, nor can it form a distinctive, specifying intentional object of marital union (like how fidelity is a vowed object of marital consent). It follows that a consistently dualist approach to marriage will not be able to affirm that sexual intercourse (somatic-sexual union) is included as an essential core meaning to the multi-levelled idea of one flesh union, and indeed as properly specifiable by one flesh union. A dualist appropriation of scripture’s one flesh union idea is committed, upon pain of inconsistency, to view its referent as the wider marital relationship exclusively, and not also marital qua sexual intercourse. According to such an appropriation somatic union cannot be intrinsically, non-instrumentally marital in significance for the spouses. Since somatic union is non-essential to marriage the door is opened to forms of marriage incapable of somatic union.

LS’s unnoticed body-person dualism

It is therefore no coincidence that in the course of advocating for same-sex marriage LS’s Response denies that sexual union is intrinsically constitutive of marital union. LS premise their Response on a necessary logical corollary to the idea that persons are not bodies, viz. that sexual union qua bodily union is not itself personal-type union and thus is not intrinsically constitutive of (and necessary for) marital union. So, in a manner entirely congruent with their Initial Article wherein neither sexual union nor one flesh union are mentioned, the determinative arguments in LS’s Response implicitly rely on a dualist account of the person vis-à-vis the body in general and sexual intercourse in particular. While LS profess rejection of dualism in their Response, ³⁰ those anti-dualist professions are a self-exonerative addendum to their actual argument for same-sex marriage. They form no part of the argument itself, whose operative reasoning—as will now be demonstrated—consistently relies on the idea that a sexual union of bodies is not a union of persons, an idea indebted to a dualist separation of body and person.

LS insist that one flesh as used by Jesus is a “metaphor.” ³¹ The insistence comes just prior to their exegesis of Mt 19:5–6 wherein they argue that Jesus’s invocation of one flesh was directed not at all towards sexual intercourse but exclusively towards the one flesh union that is the wider marital relationship. I have already shown why this reading is mistaken by dint of its dislocation from the overall pericope Mt 19:3–9. That exegetical issue aside, only by denying that a fleshly union of bodies is a union of persons does it make sense to insist that one flesh is merely a metaphor for wider marital-personal union. Conversely, if persons are bodies, and if bodily union is a personal-type union, and if marriage is a comprehensive multi-levelled personal union (which necessarily includes bodily union), then one flesh as a signifier for marital union operates in important part literally-realistically, and thus not merely metaphorically. ³² Hence behind LS’s insistence on the exclusively metaphorical character of marital one flesh union lies a dualism between bodily union and personal union, and thus, implicitly, between body and person. It is a dualism blind to the hylomorphic realism inherent in the Jewish use of basar (flesh).

And it is a dualism to the fore in LS’s determinative, more philosophical argument. So while they acknowledge that “the sexual union of the spouses in marriage” is “intimately related ³³ to their marital, personal union,” their sexual union “is not as important as their marital personal union”; in fact, the union of persons between a woman and a man in marriage is “much more important [. . .] than the union of their bodies in sexual intercourse.” ³⁴ Thus dichotomised is persons and bodies, and thereby the union of each. Bodily union of the spouses is both substantially different from and less important than their actual marital, personal union (the wider marriage, for LS). Only the latter is a personal-type union. In principle, then, bodily union is not personal-type union and thus is not an intrinsic, necessary level to marital union. Commenting on their claim that spousal sexual union is not as important as their marital, personal union, LS say, “[t]hat is precisely what we mean when we insist that [. . .] the good of the spouses is prior to the good of procreation.” ³⁵ For them union of bodies pertains not to the unitive good of the spouses but merely to procreation. As such bodily union is presented by LS as intrinsically sub-personal and thereby sub-marital in significance. Consistent with these remarks they go on to argue against my position,

[t]here is no “inherently personal significance of one flesh union” . . . Finegan’s sexual one flesh union, sexual intercourse, has no human meaning other than the meaning assigned to it by spouses engaging in it. Finegan’s continued insistence on the “inherently personal significance of [sexual] one flesh union” is simply puzzling to us. ³⁶

My quoted claim can only be puzzling if, as dualism holds, persons are not bodies. If they are not, then bodily union cannot have inherent personal significance. Yet persons are bodies (of a rationally souled sort). It follows that bodily union per one flesh union must possess inherent personal significance. It is a personal-type union by virtue of being a bodily union. Therefore, it cannot be true, as LS think, that sexual union has “no” human meaning other than that “assigned” to it by spouses (a truly remarkable claim—see note 41 below). ³⁷ Bodily union via sexual intercourse possesses the significance of being a personal-type union irrespective of what meaning or significance (if any) someone (spouse or otherwise) “assigns” to it. This is not to say that a conclusive moral judgment about an act of sexual intercourse can prescind from considering the intentions and wills of those engaging in it. ³⁸ Rather, it is to say that sexual intercourse inherently possesses personal-type significance in virtue of being a personal-type union and not simply a union of cells, organs, or some other sub-personal object. From the fact that one cannot reach a complete moral judgment about a sex act without knowing the intentions of its participants, it simply does not follow that sex acts have no inherent personal-type significance of even a morally indeterminate sort. (Analogously, killing is morally underdetermined absent knowledge of intention and circumstances but it does not follow that there is no inherent personal significance to dealing bodily death.) So sexual intercourse is never “merely physical” or “personally meaningless,” as LS claim in characteristically dualist fashion. ³⁹ Intercourse is always a somatic union of bodied persons and therefore necessarily significant (meaningful) in some personal sense. (What is genuinely meaningless is LS’s idea of considering intercourse “detached from human persons.” ⁴⁰ No intercourse exists “detached from human persons”—unless, of course, one assumes that bodied actions like sex are “detachable” from the persons performing them.) Again, LS’s thinking on all this presupposes a dualism between bodily union and personal union, and thus between body and person. It is on this basis that they can deny all meaning and significance to sexual intercourse except that supplied by the intentionality of the persons engaging in it. ⁴¹ In terms of their operative reasoning, the body is intrinsically (in and of itself) sub-personal in significance and therefore so too is bodily union.

Fittingly, LS explain that on their view the one flesh union of the spouses is their “marital union” as contradistinguished from their “sexual-physical union.” ⁴² What makes them one flesh, therefore, is merely their “mutual consent to be married.” ⁴³ Marital union is exclusively a union of wills, and not also one of bodies. LS are thereby committed to rejecting the idea that the spouses’ sexual union is intrinsically constitutive of their marital union. For LS, while the spouses’ sexual union “expresses their pre-existing marital union and sustains and strengthens it,” ⁴⁴ such sexual union “in no way constitutes it [the marital union].” ⁴⁵ Their dualism between personal union and bodily union, and thus between person and body, is clear and consistent. If, however, marital union is a comprehensive multi-levelled union across all dimensions of personhood, and if persons are bodies, then bodily union must be intrinsically constitutive of marital union and thereby essential to and a necessary condition for it. LS’s dualism effects their departure from canon law (and the ancient tradition on which it relies) insofar as it affirms that bodily union is indeed intrinsic to marital union. It is canonically held that antecedent and perpetual impotence to have sexual intercourse “by its very nature invalidates marriage”; ⁴⁶ that marriage is only absolutely indissoluble on account of consummation; ⁴⁷ that “of its own very nature” marriage is ordered to (inter alia) “the procreation and upbringing of children”; ⁴⁸ and that marriage is “by its very nature” ordered to sexual intercourse and by it (i.e., sexual intercourse) “the spouses become one flesh.” ⁴⁹ These propositions accurately reflect Gaudium et Spes no. 48 when it asserts that “by their very nature” matrimony and conjugal love are “ordained for the procreation and education of children, and find in them their ultimate crown.” The conciliar text goes on, “therefore [itaque] a man and a woman, who by their covenant of conjugal love [foedere coniugali] ‘are no longer two, but one flesh [una caro]’ (Mt. 19:6), render mutual help and service to each other through an intimate union of their persons and of their actions.” Here as elsewhere in Gaudium et Spes “conjugal love” most certainly incorporates sexual intercourse between the spouses (c.f., in particular Gaudium et Spes nos. 50–51, and note also the identical connection in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 372). Marriage can be ordered towards procreation “by its very nature” only if the nature of marriage is intrinsically constituted by the bodily union that is sexual intercourse. Hence it is entirely appropriate, indeed, theologically unavoidable, that at the heart of Vatican II’s treatment of marriage and conjugal love is affirmation of one flesh union understood as inclusive of male-female sexual intercourse. The bodily-sexual union that is one flesh union is inherently marital-personal in significance. LS’s unnoticed dualism between body and person prevents them from seeing this.

While the dualism goes unnoticed it does serve a crucial purpose for LS’s argument. If marital union includes of its very nature a union—a marriage—of bodies then there can be no real marriage without real bodily union. Since bodily union obtains only via sexual intercourse between the complementarily sexed bodies of a male and female it follows that same-sex relationships cannot be marriages (and a fortiori cannot be sacramentally marital). A pair of male or female bodies cannot marry together as one body. On the other hand, if marital union excludes real bodily union from its nature then it becomes cogent to think of same-sex marriage as a real possibility. Hence to advance their thesis LS are committed to denying that marital one flesh union essentially includes the two-in-one bodily union that occurs via sexual intercourse. For them bodily union is excluded from the nature of marital union. If bodily union is excluded from and is thus unnecessary for marital union (as LS suppose), and if marital union is comprehensive personal union (as it is), then the implication is clear: bodily union is not personal union. Protestations aside, LS’s thesis is built on a dualist separation of body and person. Their companion scriptural and philosophical presentations of one flesh union are each framed dualistically: a metaphor for wider marital union only, and not in any way a direct realist signifier of bodily union (per their exegesis of Mt 19:5–6); and pertaining exclusively to a marriage of wills and not also to a marriage of bodies (per their philosophy of marriage). LS’s construal of one flesh union is not that found in Mt 19:4–6 and rendered philosophically intelligible only through acceptance of hylomorphism. It is a dualist appropriation of the one flesh idiom, a counterfeit alien to and wholly incompatible with the teaching of Jesus, Paul and the Church.

Answering Objections

No part of my argument thus far has proposed or otherwise relied upon the idea that marriage is “only” or “exclusively” a union of bodies, or the idea that sexual union is intrinsically marital in effect or sufficient by itself to constitute marriage. All that has been claimed is that marriage includes as an essential part of its nature the union of bodies. Persons are multi-levelled beings and marriage is a comprehensive, multi-levelled union. It will be helpful to keep these clarifications in mind when considering objections drawn from both LS’s Response and an earlier critique by Gareth Moore of Germain Grisez’s appeal to the one flesh principle.

In arguing against the idea that sexual union is constitutive of the marital bond LS offer what to their minds is a counter-proposal: the marital bond is instead constituted by “the public mutual marital consent of the spouses.” It is not either-or, however; it is both-and. Marital consent is indeed necessary, but not sufficient, for an indissoluble marriage. Indeed, the requisite consent, far from being indeterminate and formless, contemplates sexual union. It is consent given with the purpose of “establishing a marriage” (can. 1057 §2) which “of its own very nature is ordered to the well-being of the spouses and the procreation and upbringing of children” (can. 1055 §1). Marriage, in turn, has among its essential properties “unity and indissolubility” (can. 1056), the latter of which is only properly effective upon consummation (can. 1141). This, in turn, occurs via sexual intercourse—the act to which marriage “is by its nature ordered and by it the spouses become one flesh”—which is the consummation, the completion, of a valid marriage (can. 1061 §1). Given that marriage itself is intrinsically constituted by sexual union, consent to marry cannot constitute marriage to the exclusion of sexual union. Marital consent, in having marriage as its object, necessarily includes in-principle consent to sexual union. If “loving union” were the sole intentional object of marital consent then marriage would not be an inherently sexual-type relationship and could be purely platonic. Thus, as a description of canon law and wider Church teaching, LS’s claim that sexual union “in no way constitutes” ⁵⁰ marriage is wildly erroneous. Marriage is a comprehensive, multi-levelled union of will and bodies. Hylomorphic marriage must involve a marriage of bodies.

Against this, LS reason that if sexual intercourse constitutes marriage then “every act of sexual intercourse, however secretly undertaken, by unmarried individuals would constitute a marital bond.” ⁵¹ Their reductio ad absurdum would be valid if employed against the position that sexual intercourse suffices to constitute the marital bond, i.e., if it exclusively constitutes marriage. Again, a false dichotomy frames LS’s thinking: either sexual union or marital consent constitutes marriage. But, again, it is a matter of both-and, not either-or. Union of marital bodies and union of marital wills are jointly necessary for marriage. One requires the other since persons are rational bodies with the power of willing, and since marital union is so comprehensive and multi-levelled a personal union. Note that these two objections proceed, in characteristically dualist fashion, by assuming a false dichotomy: either sexual union or consent is what really matters for marriage, which is tantamount to holding that either the body or the will is the locus for marital (and thus personal) union. Since it cannot be solely the former, LS conclude exclusively to the latter. Non-sequitur. Rejected by LS’s core reasoning are two fundamentally important Catholic beliefs: persons are souled bodies and marriage as one flesh union necessarily involves real bodily union. Having cleared their minds of those truths they can confidently conclude to the potential marital nature of same-sex relationships. But same-sex acts do not make the participants one flesh and thus do not constitute a marriage of their bodily selves.

A further objection is discernible in LS’s Response. By asserting that “the personal realization of the sexual act is not dependent on heterogenital complementarity” ⁵² they deny the intrinsic (and unique) personal significance of male-female sexual intercourse. Their idea seems to be that such intercourse is merely a function of isolatable genital complementarity. But this reduces the male and female bodies down to their genitalia—an artificial, unwarranted reductionism. Male and female bodies are, at one and the same time, wholes greater than the sum of their parts and bodies sexually specified precisely as male and female. The maleness of a body is essential to and comprehensively integrated throughout that specific body; femaleness is not reducible to an isolatable organ separable from the female body as a whole. So when male and female co-operate in sexual intercourse as a reproductive-type whole they form union not simply in terms of their genitalia but more fully in terms of their maleness and femaleness. They thus form union in terms of their whole bodily selves, personal selves sexed as male and female. In intercourse male and female persons form a bodily union that includes but is irreducible to a union of genitalia. Considered in abstraction from the rest of the body, which is LS’s reductionist framing of the matter, genitalia co-operate neither in a voluntary sense (since there is no person with a will who is their subject) nor in a complete sense (since as abstract organs they are dislocated from the wider reproductive system which acts as the somatic unifying principle of sexual intercourse—a system so thoroughly integrated into the respective male and female bodies as to specify those bodies—and not just parts of them—as male or female, descriptors which carry inherent personal significance). If only genitalia and not bodied persons unite in sexual intercourse then intercourse as a bodily act cannot be a personal-type union. ⁵³ So this third objection, by trading on a physicalist reduction of the body to its sub-personal anatomical components, also proceeds dualistically. Human persons are sexed bodies; bodied persons are irreducible to their organs.

Although not raised by LS it is worth considering the following objection. How can a sexual union of bodies be a union of persons if sexual intercourse can occur without consent? Granted, sexual intercourse is always a personal-type union and thus is always personally significant. But if the union is coerced or otherwise lacking in respect for a partner’s consent then it is an imposition of a personal-type union which, of its nature, should be the most intimate, exclusive, profound, and life-affirming—and thus free and loving—of all unions. Imposition of a profoundly intimate personal-type union on a person against his or her will is morally contradictory to the point of being grotesque. Hence the personal significance of such a union for the victim resides in having one’s body treated against one’s will as a sub-personal tool of sexual gratification rather than as a souled, intrinsically marital body deserving of both honour and authentic marital communion. Imposing one flesh union qua intercourse against the will of another results not simply in an impoverished qua incomplete personal-type union, but in a union opposed to itself. That is to say, since hylomorphism is true and thus a personal will is the will of a souled body, imposed bodily union is opposed to the souled body. Precisely because the person is a sexed body sexual assault is such a great and direct personal harm. As with bodily union, personal-type union in the form of co-operative consent can also constitute egregious disrespect to one or both of the persons involved. That is to say, in terms of the will, and not just the body, it is possible for a personal-type union to fall woefully short of a genuine union of persons (i.e., one formed by love of the bodied person). Criminal co-conspirators, collaborators in an assisted suicide, and parties to prostitution all unite their wills—and to that extent form a personal-type union—without thereby forming a union of friendship built on common concern for the other’s good (in the latter two cases, part of the good centrally denied is the human body). And even per ostensibly marital consent, purported spouses can unite their wills in what is, according to their actual intentions, a project of mutual exploitation. Again, a personally significant union obtains which constitutes so serious a personal disrespect that it actually serves to effect real distance between the two.

A different objection is foundational for Gareth Moore’s critique of Germain Grisez’s appeal to the one flesh principle. ⁵⁴ Moore challenges the coherence of the idea that in reproductive-type intercourse a man and woman become “one body.” He quotes Grisez,

With respect to reproduction, each animal is incomplete, for a male or a female individual is only a potential part of the mated pair, which is the complete organism that is capable of reproducing sexually. This is true also of men and women: as mates who engage in sexual intercourse suited to initiate new life, they complete each other and become an organic unit. In doing so, it is literally true that ‘they become one flesh’ (Gn 2.24). ⁵⁵

And goes on to comment,

Grisez treats male and female animals in effect as organs or parts of some other animal or “organism”. But, while organs are parts of animals or organisms, animals are not parts of animals or organisms. Grisez would have it that the male and female animal are only parts of a mating pair, and that this pair is the complete organism capable of reproducing sexually. This is wrong. ⁵⁶

Moore sees the wrongness of Grisez’s account as trading on two interrelated errors. The first is a disanalogy missed by Grisez. While it is true, accepts Moore, that individual members of a group are like bodily organs in that both the members and organs can “act as one,” members of a group are unlike bodily organs in being agents. ⁵⁷ Members of a group perform voluntary activities and thus collaborate “by co-ordinating their activities so as to act as a group and achieve a common end.” By contrast, bodily organs do not co-ordinate their activities as voluntary agents. Moore’s point, it seems, is that since Grisez supposes that men and women in intercourse “are only parts of a mating pair,” and since mere parts do not voluntarily coordinate their activities towards a common end, then a man and a woman (qua “parts”) do not become one or act as one in intercourse. But even if Moore’s depiction of Grisez’s position is correct, viz. a man and a woman being only parts of a whole in intercourse (identical to how bodily organs are only parts of a whole organism), his argument miscarries. For parts, though not voluntary and thus not agents, obviously can function in a co-ordinated manner as a single unified whole: the bodily organs of a newborn child function “non-voluntarily” in a co-ordinated manner as a single body. Of course, the major premise in Moore’s argument is in any way wrong. Grisez’s one flesh account obviously does not suppose that the male and female who embrace sexually are “only” parts of a whole, let alone non-voluntary parts of a whole.

The second of Grisez’s errors, thinks Moore, is how he misconstrues the mating pair as an organism when in fact they are really only a group. The couple who group together in intercourse remain as individuals who “have an existence as living individuals outside that group . . . [t]he life of a [higher] animal is separable from the particular role it plays in the group of which it is a part.” ⁵⁸ In this respect the mating couple are unlike bodily organs that cease to exist as living when separated from the body of which they are a part. Thus, argues Moore, “[t]he real biological unity that Grisez wishes to find, which would make of the two together one complete organism, is simply not there. The couple are just not one flesh in the sense that Grisez wants.” ⁵⁹ Moore thinks that if Grisez is correct, that if the mating pair really act as a single “organism,” then a resulting child would be an example of asexual, not sexual, reproduction—a reductio ad absurdum. So Moore advances two reasons against the idea that a mating pair become one organism and thus one body: they cannot act as one body while remaining distinct individuals, and if they act as one body human reproduction amounts to asexual reproduction.

Neither reason works, however, since both involve a misunderstanding of Grisez’s position. Contrary to how Moore tends to depict it, Grisez does not assert that in intercourse a couple become a single organism entirely and without qualification. Rather, with respect to reproduction those who engage in sexual intercourse “become an organic unit.” In that limited sense they act as, and thus become, “one organism.” ⁶⁰ Moore himself seems to acknowledge two of the key bases for this assertion: in intercourse “it is a pair of organisms—a pair of animals—engaged in a joint activity, two agents co-ordinating their acts to achieve a common end”; ⁶¹ and in joint activity co-ordinated towards a common end the collaborators “act as one.” ⁶² The question arises as to what is the form of the unity—of acting “as one”—in the case of intercourse between a man and woman? Whatever else it might involve, it necessarily involves the bodies acting as a somatic whole in relation to a joint co-operative activity biologically oriented towards a common reproductive end. Hence the locution “one flesh” suitably describes the limited but real and literal somatic union achieved through intercourse. Since their acting together as one body is not tantamount to collapsing into a single body such that only a single person exists, they retain their individuality during and outside of intercourse (similar to how in the unification of marital wills during the marriage rite there perdures two wills, not one). Unity is not identity. And since it is two bodied people who form one body with respect to reproduction, human reproduction, as an activity of two acting jointly, is sexual, not asexual (dissimilar to how in cases of genuine asexual reproduction only one substance is the direct causal subject of the reproduction). Moore makes his task easy: to show that intercourse does not involve complete, identity-destroying subsumption of individuals into a unified sexual whole. But what he needs to show is that no real somatic union obtains in the case of sexual intercourse. This he does not demonstrate. And if it were true it would follow that there is no literal bodily union intrinsic to sexual union, which would in turn mean that the unifying force of intercourse operates primarily on the emotional and psychological levels—an entailment comporting with a dualist approach to sex ethics. ⁶³

Logical Implications?

I have argued that LS’s argument is badly mistaken. But what if it is correct? Assuming it is—not just its conclusion in favour of same-sex marriage but, more importantly, its underlying presuppositions and reasoning—what else would be logically entailed or denied by it? Here, then, by way of conclusion is a challenge to Catholic critics of the one flesh principle defended by myself and others. Can they cogently explain the following matters in a manner fully consistent with their rejection of the realist, hylomorphic one flesh view of marriage (and fully consistent, too, with their approach to Church tradition): (a) Whether, and if so, why, Catholic marriage is restricted to a union of just two persons? (b) Whether, and if so, why, Catholic marriage is an inherently sexual union, i.e., it must intend and involve at least one completed sexual act, and thus cannot be a purely platonic relationship (no matter how loving)? (c) Whether, and if not, why not, a Catholic (female) bride and (male) bridegroom can consummate (i.e., complete, make fully real) their sacramental, marital one flesh union via an act of anal sex? (d) Whether, and if so, why, adultery is always seriously anti-marital in principle (even in cases where the adultery raises no objection from the non-adulterous spouse or is even encouraged by him/her as a way of, e.g., sexually enriching or saving their marriage)? (e) Whether, and if so, how, marriage is intrinsically oriented towards procreation? And (f), whether, and if so, how, sexual intercourse is intrinsically marital by virtue of belonging exclusively within marriage?