Theology of the Body, Part 6: The Riddle of the Third Way

Christopher West's Theology of the Body for Beginners: A Basic Introduction to Pope John Paul II's Sexual Revolution is my continuing object of fascination (see Theology of the Body, Part 5: the Transformation of Lust and preceding posts for more).

One of the trickiest things to understand about the message of this book is that there is a hidden, divinely aided third way beyond the pair of strategies for sex which initially must seem to exhaust all possibilities: repress lust, or indulge it.

A person who is blind to the third way, as so many are, would say that the sexual urge is a given. If it is not to be repressed — thereby doing us immeasuarable harm — it must be indulged to the fullest. Since religion opposes sexual indulgence, religion must go.

That's true, as far as it goes. If religion is basically about the repression of lust, then it's bad for us. But West tells us in his book that Pope John Paul II's "theology of the body" hates the repression of lust as much as it despises lustful indulgence!

Repression represents "the trap of 'holding to the form of religion' while 'denying the power of it'" — that is, the power of God, if we give him our assent, to change the way we feel and the way our minds and hearts operate inside us (p. 48; the quotation is from St. Paul's Second Letter to Timothy 3:5). Christ through his death and resurrection can redeem our sexuality. "In other words," writes West, "the death and resurrection of Christ is effective. It can change our lives, our attitudes, our hearts — yes — our sexual desires" (p. 48).


Practically speaking, how does this work? The key thing is primarily for us to switch from following the false lure of self-gratification to preferring "the love of total self-donation" (see p. 29).

The "right kind" of sexual desire is accordingly that which is found in the best marriages: in the conjugal bed, as in the rest of married life, each partner is mainly interested in "donating" his or her own selfish gratification to the needs of the other, to ensure the other's fulfillment.

Self-donation on a wider, not-necessarily-sexual scale is accordingly the keynote of all Christian life ... just as Christ's death on the cross to save the entire world from the wages of sin was the ultimate act of self-donation.


But self-donation, when emphasized all by itself, is but one of two co-equal aspects of the hidden third way. The other aspect — the other manner of describing this marvelous change of heart which depotentiates lust and sin — is to recognize that it can't happen without supernatural help. For our sexual nature to be "redeemed" requires, if we are Christian, that we accept the redemption spoken of by Christians when they refer to Christ's saving death on the cross.

Likewise, God's gift of redemption can equally be spoken of as allowing the Holy Spirit admission into our hearts. Whether spoken of as the indwelling of the Spirit or the salvation of Christ's cross, it all comes down to this: "... 'in a certain way we [according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church] have already risen with Christ' ... Here and now we can begin to experience the redemption of our sexual desires, the gradual transformation of our hearts. It is a difficult and even arduous journey, but one that can be accomplished" (p. 34).

Christ's saving cross and the entry of the Holy Spirit into our hearts together enable us to choose to be self-donating in our sexual and communal lives, while our opting for self-donation over self-gratification is what allows Christ's redemption and the indwelling of the spirit to be effective. The two aspects of the Riddle of the Third Way go with one another hand in glove to change our lives radically, over time, to ones of total commitment to God's plan and sincere self-donation to others.

Theology of the Body, Part 5: The Transformation of Lust

Christopher West's Theology of the Body for Beginners: A Basic Introduction to Pope John Paul II's Sexual Revolution continues to interest me greatly (see Theology of the Body, Part 4: Faith in Analogies and earlier posts for more). As I make my way through it, I become more and more convinced that its message concerning the body and sex is crucial to understanding and living out the Christian faith, Catholic-style.

The message is, it comes as no surprise, one of chastity and purity. There are two equally chaste vocations, the book says: marriage and celibacy. Perhaps surprisingly to some, conjugal chastity typifies the lives of Christian married couples. It includes a lot of healthy sex ... for sex and the body are good, in the Christian view, not sinful.

Nor is celibate chastity — the vocation I seem to be called to — a rejection of sex. Yes, physical sex is freely given up. Yet celibacy, which amounts to choosing to live one's life as a so-called "eunuch for sake of the kingdom of heaven," as Jesus put it at Matthew 19:12, is a calling that "embraces and anticipates 'the heavenly marriage'" (pp. 66-67). That is, celibacy on the part of some of us points all of us toward the beatific vision we will all share of God when we have arrived in heaven.

In turn, a celibate's life here on earth points out to the non-celibates who far outnumber him/her "the ultimate purpose and meaning of sexuality." This is so because in this world of ours "man and woman become one flesh as a sign or 'sacrament' of Christ's eternal union with the Church (see Eph [Paul's Letter to the Ephesians] 5:31-32)."

Celibates who eschew sex and married practitioners of a conjugal chastity which includes a vigorous sex life both "experience the redemption of their sexuality in Christ" (p. 68). In neither case is there repression of lust. Nor is there indulgence in lust. Chastity of either variety is a transformation of lust into something better and purer. Ordained by Christ, chastity, conjugal or otherwise, serves "to restore creation to the purity of its origins" (p. 68). In other words, purity allows us "to experience redemption from the domination of lust" (p. 69).


Therein, a capsule summary of the entire Christian outlook. Broadly speaking , all sin is lust — though, of course, it is not always sexual lust — and lust of any variety is sin. The point of the whole Christian exercise is to break free from sin, which after all is said and done, is always "the domination of lust."

Which makes Pope John Paul II's theology of the body central to Christian spirituality. There is a riddle here not unlike Zen's "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" It is this: How can there be a third, entirely constructive way to deal with our lust, in addition to repression and indulgence, both of which are destructive?

How can there be a difference, that is, between repression and the healthy self-denial which even married couples must practice, if lust is to be avoided? How can strong sexual desire manifest itself rightly ... especially in the life of the celibate who has no sexual relations and whose sacrifice is accordingly total?

West spells it out (p. 73): "... [T]he self-denial involved in such a sacrifice [i.e., celibacy] must not be conceived as a repression of sexuality. Celibacy for the kingdom [i.e., heaven, as the kingdom of God] is meant to be a fruitful living out of the redemption of sexual desire, understood as the desire to make of oneself a 'sincere gift' for others."

The same is true for married people. Their mode of redeeming their sexual desire also serves to liberate healthy expressions of sex from lust. It too enables the marrieds' making a "sincere gift" of themselves to others: to the other spouse, to their children, to their larger family, to the community as a whole.

So the "self-donation" which a husband makes to his wife in their bedchamber, and which she of course makes back to him, stands as an archetype for all the "sincere gifts" a person makes to other persons ... which is why the idea of the redemption of lust can be construed as lying at the very heart of Christianity!

Theology of the Body, Part 4: Faith in Analogies

Christopher West's Theology of the Body for Beginners: A Basic Introduction to Pope John Paul II's Sexual Revolution impresses me as a "typically Catholic" book, if only because it glories in analogies.

For example, West draws an analogy between the "one flesh" nuptial union that married couples seek here in this world, and the "divine reality" which we who hope to be saved can expect to enter into: direct, personal communion with God when this life is over and we are in heaven. Jesus accordingly taught, "In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage (Matthew 22:30; see pp. 55ff.). Along these lines, West tells us, "the 'primordial sacrament' [of God-ordained marriage here on earth] will give way to the divine reality" in an afterlife in which there is no longer any need for marriage, sex, and procreation as we know it (p. 56).

No sex in heaven, then, alas ... but still, here in this world, marriage and sex are fountains of earthly delight that, viewed aright, direct our gaze heavenward: "They help us set our sights on the union [with God] that alone will satisfy" (p. 57).

At the Bible's end, Christ as Bridegroom weds his church as Bride, and (says West, p. 61) throughout scripture, from Genesis on, "the nuptial imagery is unmistakable." At the same time, though, West makes clear that "when using nuptial union as an image of heaven, it's more important than ever to remember the inadequacy of analogies. Caution is necessary. Heaven is not some eternally magnified experience of sexual union on earth. As John Paul II observes, the union to come 'will be a completely new experience.' Yet 'at the same time,' [the Pope goes on], 'it will not be alienated in any way from the love that man and woman experienced in 'the beginning' and have sought to reclaim throughout history ... ."

Thus, the special value of analogies as images of divine realities. On the one hand, they are indispensible for providing us with some insight into mysteries, such as the nature of heaven, which we ordinarily couldn't fathom. On the other hand, every spiritual analogy has its limits, knowable to reason and common sense. We must be ever on guard against turning an "icon" — say, the God-ordained sexual union of a married couple, taken as an image of the communion of saints in heaven — into an "idol" that is sought after for its own sake, here in life on this earth. (See pp. 56ff. for more on the distinction between "icons" and "idols.")

This is the way we Catholics often look at theological matters: by virtue of conceptual analogies that are to be understood almost intuitively, but are also to be tested by reason and common sense. Notice that there is no assertion in the Catholic outlook concerning the afterlife that heaven will "really" be anything like what we know here and now. Just the opposite: as the late pope says, heaven will be "a completely new experience."


I contrast the profoundly analogical outlook in Catholicism with the worldview expressed by pastor Ted Haggard, President of the National Association of Evangelicals, on a recent TV special, Is Heaven Somewhere out There Beyond the Stars? Barbara Walters Takes Viewers on a Heavenly Journey. Walters interviewed all manner of "experts" on the subject of what heaven is and how we get there. Haggard, as a sort of stand-in for a "pope" of America's conspicuously popeless evangelical Christians, told Walters (among other things) that he personally thinks of heaven as having multiple "neighborhoods," since Jesus tells us right out it has many "mansions."

Presumably, if there are "mansions" in heaven, then there are "neighborhoods" around the mansions, or so Haggard's reasoning goes. In a very concrete sense, then, Hagggard's version of heaven is not a completely new experience. Instead, in many ways it's just like what we've already experienced here on earth ... without any of the bad stuff, of course.

What I detect here is a disinclination on Haggard's part to comprehend analogically. Rather, he seems to be saying that when we read the Bible, the most concrete and literal interpretation that immediately comes to mind is the one that is most assuredly right, since such an interpretation will be in no way "abstract," and therefore highly suspect.


It occurs to me that such an outlook is entirely consistent, may God bless it, with a faith tradition which has no central authority: no pope, no Vatican, no Curia, no magisterium or teaching authority, no hierarchy of priests, and no organized doctrine.

When Christians are called to read scripture and interpret it directly for themselves, as evangelicals are, then (it stands to reason) how do you expect them to agree on stuff? One answer to this conundrum seems to be to favor the strictly literal reading of the words of the Bible. To avoid abstraction, hence, is to skirt disunity.

The traditional Catholic approach is different: the individual Catholic is expected to read the Bible nowadays — yes; that revision to the everyday Catholic's lifestyle began at about the time of Vatican II — but always to interpret it with the help of the traditional magisterium of the church and all those lay explicators, such as Christopher West, who are in tune with it. The church over time accretes a reasoned, internally consistent, unabashedly analogical approach to understanding the whole Gospel message. That carefully worked out outlook informs us everyday Catholics in the pews of, among other things, when "caution is necessary" in order to avoid taking an analogical "icon" (e.g., married sex as a pointer to heavenly bliss) and making it into a concrete "idol" (sex as an end in itself).


This subject fascinates me, because I have to admit that the Catholic, "abstract," analogical approach thrills me to the marrow, spiritually speaking, while the evangelical, "concrete," literal approach leaves me cold. Yet I also have to admit that the deep cleft between Catholics and evangelicals strikes me as wrong. Christians are supposed to exhibit solidarity and brotherhood, not disharmony and discord.

West's book is a case in which I suspect Catholics and evangelicals would have no trouble agreeing on West's (and John Paul II's) conclusions about what is and is not morally right, sexually speaking. But I also suspect that many evangelicals, if they read this book at all, would be put off by West's extremely "Catholic" — i.e., analogical — way of reasoning to arrive at such conclusions. They would no doubt prefer to note the Bible passages which call homosexuality an "abomination," say, and then add, quite simply, "God said it. I believe it. That settles it."

Their evangelical faith is fully invested in God, Jesus, and the Bible ... and not, it seems, in analogies.

Theology of the Body, Part 3

Now, yet more on Christopher West's Theology of the Body for Beginners: A Basic Introduction to Pope John Paul II's Sexual Revolution. My two earlier installments in this occasional series may be read here and here.

Actually, this amounts to something of a new beginning on the subject for me since open-heart surgery, followed by the outset of several weeks of recuperation, have intervened since the last time I cracked open the book. And I find that I am still massively conflicted with respect to the author's point of view on sexual morality — which is that of the late Pope John Paul II, explained in layman's terms.

According to West (p. 2): "Far from being a footnote in the Christian life, the way we understand the body and the sexual relationship 'concerns the entire Bible' [as the Pope put it in 1982]. It plunges us into 'the perspective of the whole Gospel, of the whole teaching, in fact, of the whole mission of Christ' [the Pope had previously said in 1980]."

These snippets and many others are quoted by West from "a series of 130 fifteen-minute conferences at papal audiences beginning on September 5, 1979 and concluding on November 28, 1984," in the words of this web page. "The conferences were grouped into four clusters: 'The Original Unity of Man and Woman,' 'Blessed Are the Pure of Heart,' 'The Theology of Marriage and Celibacy,' and 'Reflections on Humanae vitae.' These talks were [eventually] brought together [and published as a book] under the title Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan."

This view, taken to its logical extreme, implies that you can't really understand Christ without unerstanding sex in the way God and the Pope want us to. The bliss associated with physical sex, as long as it's in the context of the pure, conjugally chaste union of a married man and woman who are not in any way misusing or defiling it, is a positive foretaste of the noncarnal bliss to be found when we are in God's heaven. Any other kind of sex is, accordingly, a travesty.

Premarital sex. Extramarital sex and adultery. Marital sex when it's not open to conception because artificial birth control is used. Abortion. Gay sex. Masturbation. Pornography. Child abuse. Broken families and divorce. Illegitimacy. The failure of today's social mores any longer to rein in our carnal lusts. All these represent ways in which we have fallen away from the original divine plan for sex and procreation.

Actually, I buy that. Or some of me does, if only with bigtime reservations.


Yes, there's a huge part of me that stands up and cheers when West (after John Paul II) reminds us that the Old and New Testaments, taken as a whole, form what is in effect an extended "spousal analogy" (see pp. 10-11), which I think of also as a "bridal" or "nuptial" motif. At the end of the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, we are told that the climax of all history will be the marriage of Christ as Bridegroom with his Church as Bride. The Church is, of course, made up of its innumerable members. All of us who have accepted the invitation to the wedding feast will find that we ourselves are, lo and belold, the Bride at this glorious wedding. "Through this lens," writes West, "we learn that God's eternal plan is to 'marry' us ... to live with us in an eternal exchange of love and communion."

Revelation's nuptials must be understood in the light of the call in Genesis 2:24, at the very outset of the Bible, for man and woman, represented in the persons of Adam and Eve, to become "one flesh." In turn, this aspect of the original creation is why Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians 5:31-32 links the selfsame "one flesh" metaphor in Genesis to the "great mystery ... in reference to Christ and the church" (see pp. 8-9).

From such scriptural references — including that item of the Ten Commandments which forbids adultery — may be spun out the entire basis for Pope John Paul II's "theology of the body." Of course, the great body of Catholic teaching, down through the millennia, including the documents of Vatican II which so shaped this particular pope, amplify this theological world view, which is also duly reflected in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that was issued in the 1990s under JPII's aegis. Even so, writes West, even though this is established teaching from way back, "Catholic theologian George Weigel describes John Paul II's theology of the body as 'one of the boldest reconfigurations of Catholic theology in centuries' — 'a kind of theological time bomb set to go off with dramatic consequences'" (p. 1).

I buy that too. Even though JPII made all this theology-of-the-body stuff crystal clear from day one during his 26+ year pontificate, for some reason I personally am just starting to tune it to it. And even though, outwardly speaking, it's not going to make a big difference in my mostly chaste existence — I'm a single man whose worst sexual sin has been looking at Internet porn and occasionally "spanking the monkey," both of which I have given up — I think it may make a huge difference inwardly.

For, as I say, there's a major part of my soul that absolutely relishes the idea of marital purity and sexual chastity. You can't convince that part of me that sex in this world which does not honor our "supreme calling" to "eternal ecstasy; unrivaled rapture; bounteous, beauteous bliss" in the next is anything but a travesty and a tragedy (see p. 64).


But I'm also very conflicted about all this. I've spent 58+ years — nearly 20 of them as a practicing Christian and the last ten of them as a "good" Catholic — in a culture which says "if it feels good, do it."

Our mainstream culture has it that sex between consenting adults, of whatever gender, is simply nobody else's business.

That abortion is a private decision which must be left up to the woman in question and never made illegal by courts and legislatures.

That marriage is optional for lovers, and divorce is an acceptable solution when marriage goes sour.

That entertainment which is not raunchy or violent, or both, is boring.

That theology-based ideas are radioactive and need to be kept strictly clear of the public ethos.

I'm increasingly finding that aspect of the mainstream culture to be "sick," and yet I realize that there are millions of us who with sincere heart and clear conscience would defend the secular status quo to their dying day.

There are many who feel, as I used to, that we are better off not reinstating "old-fashioned" ideas on sexual morality — especially to the extent that they may represent a stalking horse for society's return to the anti-feminist, anti-gay intolerance of yore.


In fact, the theology of the body is downright radical — and that's what gives me the willies. If the call to human sexual purity is inscribed by God in the very fabric of creation, if it is, as West says, a sign of the love the three divine persons of the Holy Trinity bear for one another, there can be no compromise.

Most or all of the other outlooks I've espoused in my various blogs are compromises of moderation, carefully wrought intermediate positions between radically opposing viewpoints. For example, in my Beyond Darwin blog, I have championed a view of evolution which accepts most of what Darwin proposed abou tnatural selection but claims evolutionary history is nonetheless directional — toward better and better "non-zero-sum games" and more and more complexity. That sort of compromise means we can have our intellectual cake and eat it too. Our species (and all others) evolved, rather than being directly created by God. But the planet's biosphere nevertheless gravitates toward producing conscious life "in God's image."

But by accepting the theology of the body of Pope John Paul II, I'd be rejecting (among other things) the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and '70s outright, lock, stock, and barrel, along with all its fruits. There can be no compromise on this point, for this particular baby cannot be split.

And that is, at the end of the day, what gives me the jim-jams. I'm not fond of radical positions that do not admit of compromise.