Eberhard Arnold

Meeting Transcript, September 1, 1934

[Arnold, Eberhard and Emmy papers - T.S.H.]

[Draft Translation by Bruderhof Historical Archive]

EA 283

The Nature of Woman and of Man

Meeting with the community when four newly received novices--Arnold, Gladys, Kathleen, and Winifred--raised questions concerning the relationship of man and woman. Eberhard Arnold lead the meeting and spoke for the community in his answers and comments. This is a shorthand record of the meeting.

Arnold: We would like to ask about man and woman, about their natures and the difference and the relationship between them as these things are set forth in the four points of the Hutterian article on marriage. Here the man is regarded as the head of the woman. He appears to be placed higher. Are they not equal? Then it is said in the four points that the wife is to follow the husband in all that is good and godly, and she is asked whether she wants to do this. Why is this question asked only of the wife and not of the husband? If there is full unity and if we are concerned with unity then the wife cannot be under a moral force; compulsion would be saying too much, while influence would be saying too little. They must complement one another perfectly. They stand side by side as equals. We feel that the only difference between man and woman is purely biological. They are utterly different, but out of this difference they complement one another perfectly. The wife is necessary to the husband and the husband is necessary to the wife. At times the husband is superior to the wife. As beings in themselves they are equal.

Gladys: The difference between man and woman is more than just a biological difference.

Eberhard: Is there such a thing as a merely biological difference? Behind this difference something else must lie, something more essential, otherwise the biological difference would not exist either. The biological difference is only the outward aspect of a deeper difference.

Kathleen: I have represented the same point of view as Arnold until today, that the difference between man and woman is merely a biological one.

Arnold: The question is, what is the real difference between man and woman? Looking at your practical living together and your mutual relationships, it seems to me that our relationship to one another is exactly like yours.

Winifred: Before I came here I also used to think that the difference was only biological. Since I have been here I feel that something much deeper lies behind it; I feel that this difference between man and woman has a much deeper basis than the biological one. The question as Arnold and Gladys and Kathleen have put it is only a question of personalities. The real question must be asked and answered from a deeper source.

Eberhard: There is something much deeper than the question of the development of the feminine personality.

Winifred: I suspect there is something deep here which lies behind the whole of life, some-thing which I cannot yet name. I do not want to speak about it before I understand more about it.

Gladys: I too feel that it is not just a question of personality and that the answer to this question of the difference between man and woman is the key to the polar tension between the masculine and feminine principles.

Eberhard: The feminine principle lies much deeper than the biological aspect of woman. If we believe in the divine and creative Being, then we know that something deeper and more essential lies hidden behind every outward appearance. As truly as God is creator of all things, so surely there lies hidden behind every outward, visible difference a more profound, invisible difference. It has been pointed out, and rightly so, that this difference is not a difference in worth. Woman's nature cannot possibly be ranked lower than man's, or to express it the other way around, man's nature cannot possibly be set above that of woman. This is completely out of the question.

We must, however, come to recognize the particular spiritual nature of woman; we must come to recognize woman's spiritual being and nature in its essence. It must be understood that the spiritual nature of woman also exists independently of the body. Thus the material body is merely the shape and form given to this spiritual being. A sculptor gives shape and form to something already given to his spirit. To express it as Plato did, the feminine principle existed before the body of woman.

We must search for a woman in the history of mankind, a woman in whom we can recognize this feminine principle. In their writings the Hutterians have recognized in Mary the mystery of womanhood and motherhood in its deepest sense. What did Mary do? She believed the living word that God spoke to her. She was not troubled by the fact that God spoke this living word to her through a messenger. She felt that the Holy Spirit came to her in this word. She received the word. She received the Spirit and said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." (Luke 1:38) He who commanded her was God.

Thus the eternal Word was not ashamed to receive flesh, body, and form from Mary in order to become man. And most important of all, God's eternal love became man. God's eternal truth received earthly form.

To continue then: The old Hutterian writings, with a right understanding of the New Testament, say that Mary is the image of the Church. Mary is the mother and the Church is the mother. The mother is not a visible church of some particular creed, composed of human beings here and now. No, the mother is the city above, the invisible Jerusalem. The mother is the city of the kingdom of heaven.

Our Bruderhof is not Church through being composed of believing and loving people or through the sum of the believers. The Bruderhof becomes Church whenever the Holy Spirit, the Jerusalem above, comes down upon us, whenever the Church above unites us in the Holy Spirit.

The reality of the motherly Church exists before life in community represents the Church here and now. Or, in other words, the reality of the Holy Spirit brings the Church down to us who believe. Thus the Church is given through the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit comes to us as He came to Mary, and thus we become children of God's Church. The Church is the mother and we are her children. This is the mystery of our deep fellowship, of our community which extends to the whole of life.

Now here is something astonishing. The place assigned to woman in the first creation is the same as the place assigned to the Church in the new creation. The example and image for both is Mary. Woman in her spiritual nature is like the Church. Such is the place of woman in marriage. The woman who does not marry because of a special calling has this same place.

The highest thing that can be said of a human being is that his nature is similar to the nature of the Church. There can be nothing higher for a human being. It is the nature of the Church to bring life into the world in the fullness of community with the Holy Spirit and in motherly strength, to give form and reality to new life in this world and to do these in keeping with God's will and with His being and His word. This is woman's place. It is given to her by Christ and by the apostolic word.

If we know women who are truly womanly, we realize that the essence of woman is the heart, the motherly spirit, the innermost feeling for all that is holy. Womanly nature has the gift of feeling, tasting, sensing, and absorbing the atmosphere of the Holy Spirit. It has the intuition which senses the atmosphere surrounding a thing or person even before the person has expressed by a word or sentence what he thinks. The genuine woman, the believing and loving woman, has a very deep perception of the radiations and stirrings of soul and spirit and thus in particular of the Holy Spirit.

All that has been said here about Mary, about the Church, and about woman and the womanly nature is not a matter of the mind. Naturally, this is not to say that woman does not have a mind. But the important part of the true woman is not the mind or the intellect. This is a good thing. The curse of the nineteenth century was that it acted as if the mind alone were the spirit and soul of man. This is the ugliest monstrosity that the materialism of the nineteenth century has brought forth. The materialistic way of thinking gave rise to this wrong emphasis and this wrong concept of human nature, which also encompassed the relationship between husband and wife.

We must now speak of the spiritual nature of the man. You will by now have an inkling of what the apostolic word of the New Testament means in saying that the man is to be the head. This does not mean that the head rules over the body by force or tyrannizes it. This is not the case in our bodies either, if we are true men. I would resist with all my might against my relatively stupid brain being the master over my whole life. The head has its significant place in the body but it is not the tyrant of the body. Heart and head must go together.

Thus we must not confuse the significance of the place of man in marriage and in the order of creation, we must not confuse man's nature with what is called the intellect, although from a certain point of view it can be compared to the intellect. The spiritual nature of man is much more than the manifestation of human intellect. We feel it in this way: In God's all-embracing Spirit He shall give and entrust to the man the substance of His thoughts, His plan and design. To man as the head, then, the guiding thoughts of the Spirit are entrusted for administration and leadership. In His revealing Spirit, God entrusts to him His historical and super historical plan. God's plan, the movement of the centuries toward the coming kingdom, is to be revealed and entrusted in a special way to the man. To express this in Biblical words, God's kingdom as the revelation of the plan of the Spirit is entrusted to the man in particular. Man is called to apostolic mission that is indissolubly bound together with the Church. This is man's apostolate, a mission that shows the way and clearly sets forth the cause and its direction. This is the man's nature and calling.

We have already spoken of how we understand the life of the Church and what the Church is. The apostle stands within the Church. Regardless of whether he is Peter or Paul or John, he demands nothing of the Church that is inwardly alien to the Church. Out of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle speaks guiding and clarifying words and thoughts of God.

These thoughts of the Spirit which the apostle speaks are alive in the heart of the whole Church. What he says is said in the name and authority of God, and at the same time what he says is said in the name and authority of the whole Church. What the apostle furthers is always God's cause; what he furthers is always the cause of the Church.

This, then, is the relationship of the head to the Church. The head thinks in the Spirit; through the word of the Spirit, the head expresses that which is always present though unspoken in the whole Church. When the right man is lacking, the man who can put it into words, everything is still there and working in silence but it will not be given clear expression. An apostle without the Church would be a sad and impossible thing; so too the Church without an apostle is sad and impossible however faithful the individual members of the Church may be.

Therefore, having held up Mary as the example of womanhood, we now see the apostle as the example of manhood. Even though there is scarcely one individual husband who can be an apostle or any one wife or woman who can be like Mary, yet man's task and place in accordance with his spiritual nature is and remains this and no other. The question of whether woman has received the nature and spirit of Mary and man the nature and spirit of the apostle is all the more pressing because we see so many human beings who are far from living in this way. Yet we have the faith that all of them can become open to this calling and can go at least a little way in this direction. All can do this through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, through Christ. In the Holy Spirit, Christ the Head is the image of man and Christ the Body of the Church is the image of woman.

Gladys: Once one has started to go on this way, one can no longer turn back. At times this is a terrible thought; at other times it is a wonderful thought. When Jesus asked the apostles whether they wanted to leave Him they said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." (John 6:68) This is our situation now.

Arnold: I have much more of a feeling now about the relationship between man and woman. I did have a vague idea about it before, but I haven't quite found my balance yet.

Eberhard: It is startling and overpowering. The calling that has come to you is overwhelmingly great.

Arnold: If one were able to understand everything rightly and do everything correctly, then God's kingdom would already be fulfilled here and now.

Eberhard: God's kingdom comes to us in Christ and in His Spirit. It is grace. The life we have left behind appears quite impossible to us now. Yet on the other hand it is so difficult to live in the right way. We have to accept what is given to us by the Holy Spirit.

Winifred: Before I came here I used to have difficulties in this matter of woman's deep responsibility. However, these difficulties disappear when one puts everything in the context of the great cause.

Eberhard: As long as it remains a specialized and isolated question nothing can be solved, nothing at all!

Winifred: That was my difficulty.

Eberhard: That is what ails the world. All questions have become isolated questions and thus none of them can ever become clear. The secret of God's kingdom is polarity and universality. All questions become one question. That is marvelous!

Kathleen: I find it hard to say what I feel because what we have spoken together is so un-usual for me. I feel that my life is like an empty vessel held out open to be filled by God's Spirit.

Eberhard: You may know from the arts and from the history of civilization that the posture adopted in prayer used to be quite different from what it is nowadays. In present-day churches and Christian communities it is customary to pray with hands and fingers folded together, with head bowed and eyes closed. In early Christian times the posture in prayer expressed what Kathleen has just said. Hands were raised like cups; like empty vessels they were lifted toward God so that He might fill them. This is the prayer of one who knows that he is empty and believes that he will be filled. Surely it will soon be given to us, too, to come before God in this way.