‘Neither is woman apart from man nor man apart from woman, in the Lord’ (1 Cor. 11.11). In the Lord, woman and man are not independent of one another but interdependent. They face each other and must constantly reckon with the being of the other. They do not face away from one another; they do not find their true being by taking a path that diverges from the path of the other, crossing it only occasionally and accidentally. In the Lord, they belong together. That is so within the Christian community, in which Jesus is acknowledged as Lord, and also outside it; for, whether or not Jesus is acknowledged, it remains the case that God ‘has put all things [panta] in subjection under him’ (1 Cor. 15.27). The sphere in which man and woman belong together is coextensive with the sphere of this universal lordship. This ‘belonging-together’, to which all humans are called, is not a mere neutral coexistence. It is the belonging-together of agape, a pattern of living with others that this same Pauline text will later articulate and celebrate (1 Cor. 13).

Belonging-together does not exclude difference. If difference were dissolved into homogeneity, it would no longer be ‘man’ and ‘woman’ who belonged together; they would belong together not as man and woman but only as sharing in an undifferentiated humanity. In the Lord, humanity is not undifferentiated.