During the second part of the General Audience, held in the Paul VI Hall, on 26 March, the
Holy Father continued his catechesis on marriage in the following discourse.

1. We are drawing to the end of the cycle of reflections wherein we have tried to follow Christ's appeal handed down to us by Matthew (19:3-9) and by Mark (10:1-12): "Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?'" (Mt 19:4-5). Conjugal union, in the Book of Genesis, is defined as "knowledge": "Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore..., saying, 'I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord'" (Gen 4:1). We have tried already, in our preceding meditations, to throw light on the content of that biblical "knowledge". With it man, male-female, not only gives his own name, as he did when he gave names to the other living beings (animalia), thus taking possession of them, but "knows" in the sense of Genesis 4:1 (and other passages of the Bible), that is, realizes what the name "man" expresses: realizes humanity in the new man generated. In a sense, therefore, he realizes himself, that is, the man-person.

2. In this way, the biblical cycle of "knowledge-generation" closes. This cycle of "knowledge" is constituted by the union of persons in love, which enables them to unite so closely that they become one flesh. The Book of Genesis reveals to us fully the truth of this cycle. Man, male and female, who, by means of the  "knowledge" of which the Bible speaks, conceives and generates a new being, like himself, to whom he can give the name of "man" ("I have gotten a man"), takes possession, so to speak, of his humanity, or rather retakes possession of it. However, that happens in a different way from the manner in which he had taken possession of all other living beings (animalia) when he had given them their names. In fact, on that occasion, he had become their master, he had begun to carry out the content of the Creator's mandate: "Subdue the earth and have dominion over it" (cf. Gen 1:28).

3. The first part, however, of the same command: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth" (Gen 1:28), conceals another content and indicates another element. The man and the woman, in this "knowledge", in which they give rise to a being similar to them, of which they can say that "this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Gen 2:24), are almost "carried off" together, are both taken possession of by the humanity which they, in union and in mutual "knowledge", wish to express again, take possession of again, deriving it from themselves, from their own humanity, from the marvellous male and female maturity of their bodies and finally—through the whole sequence of human conceptions and generations right from the beginning —from the very mystery of Creation.

4. In this sense, biblical "knowledge" can be explained as "possession". Is it possible to see in it some biblical equivalent of "eros"? It is a question here of two conceptual spheres, of two languages: biblical and Platonic; only with great caution can they be used to interpret each other (1). It seems, however, that in the original revelation the idea of man's possession of the woman, or vice-versa, as of an object, is not present. On the other hand, it is well known that as a result of the sinfulness contracted after original sin, man and woman must reconstruct, with great effort, the meaning of the disinterested mutual gift. This will be the subject of our further analyses.

5. The revelation of the body, contained in the Book of Genesis, particularly in chapter 3, shows with impressive clearness that the cycle of "knowledge-generation", so deeply rooted in the potentiality of the human body, was subjected, after sin, to the law of suffering and death. God-Yahweh says to the woman: "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children" (Gen 3:16). The horizon of death opens up before man, together with revelation of the generative meaning of the body in the spouses' act of mutual "knowledge". And lo, the first man, male, gives his wife the name Eve, "because she was the mother of all living" (Gen 3:20), when he had already heard the words of the sentence which determined the whole perspective of human existence "within" the knowledge of good and evil. This perspective is confirmed by the words: "... you shall return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Gen 3:19).

The radical character of this sentence is confirmed by the evidence of the experiences of man's whole earthly history. The horizon of death extends over the whole perspective of human life on earth, life that was inserted in that original biblical cycle of  "knowledge-generation". Man, who has broken the covenant with his Creator by picking the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is detached by God-Yahweh from the tree of life: "Now, let him not put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever" (Gen 3:21). In this way, the life given to man in the mystery of creation has not been taken away, but restricted by the limit of conceptions, births and death, and further aggravated by the perspective of hereditary sinfulness; but it is given to him again, in a way, as a task in the same ever-recurring cycle.

The sentence: "Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore..." (Gen 4:1), is, as it were, a seal impressed on the original revelation of the body at the very "beginning" of man's history on earth. This history is always formed anew in its most fundamental dimension as if from the "beginning", by means of the same  "knowledge-generation", of which the Book of Genesis speaks.

6. Thus, each man bears within him the mystery of his "beginning" closely bound up with awareness of the generative meaning of the body. Genesis 4:1-2 seems to be silent on the subject of the relationship between the generative and the nuptial meaning of the body. Perhaps it is not yet the time or the place to clarify this relationship, even though it seems indispensable in the further analysis. It will be necessary, then, to raise again the questions connected with the appearance of shame in man, shame of his masculinity and femininity, not experienced before. At this moment, however, this is in the background.

In the foreground there remains however, the fact that "Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore...". This is precisely the threshold of man's history. It is his "beginning" on the earth. On this threshold man, as male and female, stands with the awareness of the generative meaning of his own body: masculinity conceals within it the meaning of fatherhood, and femininity that of motherhood. In the name of this meaning, Christ will one day give the categorical answer to the question that the Pharisees had asked him (Mt 19: Mk 10). We, on the other hand, penetrating the simple content of this answer, are trying at the same time to shed light on the context of that "beginning", to which Christ referred. The theology of the body has its roots in it.

7. Awareness of the meaning of the body and awareness of its generative meaning come into contact, in man, with awareness of death, the inevitable horizon of which they bear within them, so to speak. Yet there always returns in the history of man the "knowledge-generation'' cycle, in which life struggles, ever anew, with the inexorable perspective of death, and always overcomes it. It is as if the reason for this refusal of life to surrender, which is manifested in "generation", were always the same ''knowledge", with which man goes beyond the solitude of his own being, and, in fact, decides again to affirm this being in an "other". Both of them, man and woman, affirm it in the new man generated.

In this affirmation, biblical "knowledge" seems to acquire an even greater dimension. It seems to take its place in that "vision" of God himself, with which there ends the first narrative of the creation of man about the "male'' and the "female" made "in the image of God": God saw everything that he had made and... it was very good (Gen 1:31). Man, in spite of all the experiences of his life, in spite of suffering, disappointment with himself, his sinfulness, and, finally, in spite of the inevitable prospect of death, always continues, however, to put "knowledge" at the "beginning" of "generation". In this way, he seems to participate in that first "vision" of God himself: God the Creator "saw..., and behold, it was very good". And, ever anew, he confirms the truth of these words.

NOTES

l ) According to Plato, "eros" is love athirst for transcendent Beauty and expresses insatiability straining towards its eternal object; therefore, it always raises what is human towards the divine, which alone is able to satisfy the nostalgia of the soul imprisoned in matter. It is a love that does not draw back before the greatest effort, in order to reach the ecstasy of union; therefore it is an egocentric love, it is lust, although directed to sublime values (cf. A. Nygren, Eros et Agap¾, Paris 1951, vol. II, pp. 9-10).

Throughout the centuries, through many changes, the meaning of "eros" has been debased to merely sexual connotations. Characteristic, here, is the text of P. Chauchard, which even seems to deny "eros" the characteristics of human love:

"The cerebralization of sexuality does not lie in boring technical tricks, but in full recognition of its spirituality, since Eros is human only when it is animated by Agape and since Agape demands to be incarnated in Eros" (P. Chauchard, Vices des vertus, vertus des vices, Paris 1963 p. 147).

The comparison of biblical "knowledge" with Platoic "eros" reveals the divergence of these two concepts. The Platonic concept is based on nostalgia for transcendent Beauty and on escape from matter; the biblical concept, on the contrary, is geared to concrete reality, and the dualism of spirit and matter is alien to it as also the specific hostility to matter ("And God saw that it was good": Gen 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25).

Whereas the Platonic concept of "eros" goes beyond the biblical scope of human "knowledge", the modern concept seems too restricted. Biblical "knowledge" is not limited to satisfying instinct or hedonistic pleasure, but it is a fully human act, directed consciously towards procreation, and it is also the expression of interpersonal love (cf. Gen 29:20; 1 Sam 1:8; 2 Sam 12:24).