From Tob

[edit] Theology of the Body

[edit] Synopsis per chapter and section

[edit] Chapter 1

This chapter goes back to the beginning and seeks to describe the relationship between Adam and Eve at its origin.  John Paul II describes such concepts as original solitude, unity, innocence, and happiness.  He sets up the fall of man as a boundary experience separating man in the beginning from the historical man.  Shame and death are introduced as new experiences that stand in stark contrast to the experience before the fall and affect the reciprocal, complete, and disinterested giving of self between man and woman.  Through all this, the body is see as the physical manifestation of the individual and integral to all that happens to the person. 

[edit] Chapter 2
General Audiences 24-33

I. Matthew 5:27-28: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ ButI tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
A. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ fundamentally revises the understanding of how to carry out the moral law of the Old Covenant.
B. Christ’s new teaching shows how to “fulfill the justice” of the commandment, which reaches its “specific fullness” in man.
1. Man is the subject of morality.
2. The very meaning of being human is thus formed in the “interior perception of values,” which gives birth to duty as the response of personal conscience.
3. The tendency prior to this teaching to focus on acts of the body instead of on interior values deformed the commandment and opened up legalistic loopholes.
4. The new teaching directs man to find himself in his interior
C. “Adultery in the heart” is a clearly defined interior act that expresses itself through sight

II. 1 John 2:16-17 (The Threefold Concupiscence): “All that is in the world, the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world passes away with its concupiscence; but the one who does the will of God will remain in eternity.”
A. The threefold concupiscence is the fruit of breaking of the first Covenant.
1. It is a result of man’s doubt of the Gift of Love, sown by the serpent: “You will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
2. In doubting the completeness of God’s gift, man turns his back on the Father, detaches his heart, and cuts it off.
3. What is left is thus “from the world,” rather than “from the father”

II. 1 John 2:16-17 (The Threefold Concupiscence): “All that is in the world, the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world passes away with its concupiscence; but the one who does the will of God will remain in eternity.”
A. The threefold concupiscence is the fruit of breaking of the first Covenant.
1. It is a result of man’s doubt of the Gift of Love, sown by the serpent: “You will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
2. In doubting the completeness of God’s gift, man turns his back on the Father, detaches his heart, and cuts it off.
3. What is left is thus “from the world,” rather than “from the father”

III. Genesis 3:6: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they realized that they were naked; they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”
A. This passage suggests the beginning of concupiscence immediately after the fall, and as its first and most powerful manifestation.

IV. Genesis 3:8: “Then they heard the sound of the Lord God, who was walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves among the trees of the garden from the presence of the Lord God.”
A. This passage shows a previously unknown fear of God.

V. Genesis 3:9-10: “The Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?’ he said, I heard the sound of your step in the garden, and I was afraid, because I am naked, and I hid myself.”
A. The true source of man’s fear is his break from God, which he tries to cover by instead stating the effect or symptom of that break (his nakedness). And God immediately calls man out on that: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you perhaps eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Gen 3:11)
B. Man has deprived himself in full participation in the Gift and alienated himself from Love. In so doing, man damages in the fullness of his imaging of God and limits his right to participate in the visibility of the world and in the full mystery of creation.
1. His loss of confidence in the fullness of the image of God is expressed in part in his shame at nakedness. Man is no longer confident in the body as a sign of the person in the visible world: insecurity in somatic structure
C. Concupiscence thus enters into man’s heart as part of the limitations to the fullness of the image of God that appeared with sin: It is a manifestation of man now lacking his original endowment.
D. Shame becomes intrinsic to man and changes the nature of his very existence: “The body is not subject to the spirit as in the state of original innocence, but carries within itself a constant hotbed of resistance against the spirit and threatens in some way man’s unity as a person, that is, the unity of the moral nature that plunges its roots firmly into the very constitution of the person. (p. 244) In this way, concupiscence threatens self-possession and self-dominion. (See Romans 7:22-23)

VI. Shame fractures the original integrity of man’s sexuality. Man’s shame is realy shame of the body motivated by concupiscence, which is a shame relative to both male and female. It springs from man’s distancing (lack) of the fullness of values experienced in original simplicity.
A. Shame radically transformed man’s relation to woman.
B. The reciprocal personal communion of man and woman through the body has been shattered: No longer a perfect medium of self-gift to one another.
1. “Sexual shame, about which Genesis 3:7 speaks, attests to the loss of the original certainty that through its masculinity and femininity the human body is precisely the substratum of the communion of persons, a substratum that simply expresses this communion and serves to realize it.” (pg. 248)
C. The simplicity and purity of the original experience of union is gone; full “self-donation” with full trust in all that constituted one’s identity, including bodily identity, is gone.
D. The diversity of the sexes, once an element of the fullness of union, now becomes an element of the opposition of the sexes to one another. Sexuality now becomes an obstacle.

VII. Genesis 3:16: “You desire shall be for your husband, but he will dominate you.”
A. Not about social inequality, but a symptom of the lack of full unity that now exists.
1. “This communion had been intended to make man and woman mutually happy through the search of a simple and pure union in humanity, through a reciprocal offering of themselves...” (pg. 251)
B. The community of persons is the same, but now fundamentally changed in character. There is now a threat in the insatiability of that union.
1. Note how “the pride of life” from the threefold concupiscence dovetails with man’s desire to dominate here
C. Shame on the one hand is the manifestation of concupiscence, but on the other hand is also a weapon against it, helping in the struggle to retain original innocence.
D. The body continues to arouse desires for personal union, but concupiscence corrupts and misdirects those desires.
1. The reference to domination shows a transformation from mutual personal sharing from communion of persons to a relationship of possession of the other as an object of desire. Disinterested gift is excluded by egotisitcal enjoyment.
2. This is a corruption of the spousal meaning of the body, whereby in the original state, the body was the means of expressing human self-gift. “[F]emininity and masculinity in their mutual relations seem to be no longer the expression of the spirit that tends toward personal communion and are left only as an object of attraction.” (pg. 257)
a) The human body has “almost” lost the power of expressing love in the dimension of bodily gift and of welcoming the reciprocal gift of the communion of persons -- but the power of self-gift is in fact threatened, not suffocated, and can be regained, at least in part, through self-mastery. A constant danger to true loving, the desire of the body vs. the desire of the mind.
b) In becoming objects for one another’s desires, men and women do not treat each other as “willed for themselves” as the Creator intended
3. Genesis 3:16 shows that woman feels this breakdown of self-gifting more than man.
4. Genesis 2:23-25 (flesh of my flesh) shows that it is primarily the man’s responsibility to retain the true balance of the reciprocity of self-gift.s

[edit] The Ethos of the Body in Art and Media

See page at: Ethos of the Body in Art and Media

[edit] Chapter 3

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1. The third part of the triptych of Christ’s statements that is essential to the theology of the body is His dialogue with the Sadducees regarding the resurrection. The dialogue is found in Matthew 22:24-30, Mark 12:18-27 and Luke 20:27-40.

2. The Sadducees say there is no resurrection. If a man dies, leaving his wife and no children and she marries his seven brothers, and each one dies and leaves her with no children, whose spouse will she be in Heaven?

3. Christ responds: “Is not the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they take neither wife nor husband, but are like angels in heaven.” Matthew 12:24-25.

“And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Issac, and the God of Jacob?” He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.” Mk 12:26-27

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3. Moses’ father in faith (Abraham, Issac, and Jacob) are living persons for God (“for all live for him - Luke 20:38).

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1. In the future resurrection, man will experience spiritualization, which means that man will be free from experiencing the law of sin. Body and spirit will be in perfect harmony; there will no longer be opposition between.

2. The mastery of spirit over body does not mean a “disincarnation” of the body or man’s “dehumanization.” It signifies his “perfect realization.” Perfection consists of a “deep harmony” between body and spirit, “safeguarding the primacy of the spirit.” This is not a victory of the spirit over the body. The resurrection consists of the perfect participation of both the body and spirit.

The resurrection “will consist in the perfect realization of what is personal in man.” Does this mean the perfection of our uniqueness as persons?

3. In the future resurrection, man will experience the divinization of his humanity. Man will participate in the divine nature, in God’s inner life. God will penetrate and permeate man, self-communicating His divinity to man. The life of the human spirit will reach a fullness that was not previously attainable.

Divinization is not only seeing God face to face. It’s a “new formation of man’s personal subjectivity according to the measure of union with God in His trinitarian mystery and intimacy with him in the perfect communion of persons.” Does our new formation depend on our union with God in this life?

4. Christ says there is no marriage in Heaven. JP II says this unveils a new meaning of the body. He asks, “Is it possible, in this case, on the level of biblical eschatology to think of the discovery of the spousal meaning of the body above all as the virginal meaning of being male and female in the body?” What does he mean by this? See also 69.

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2. In our union with God in Heaven, man keeps his subjectivity and acquires it more perfectly. In man’s perfect subjectivity, he keeps his masculinity and femininity in the risen body. Why do we keep masculinity and femininity in our glorified bodies? Because it’s part of our subjectivity as persons?

3. Man makes a reciprocal gift of himself to God in response to God giving Himself to man. Man will concentrate and express all of his energies on God.

4. In heaven, man not only experiences communion with God but with created persons. He lives the communion of the saints. See The Faith Explained book.

Man experiences the “perfect intersubjectivity of all.” JP II calls this the true and definitive fulfillment of human subjectivity and of the spousal meaning of the body. Man’s total concentration on God does not take away man from this fulfillment, but it introduces him into it and consolidates him in it.

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3. The meaning of being male or female in the future world should be sought outside of marriage and procreation (since there is no marriage in heaven), but it should be derived from the mystery of creation.

4. The original meaning of being a body as male and female (spousal meaning) is united to the fact that man is created as a person and is called to live the communion of persons. Marriage and procreation do not determine the original and fundamental meaning of being a body nor of being male and female. They give a concrete reality to the meaning of them in the dimension of history. The resurrection indicates the closure of this historical dimension.

“The spousal meaning of the body in the resurrection to the future life will perfectly correspond both to the fact that man as male-female is a person, created in the image and likeness of God and to the fact that this image is realized in the communion of persons. That spousal meaning of the being a body will therefore be realized as a meaning that is perfectly personal and communitarian at the same time.” What is the difference between the spousal meaning of the body in creation and in the future resurrection?

5. The glorified body will be a new experience for man; however, it will not be alienated from his experiences in the beginning or in the historical dimension of life. This new experience will be the fulfillment of what he carried in himself historically.

B. Pauline Interpretation of the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:42-49

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2. Paul responds to those who contest the resurrection. He appeals to the reality of Christ’s resurrection. “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is in vain and also your faith is in vain ... But now Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Cor 15:12-15).

5. There is consistency between this Pauline text and the text of the gospels previously mentioned; however, the text of 1 Corinthians is more developed.

6 & 7. Like Christ in the gospels, Paul also appeals to the beginning (Adam); to the human heart as a place of struggle with concupiscence (he refers to the body as perishable and weak); and to the reality of the resurrection.

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2. Paul contrasts Adam and the Risen Christ, showing that man is situated between the mysteries of creation and redemption.

3. The “man of heaven,” Christ, is not the negation of the “man of earth,” but his fulfillment and confirmation. The humanity of the first Adam carries within itself the capacity and readiness for receiving all that the second Adam became in His resurrection. It is the same humanity in which we participate; it’s perishable and burdened with sin and it carries within itself the potentiality of incorruptibility.

4. The human body carries within itself the potentiality of the resurrection because everyone bears in himself the image of Christ, the Risen One.

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1. JP II calls 1 Cor 15 the anthropology of the resurrection according to St. Paul.

2. Paul contrasts the weak body and the body full of power. The body full of power will be a spiritual body; spiritualization of the body will be its power.

3. Paul sees the future resurrection as the reintegration and the attainment of the fullness of humanity. It’s not just a return to the state of the soul before sin; it’s a new fullness.

4. The spiritual body will have a supremacy over the body and sensuality. Paul is referring to sensuality that limits spirituality and not to the fundamental senses of knowing and loving that liberate spirituality. The spiritual body should signify “the perfect sensitivity of the senses, their perfect harmonization with the activity of the human spirit in truth and in freedom.”

[edit] Chapter 4

[edit] Chapter 5

[edit] Chapter 6

[edit] Themes

Subjectivity of man

Gaining/Losing Knowledge

Duality/Unity of body and spirit

Boundary Experience

[edit] Vocabulary

axiomatic

subjectivity

normative meaning

somatic

cosmic shame

immanent shame

sexual shame

knowledge

the Gift

innocence

historic man