Woven Together: In my previous post, I mentioned a book I had been reading and quoted briefly from Luther. Before I put the book back on the shelf, though, I ran across another statement that kept it open for a few more minutes. After the thoughts I have been working through lately about womanhood – and particularly after that previous post – this one seemed almost impossible to pass over.
Luther writes: “Just as we cannot dispense with eating and drinking, we cannot get along without women; for we can in no wise rid ourselves of our natural desire. The reason is this: We have been conceived in the bodies of women, have been nourished in them, borne by them, nursed and reared by them. Therefore our flesh is, for the most part, the flesh of women, and it is impossible for us entirely to separate ourselves from them.”
Okay, who can read that, especially that last line, without feeling the weight of it for a moment? “Our flesh is, for the most part, the flesh of women.” I love that thought. There is something so deeply human about it. Before we ever begin arranging categories, defining roles, or discussing order, we are confronted with the simple reality that every man entered this world through a woman and carries within his own flesh the evidence of that dependence.
Luther’s own comments about women are hardly simple. At times he speaks of them with warmth, dignity, and genuine appreciation, yet much of what he says also reflects the narrow structure in which women were commonly understood in his world. He could emphasize marriage, motherhood, domestic life, and the distinction between the sexes in ways that sometimes seem to leave very little room for womanhood beyond those categories. That is part of what makes this particular statement so interesting. For a moment, he is not defining woman by her place or by the categories through which she was ordinarily understood. He is simply recognizing how deeply she is woven into the very fabric of human life.
Perhaps that is part of what I find so compelling about the statement. It reminds us that man and woman were never meant to be thought of as isolated categories standing over against one another. Our lives are bound together far more deeply than that. Whatever distinctions Scripture may establish between us, they exist within a shared humanity marked by dependence, affection, need, and mutual belonging. Before there is any discussion of who leads, who submits, or who occupies what place, there is the much more basic truth that God made us for life together.
Luther’s wording is stronger than simply saying, “We came from women.” He says our flesh is, in a real sense, their flesh. That makes the relationship much more intimate and interwoven than we sometimes stop to consider. It reminds me of Paul’s words in I Corinthians 11:12: “For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God.”
Perhaps the real value of a statement like Luther’s is that it invites us to see womanhood with a wider lens. There are roles, distinctions, and relationships that matter, but none of them exhaust what a woman is. There is something deeper in the person herself – a life, a presence, a beauty, and a humanity that cannot be reduced to a place within an order. Luther’s little sentence does not answer every question, but it does make us look again. And perhaps sometimes it is good simply to stop and recognize the wonder of that. MPJ