On Theology of the Body, Sex, and Faithful Reason

A friend of mine has asked me to comment on the recent debate on Christopher West’s theology of the body. Rather than simply taking on the issue of John Paul’s theology, which I thought Schindler’s criticism of West was outstanding, I would like to situate the topic into a broader context.

In the last decades, we have seen a movement from Christian communities responding to the materialistic mentality that has been advertised in cultures and in the academia. Recent philosophies of the mind, for example, are filled with researches from cognitive science and since nobody can produce the method in which the soul is united to the body, dualism, whether substance-dualism or interactive-dualism, has been disregarded by the majority in the academia. Jaegwon Kim, for example, has stated that most philosophers of the mind are pretty much a materialist, in the sense that the majority of the philosophers do not believe in an immaterial mind. This does not mean that every philosopher is a reductionist. David Chalmers, for example, believe that consciousness cannot be reduced to material components. Of course Christians do not sit idly when an essential part of their faith is being disregarded. They try to argue against the insufficiencies of the materialist proposal (cf. Alvin Plantinga, Dean Zimmerman, and see especially John Hawthorne’s article on Cartesian dualism. Of course, there are some like Peter van Inwagen who welcome the materialist proposal). This is from the philosophical perspective. In the theological, we have seen a criticism of the overemphasis of the soul. N.T. Wright, for example, has tried to orient Christian thinking by focusing on the resurrection of the body. Heaven, he argues, is not the end or purpose of life; the goal of life is the resurrection of the body. This seems to be in line with Romano Guardini’s statement that Christianity is the most materialistic worldview; God has, in fact, assumed a human body. Over and over, we read Christian materials reminding us that God made everything good, including matter. We see Thomists re-emphasizing that for Aquinas, souls in heaven are not really persons until they are again united to the body. I think it is safe to say, then, that Christians have been trying to save the body from corrupted thinking in the last decades.

Then we had the rejection of Humane Vitae in which the modern world had chosen power over the beautiful life. This rejection was not a spontaneous event but rather the result of the struggle against the Church’s proposal to human life. Thinkers have reduced happiness to a measurable utility that contradicts Christ’s proposal that a servant is useless to his master, not because the servant lacks goodness but because the measure of service comes from the love of the master. The rejection of Humane Vitae, then, was simply the acceptance that the sensual-hedonistic life as the measure of utility. The reception of Human Vitae from the Church had been horrible and we need not recollect Pope Paul’s suffering from the rejection of his theologians.

The rejection of Humane Vitae from Catholics and the world made John Paul share the truths he had discovered as a pastor and philosopher. He had already written a book on sexuality from a personalistic perspective and he knew that the natural law perspective needed to be complemented by a Christological outlook on the matter. It is in this way, I believe, that we need to understand the Theology of the Body. Citing Gaudium et Spes 22 and 34 are necessary but insufficient. One must also read his other encyclicals and works, especially his plays and poetry to understand his overall approach to the question of the human body. For him, a human body is a sign of a person and therefore can only find his fulfillment and truth in the Person of Christ. From this perspective, he has shown that the human body is valuable because it has been created and redeemed by God. The human body carries a sacramental value in that it expresses the visible. For John Paul, a sacrament is the visibility of the invisible. This sacramental outlook also places human love within the context of divine love, for divine love has assumed a human love in the Person of Jesus Christ. From this perspective, we can understand that a sexual act like sex is good when it is within the context of this divine-human love.

After the catecheses of John Paul had came out, some saw the genius and beauty of such a work that they wanted to share this with others. They wanted to respond to theologians who have corrupted the Church as well as responding to the modern proposal of sexual life. They have found Theology of the Body to be their refuge, their “dessert,” from the attacks against the human person. But what had happened is that these people have become obsessed with chastity and sex that we can safely say that it is simply the participation of the world’s obsession about sex under the disguise of theology. This is not to say that people have not found popular presentations of Theology of the Body to be helpful in their lives. Many people have changed because of these presentations. But I believe that not only are they incomplete, but they have also been ineffective for the Church as a whole. Maybe the problem is not these popular presentations of theology of the body per se, but the attitude of certain parishioners that a presentation or couple of presentations on chastity is the best way to educate children on the delicate topic of sex. I remember, for example, as a youth minister that the topic of sexual education was one of the primary concerns of parents. They wanted their children to be free from the corruption of sexual education in secular schools and the parish church to educate their children properly what it means to have sex. Parents constantly asked me to act upon their insistence that chastity be imposed on their children. I even remembered a young girl receiving her fifteenth (exaggeration here) book on chastity for Christmas. Certainly, Catholic parents, in America, that is, are obsessed about this topic as well. I remember a couple of parents asking me how they can educate their child about sex. Of course, I have never been a parent so I gave the answer a Christian can only give: love them and continue educating their hearts. The parents, of course, because of the moralistic mentality they live in, were unsatisfied. I then said a sentence that was surprising for them: “And even if they go to college and make the mistake of committing pre-marital sex, love them anyway. God does miraculous things even through sin.” This, of course, raised eyebrows. Of course, sin is sin and it is ugly. Yet, this event seems to me the defining factor for me in this recent debate on theology of the body and how popular presentations have fallen short of the good it seeks to attain. The Church in America, the American culture, does not have a perception of mercy, and therefore gift. It is in this context that I would like to make small comments on the topic of the human body and how popular presentations of theology of the body have not been effective.

The human body is a sign of love and the capacity for a sincere gift of self. This has been already emphasized by popular presenters. However, what is important in this is the fact that the human body expresses and is sonship. When I look at myself, my hands, feet, and face, I can see that it is not me that has made these; we can look at a child’s face and see how it resembles his father’s and/or mother’s. We come from another to participate in giving. This is important because without this aspect of sonship, the nuptial meaning of the body loses its intelligibility. In fact, it is precisely in losing this filial aspect that lust and blindness to the experience and consciousness of the nuptial meaning of the body came into being. Man committed original sin and therefore lost his sonship. The break from this sonship is what made him hide from his wife. Sonship is what keeps the experience of original solitude and nakedness united of which without, man lives in a fragmented and delusional way.

This aspect of sonship is important because it is here that we can respond to the concerns of some Thomists who think that theology of the body is simply a theology of the genitals. There are some Thomists who think that John Paul’s nuptial theology disregard the traditional thought that the image of God lies in the mind of man. How can we unite the notion that we are made in the image of God because of our capacity to reason as well as our sexual differences? The answer is simple, it seems to me, because Christians have always understood the Genesis passage in a Christological context. Christ is the image of the Father that man is made in the image of. As Etienne Gilson pointed out in his book The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, man is the image of the Image of God. Man is made in the image of the Son who is the Logos and Beloved of the Father. Rationality is relational because it comes from the unbegotten begetter. This is why Ratzinger had emphasized that there can be no truth without communion, no truth without love. We are made in the image of God because we are begotten to share in the eucharist (thanks-giving) of the Father’s Son. The connection between truth and communion, between truth and love, then, gives us the way we can understand that rationality and nuptiality are complementary. The Son’s procession comes from the Father’s knowledge of Himself (rationality) which draws Him to the world (nuptiality); the Son’s mission is identical with his procession.

Original wounds our nature in that it takes away this relationship, our sonship with God. This does not destroy our image, that is, that we are begotten to participate in the self-giving of God, but it does take away its actualization. This is why God sent His Only begotten Son, so that we can be raised into His life. Here we can understand the early Christian proclamation that the resurrection of Jesus is the vindication that he is the Son of God. The resurrection is God’s merciful claim upon us. It is a mystery we cannot fully grasp. Robert Jenson even said that the resurrection itself is the ousia of God. This is true insofar as the resurrection shows the Father continually begetting-loving the Son, and that the economic activity reflects the immanent activity of God in His triune tenderness. The Resurrection is not simply an event, but contains a promise: we will be resurrected. This takes away any criticism against Catholic theology that it absolutizes heaven. The Last Judgment of God upon the world is Sonship. The Last Judgment, as Giussani observed, is Paradise.

This is not simply a theoretical exercise since this is an education for all of us. Our body is a gift and we are looked with unconditional mercy. There is the tendency in American Catholicism which thinks that we are forgiven after we have asked for forgiveness. This is a pelagian mentality under the guise of sacramentalism. What really happens as Herbert McCabe noted, is that the only way we can actually have the courage to ask for forgiveness is because of the tender gaze of God; because we are forgiven we come to the Father. Without this merciful gaze, we take reality for granted as well as thinking that we can manipulate nature. If there is a way we can understand John Paul’s theology, it is from this perspective: the first and last word in history is mercy, is Christ. Without Christ, without this experience and personal relationship with Him, the imposition of the natural law into our behaviors falls short of the glorious life. In participating in this mercy, we begin to give ourselves because of the superabundant love that has been shown, give, and spoken to us. In participating in this mercy, we begin to understand the depth of the other. At this point, we can really love somebody. The emphasis is not on sex or a way to justify sex, but to embrace the other in all of his or her totality. As Romano Guardini noted, to accept the person means to accept good and bad qualities of that person; it embraces the good and the bad. In this way, we can understand theology of the body is really the paradigm for marriage, in that it relates to every day problems such as economic or personalities ones. A lot of the problems with relationships is precisely how people can come together, how it is possible that people, with their sinfulness, can stay together. Popular presentations of theology of the body reduce this great theology into a teenage mentality and that is why it is insufficient for the Church, for the growth of the Church.

What I have argued, I believe, is the way we can approach our lives within this great theology. I would like to give a personal perspective in closing. When I was in Rutgers University, what was really troubling was not that couples slept in the same bed together or had sex every weekend at a frat party. True, those were sad moments. But what was awful was that couples lived together without commitment or couples not understanding how it is possible for them to give themselves to the other forever. Unless we are educated in forgiveness, in the permanent tender gaze of God, we will be suffocated by the thought that we can lose what is true and beautiful in our lives.