What is Theology of the Body

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What is Theology of the Body
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Introduction

• The telescope opened our eyes to the truth of the
  universe the TOB opened our eyes to the truth of
  the body
• the human body has a language that proclaims
  the mystery of God and his plan for us
• the sinful condition makes us dyslexic or even
  illiterate
• TOB pretends to be the corrective lenses

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The Theology which is the body
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The Plan

• What is man, really?
• What We were meant to be
• What We Are
• What We are destined to be
• Eunuchs for the Kingdom
• So what does it mean to you and me?
• The Sacrament of the Body
• The Liturgy of the body
• The Morality of the body

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The 3 Keys of Jesus that unlock our experiences
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Scripture past and present (Mt 193-8)

• Some Pharisees came to him to test him and
  asked him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his
  wife for any reason? And he answered them, Have
  you not read that from the beginning the Creator
  created them male and female and said, For this
  reason a man will leave his father and his mother
  and unite with his wife, and the two will be one
  flesh? So, it is that they are no longer two,
  but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined let
  man not separate. They objected, Why then did
  Moses order to give her a certificate of divorce
  and send her away? Jesus answered, Because of
  the hardness of your heart Moses allowed you to
  divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was
  not so.

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Scripture future (Mt 2230)

• Teacher, Moses wrote that if a married man dies
  and has not children, his brother should marry
  the widow. Their first son would then be thought
  of as the son of the dead brother. Once, there
  were seven brothers When God raises people from
  death, whose wife will this woman be? She had
  been married to all seven brothers. Jesus
  answered You are completely wrong! You dont
  know what the Scriptures teach. And you dont
  know anything about the power of God. When God
  raises people to life, they wont marry. They
  will be like angels in heaven.

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Models to understand human sexuality in the church

• The simple teaching
• Popular version
• Sex outside the context of marriage is wrong
• Theological virtue
• sexual expression should be true to the meaning
  of marital love, a self-giving free, total,
  faithful and fruitful
• Models of teaching
• Based on the power of will
• Based on the truth of human nature
• TOB based on experience

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Based on the power of will

• How it works
• This is the teaching
• If you dont follow it you sin
• Make sure you live up to the moral standard

• Limitations
• Weakness of the flesh becomes almost synonymous
  with sexual sin
• What is my will is not powerful enough?
• Cultural It is not my will

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Based on the truth of human nature

• How it works
• Sex is for procreation and union
• If you use it for other purposes you contravene
  the plan of God and you sin

• Limitations
• But I experience sex as pleasure, what is wrong
  with pleasure?
• The ONLY problem
• I know that sex with love and procreation is
  better. But what is wrong with consensual sex for
  pleasure ONLY? Dont we eat for pleasure ONLY and
  it is ok?
• I do not like others wills or metaphysical
  impositions on my freedom

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TOB based on experience

• How it works
• We have sexual desires and experiences
• Experiences are more meaningful than rules or
  metaphysical impositions
• We not only experience lust, we experience
  solitude, shame, yearning for communion, meaning,
  etc
• The map effect

• Limitations
• Nothing new
• Culture of death
• Relativism

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What experiences?

• Revealed Anthropology
• Original man
• Original solitude
• Original communion
• Original nakedness
• Nuptial meaning of the body
• Original happiness
• Historical man
• Lust
• The battle of the heart
• Redeeming marriage
• Eschatological man
• the communion of saints

• Todays culture
• Experience of sexual desire
• Of freedom of choice
• Of subjectivism

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Naked without shame
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Probing in experiences

• Does the way a girl dresses affect the way a guy
  views her?
• Why children are not ashamed?
• Why are animals shameless?
• Why do we feel sexual shame?
• Is shame the effect of culture?
• Would it not be better to have a more shameless
  culture?
• There is a desire to recover the lost paradise
  to be naked without shame is to be comfortable

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Jesus, the expert on man

• Because of the hardness your heart, Moses
  allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the
  beginning it was not so
• (Mt 198)

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Why is wrong with lust?

• It seeks the sensation of sexuality apart from a
  true communion of persons
• It, kind of, splits pleasure from love
• It, kind of splits, the other persons body and
  soul
• Splitting the body from the soul kills
• This is why people dont want to be the object of
  others lust

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Change of condition, not of nature

• Before the fall
• Acceptance in harmony
• Complementarity
• Harmonious relationship
• Blessing of fertility

• After the fall
• Shame at each other (I was naked and hid)
• Yearning and pining for each other (you will
  desire your husband)
• Battle for dominance (but he will rule over
  you)
• Fertility as painful fact (you will suffer
  terribly when you give birth)

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Shame entered the picture

• The result of lust is shame
• Shame is a natural form of self-defence for the
  person against the danger of being used as an
  object for sexual use.
• Shame made Adam and Eve experience for the first
  time the rupture between the spirit and the body
• Shame has a double meaning
• Threat to the value of the person
• Positive defensive value it preserves this value
  interiorly

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Eros or erotic (sexual) desire

• The original meaning of the body has not been
  completely suffocated by lust
• But it is normally threatened.
• The heart becomes a battlefield between the
  nuptial promptings of the heart and lust.
• The more lust dominates the heart, the less the
  heart experiences the nuptial meaning of the body.

• Eros is the mutual attraction between the sexes
  oriented toward the one-flesh union of husband
  and wife
• Sexual desire that is lustful is NOT EROTIC
  ENOUGH!

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Two false alternatives

• Promiscuity
• lust is given free rein (to pretend to be
  animals)
• Prudishness
• in which eros is denied or repressed (to pretend
  to be angels)

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Something went wrong

• Sin becomes a kind of magnetic field that
  deviates the right direction of love
• People become disoriented, unable to understand
  themselves, the meaning of life and the meaning
  of love
• Effects
• A kind of despair and sense of loss as to where
  to find the source of life
• Expressed
• Use (of the other person)
• Aggression
• the relationship between Man and woman become one
  of domination and desire Your desire will be
  for him and he will dominate you
• Mistrust
• the other person becomes a potential enemy or at
  least competitor (not a help-mate, but a
  competitor)

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Womans disability and Mans responsibility

• In pain you shall bring forth children, yet your
  desire shall be for your husband and he shall
  rule over you (Gn 316)

• human history has been marked by male domination
• Womans special genius (her receptivity of the
  gift) is now seen as a burden or even a curse
• Men tend to use women and women often allow
  themselves to be used.
• Adultery in the heart is not a kind of adultery
  but a kind of look. A man can even look
  lustfully at his wife.

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Purity of Heart

• Purity
• is a discovery of the dignity of the human body
• enables us to channel our desires toward the true
  vale of the person
• We need to unveil the nuptial meaning of the body
  and the true dignity of the gift hiding under the
  erotic impulses
• There is no genuine love without purity of heart
• If we make of ourselves a gift to the other, we
  need to make sure the gift is as GOOD as we can
  make it

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They saw each other

• Different (men are from Mars)
• Complementary
• A gift to me
• I am meant as a gift
• Experience of communion
• Original nakedness original innocence No
  shame
• Nakedness concupiscence (lust) shame

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Modesty

• How much should a woman hide?
• It tells us how and when to cover
• It is fashioned by culture, but not invented by it

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Bishops of two purities

• Negative purity
• Positive purity
• Which one is the right one?
• Why?

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Pornography

• Beyond the limits of shame
• Sex as entertainment
• Ability to do pornogaphy
• Not because of appreciation of their bodies
• But because of the use of their bodies to make
  others lust
• The loss of shame makes it possible

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Effects of pornography

• It robs the persons from their dignity
• Persons become objects
• We fail to see in them persons to be loved
• It robs men and women from their ability to see
  one another as God intended us to see
• It makes us to lose our ability to love like God
  loves

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Portraying the Naked Body
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Portraying the Naked Body

• ART
• Can the naked body be portrayed in art without
  offending its dignity?
• appropriate portrayals of the body help us
  overcome the limits of shame
• only before the eyes of God can the human body
  remain naked and unclothed, and keep its
  splendour and beauty intact

• PORNOGRAPHY
• Pornography and appropriate art is distinguished
  by the intention of the artist
• Inappropriate portrayals of the body overstep
  the limits of shame
• What is wrong with pornography is not that it
  shows too much (prudish) but that it shows too
  little.

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Naked without shame again

• Only true love is capable of absorbing shame
• True love
• Free
• Total
• Faithful
• fruitful

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The battle of the heart

• Between purity and lust

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The human body today

• Idol
• Pumped with steroids
• Starved to death, literally
• Pressure
• So shallow! Beauty is not important.
• But, it IS.
• Solution New Culture

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What to bring home

• Something spoilt the original dignity of the
  body SIN
• This brought
• Lust
• Shame
• Now we need
• Purity
• Naked portrayals of the body are good if they
  show the dignity of the body they can be wrong
  if they intent to show the use of the person
  through the body

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Review
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Personalistic norm

• Negative
• The human person must never be used
• Positive
• The only right attitude towards the human person
  is love

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Original Sin

• Pride
• Wanting to be like gods
• With power to decide what is right and wrong
• Free from (natural law) free from God loss of
  freedom
• Thus, a lie
• Free to love God authentic freedom
• This sin creates (uncreates) a sinful situation
  original sin history
• Effects Disintegration
• I do not understand my own actions. For I do not
  do what I want but I do the very thing I hate..
  So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin
  which dwells within me. (Rm 715)
• Confused intellects
• Weakened wills
• Overpowering emotions (desires and fears)

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The wrong inclination

• Every man who knocks on the door for a brothel
  is a man looking for God.
• G. K. Chesterton
• Man sins under the aspect of goodness
• St. Thomas Aquinas
• There is no wrong human inclination simply
  inclined in the wrong direction and therefore it
  fails to satisfy
• You are hungry. You crave for chocolate mousse.
  There is only garbage and you decide to satisfy
  your hunger
• How much garbage do you have to eat until it
  tastes like a chocolate mousse?

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Concupiscence

• A disorder in the way we desire
• Caused by a disintegration of our nature the
  sinful condition
• By which we fail to act as a integrated unity
• It affects all our affections
• Inordinate desire for goods avarice
• Inordinate desire to be like others envy
• Inordinate desire to eat gluttony
• Inordinate sexual desire lust

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Lust

• The tendency to use the body of the other for
  self-gratification
• It splits body and soul in the other
• It splits body and soul in you
• It is a inordinate sexual desire towards the
  body without the person
• The opposite is ordinate sexual desire chastity
  desire of the right person at the right time in
  the right place in the right way
• It is ok to desire the person (persons are Gods
  gifts)
• It is ok to desire the body of the person you
  desire
• It is not ok to lust

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Utilitarianism

• Ethical system to know what is right and wrong
• Based on weighing benefits and harms
• What is wrong with?
• The person is reduced to her benefits towards
  others
• The person loses intrinsic value and worth
• Typical ethical utilitarian dilemma
• An brain surgeon, a beggar and a nun share a
  waterlogged raft that could only support on
  person
• Utilitarianism consequentialism