Theology of the Body, Part 1

As I predicted I would be doing in Of Wild Things and Women's Vocations, in this and coming posts I'll be considering a book I picked up at Barnes & Noble recently, Christopher West's Theology of the Body for Beginners: A Basic Introduction to Pope John Paul II's Sexual Revolution. The brief 2004 paperback is a simplification of the same author's earlier Theology of the Body Explained, a 500-page reference work which I fear is way over my head.

The late Pope John Paul II devoted a large part of his early pontificate, says West, to setting forth his "theology of the body." In a series of 129 short talks given before the Pope's "Wednesday audiences" from 1979 to 1984 — see Mr. West's website — the Holy Father presented a discourse on humans, their bodies, their sexual relations, their marriages and families, and their wider communities: a complete doctrine rooted in the flesh, as it were. The Pope's lectures themselves can be found in the book The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan, by John Paul II (which I haven't yet read).

In fact, as I begin reading West's book, it appears that the theology of the body presented by John Paul II can be esteemed as central to all of Christian theology. I take the liberty of using the word "Christian" here, and not just "Catholic," because I can't think of any way in which non-Catholic Christians could seriously object to such a statement, in and of itself. More on that anon.


The body is the basis for the "one flesh" metaphor, from Genesis 2:24, quoted by Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians 5:31-32. Paul's words are: "'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church ... ."

West says that the metaphor refers to, or "images," several bedrock things in Christian understanding. For one thing, Paul is saying, the one-flesh metaphor refers to the way in which Jesus would/did come to "give up his body for his Bride (the Church) that we might become 'one flesh' with him" (p. 9).

For another thing, there's the Eucharist, the sacrament of holy communion in which we (Catholic) faithful consume consecrated bread and wine that has become, in Jesus' words, "my body" and "my blood." In partaking of it, we ordinary humans become one flesh with Christ in a very materialistic way.

In both cases, there is mutual giving. We as a community become Christ's spiritual Bride, the Church, by choosing to give up our waywardness before God. Then, at the Mass, the elements that are to become the Blessed Host are brought forth as gifts, along with the worldly treasure we have sacrificed on the donation plates.


The "one flesh" metaphor for human marriage thus betokens all self-donation, all giving in love, all mutual solidarity, writ very large. This idea can be writ no larger than the notion that at the heart of God's deepest inner mystery there exists the eternal begetting of the Son by the Father, and hence the love which these, the First Two Persons of the Holy Trinity, never stop proceeding to share.

"The love they share is the Holy Spirit ... ," writes West (p. 8). So when the Apostle John says in the New Testament, in his First Letter, "He who does not love does not know God; for God is love," he accordingly could be referring to the entire Trinity, or to the Holy Spirit as the Third Person thereof; it's all the same thing.

"In the Pope's language," West notes, "God is an eternal Communion of Persons" (p. 7). The human body in its sexual capacity mirrors this communion. Not only is fleshly marriage a sacrament — a sign of the spiritual reality thus spoken of — the body itself is a sacrament (p. 5).

West shows that the "image of spousal love" is a major way in which Scripture, in its totality, conveys "God's love for humanity." From Genesis through Revelation, the marriage metaphor is never far from the Bible's ken: "The Bible begins in Genesis with the marriage of the first man and woman, and it ends in Revelation with another 'marriage' — the marriage of Christ and the Church" (p. 10).

Along the way, the prophet Hosea (2: 16-20) writes:

"And in that day, says the LORD, you will call me, 'My husband,' and no longer will you call me, 'My Ba'al.' For I will remove the names of the Ba'als from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more. And I will make for you a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to me for ever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD.

(Ba'al was the god — or the plurality of gods — worshiped by the Israelites' pagan neighbors, a running theme in the Old Testament being how the Lord, the One God, supplanted the polytheistic pagan worship of yore, as it was still practiced by the Israelites' neighbors in the Holy Land.)


So what West calls the "spousal analogy" (see p. 10) is absolutely central to Judeo-Christian understanding. That is a fact which I personally find unsettling; there are several reasons for my discomfiture. Before going into them, though, I also need to say that I find this spousal-analogy view of Judeo-Christian thought compelling, even thrilling.

It is harder to say why I'm thrilled to discover this "secret" of Christian faith which, I need to admit, has long been in plain sight, than to say why I'm discomfited. What does the spousal analogy matter to one such as myself? After all, I'm not married, and at age 58 I think it unlikely that I ever will be. My sex life has never been particularly active. Though I'm personally no choir boy, quite frankly I admit I've always been ambivalent about the sexual revolution. I don't really like the fact that what was once illicit sex has become the norm in our society.

All the same, I've never been inclined to excoriate other people for their "loose" behavior. In fact, I've tended to support the notion that sex between consenting adults is nobody else's business, no matter who are doing it and under what circumstances it is done. And I've labored under the notion that our failures of chastity don't really matter all that much in the eyes of God.

So as I now buy belatedly into a spousal-analogy worldview, I imagine the more prudish of the two sides of me taking charge. That, naturally, discomfits me ... but it also thrills me. To me, it feels like coming home.

It feels like the laissez-faire sexual mask that I put on in the 1960s is coming off, at long last.

It feels like I've turned to the back of the math text, where all the answers have been printed, and found that the answer that I gave first — before foolishly starting to think it over — is the right one after all.


So why does it discomfit me? Well, as I say, I'm no choir boy, and I worry I won't be as chaste as this new-old worldview of mine demands.

I worry that I'm making a liar (and possibly a fool) of myself — or, at least, of the ostensibly permissive self that I've been identifying with for several decades.

I worry that, if I buy into the spousal analogy, I won't be able to maintain my longstanding support for the rights of women and gays. (Well, my support of feminist goals is well-established; my support for gay rights is, shall we say, evolving.)

I worry that my incipient theology-of-the-body Catholicism will degenerate into a connect-the-dots, dogmatic thing which will, at some point, become an idol, a false god. I seriously doubt my own long-term ability not to let fresh insight turn into rancid intolerance.

Perhaps most of all, I worry that my developing theology-of-the-body, spousal-analogy outlook works against social solidarity, which I consider the prime directive of the faithful Christian.


As I'm trying to set forth in my Jesus Before Christianity blog, universal compassion and boundless love are the Christian's Job One. All humankind will sooner or later come to see that we're all branches of a single vine, Jesus taught. There are no specially blessed in-groups in God's eyes. So, do not ostracize; do not sow discord.

As soon as I start talking about the theology of the body, I'm automatically talking chastity ... and I can see people by the millions leaving the room. To which the ones who stay in their seats say, good riddance.

Is that any way not to ostracize? Is that any way to replace intolerance with love?

That's the kind of thing I worry about as I, yes, continue to be thrilled by John Paul II's theology of the body.