When Adam awoke from the divine sleep God presented him with Eve. Adam explained “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” This was an exclamation of love. Adam saw in Eve a human person like himself. Eve saw in Adam a human person like herself. In this moment original solitude was over come. The loneliness that each person felt for the other, the longing that they felt for another was over.
Original solitude gives way to original unity. Adam was a gift for Eve. And Eve was a gift for Adam. Their very bodies spoke a language of love and communion, intimacy and union. Neither Adam nor Eve would use another person. Original unity meant they could view each other “with all the peace of the interior gaze” and not be afraid. Man was not given over to dominating woman. Woman was not afraid of man. The two represented a communion of souls. There was harmony in the male-female relationship. Such were the characteristics of original solitude.
The nuptial meaning of the body is central to the idea of John Paul’s theology of the body. As he states “the body and it alone is capable of making visible what has been invisible, the mystery of the divine since time immemorial.” The body makes visible the ineffable mystery of the human person. It is a sign of the person but then again it is more, it is the embodiment of the person. There is no disconnect between a man’s sprit and his bodily desires in the beginning. The two work in concert with each other. Just as there was harmony in the male-female relationship so to there was harmony in the mind-body-sprit relationship within the human person.
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