"In the Beginning . . .": A Theology of the Body

By Eduardo J. Echeverria and Janet E. Smith

One of the most significant contributions of Pope John Paul II to the church, and arguably to the culture, was his development of a theology of the body. This theology explores the rich meaning and vocation of human embodiment, of the body-person, in light of the fundamental truths of creation, fall into sin, and redemption in Jesus Christ. In this book, Eduardo J. Echeverria inquires into the biblical, theological, and philosophical foundations of the Pope's theology of the body. In a wide-ranging discussion of a Catholic theology of revelation, biblical hermeneutics, and a biblical perspective on the Christ-centered dynamics of the moral life, Echeverria clearly establishes the fundamental principles needed for a full understanding of John Paul II's thought. He probes the philosophical foundations of the Pope's thought in the context of a Catholic theology of nature, sin, and grace.

The book concludes with an analysis of the normative implications of the Pope's theology for sexual ethics and provides a novel and provocative application of the theology of the body to the morality of homosexuality. Echeverria's study of John Paul II's theology of the body helps us to make sense of how the pope's theology deepens our understanding of the Catholic teaching that "the human body shares in the dignity of the 'image of God'" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 364).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Jan 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781498273077

Eduardo J. Echeverria

Eduardo J. Echeverria is Professor of Philosophy and Systematic Theology, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit. His publications include Berkouwer and Catholicism: Disputed Questions (2013) and Pope Francis: The Legacy of Vatican II (2015).

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In the Beginning . . .

A Theology of the Body

Eduardo J. Echeverria

Foreword by Janet E. Smith

2008.Pickwick_logo.jpg

In the Beginning . . .

A Theology of the Body

Copyright © 2011 Eduardo J. Echeverria. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

The Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1965, 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

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isbn 13: 978-1-60608-648-3

eisbn 13: 978-1-4982-7307-7

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Echeverria, Eduardo J.

In the beginning . . . : a theology of the body / Eduardo J. Echeverria ; foreword by Janet E. Smith.

xxviii + 340 p.; 23 cm. — Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 13: 978-1-60608-648-3

1. Human body — Religious aspects — Catholic Church. 2. Homosexuality — Religious aspects — Christianity. 3. John Paul II, Pope, 1920–2005. Theology of the body. 4. Sex — Religious aspects — Catholic Church. I. Smith, Janet E., 1950– .

bx1795.b63 e25 2011

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Biblical Revelation and Authority

Chapter 2: Catholic Biblical Hermeneutics and Ethics

Chapter 3: Experience and Revelation

Chapter 4: The Phenomenology of the Body

Chapter 5: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Fulfillment

Chapter 6: The Theology of the Body and Homosexuality

Chapter 7: Caritas in Veritate

Bibliography

To my children

Michael, Genevieve, and Christine

Further let me ask of my reader, wherever, alike with myself, he is certain, there to go on with me; wherever, alike with myself, he hesitates, there to join with me in inquiring; wherever he recognizes himself to be in error, there to return to me; wherever he recognizes me to be so, there to call me back: so that we may enter together upon the path of charity, and advance towards Him of whom it is said, Seek His face evermore (Ps 105:4).

—St. Augustine De Trinitate I.3.5

Foreword

Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, in spite of being a dense theological work, is much better known to popular audiences than to scholarly ones. Scholars, arguably, have been somewhat slow to mine the riches of the Theology of the Body. Eduardo Echeverria’s " In the Beginning" provides a major contribution to our understanding of the Theology of the Body both for those with little theological background and for those with very sophisticated theological and philosophical training. It is of value not only for understanding what light the Theology of the Body has to shed on the issue of homosexuality; it is of value for those who want to know more about the philosophical and theological issues that undergird the Theology of the Body and that the Theology of the Body raises.

Readers of this book are in for an unexpected and unparalleled treat. They are going to meet not only a splendid application of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body to the question of homosexuality, they are going to experience a marvelous mind at work, a mind that has amazing depth and scope. Echeverria’s is a mind that loves a dispute and loves to engage in a dispute fairly. He uses the occasion of this book to argue for philosophical realism and theological propositionalism in a remarkably thorough way. A significant portion of this book is about neither homosexuality nor the Theology of the Body but is about questions regarding fundamental philosophical commitments and fundamental faith commitments, such as the authority and proper interpretation of scriptures.

Indeed, Echeverria does not really begin to treat the issue of homosexuality until mid-way through chapter 4. As Echeverria states in his introduction, he takes the long route to answering a series of questions. Personally, I always prefer the long version of any story, and that preference should be a principle when dealing with the complex issues that arise from the exercise of deriving truths from scripture. Echeverria is quite intimately aware of the kinds of presuppositions that underlie any hermeneutic and is not afraid to take on the project of explaining the fundamental principles that guide his hermeneutic. His wide-ranging erudition and patient pedagogy combined will likely dazzle readers and will certainly inform them. It is not often that the same person can justify his biblical hermeneutic, grapple with the legitimate role of experience in revelation, explain John Paul II’s phenomenological method and personalism, and apply these to the sensitive issue of homosexuality. This book should become a standard textbook for graduate courses in moral theology; few other books provide the holistic approach that defines this work. Indeed, all graduate students in theology preparing for their comprehensive exams could well read this book as a marvelous review session—that will not only refresh their knowledge and help them synthesize it but enrich it.

Again, this book is remarkably rich in a number of surprising ways. The reader will likely be startled by a claim in the introduction: This realist emphasis on the order of creation aligns Catholicism with the Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition of Reformed Christianity (xxiv–xxv). Throughout the book, Echeverria draws upon resources of Reformed Christianity; he is intimately familiar with that tradition since for a period of time he belonged to it. Both the Catholic scholarly community and the Reformed scholarly community are likely to benefit greatly from being introduced to new thinkers who bring the best of their traditions to bear upon the issues Echeverria treats.

Perhaps there is no more controversial topic in our times than the question of homosexuality. Those who dare to raise the question of the morality of homosexuality risk being labeled as homophobic or intolerant even before the discussion begins. Whereas only a few decades ago, there was nearly widespread agreement that homosexuality was a form of sexual deviance, it has now become normalized to the point that it seems self-evident to many that homosexuality is a difference on the level of race and not a moral question at all. Echeverria intrepidly seeks to demonstrate that homosexual acts are immoral and does so by showing how the principles articulated in Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body demonstrate the immorality of homosexual acts. He is, I believe, the first to do so.

Echeverria goes back to the very basics, as does John Paul II: he focuses his argument on the meaning of the body, of the body as an integral part of the person, as an external expression of the interior person. He speaks of the necessity of the person being integrated in body and soul. He argues furthermore that the complementarity of the sexes is fundamental to the framework and substance of scripture and salvation history. With John Paul II he acknowledges that the body has meaning and that its meaning provides a limit or context for determining the morality of our choices. Sexuality, sexual differences, have a meaning—a meaning that involves the possibility of acts of self-giving that lead to union. Differences (not sameness) and procreativity are essential to achieving the union towards which sexuality drives.

Echeverria is an adroit dialectician. He knows who his critics are and how they argue; he gives them every consideration and respectfully assesses their claims. But he takes no prisoners. While he pays his opponents the compliment of reading them carefully and sometimes of presenting their positions more clearly than they do, he ruthlessly exposes the fallacies and contradictions that bedevil his opponents. Echeverria works out his position in respectful conversation with those, such as Luke Timothy Johnson, Margaret Farley, Andrew Sullivan, Stephen Pope, and Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, who maintain that homosexual acts are moral. Recognizing that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology, he enlists the careful thinking and argumentation of such philosophers as Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Robert George, and Michael Polanyi. Extremely helpful is his identification of six major justifications that have been advanced for the morality of homosexuality and then his patient and thorough response to each of those justifications.

Indeed, Echeverria’s work is undeniably thorough and patient. He works through the issues and in the best Thomistic methodological tradition, lets all parties have their say. In turn, he justifies the hermeneutical principles that drive his own approach. This book is a splendid exercise in honest engagement of the issues that arise when trying to utilize John Paul II’s Theology of the Body to explain and defend the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. It is a model of how such an exercise should be conducted.

Janet E. Smith

Father Michael J. McGivney Chair in Life Ethics

Sacred Heart Major Seminary

Detroit, Michigan

Acknowledgments

I wish to express my gratitude to the Academic Dean and Rector President of Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Fr. Todd Lajiness and Monsignor Jeffrey M. Monforton, who supported my Licentiate studies during which time I wrote the initial draft of this book. I would like to extend special thanks to Janet E. Smith, my friend and colleague, who gave me substantial feedback on that draft, encouraged me to revise it for publication, and also generously wrote the Foreword. I am also thankful to J. Daryl Charles and Hans Boersma for their thoughtful comments on the initial draft and for their encouragement. Their critical remarks, along with those of Janet Smith’s, helped me to make this a better study of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body than it otherwise would have been.

I am indebted and thankful to the late Pope John Paul II for his writings, especially but not only those that play a key role in this book. They were and continue to be an important stimulus to my own philosophical and theological work, my teaching, and, last but not least, the dynamics of an authentic Catholic understanding of true spirituality.

May God grant that I speak with judgment and have thoughts worthy of what I have received, for he is the guide even of wisdom and the corrector of the wise. For both we and our words are in his hand, with all our understanding, too. (Wis 7:15–16)

Introduction

When we undertake the analysis of the beginning according to the dimension of the theology of the body, we do so by basing ourselves on the words of Christ with which he himself appealed to that beginning. When he said, Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator created them male and female? (Matt 19: 4), he ordered us and always orders us to return to the depth of the mystery of creation. And we do so in the full awareness of the gift of original innocence, which belonged to man before original sin. Although an insurmountable barrier divides us from what man was then as male and female, through the gift of grace united to the mystery of creation, and from what both were for each other as a reciprocal gift, we are nevertheless trying to understand that state of original innocence in its link with man’s historical state after original sin, "the state of fallen and at the same time redeemed nature [status naturae lapsae simul et redemptae]. (MWTB, 18.3)

Does John Paul II’s Theology of the Body have anything to contribute to the debate about homosexuality? ¹ In this book on the pope’s theology of the body, I will argue that he has much to contribute to that debate, although he does not address that issue explicitly in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. ² Still, with the current consensus of the culture celebrating sexual diversity, which has led to the widely-held presupposition that the sexual difference of the two sexes is morally and theologically inconsequential, the pope’s theology of the body is counter-cultural in affirming the normative significance of humanity’s sexual difference in creation, after the fall, in redemption, and in the eschaton. ³

The epigraph to this introductory chapter makes clear that the starting point of John Paul II’s theology of the body is that sexual difference is grounded in the ontology of creation.⁴ In other words, the sexual difference between male and female is a creational given such that all mankind is bound to the structures of creation. It is also a creational given that, at one and the same time, mankind is one and a bi-unity: male and female. John Paul explains:

Let us enter into the setting of the biblical beginning. In it the revealed truth concerning man as the image and likeness of God constitutes the immutable basis of all Christian anthropology. God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen 1:27). This concise passage contains the fundamental anthropological truths: man is the highpoint of the whole order of creation in the visible world; the human race, which takes its origin from the calling into existence of man and woman, crowns the whole work of creation; both man and woman are human beings to an equal degree, both are created in God’s image.⁵

Indeed, the pope imitates Christ (see Matt 19:3–9) by appealing to the beginning, to the creational ordinance for marriage, drawing on Genesis 1 and 2 for his understanding of the normative intent of a biblical ontology of creation, the objective structures of creation, in which the original meaning of the union of man and woman as willed by God from the beginning is grounded. His treatment of these foundational texts is ultimately theological, because grounded in an historical-redemptive dialectic of creation, fall, redemption, and fulfillment, but also philosophical—articulating a philosophical anthropology of the body-person, which in its broadest sense is man himself in the temporal form of existence of human life.⁶ I will lay out his philosophical anthropology of the body-person in chapter 4.

Additionally, John Paul’s theology of the body is at once prophetic and evangelical. His theology draws on not only the nuptial symbolism of the prophets that "portray the covenant as a marriage established between God and Israel" (MWTB, 104.2), but also on the definitive covenant in which Christ, having loved the Church and given himself for her, unites with her in a spousal way (MWTB, 93.3), which in turn allows us to understand marriage itself as a covenant between husband and wife (MWTB, 104.2). Furthermore, his theology grounds marriage, according to the order of creation (Gen 2:24), in the sense that in the common life of the couple . . . the two, by being united in the conjugal act, become ‘one-flesh’ (MWTB, 118.4). This two-in-one-flesh union is renewed in the sacrament of marriage. The sacramental theology of the Church defines a sacrament as ‘a visible sign of an invisible reality’ [Augustine], namely, of the spiritual, transcendent, and divine reality. In this sign—and through this sign [because the sacrament actually accomplishes what it signifies]—God gives himself to man in his transcendent truth and in his love. The sacrament is a sign of grace, the pope adds, "and it is an efficacious sign. It does not merely indicate and express grace in a visible way, in the manner of a sign, but produces grace and contributes efficaciously to cause that grace to become part of man and to realize and fulfill the work of salvation in him, the work determined ahead of time by God from eternity and fully revealed in Christ" (MWTB, 87.5). It is in this pregnant sense, sacramentally speaking, that the theology of the body is evangelical because it proclaims the "truth [about marriage] that comes from God" (MWTB, 105.3).

Now, the doctrine of creation is an integral part of Christian revelation, but so too is a doctrine of sin. Man, savagely wounded by the Fall into sin, original sin (see Genesis 3), bears within himself this wound, which, as John Paul says, constantly draws him towards evil and puts him in need of redemption.⁷ The doctrine of sin, he adds, has great hermeneutical value insofar as it helps one to understand human reality.⁸ Yet, the deepest foundation of created reality is still what God made it despite the Fall.⁹ The creation order continues to be upheld by God’s common grace, which is a non-saving grace that limits the damaging effects of sin from having its full way with reality.¹⁰ Dooyweerd is right: A denial of this leads to the unscriptural conclusion that the fall is as broad as creation; i.e., that the fall destroyed the very nature of creation. This would mean that sin plays a self-determining, autonomous role over against God, the creator of all. Whoever maintains such a position robs God of his sovereignty and grants Satan a power equal to that of the origin of all things.¹¹ Furthermore, the wounds affecting creation are healed through the saving work of Jesus Christ, redeeming and restoring from within this fallen world. John Paul II’s view presupposes a theology of nature and grace in which its key theme is grace restoring and renewing nature. Later in chapter 5, I’ll discuss in some detail the pope’s theology. This theology is, for now, however briefly, well expressed by Etienne Gilson, The work of creation is shattered, but the fragments remain good, and, with the grace of God, they may be reconstituted and restored.¹² Elsewhere he writes, "The true Catholic position consists in maintaining that nature was created good, that it has been wounded, but that it can be at least partially healed by grace if God so wishes. This instauration, that is to say, this renewal, this re-establishment, this restoration of nature to its primitive goodness by grace, is on this point the program of authentic Catholicism."¹³

In my judgment, this program of authentic Catholicism, as Gilson phrases it, has come to life in John Paul II’s theology of the body, and hence it is indeed relevant to the condition and practice of homosexuality. It is relevant because the theology of the body-person provides not only a foundation for anthropology and sexual ethics in the ontology of creation, but also it brings God’s healing grace to bear on the condition [and practice] of a disordered sexuality that reflects the brokenness of our sinful world.¹⁴ Thus, this book is devoted to laying out the biblical, theological and philosophical foundations of the theology of the body in order to apply the insights of that theology to the vexing issue of homosexuality. I take the long route to that application:

1. I consider the all-important question in this debate regarding the nature and authority of biblical revelation, its primacy and finality, for faith and practice, and its foundation in a doctrine of special revelation. In my treatment of biblical revelation, I also give a brief account of the relation of Scripture and Tradition.

2. I then turn to sketch the principles of a Catholic biblical hermeneutic especially as they pertain to the use of Scripture in ethics, and to the charge that such usage is arbitrary, reflecting a fundamentalist mindset.¹⁵

3. The issue of experience and whether it has any authority, even if not as a source of revelation, in my judgment, also raises questions of theological method and epistemology. The question regarding the place of experience is especially important because in some theological circles experience is treated as a separate source of authority and revelation, which is played off against Scripture itself. Do we give the last word to Holy Scripture as the supreme norm of faith or to our experience? I will briefly address this decisive question in this book.

4. Following that, I turn to the philosophical foundations of the theology of the body, especially to the pope’s phenomenology of the Body. How should we understand the role of phenomenology in the philosophical infrastructure of that theology?

5. I then turn to the theology of nature and grace that informs John Paul’s theological anthropology and its normative implications for sexual morality. In this context, I will also direct my attention to the biblical foundations of the theology of the body.

6. Finally, I apply those normative implications to the moral question of homosexuality in the last chapter of this book, wherein I will also address some of the usual objections to the Church’s teaching concerning homosexuality.

The question could be raised by the reader as to why I take the long route to showing the relevance of the theology of the body for the homosexuality debate. Why am I discussing biblical authority, hermeneutics and ethics, experience and theological method before I explore the theology of the body and its normative implications?

Briefly, I want to reply in this book to critics of the orthodox Christian position regarding the significance of sexual difference in the moral theology of sexuality and, a fortiori, of marriage. I’m thinking of critics, such as Rowan Williams, who claim that the rejection of same-sex relations must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous biblical texts, or on a problematic and non-scriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to psychological structures.¹⁶ The thesis of my book is that John Paul II is neither fundamentalist in his biblical hermeneutic nor naturalistic in his anthropology. Indeed, both his hermeneutic and anthropology are deeply biblical in affirming the integrity of creation revelation as the foundation of the normative significance of humanity’s sexual difference. As Christopher Roberts puts this point: "The same God whom we know in Christ has, in his goodness, created us as male and female. To be male or female, then, is to be blessed, for it is to be something that is good. To be this sexually differentiated creature is to be something that will be redeemed, and redeemed as it was made and not as some other creature; in other words, sexual difference itself will be present in our redemption. Sexual difference is something humans should embrace and welcome, for to do that is to honor creation and anticipate redemption."¹⁷ In other words, redemptive grace does not render the goods of creation insignificant; rather grace presupposes nature, renewing and perfecting it, neither abolishing it nor leaving it untouched by grace’s healing power, because it was this creation, in all its distinctness and particularity that God created, that fell into sin, and is redeemed in Christ, and no other.¹⁸ In short, Faith in redemption cannot be separated from faith in the Creator. Redemption, adds Joseph Ratzinger, is an act of new creation, the restoration of creation to its true identity.¹⁹

Regarding fundamentalism, one might ask, What is a fundamentalist? It means, for some, someone who operates in his appeal to Scripture with the presupposition of biblicism. Dutch theologian Jochem Douma gives a helpful definition of biblicism: "By biblicism we understand that appeal to Scripture which uses Bible texts in an atomistic (isolated) way by lifting them out of their immediate contexts or out of the whole context of Scripture. Let’s call this atomistic appeal to Scripture the bad sense of using proof-texts. But there is a good sense of using biblical proof-texts, exegetically and scripturally. Otherwise, It would be a hopeless situation, Douma correctly adds, if by definition every appeal to Scripture were biblicistic. For then a pure appeal to Scripture in ethics [or theology] would be simply impossible."²⁰

Following this definition of biblicism, John Paul is not a fundamentalist. Rather, in accordance with the biblical hermeneutic of Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, and the Church’s teaching regarding the unity and reliability of the Word of God, he gives serious attention . . . to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture in developing the biblical foundation of the theology of the body.²¹ His is a canonical exegesis, which involves placing the individual biblical texts in their immediate literary context,²² within the unfolding history, from creation to eschaton, of God’s revelation, the context of Scripture as a whole,²³ and the living tradition of the Church.²⁴ Indeed, the pope’s view dovetails with the biblical hermeneutic of Richard B. Hays who holds that the theological consideration of homosexuality must take place in canonical context, No theological consideration of homosexuality can rest content . . . with a short list of passages that treat the matter explicitly. We must consider how Scripture frames the discussion more broadly: How is human sexuality portrayed in the canon as a whole, and how are the few explicit texts treating homosexuality to be read in relation to this larger canonical framework? Thus, adds Hays, The normative canonical picture of marriage provides the positive backdrop against which the Bible’s few emphatic negations of homosexuality must be read.²⁵

Furthermore, John Paul II works with a hermeneutical schema that takes seriously the reality of general revelation in creation, for biblical revelation is not the whole of God’s revelation to us. Rather, the structures or orders of creation are revelatory of God’s ordained teleology of the world. So, John Paul does not succumb to biblicism in another sense of that word. In this second sense, biblicism is the view which holds that truly scriptural principles for any area of human activity must be derived strictly from explicit Bible texts. Dooyeweerd, along with John Paul, rejects this view. He writes:

Is it not true that God revealed his whole law in the Ten Commandments? Is this revelation not enough for the simple Christian? I answer with a counterquestion: is it not true that God placed all the spheres of temporal life under his laws and ordinances—the laws that govern numerical and spatial relationships, physical and chemical phenomena, organic life, emotional feeling, logical thinking, language, economic life, and beauty? Are not all these laws grounded in God’s creation order? Can we find explicit scriptural texts for all of them? If not, shall we not acknowledge that God gave man the task to discover them?²⁶

The answer to the question raised by Dooyeweerd in the concluding sentence of this passage is, of course, affirmative. This, too, is the view of the Second Vatican Council in its teaching regarding the autonomy of the various secular spheres.²⁷ The Council Fathers make clear in Gaudium et Spes that they reject, says Otto Semmelroth, the false conception of autonomy which denies that things have their root in the divine will of the Creator and so abandons their use to the arbitrary will of man. This is said totally to overlook the fact that creatures are nothing without the Creator, that their true pattern is obscured by the forgetfulness of the Creator.²⁸ That is, as Otto Semmelroth adds:

Autonomy is entirely justified, if by autonomy we understand that created things and societies themselves enjoy their own laws and values which must be gradually discovered, put to use and regulated by man [Gaudium et Spes, no. 36]. The theological interpretation regards this autonomy as based on the word of creation. Because the world was created through the word, all things are endowed with their own ontological consistence, truth, goodness, their own laws and orderly structure (propria firmitate, veritate, bonitate propriisque legibus ac ordine). The rationality of the whole world, i.e., all the laws of the physical, biological, mathematical, and logical realms of reality, as well as those of the world of artistic significance and those of personal existence and of man’s social solidarity originate in the word of creation.²⁹

In the above passage, it is correctly assumed that, in Holy Scripture, the Word of God also refers to divine speech that created and directs the world (Gen 1:3, 6, 9; Pss 33:6, 119:89–92, 147:15–18, 148:8). Of course, in Scripture, as John Frame adds, ‘Word of God’ applies not only to spoken and written revelation but also . . . to Jesus Christ himself as the supreme self-expression of the Father. Thus, God makes himself known to us, not only through the Bible, but through everything in creation. We ourselves, made in God’s ‘image,’ constitute an especially important form of God’s self-disclosure.³⁰ And since the human body shares in the dignity of that image, then it follows that the whole human person is an especially important form of God’s creation revelation.³¹

Against this background, we can easily understand why John Paul is not a biblicist in this sense either: he grounds the theology of the body in God’s creation revelation. Indeed, the pope’s theology of the body is, in fact, a realist theology, as Dominican theologian Romanus Cessario rightly calls this hermeneutical schema that takes seriously creational structures. It seeks to contemplate an immanent wisdom in the universe . . . reflecting the ordered wisdom of the divine plan for creation.³² Significantly, this realist emphasis on the order of creation aligns Catholicism with the Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition of Reformed Christianity.³³ Furthermore, John Paul takes these structures of creation as the normative starting point for developing not only the biblical and theological foundations of the theology of the body, instead of just individual biblical texts—although John Paul does appeal to biblical texts and premises to support ethical arguments—but also its normative moral requirements for discerning the sins of the body, especially but not only sexual sins.³⁴ In reply to the question Christ receives about marriage and divorce in Matt 19:3–8, Jesus refers us, says John Paul, to the beginning, to the first divine order. This means that this order has not lost its force, although man has lost his primeval innocence. "Christ’s answer is decisive and clear, adds John Paul. For this reason, we must draw the normative conclusions from it [the normative order of creation], which have an essential significance not only for ethics, but above all for the theology of man and the theology of the body, which, as a particular aspect of theological anthropology, is constituted on the foundation of the Word of God who reveals himself" (MWTB, 3.4). Hence the title of my book, In the Beginning, which signifies John Paul’s reference to God’s original order of creation, his good creation, an ontological foundation that explains the meaning and purpose of human sexuality, of human sexual difference.

Moreover, John Paul II is not naturalistic about complementarity, and he doesn’t apply his theology of the body, indeed, his phenomenology of the body, merely to the physical body without regard to the unity of body and soul, of the whole man. In other words, as I shall show in chapter 4, the pope does not think of the human body as a mere abstract material body, but rather as the whole of man’s temporal existence. Of course John Paul II addresses the problem regarding the unity of the human person in his theology of the body. According to José Noriega, The problem is properly located in the relationship between corporal-anatomical identity and personal-relational identity, or, in other words, it is the question of the foundation of personal-relational identity, and what role the body plays in that identity.³⁵ According to the pope, then, the human person is a unified totality, existing as a whole, with body and soul being functionally inseparable, and thus we shall need to consider the question regarding the specifically human meaning of the body, its existential significance and not merely its biological significance, in conformity with the Creator’s wise plan.³⁶ In short, what is John Paul II’s understanding of the embodiment of the human person and, accordingly, the place of the body in moral action?³⁷

One more introductory remark: my reflections in this book are interdisciplinary in nature, covering topics in systematic theology, moral theology, philosophical theology, and theological anthropology. Furthermore, this book is also an exercise in ecumenical theology, drawing on the best from both the Catholic and Reformed traditions—particularly, Dutch neo-Calvinism. Regarding ecumenism, searching for an ecumenical basis for cooperation among Christians where this is possible is an urgent necessity.³⁸ Indeed, as Herman Dooyeweerd correctly remarks, In the face of the increasing dechristianization and spiritual uprooting of modern mankind this necessity is so evident that any further argument is superfluous.³⁹ Significantly, John Paul II argues in his 1995 Encyclical Letter, Ut Unum Sint, that the Church’s unity is at the very heart of the proclamation of the Gospel, not only in the sense that it belongs to the very essence of Christ’s body, and Christ cannot be divided, but also, and in particular, because disunity is a grave obstacle for proclaiming the Gospel credibly and authentically. Hence, as John Paul II rightly urges, ecumenism is not only an internal question of the Christian communities.⁴⁰ At the same time, he adds, it is obvious that the lack of unity among Christians contradicts the Truth which Christians have the mission to spread and, consequently, it gravely damages their witness.⁴¹ In short, lack of unity among Christians compromises our witness to the world, contradicting the Gospel truth, such as the truth of the theology of the body, that Christians have the missionary mandate to live, proclaim, and defend.

This study is organized in the following way: I treat points 1–3 in the first three chapters, respectively, before turning to the theology of the body itself—its philosophical and theological underpinnings—in chapters 4 and 5, and its normative implications (points 4–6) for sexual ethics, particularity the ethics of homosexuality, in the book’s penultimate chapter. In that chapter, I also deal with several objections to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. I conclude in the final chapter with a response to the pastoral objection to her teaching, namely, to the so-called gap that exists between Catholic sexual ethics and peoples’ real lives.

1. John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them. Furthermore references to this text will be cited parenthetically in the text as MWTB. Helpful for understanding the philosophical underpinnings of the Theology of the Body is the pope’s pre-papal work, Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility. Also helpful is The Acting Person; and the pre-papal essays in Wojtyla, Person and Community, especially Subjectivity and the Irreducible in Man, 209–17.

2. In his pre-papal work, Love and Responsibility, Wojtyla holds that same-sex attraction is a deviation from the natural direction of the sexual urge . . . towards a human being of the other sex (49). Indeed, elsewhere in this book he speaks of same-sex attraction as belonging to a class of perversions, or deviances, other members of that class being bestiality (extra-human sexual relations) or some kind of fetish with an inanimate object (105). Although Wojtyla doesn’t say, I think we can distinguish a sexual deviance from sexual dysfunctions [e.g., for men, premature ejaculation, impotency, and for women, vaginismus or orgastic dysfunction] in that [in the former] the object or action in which sexual satisfaction is sought is abnormal (Ashley and O’Rourke, Health Care Ethics, 389).

3. In his fine study, Creation and Covenant: The Significance of Sexual Difference in the Moral Theology of Marriage, Christopher C. Roberts agrees with this assessment of John Paul II’s theology of the body. Along with Karl Barth, John Paul II’s arguments about sexual difference seek to deepen and clarify the traditional premise that sexual difference has moral significance (8). I have profited much from Roberts’ study. See also Avila, Sexual Difference and Marriage.

4. I am struck by the soundness of Paul Helm’s observation and its relevance for understanding the pope’s strategy: Surely given the current penchant of the culture for pluralism, for celebrating difference, Christians need to celebrate sameness. . . . We cannot dodge our moral obligations by playing the cultural difference card. It is into this world of objective structures, though fallen and hence warped and bent, that the one Gospel comes. It is the Creator’s Gospel. . . . The Gospel has the same kind of objectivity as the structures of creation do. It is the amazing grace of their Creator. Its claims are held to be true with the same kind of truth, not relative, subjective truth, but objective truth (Against Ideological Apologetics).

5. John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem: On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, no. 6. See also Barth: In the whole reach of human life, writes Barth, there is no abstractly human, but only concretely masculine or feminine being, feeling, willing, thinking, speaking, conduct and action, and only concretely masculine and feminine co-existence and cooperation in all these things Church Dogmatics III/2, 286. Hans Urs von Balthasar echoes: The polarity of man and woman can stand as the paradigmatic instance of the thoroughgoing communal character of humanity (Von Balthasar Reader, 72).

6. On the development of a theological anthropology of the body person, see Martin, Feminist Question, 331–406.

7. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, no. 25. See also, "The Church’s wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin in social conditions and in the structure of society: ‘Ignorance of the Fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action, and morals’ [Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 407]" (Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 34).

8. Ibid.

9. Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 45.

10. Dooyeweerd is right: Relegating creation to the background is not scriptural. Just read the Psalms, where the devout poet rejoices in the ordinances that God decreed for creation. Read the book of Job, where God himself speaks to his intensely suffering servant of the richness and depth of the laws which he established for his creatures. Read the Gospels, where Christ appeals to the creational ordinance for marriage in order to counter those aimed at trapping him. Finally, read Romans 1:19–20, where the creational ordinances are explicitly included in the general revelation to the human race (Roots of Western Culture, 59).

11. Ibid., 60.

12. Gilson, Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, 127.

13. Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 21–22.

14. Belief Statement of the Christian Reformed Church on the condition of same-sex attraction and its expression in the practice of homosexual acts (such practice is called homosexualism by this Statement) is to the point because it sees clearly that the prior condition itself is objectively disordered and hence its sexual expression must also be intrinsically disordered. In short, referring to the condition itself as a sexual disorder means that no parity exists between heterosexual and homosexual men from the order of creation.

15. I affirm the normative biblical hermeneutic as expressed in the Vatican II Con-stitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, nos. 7–10.

16. Williams, Body’s Grace, 320.

17. Roberts, Creation and Covenant, 236; italics added.

18. Ibid., 208.

19. Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Spirit of the Liturgy, 24, 34. See also, Hopko, Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction, 15–16.

20. Douma, Appendix: The Use of Scripture in Ethics, 363–64.

21. Dei Verbum, no. 12.

22. Ibid.: To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to ‘literary forms.’ For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture.

23. Ibid.: But, since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out. Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 154. Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Jesus of Nazareth, xix. For a similar emphasis, see also Anglican theologian, Ward, Words of Life, 122. For a summary statement on Catholic biblical hermeneutics, see Williamson, Catholic Principles for Interpreting Scripture.

24. Ibid.: The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between the truths of the faith [‘analogy of faith’].

25. Hays, Moral Vision of the New Testament, 389–90.

26. Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture, 58.

27. In what follows, I am citing Otto Semmelroth’s commentary on chapter III, no. 36, of Gaudium et Spes, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 5, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 191–92.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Frame, Rationality and Scripture, 293–94.

31. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 364.

32. Cessario, On Bad Actions, Good Intentions, and Loving God, 109.

33. By Reformed I mean that version of Protestant Christianity arising from the Calvinist Reformation in sixteenth-century Europe. The term neo-Calvinist refers to a movement within Reformed Christianity that stems from the nineteenth-century Dutch educator, theologian, church leader, and politician Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). Besides Kuyper, other genial spirits within this intellectual milieu include theologians Herman Bavinck (1845–1921) and Gerritt C. Berkouwer (1904–1996), and the philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977). For an account of the notion of creation order in Dutch neo-Calvinism, especially the philosophy of Dooyeweerd, see Wolters, Creation Order.

34. For an exposition of the pope’s hermeneutical schema, see Kurz, "Scriptural Foundations of The Theology of the Body, and the reply by Stegman, ‘Actualization’: How John Paul II utilizes Scripture in The Theology of the Body."

35. Noriega, Homosexuality, 453.

36. Wojtyla, Love & Responsibility, 52. See also, John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, nos. 46–51.

37. Crosby, Estrangement of Persons from Their Bodies.

38. I develop a theological basis for ecumenical conversation in my book, Dialogue of Love, Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic Ecumenist.

39. Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, 3:543.

40. John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 99.

41. Ibid., no. 98.

1

Biblical Revelation and Authority

Critics of Biblical Authority

That the authority of the Holy Scriptures should be honored as the foundational court of appeal in moral matters is an ancient conviction of the Christian faith. Yet, the Bible’s moral authority is rejected by many today, even by self-professing Christians, with the objection that appealing to its moral authority is selective and arbitrary. But is using the Holy Scripture as ultimate authority in moral matters arbitrary? A despiser like none other of the Christian tradition, Richard Dawkins thinks so:

In practice no civilized person uses scripture as ultimate authority for moral reasoning. Instead, we pick and choose the nice bits of scripture (like the Sermon on the Mount) and blithely ignore the nasty bits (like the obligation to stone adulteresses, execute apostates and punish the grandchildren of offenders). The God of the Old Testament himself, with his pitilessly vengeful jealousy, his racism, sexism and terrifying bloodlust, will not be adopted as a literal role model by anybody you or I would wish to know. Yes, of course it is unfair to judge the customs of an earlier era by the enlightened standards of our own. But that is precisely my point! Evidently, we have some alternative source of ultimate moral conviction which overrides scripture when it suits us.¹

In the last sentence of the above passage, Dawkins alludes to an alternative source of ultimate moral conviction to which one allegedly appeals in rejecting Scripture. Luke Timothy Johnson, in a recent article, Homosexuality & the Church, agrees with this claim.² That is, Johnson’s position is representative of an approach to biblical authority that is widely influential today in the debates regarding homosexuality, namely, making an appeal on behalf of experience as that alternative source of moral conviction to override scriptural authority and hence the clear teaching of Scripture. Accordingly, I think a brief exposition of Johnson’s position will raise several of the questions that I will address in the remainder of this chapter and the next.

First we must acknowledge that Johnson is not a despiser of the Christian tradition and of the Church’s Scripture; indeed, he is a committed Catholic who holds that something normative is at work in the authority of Scripture and of the Church’s tradition.³ Nonetheless, he frankly dissents from explicit scriptural commands on homosexuality (see Lev 18:22; 20:13; Rom 1:18–32; 1 Cor 6:9–11; 1 Tim 1:10; Acts 15:28–29) and holds that "we must state our grounds for standing in tension