30 Prof. Dr. Eduardo Echeverria Perspectief “approximately one-half of the species-members contribute by reproducing outside of themselves (the males), and the other half of the members by reproducing inside themselves (the females)?” Does Huijgen deny these facts as being a matter of nature, that is, ontological facts? No wonder, then, that Huijgen suggests reading Genesis 1:27 as a matter of God creating sexuality as a spectrum of human beings with some falling in between male and female (256-257). But there is no justification for reading Genesis this way, rather than just about the ontological fact of sexual differentiation between man and woman, with the latter being a fundamental prerequisite for the two to become one flesh. Is Huijgen suggesting that one may legitimately separate gender from biological sex, maleness and femaleness? If so, this dualistic anthropology contradicts the unity of the human person. Indeed, as John Paul II states, “body and soul are inseparable: in the person, in the willing agent and in the deliberate act they stand or fall or fall together.” He adds, “‘the nature of the human person’ . . . is the person himself in the unity of soul and body and of all the other specific characteristics necessary for the pursuit of his end.” Alternatively formulated, Huijgen’s fellow country man, Reformational philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977), states: [T]he human spirit cannot carry out any real acts outside its temporal corporal individuality-structure. For that reason we said: it is the individual human being in the integral unity of “body” and “soul” who accomplishes the acts. The full person as a totality is the subject of the act. In short, despite Huijgen’s claim that the human body is theologically relevant (303), his denial that biological sex, maleness and femaleness, has to do with the nature of things, of the nature of marriage and God’s purposes for marriage, leads to a denial of the unity of the human person, as stated above by John Paul II and Dooyeweerd. One reason why Huigen separates creation and nature is because of his eschatological orientation: “God maakt telkens opnieuw de toekomst open” (260). He explains,
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