A Reflection on Sexual Liberty(HFF)

I have decided that I am not lazy, just busy, and thus have posted another personal reading and reflection on John Paul II from my other blog here. I hope you are enjoying Holy Father Friday. Thanks for reading and the dialogue. Let’s get to it, today’s post is good.

“It is an illusion to think we can build a true culture of human life if we do not . . . accept and experience sexuality and love and the whole of life according to their true meaning and their close inter-connection.”

John Paul II, The Gospel of Life (n. 97).

Our generation is one plagued with sexual anarchy, and the rejection of guilt. Ultimately ours is a generation that refuses confession, and as such is a culture that destroys itself through the anarchy inherent in the absence of reconciliation. It is riddled with questions and contradictions too great to be reconciled, and yet it terms itself free. The only thing it is free from is chastity, and in so doing, it is free for nothing at all. Pope John Paul II sees this and seeks to Liberate us from the bonds of unchastity and the bonds of sexual depravity that modernity has championed as true freedom.

All the “liberties” that modern culture wants to make sexually charged are simply chains by other names. The sexual freedom of our culture is freedom for myself, and so it is a freedom that is bound to every passing whim, and is not truly a freedom at all. The Pope seeing this proposed to undertake a series of teachings to answer some of life’s most pressing questions about sex, existence, and what it means to be human.

The Theology of the Body is John Paul’s answer to sexual anarchy and the dissolution of Humanity in the wake of a sexual revolution that like all the revolutions of the 20th Century have had far more detrimental effects than positive ones. Since the lectures began, they have cultivated profound respect and a renewed imagination in the realm of sexual ethics and sexual polity.

In the lectures JPII takes a positive interpretation of the Church’s sexual teachings and frames them in terms of the ultimate question: “How shall I be free to love my neighbor?” The answer he proposes is that Love, true Love, requires work, sacrifice and holiness and here’s why: “Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love,  fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”(Gaudium et Spes 22). The Holy Father’s solution is that Christ is the eternal mediator, between man and man, and between man and God. He proposes that especially sexuality is consecrated by the power of the gospel, and none shall be truly free apart from it.

In short, the heart of the lectures is a sexual salvation open for all through either celibacy or marriage and the freedom that these two bring to the human person. This salvation happens by redeeming sexuality from the throes of false liberty that is liberty from everything and sees sexuality as something that is free for the other and for The Triune Lord.

Pope John Paul II merely follows the advice of Jesus and shapes his lecture as such in keeping with the greatest commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your heart and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

He insists that love is something that will place demands on us and not be “free for the taking” because and precisely because if it is to be love at all, it must have its origin in the Triune Love itself, and nowhere else. JPII also says “Only the chaste man and chaste woman are capable of true love.” Chastity is not just a bygone of an outdated era, it is the only way in which the human person engages love at all.

A sexuality that cannot keep these commands cannot be free at all. As Pope John Paul II said “Real love is demanding, I would fail in my mission if I did not tell you so. Love demands a personal commitment to the will of God”

Without a love that works, a love that creates space for the other, we cannot truly love at all. For love must echo the loving act of God’s creation.

Liberation and the sexual freedom that the Holy Father teaches will come by obeying the Lord’s Commandments, which are what is natural to us, they are what our bodies are intended for. They are very difficult at the start but then they become more “natural” through the process of the disciplines and obedience. As with all life, there is a process of growth ad recognition, and just as bodies mature, so should their disciplines.

When we love God and neighbor in the proper language with our bodies and holy intent, then we will form the habit to be disciples, most especially with our bodies. We shall then follow and in turn spread His glorious light. We will be able to “Think without thinking” and love without legalism. This is the heart of the Theology of the Body, a revolution that frees us for our neighbor and in so doing, truly gives us ourselves.

Ultimately the path to sexual freedom must believe the following: “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” –Pope John Paul II

The Biblical Account of Creation Analyzed (Part 2)

This is part two of our examination of the second article of the Theology of the Body by our holy father among the saints of the Church, Pope John Paul the Great. Anyways as we move on with our examination We’re going to look a bit more closely at the Genesis accounts and what are termed the “first” and “second” creation narratives.

Various Accounts of Man’s Creation

In the second address of the Theology of the Body, Pope John Paul II opens up a foundation for discussion by looking at the two different interpretations of creation present in the first three chapters of Genesis. If you were to re-read the first three chapters of Genesis (which everyone in this study should do if they wish to actively participate in this study), you’d notice that there are two different creation accounts as relates both to the world, and to human beings. The first is in the first chapter of Genesis sets what most of us know as the typical creation story in seven days. However, this first text implies that God made Adam and Eve together at the end of the sixth day.

The second account is the chapter two narrative which is less developed stylistically, linguistically and otherwise, and is held to be the more ancient of the two creation stories. The first chapter is a well ordered and intentional summary of creation and holds phrases about man being created in the image of God, and after his likeness. Whereas the second chapter of the Genesis which is called the ‘Yahwist’ account because it uses the Divine name instead of the first chapter’s ‘Elohim.’ The Holy Father approaches with these two readings because he will make a set of points about the first account which is estimated to have been written later and put at the front of the book.

The Holy Father repeatedly makes the point that this first account of Creation in Genesis 1 is theological and objective. He does not mean objective as in truth opposed to subjective opinion, though this is sometimes how the terms are read. He means that this first narrative establishes the foundational way we should read the text of the second chapter. It is the epistemological(meaning it establishes the way we should understand the) framework for what is to follow.

What he means by theological is that this text establishes a theology, it establishes a framework for how to read. However, and perhaps as importanly is the other implied point that this text is theological in that it establishes ‘Creation from God’s point of view‘ a term he will use later in the text. Also, as we look at this text (Genesis 1) it establishes the “what, where, when and how of Creation.” This text also clearly in a few ways intentionally pauses before the creation of man and woman. This account sets up a vision for what the Holy Father says in a rather surprising phrase “The Creator seems to halt before calling him (man) into existence, as if he were pondering within himself to make a decision“. The emphasis is on the distinction between the human creature and all the others. I agree with the Holy Father here, that man is something unique, someone unique in the divine communication towards the universe

What the Holy Father means by objective is not, as I mentioned, a truth opposed to subjective truth. What the Holy Father means by objective is that it establishes a word by which we may judge and know our subjective experiences. Pope John Paul II was a student of phenomenology a branch of philosophy or method of inquiry based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness. John Paul II studied phenomenology, and wrote his doctoral dissertation on the phenomenology of Max Scheler. Scheler argued that every human experience is connected to value. In other words that we are either attracted to or repulsed by the value of something. Scheler believed that through subjective experiences we could know these values objectively. For those who are familiar with the constructs of Catholic natural law, you can see how the Holy Father would want to bring this to the table, even this early on.

A further point should be made to bring all this to the fore. A brief look at the Holy Father’s use of the term”subjective” is in order. What he means by subjective throughout this text and in many others of his works is what we experience individually as the goods and the norms of creation. Richard Hogan is my source for my reading of this term. His survey of the first few addresses of the Theology of the Body have been helpful navigation for me. But we can see from above, how objective and subjective are colored by a phenomenological reading in the works of the Holy Father. Hogan Says “In studying Scheler, John Paul saw that Scheler’s use of phenomenology provided a powerful tool for the study of Christian ethics. If the Christian norms taught by Revelation could be understood as interior norms, i.e., if these norms could be perceived through experience as values, they would cease to have the character of external laws imposed on one from the outside.” I could not agree more. Pope John Paul II’s project among other things seeks to show us the natural calling of man and woman. What I’m saying is that the Holy Father wants to show us that what we know to be right, what the Church teaches as right is not externally imposed law, but agrees with the natural conscience of humanity as evidenced by its making clear of the interior “subjective”(or individual) values that humans commonly experience through their subjectivity.

To go back to what West was saying in the introductory articles, the Holy Father is establishing a developed language for talking about human sexuality in the Church as something that has values associated with it, values which should be guided by the question: “What is the act that makes me free to truly love my neighbor?” If some of this isn’t easy to grasp, you’re not alone. Anyways, let’s keep reading this lecture next week, hopefully we can finish the lecture then.

The Unity and Indissolubility of Marriage (Part Four)

This lecture has opened me up to a whole new understanding of marriage. I mean I had heard similar teachings in undergraduate studies through some really awesome professors, but it’s nice knowing a source text for these teachings, since I was attempting to teache these things to my church when i was a baptist pastor and was really lacking in primary sources. My girlfriend and I have talked extensively about the Theology of the Body as I have been reading it, and it’s been a wonderful experience.

In any case, blogging about this lecture has been both eye opening and revelatory, yet comforting and familiar. The concepts are not new to me, so much as they are being properly articulated now. Working through the Christopher West article was a lot of fun, and drawing certain preliminary conclusions was certainly worthwhile. To reiterate, I don’t agree with everything West has said, nor do i endorse him as a final authoritative source. However, I do think he accurately conveys what the Holy Father is trying to say for the most part. Michael Waldstein who translated the work into a new English translation, and whom I have personally met and sat in class with, endorses West’s interpretative work here.

Waldstein, who is an amazing man of considerable talent offers some interesting and penetrating insight into West’s work, and asks us to focus on larger issues of the Theology of the Body. I am partial to West for as many reasons as I am considering his work one voice among many. I certainly do not think he is a final authoritative voice, but he’s a good primer and his work won’t lead converts or cradle Catholics wrong. I think his reading is very “democratic” as Alice Von Hildebrand put it, but this I found to be acceptable rather than to be decried. Also, given that this post is not about the West article anymore, and that I’ve reiterated my point, let’s move along.

Reading the actual lecture itself was highly rewarding, and I am at a loss for words to express how liberating this exercise in reading the Holy Father is. Just a few final personal thoughts on the matter of the lecture “On the Unity and Indisollubility of Marriage” will here follow. Notice that already we have seen Pope John Paul establish matrimony and the teachings of Jesus on Genesis as normative for the rest of the lectures. We can see why ‘Male and Female He Created Them‘ is a valid title for the series.

This vision of the political power of embodiment and the prophetic nature of human sexuality is astounding, refreshing and vivid. It’s only been the first article and a preliminary survey, but it’s been a moving experience for me. If there is anything to be said about the TOB it is this: It is fundamentally challenging in its simplicity. It is simple, precise and yet profound. It teaches nothing new, so much as theologically establishes and develops ancient anti-gnostic and pro-Christian views of the body and its dignity.

I have to agree with Alice Von Hildebrand that the Theology of the Body is nothing new, so much as it is a development of the ancient affirmations of the Church. It is fundamentally apostolic. Its voice speaks as one with the teachings of the early church fathers, and many of the writings of St. Paul and Jesus Our Lord Himself.

Blogging about the Theology of the Body has made me, in my opinion, a more humble future spouse to my girlfriend, and far more appreciative of everything about her, most especially the sanctity of our togetherness. I had a vision and understanding of this, but it seems that the more I read the writing of the Holy Father, the more sense it makes, the more flesh it takes on, the more glory-bearing and vocationally active I see not only this relationship, but my own body. I am indeed seeing how the divine mystery of our vocation is inherently tied into the paschal mystery and every other mystery.

Life itself finds fulfillment in the sacraments and the way they lead us on into God Himself. I have already begun to learn to see my body as spoken for and that has been one of the most rewarding changes that has begun to happen. I appreciate my girlfriend and the already-not-yet claims she has on me through our intentionality towards marriage. I feel that I have come to see our relationship as a pre-marriage in all the right ways.

The Theology of the Body has made it so that, even in these brief readings the vocational nature of bodies has begun to take on new form in my thought life and imagination. I have always appreciated her, from day one, and yet, I feel that even though I felt I gave my all before, I have since working through the Theology of the Body since mid August of 2010 come to give even more.

I see myself doing more than I thought possible, and yet, it is easy. I see this as a charism, a gift, and a grace to me. I see the calling that I have to give to her, to be for her as light and easy and full of value and worth. I won’t speak for her, but I recognize a deeper sense of the vocation of marriage. I thought I knew what it would entail, and I do, but there’s a deeper dimension that has come out from reading the Theology of the Body. Reading this lecture has affirmed the Church’s teachings in a way that is wonderfully easy to bear, and yet dramatically challenging in all the right ways.

I guess all I have to really say that I have not yet said is the ineffable gratitude I feel for Pope John Paul II only grows as I read and reread the lecture. It is simple, foundational, basic, yet in this it is profound, and challenges everything in late modern society and especially its view of the body. That the body should have a dignity at all is fundamentally revolutionary to this culture. It is not a matter of revolution in the Church, it’s a matter of revolutionizing society.

All in all, thanks for reading, and make sure to subscribe to the blog and leave comments as you see fit. Any readership and dialogue is helpful along the way. -Eli

The Unity and Indissolubility of Marriage (Part Three)

This first lecture can teach us a few things about the nature of marriage, and about the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and how these teachings still speak to us today.

1) Jesus supersedes and challenges the law, seeking its fulfillment, so too we should have this mind in us, not to approach the law as a minimal requirement but to exceed its righteousness in the way that Christ has shown us. He has shown us that certain parts of the law were for humans who were hard of heart, and that we should go back to the Genesis in order to understand the true law and how to live it. We do so through understanding Christ, what He establishes, and His teachings as authoritative guides.

2) The Holy Father sees the family as a central community of human life. What this means for us is that the family has a meaning as more than a collective of persons. This may seem fundamental to some, but in our society where the family has denigrated into an often personal confrontation with disillusion, isolation and negligence, this is fundamentally revolutionary. This is

clearly a development of the Church’s ancient view of the sacrament, but to a postmodern culture it might seem almost irreverent for what in our generation is seen as the inherently denigrating and negative power of the family.

3) The unity of marriage is something that is original to the creation of humanity and though there was no family in the sense of a third, a child, before the fall, there was certainly the intentionality for familial union. The Holy Father says that the family is fundamental to the creation of humanity.

4) Community in Chrisitian language in the sense that Pope John Paul II is using it is never just about coming together, but about the type of coming together it shall be and for that we use the word koinonia. This word means a communion shaped by intimate participation in and with and through one another.

5) Jesus Christ shows through His reading of the Holy Scriptures that the unity of man and woman has its origin in God and that this is not merely an institution, but a divine reality established in and through the maleness and femaleness of the created humans. What this means for us is that the maleness and femaleness of bodies correspond to the desire of God for the Creation from the beginning. Further, this means that the irrevocable nature of marriage is original to the Creation, and that it too has its origin in God. Meaning, if we were to understand this in a broader sacramental context, that Christ is teaching that it is God Who enjoins marriage, and that no human actions can terminate it because it is deeper and more ancient than the law itself.

6) The Holy Father says about the nature of the family that it is and has been fundamental from the beginning. This is a very large and very important claim for the future of our readings, notice that the Holy Father says not just that male and female He created them, but that from the beginning this community of the family is fundamental to human and Christian life.

7) The family is a community, a shared reality, an intimate communion established from the beginning. It is intended for humanity and Christ Himself has given this to us through His quoting Genesis in His teachings on Marriage. The role of the family is not superfluous or a second thought, it is at the very heart of human existence.

8) The unbreakable bond that is marriage is part of how Christ understands the very nature of the creation of man and woman. Man was made for woman, and woman for man in a way that goes back to the most ancient scriptures. Marriage is not a superfluous institution, but at the very heart of maleness and femaleness. We are created for each other.

9) God intends marriage, God intends family, He intends nuptiality as part of the very order of Creation.

10) Marriage is unbreakable according to Christ because it is more ancient than the Law and is intended from the very beginning, as part of what it means to be male and female.

All this may seem a bit overwhelming, but I am sure the Holy Father will clarify as we move along in our readings.

The Unity and Indissolubility of Marriage (Part Two)

Last week we surveyed the first lecture in the Theology of the Body and this week we will work through the rest of this first lecture with our examination of the second half of the article, and at the end we will draw some practical implications of what is being said. Last week we saw how the Holy Father teaches us that Christ intends us to understand that God intends marriage as the very order of what it means to be created male and female in His image. We also saw how Christ intends to supersede Moses and go back to the very heart of Creation to show us the meaning and purpose of marriage and male-female unity.

As with many other aspects of the Jewish law, Jesus provides a reading that goes back before Abraham, and provides a fresh and challenging reading of the Holy Scriptures. He refuses to let the standard approach be that of Moses, claiming more authority than Moses Jesus elaborates His teaching on the unity of marriage as from the beginning. Christ, having gone back to the Genesis account to establish His theology of conjugal union must needs reject the framework with which the Pharisees approach this question and establish a new foundation.

The Holy Father goes on to say:

Christ did not confine himself only to the quotation [which He himself quoted from the Genesis passage] itself, but added: “So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” That “let not man put asunder” is decisive. In the light of these words of Christ, Genesis 2:24 sets forth the principle of the unity and indissolubility of marriage as the very content of the Word of God, expressed in the most ancient revelation.

Pope John Paul II intends to teach us that the unity of marriage, the necessity of understanding its permanence is not merely something that the Church has added to the gospels, and is not this at all, but is part of the most ancient revelation that Christ offers us through His reading of Genesis. Christ adds this to His quotation in order to teach us something of the nature of maleness, of femaleness and of the Order of Creation. This insertion by Christ is how He intends us to understand the preceding scriptures. This is key to how we come to read Genesis and the rest of the creation account and the purpose of Creation. Jesus shows through this reading of the Holy Scriptures that the unity of man and woman has its origin in God and that this is not merely an institution, but a divine reality established in and through the maleness and femaleness of the created humans.

However, Pope John Paul II doesn’t stop at only pointing this out, he does not merely wish us to grasp that this ancient formulation is how Christ reads marriage. He wishes us to see that through this quotation Christ has established his own teaching in such a way as to introduce the body into the conversation and precisely the body in the sense that “male and female He created them”. “What God has joined together” is not merely a formulation in a theology debate, but how Christ understands the origin of sexual differentiation. What I mean is that Jesus is reading the very nature of creation in a nuptial manner. He is reading the beginning as the creation of two made to be one flesh for each other. The Pope illuminates it as follows:

…that significant expression “from the beginning,” repeated twice, clearly induced his interlocutors to reflect on the way in which man was formed in the mystery of creation, precisely as “male and female,” in order to understand correctly the normative sense of the words of Genesis.

The reading that the Holy Father provides us is one that establishes Christ’s teaching as making normative the idea of maleness and femaleness for how we understand bodies, marriage and Creation. Pope John Paul intends to turn our attention towards the mystery of Creation, in such a way that we understand that it is from the very beginning that God creates them male and female in His image.

As I mentioned above this maleness and femaleness is at the heart of Christ’s understanding of the nature of marriage and the indissolubility thereof. The unbreakable bond that is marriage is part of how Christ understands the very nature of the creation of man and woman. At least this is what Pope John Paul II intends us to understand from these teachings, and we can already see how this will lead to his later conclusion of the nuptial meaning of the body.

The Holy Father says we must put ourselves in the place of those who were conversing with Christ if we are to understand these teachings properly by having our attention drawn to the same subject matter. He will go on to say that we will read this teaching, particularly Matthew 19.3 from the vantage of Christ’s interlocutors by being drawn to reflect on the what in which male and female form the normative sense of the words of Genesis. We will attempt to penetrate the “beginning” which Christ intends us to understand through His words and the readings provided by the Holy Father. Further he closes by informing us that the lectures are intended to turn our attention towards “the deep roots” from which the subject matter of Christ’s view on the vocation of marriage and the family springs.

The Unity and Indissolubility of Marriage (Part One)

The Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, began his lectures for the Theology of the Body on the 5th of September 1979. At the General Audience in St Peter’s Square attended by more than 20,000 people, Pope John Paul II gave an important address that would reshape the way all Christians have begun to think about sexual ethics.

What we can expect from this lecture is the Holy Father’s opening remarks, and an introduction to the Theology of the Body. He will obviously open with marriage, as the title given on the resource page suggests. The Theology of the Body, having the nuptial meaning of the body as a core doctrine would hardly presume to begin elsewhere.

Pope John Paul II will expound on Matthew 19.4 ” ‘Have you not read that the One who made them at the beginning “made them male and female…” Another title for the Theology of the Body is Male and Female He Created Them. Without further ado, let’s examine these magnificent words, and begin our journey with the Holy Father.

The Holy Father introduces us by contextualizing the talks within the framework of a synod on the family. “The theme of the Synod, “The role of the Christian family,” concentrates our attention on this community of human and Christian life, which has been fundamental from the beginning.” The Holy Father sees the family as a central community of human life. Notice how he does not use the word unit, or any other term that would imply singularization or the end of diversity. No, the family is a community, and as such has very different interpretative and theological and ethical language than that of a unit, or a cohesion, or a collective.

As a community the family firstly reflects the community that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the community of God, and secondly it has certain goals in mind. Surely Pope John Paul II does not just mean a community in the sense of a collective, but a koinonia a shared fellowship of human and Christian life. A communion of intimate participation, that’s what I assume the Holy Father means. Community in Chrisitian language is never just about coming together, but about the type of coming together it shall be and for that we use the word koinonia which means a communion shaped by intimate participation in and with and through one another.

The other thing the Holy Father says about the nature of the family is that it is and has been fundamental from the beginning. Here, already beginning to echo the future direction of the lectures and preface us with the words of Jesus Our Lord, he is stating that it is not merely male and female that were created from the beginning, but this intimate sharing, the family.

This is a very large and very important claim for the future of our readings, notice that the Holy Father says not just that male and female He created them, but that from the beginning this community of the family is fundamental to human and Christian life. In other words, it is something original (meaning intended from the beginning and having a purpose from the very creation of man and woman) and foundational to the creation. The beginning then is not just something Christ is quoting about the origin of marriage, but He is deriving His teaching from the book of the Genesis of humanity, and thus superseding Moses. What this says to us is that God intends marriage, God intends family, He intends nuptiality as part of the very order of Creation.

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?’ He answered, ‘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’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.’ They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?’ He said to them, ‘For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so'(Mt 19:3ff., cf. also Mk 10:2ff.). (I am using the translation provided in the text of the TOB which is likely derived directly from the Vulgate.)

Pope John Paul II says “During the talk with the Pharisees, who asked him the question about the indissolubility of marriage, Jesus Christ referred twice to the “beginning.” The Holy Father says that Christ does not accept the discussion on the level at which his interlocutors, the Scribes and the Pharisees, introduce the conversation. They seek to begin with Moses, and Christ says that the origins of marriage and the nature of the discussion goes even beyond Moses to the very act of creation.

In order to be conscious of your time, I am trying to keep these posts under 1000 words. If you feel that they are too short, let me know via comments, and we’ll work something out.

The Liberation of the Body

We have seen from all the preceding sections of Christopher West’s article the sort of teachings we’re going to be encountering from the Holy Father as we work through the individual sections of the Theology of the Body.

Authentic Sexual Liberation

Authentic sexual liberation is the aim and goal of the Theology of the Body. We have seen from the past few weeks that the Holy Father’s ultimate project is turning our view of the Church’s teaching on sexuality around. He’s trying to show us that what the Church offers is not abstinence from the freedoms of love, but abstinence from lusts that make true love truly free.”Sin’s tactic is to “twist” and “disorient” our desire for the eternal embrace.” is what West says in this concluding section and I could not agree more. We live in a sexually disoriented society, a society that has no conception of the common good, no conception of what a polity truly is, because its sexuality (the very thing which lies at the heart of political thought As Augustine understands in the City of God) is unchaste. Where there is unchastity, injustice and deception will also flourish.

However, there is hope. “Be Not Afraid!” were the words of the Holy Father in his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope and this is exactly what we should hear through all this. The Holy Father’s clarion call that pierces through the darkness is not intended to steal our hope, but to renew it. We find ourselves in the midst of a generation beginning to reject the “freedoms” that the 60’s culture in our country thought would make the world a better place. Our youth are starting to become dissatisfied with the base sexuality that is offered to them as the height and culmination of sexual experience.

There is hope because the world’s vision of sexuality is ultimately counterfeit, and as such, it has no place in the future which God intends. There is hope because this counterfeit has failed to satisfy. The tragic reality is that the world is in the state it is in partly because the teachings of the Church are not adhered to, and when this happens, souls and bodies are wounded. And yet, there is hope. There is hope because despite the tragedy of the wounds that this counterfeit has endured, we are the people for whom confession of sin, penance, and reconciliation with God, and with neighbor are core to growth in perfection.

The world is ripe for the harvest, and the best way we as disciples may be sent out as laborers is to faithfully live the teachings of the Church as authentically as possible. It is in these teachings that we find the freedom to Love as we ought. The Church has never intended for her teachings to be a burden imposed from the outside, but that they should spring from the faithful heart in gladness, and become a wellspring of the living water of salvation from within. When we adhere to these teachings we overthrow a culture that would thwart us, that would seek to make us weak and sick with counterfeit.

We are all of us, tempted by our culture, by our medias, by our distrusts to be very afraid in the midst of a world so backwards and challenging. We are tempted to distrust that there can be hope. We are tempted to stand at the door and keep ourselves from hurt through skepticisim, not realizing that this unhealthy skepticism is itself a wound. We are tempted to stand at the door in fear, timid in the face of a ravenous culture, and we are tempted to assume that salvation’s breaking forth is still a long ways off.

To this, the Holy Father gives us one piece of holy advice, one tenet with which to approach this great labor of hope in the midst of peril, of evangelizing a world ready to overthrow the lies, “Be Not Afraid!“

The Ultimate Experience of the Body & Sex

For those of you just joining us, please scroll back and read the first few introductory posts, since we are slowly working through Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and are setting up some foundations for how and why to read these lectures through an article penned by popular Catholic writer and someone who has many articles on the Pope’s Theology of the Body Christopher West.

Well, let’s get right into it.

The next section is about our experience of the body in the resurrection. Christ says in response to the Pharisees and Sadducees that we are no longer given or received in marriage (Matt. 22.30). However, we need not fear it is not that the desire for union and togetherness is done away with, but it is fulfilled in God

As a sacrament, marriage is only the anticipation of the final reality, it merely points to what is yet to come. In that day, we will no longer need signs, everything will be full of grace, we will not need signs of heavenly things, we will not need signs of grace, we too shall be full of grace and Truth Himself, and we will embody the grace that the sacraments signify.

The signs will be unnecessary because the full consummation not rejection of those realities shall be at hand. Christ will show us the true nuptiality at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. We need not fear, because the Bible nor the Tradition teach a forgetting of our lives on earth, the Holy Scriptures teach a consummation of union, not the abolishment thereof.

Growing up, when I heard that there were no marriages, I assumed there were no families, and thus no memory of life on earth. Heaven terrified me because I had grown up assuming that there would be no union between my mother and my father, no union between myself and my family. I had no coherent vision for what a world without marriage might look like other than a terrifying one.

However, we must understand that Jesus intends this for good and not evil and therefore we must understand that in the project of fulfillment that is the King of Israel’s modus operandi, the end of marriage is not an end at all, but a consummation, it will have no fuller fullness than the reality which we see in part now, and shall see in full in the end of all things.

“For man, this consummation will be the final realization of the unity of the human race, which God willed from creation. …Those who are united with Christ will form the community of the redeemed, ‘the holy city’ of God, ‘the Bride, the wife of the Lamb” (CCC, n. 1045).“

This consummation will fulfill the opening statements of Genesis, and what God has established, not even He shall tear asunder. The two shall be one flesh. If Jesus condemns divorce, how shall the Lord at the end of all things divorce us from all other things? It’s impossible. Redemption and the consummation is for all creation, not mere individuals alone, but over all created things. All that is in Christ will have perfect koinonia in a way that is foreshadowed now, (in my opinion most precisely through Eucharistic celebration).

What God does in the end will not be different from the beginning, it will be the fulfillment of the beginning. In the resurrection The Holy Father will teach that we discover the same nuptial meaning from the beginning is not abandoned, but fulfilled. It will not be alienated from sexuality or the procreative meaning of the body, this shall merely be fulfilled in the end of all things in a way that we may not now recognize, but that will make perfect sense in the end of all things. The nuptial and procreative meaning of the body will meet with the mystery of God face to face, and in so doing shall speak a new word, yet this word shall agree with and fulfill all that has come before.

The Historical Experience of the Body & Sex

“Original sin caused the “death” of divine love in the human heart.” is how Christopher West opens our next section in the prologue to our reading of the Theology of the Body.

I do notice he focuses his overview a lot on sex and sexuality, there’s so much more to the Theology of the Body, but it is important to how we read the Theology of the Body, especially in a generation starved for a true sexuality.

Notice how “death” appears in quotations in West’s opening line. This section will address the realities of the fall and life under the sway of sin. Where the last section in our brief outline looked at original unity this section will look at the dawn of lust, and the power of sin in the history of humanity. It will examine the loss of true eros for an eros devoid of God’s love. The Holy Father will go on to teach us that eros is not evil, but flawed under the power of sin. Human sexuality can still be ‘very good’ but it requires proper redemption in order to do so.

“Men and women of history now tend to seek “the sensation of sexuality” apart from the true gift of themselves, apart from authentic love.” is how West continues his survey, and he could not be more right. Ours is a culture that has removed persons entirely from the realm of sexuality, in every facet, and has exchanged nuptial personhood for a vision of the human body as a commodity bought and sold to the bidder who evokes the highest emotional response or incites the most lust. West only briefly touches on this entire section and once we hit the primary text, we’ll do a lot more looking at this idea in the text, it’s really rather astounding and I feel this short post won’t do it justice.

Our society is based on the facets of mechanism, the body as object, as commodity, as economic purchase, rather than person. Sexually, the “revolution” only enslaved us to a denigrated view of the body as object of our purchases rather than as subject open to the other. Our society would like to force us into the prudishness of empty personhood, wherein the only authentic love is a simulation projected on movie screens. The world would like to entirely remove personhood from the sexual equation. To this the Holy Father, and the entire Church reply a resounding and powerful “No.”

The biggest mistake the sexual “revolution” made was assuming that if we merely exposed more skin and rejected more and more limits we would finally arrive at the height of sexual liberty, but this is not true. The prudishness of past generations and their unwillingness to talk about sex is equally as impoverished as the over-sexualized modern cultures. The Church has always been a refuge of a true, healthy and developed, sacramental sexuality. Though before the 20th century there was not a single text that could address human sexuality with the mastery that JPII approaches it with.

Further, there has always been the problem of the relation of nakedness and lust in the Christian tradition. There have been “restorationist” movements, but there have always ended poorly because they miss the point. With piercing insight and summarization West says: “We cover our bodies not because they’re bad, but to protect their inherent goodness from the degradation of lust. Since we know we’re made for love, we feel instinctively “threatened” not only by overt lustful behavior, but even by a “lustful look.” Now some people have taught themselves to reject this feeling as some sort of degradation of their freedom, but this is actually the glaring voice of freedom calling them back to authentic love. To put it another way, Bonhoeffer says that ‘Shame is the irrepressible memory of our disunity with God…‘as well as out fellow creature.

In this section of the lectures, the Holy Father will continue to examine the teachings of Christ, focusing on lust and the statement that whoever looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery. Let’s look at the following block quote for a fuller understanding of what we can expect when our readings bring us thus far:

Christ’s words are severe in this regard. He insists that if we look lustfully at others, we’ve already committed adultery in our hearts (see Mt 5:28). John Paul poses the question: “Are we to fear the severity of these words, or rather have confidence in their salvific …power?” (Oct 8, 1980). These words have power to save us because the man who utters them is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29).

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus are not merely therapeutic realities. They are not meant to merely give us coping mechanisms to handle sin until the end with meager progress, the life and career of Jesus are meant to give us the fullest anticipation of the eschaton through the holiness that He Himself offers and makes possible. “Christ’s death and resurrection effectively “liberate our liberty from the domination of lust” as John Paul expresses it (March 1, 1984).“

Nothing is more critical than, as I have been stating in all the prolegomena, that we liberate what our culture calls liberty from itself. Our task is to give it over to proper keeping in the loving embrace of authentic love, chastity and with eyes towards the final consummation of humanity in the nuptial embrace of Christ Himself.

The Historical experience of the body is always a war between love and lust in the heart of women and of men. Even so, it is necessary that we recognize the advent of the Lord and the redemption of the body are already in our midst. We come to recognize this through bearing our crosses and letting our lusts be crucified with Christ and we progress from sexual anarchy to sexual salvation.

We can progressively approach an eroticism that embraces the nuptial meaning of the body and is therefore truly Christian if we approach this new eros with a renewed ethos that establishes sexuality as a nuptial pursuit of Truth, Justice, Goodness and Beauty. This is where the project of cultural renewal in the Theology of the Body really begins to take shape.

We have been created for each other in Love Himself, and what our culture champions cannot help but be not only insensible to us, it is a sheer and vast travesty that among our Protestant brothers and sisters, and even among young Catholics in modern society there is a generation who by and large has no clue of the meaning of chastity, even if they attempt to live chaste lives.

The Original Experience of the Body & Sex

Continuing our little prologue to the Theology of the Body with West’s article I’m going examine what the Pope has to say about original sexualty with West’s interpretation in mind, and we’ll work through some things to look for when we read the Theology of the Body.

West points out that the war between the sexes to us seems normal to us but that it is actually foreign to human nature by its being a product of the fall. “Before sin, man and woman experienced their union as a participation in God’s eternal love.” I think that this is truly profound. What West is saying is what JPII will teach us, and that is: The body, human sexuality, and all human interaction have their origin in God. What strikes me, is that the eternal love of God is not only our origin, as this statement says, but through the doctrine of reconciliation we see that it is our goal as well. The entire original innocence project that the West grounds his teachings of eschatology in through the idea of recapitulation is what is shaping statements like these.

West observes JPII teaches that “original unity flows from the human being’s experience of solitude.” Even with God and all creation with him, man is still alone, he still requires a helper, one that is ‘bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh.’ Man Has God and Creation, and yet he is alone. This is crucial, because it teaches us that one can have God and yet be unsatisfied or unfulfilled in a way that is not sin.

Christopher West also goes on to say that it is this experience of solitude in the biblical narrative that is key to understanding the unique vantage of human sexuality. It stands apart in that it is not mere mating, it is a sharing of love. Love requires sharing between two persons in order to be love. The man is called to use his body as an instrument of Love in God’s image and a proper reflecting of that love must be given back and this can only happen in and with and through another person.

I’d like to share an interesting passage for our examination from the article.

How did he know that she too was a person called to love? Her naked body revealed the mystery! For the pure of heart, nakedness reveals what John Paul calls “the nuptial meaning of the body.” This is the body’s “capacity of expressing love: that love precisely in which the person becomes a gift and + by means of this gift + fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence” (Jan 16, 1980).

Get that and don’t let it slip past you. Two very important things just happened in that short little passage.

1. Our bodies have a revelatory (and that is precisely the word for it, unless one were to use the word apocalyptic,) power when our hearts are pure and we live out our sexuality according to the call of Christ. Due to the purity in both Adam and Eve they are immediately cognizant of their nuptial nature, and their spokenness for each other happens in the moment when Adam rejoices in Eve, and her personhood, which he can now fully give himself over to. I think that there is a slight misdirection that is possible in a certain frame of this reading presented by West. If we are not careful we could equate more nakedness with more truth, which is certainly not the case. There is a type of modesty and chastity that is proper even when God unveils them.

To not stress the point too much bvut provide a foundation for my critique of West, let’s look at The Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa, in which St. Gregory calls God a dark illumination. I think this is the sense of nakedness we are to assume from this. The point West brings out is certainly important, but we cannot be idyllic, or assume that more nakedness would mean more truth.

There is a certain holy unknowability of the other, as other. Just as sex does not allow us to more deeply know each other without the disciplines that make it meaningful and True, so too nakedness is not a virtue, but a condition thereof, and only within the limits of nuptiality. Nakedness is not, despite opinions, or misintentions in reading West, a fruit of chastity, and any “return” which our sexuality is engaged in, must deal first with our current state under sin, and secondly with Christ’s vision of the future and our final destination at the marriage supper of the Lamb. Let’s return to West and the Holy Father.

The pope is teaching us that there is a meaning in the body that comes from chastity. He is also teaching that it was original unity in that moment through the virtue of chastity that unveils the meaning of their bodies for each other. Through the nakedness apprehended through original chastity, he understands the woman as for himself, and himself as for the woman. Truly, we cannot expect to gain much in attempting to search out nuptial meaning with willingly tainted sight. Can we?

2. The body has a meaning for union. It is made for nuptaility, either to Christ, or to a spouse.

This too is huge. Whereas our cultures teach that sexuality is a matter of choices and tastes and selections based on autonomous desire, PJPII is teaching that the body has a meaning outside itself and for the other. The body speaks a unitive word in its very existence, maleness was created for femaleness and femaleness for maleness. They point to each other and their union simply is de facto the natural order.

The male-female union fulfills the greatest commandment of loving one another as Christ has loved us because in the nuptial sharing they truly offer their bodies to one another. This is my body which is given for you (Luke 22.19) is the apex of the creaturely direction of humanity. To give our bodies for and to one another as they did in Genesis, the man for the woman, and the woman for the man is to fulfill the command of Christ. Christopher West says, “God created sexual desire as the power to love as he loves. And this is how the first couple experienced it. Hence, they ‘were both naked, and were not ashamed’ (Gen 2.25).”

They were not ashamed because in original unity there is no fear, and thus no shame(1 John 4.18). In the beginning, there cannot be shame because the bodies are fulfilling their original purpose which is the complete other-turned self-disclosing love that is found in the Triune Lord. They saw each other with the eyes of love, which is not blindness, but the only true sight.

—

So what can we draw from all this?

In the beginning, sexuality was for the other, as was the body. What I assume we should take from this is that the Holy Father will teach us how to apply to our own lives an interpretation of sexuality that is for the other. I assume we will be led away from questions such as “what do I want?” for questions of “how may i love my spouse more perfectly?”

John Paul II’s lectures on the Theology of the Body and West’s commentaries take up this theme again and again. Love for the other. A love free to be truly free because we are created to be here for each other. In the lectures, as you may have already noticed from our overview, he speaks again and again of ‘the nuptial meaning of the body.’ This meaning is revealed in and through our bodies and proper reflection not only on the genesis accounts but on Christ Himself. Pope John Paul II does precisely this by wedding the Genesis accounts to the teachings of Our Lord.

When he speaks of the nuptial meaning of the body the Holy Father means that our bodies reveal that we are and have meaning for each other. It means we are gifts to one another. It means our bodies and our sexuality are something we give to and to receive from one another. We know this, of course, only because we can and do know Christ’s body and it is God’s spoken word about both Himself, ourselves and everything in between.

We can discover the meaning, the purpose, the telos of our own sexuality, our own families, our own relationships and religious vocations by reflecting on Christ Himself. The passage I have quoted in previous posts, is highly illuminating in this regard where St. Paul the Apostle tells us that ‘The body…is meant for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.’ (I Cor. 6.13)

A few updates

I am pleased to announce that starting soon, we will have Sneagan Meditation Mondays with my friend Sneagan. He’s taking a Theology of the Body class at Ave Maria University in Flordia, about an hour from where I currently live. We were introduced through my friend Harrison who has been a source of continued guidance as I have approached confirmation. He took the plunge this Easter, and I’ll be taking it in Easter 2011.

Anyways, here’s what to look forward to. Sneagan will be writing two 100 word reflections per week on the Theology of the Body. He will email them to me, and I will post them here, since he’s been kind enough to offer them to me. Hopefully this will help us along the way. Anyways, that’s one thing to look forward to.

Another is a more formal approach to seminar saturday. We’ll be working with themes and topics as I can draw in authors and writers who care to be engaged with the “Journey with the Holy Father” project. If you care to be involved and are Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, or just interested in adding or asking questions but are part of a non-Christian religion, go ahead and email me(see the contact/about me page) or, leave some comments. I’m looking for contributions and people who care to add to the discussion on the work of such an important man.

Anyways, the final thing to look forward to is Holy Father Fridays, which will be a once a month project unless I can find a correspondent who would like to take over and do a weekly quotation or passage or sermon from the Holy Father and either add a commentary on shorter pieces, or a short introduction on longer pieces.

I’m always looking to make more friends. Let me know if you’re interested.

Eli

What is the Theology of the Body?

Christopher West has a really well written introductory article on the Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul II. We’ll be working through this article for a while as necessity dictates to help us establish how to read the Theology of the Body, and how to understand the highlights that should guide our reading.

Disclaimer: I am aware of Alice Von Hildebrand’s position on the writings of Christopher West, after the introductory posts were written. I agree with her essay‘s point that the Theology of the Body is less a “revolution” and more of a development of doctrine. Her critique of West’s reading as a ‘revolution’ is fair and rather accurate. I’ve heard that West has since gone on a sabbatical and reshaped his vision for the future, which i cannot confirm. Suffice it to say, I do not fully endorse Christopher West, I merely thought we should lay some ground work and that this article was a comprehensive summary that would help us do that. To all my ultra-orthodox Catholics out there, trust me I know what I’m doing. To those who don’t care, keep reading. Thanks for allowing me this interruption. -Eli

West has a few really interesting points I wanted to highlight. First, I want to requote his opening quote for those of you who will not be reading the article.

“It is an illusion to think we can build a true culture of human life if we do not . . . accept and experience sexuality and love and the whole of life according to their true meaning and their close inter-connection.”

John Paul II, The Gospel of Life (n. 97).

In my previous post I said that the Theology of the Body is a theological anthropology, it is a study in the creaturely dimension of human being, and it is a series of teachings on the meaning of the body. However, West highlights some really interesting things that I wanted to bring out as well. West says that the Theology of the Body(TOB) is a project in cultural renewal. It is a “sexual counter-revolution” as West terms it. I could not more readily agree.

The TOB operates under the following logic according to West: “In short, as sex goes, so go marriage and the family. As marriage and the family go, so goes civilization” This is definitely true, as history has shown and as Christian Tradition has said for a polity to be a polity there must be chastity, or else it is a horde. In other words, as Robert Jenson puts it in his Systematic Theology Volume II “A sexually anarchic society cannot be a free society” (Chapter 6. p. 91)

This ticking time bomb of Western Civilization’s decline and fall was clearly recognized by Pope John Paul II and he set out to offer an alternative to the oppressive and nihilistic vision of sexuality that contemporary cultures offer their constituents. The debate on sexual ethics has often been placed in negative terms, ending in a list of do’s and don’ts but Pope John Paul II decided to reframe the argument in terms of sexual liberty, and in terms of the question “What is the Truth which sets me free to love?” By reframing the question this way the Holy Father has opened up all new dimensions in our quest for sexual holiness, and our quest for right love of God, and neighbor.

He has set us free from the obsessions of legalist tendencies and work with the dos and don’ts of law, and made a broad and open place to really teach us the teaching of Christ.

So What is the Theology of the Body? From the outset, it is a project of cultural renewal, it is a theological anthropology that calls men and women to share in their original vocation and to understand their sexuality as a prophetic voice which speaks as powerfully if not more powerfully than any other.

Let’s ask again and see what West says is the Theology of the Body?

The often repressive approach of previous generations of Christians (usually silence or, at most, “don’t do it”) is largely responsible for the cultural jettison of the Church’s teaching on sex.

I heartily disagree that the Church has been prudish on sex, in fact, Catholicism has always retained a healthy sexual vision for humanity, especially against the denigration of sexuality and embodiment found in Protestant culture and practice. I do think West suffers from a lack of proper history here, but one can also discern his point which is the monumental nature of the Theology of the Body as well as to express the prudishness with which He sees past culture. Given that West is a convert, and also that he is still heavily steeped in his former traditions, I give him the benefit of doubt, while recognizing his inaccuracy.

We need a “new language” to break the silence and reverse the negativity. We need a fresh theology that explains how the Christian sexual ethic + far from the prudish list of prohibitions it’s assumed to be + corresponds perfectly with the deepest yearnings of our hearts for love and union.

The TOB is John Paul II’s reframing of the important questions of human sexuality and bodily ethics in a new language, a language that actually teaches the freedom found in the Church’s teachings. I think he suffers from a lack of precision in his documentation of this as a “new language” in a few ways, but this isn’t a let’s critique Christopher West blog, it’s a blog about the Theology of the Body. Let’s get back to it. West is right to highlight how necessary it was, and how the Theology of the Body has been fundamental to the Church’s resistance of postmodern sexuality in so many ways. He says “It’s a message of sexual salvation offered to one and all.”

This is clearly a pressing need for a new generation of both Protestant and Catholic and Orthodox youth growing up around the world which finds itself under the sway of globalism, capitalism and radical individualism. Now, I am no enemy of capitalism per se, but I am wary of the effects it has on cultures and specifically on sexuality.

If you’ll allow me a short story:

Once, in undergraduate school, I liked a girl very much. I liked her so much I refused to say anything, especially because I was terribly shy. However, later on as we became friends I shared the feelings I once had, and we entertained a long discussion on how inappropriate it seems that our peers find it normal to dissolve relationships when demands, sexual, relational and otherwise are not met. We felt that this seemed entirely too economic a solution to the problem. It was seeing relationships based on supply and demand, which are not relational terms at all, but economic ones. My friend and I sought deeper answers to the question of how to have meaningful friendships and discovered the possibility of sexual andrelational salvation manifest in the magisterial traditions and specifically in the teachings of John Paul II. But this is not a place for my theology, so let’s return to the Pope with the following quote in West’s article:

In short, through an in-depth reflection on the Scriptures, John Paul seeks to answer two of the most important, universal questions: (1) “What’s it mean to be human?” and (2) “How do I live my life in a way that brings true happiness and fulfillment?”

These are the two major questions which the Holy Father addresses in the catecheses and they shape the entirety of the discourses. They are huge questions, but he handles them with the mastery which is not mastery, he handles them with the humility of a servant, offering to the church a renewed vision of everything life might mean if we take the Faith seriously.

This will conclude Part One of this Outline, and we will return to the West article in the next post for further discussion and guidance as we begin to read the Theology of the Body.