Theology of the Body

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Theology of the Body
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Chris West
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Mary Shivanandan
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Series of Talks 1979-84
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Purpose

• Defend Humanae Vitae
• Explaining the importance of the body to
  understanding the human person
• Understanding the body as a sign of transcendent
  realities
• Helping us understand our vocation in the world
  as being made in the image and likeness of God,
  as male and female

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Return to Scripture

• Likewise let the other theological disciplines
  be renewed through a more living contact with the
  mystery of Christ and the history of salvation.
  Special care must be given to the perfecting of
  moral theology. Its scientific exposition,
  nourished more on the teaching of the Bible,
  should shed light on the loftiness of the calling
  of the faithful in Christ and the obligation that
  is theirs of bearing fruit in charity for the
  life of the world. (Optatam Totius, 16, 1965)

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Christ Reveals Man to Himself

• In reality it is only in the mystery of the
  Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity
  truly becomes clear. For Adam, the first man,
  was a type of him who was to come, Christ the
  Lord. Christ, the new Adam, in the very
  revelation of the mystery of the Father and of
  his love, fully reveals humanity to itself and
  brings to light its very high calling. (Gaudium
  et Spes, 22)

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Self-Giving

• If human beings are the only creatures on earth
  that God has wanted for their own sake, they can
  fully discover their true selves only in
  self-giving (Gaudium et Spes, 24)
• Man must lose himself, to find himself. (Luke
  1733)

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Matt 19 4-8

• He said in reply, "Have you not read that
  from the beginning the Creator 'made them male
  and female' and said, 'For this reason a man
  shall leave his father and mother and be joined
  to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?
  So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
  Therefore, what God has joined together, no human
  being must separate." They said to him, "Then why
  did Moses command that the man give the woman a
  bill of divorce and dismiss (her)?" He said to
  them, "Because of the hardness of your hearts
  Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from
  the beginning it was not so.

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Genesis 127, 31

• God created man in the image of himself, in the
  image of God he created him, male and female he
  created them. God blessed them, saying to them,
  Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and
  conquer it.God saw all that he had made and
  indeed it was very good.

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Man Made in the Likeness and Image of God

• Rational thinks, is creative, is intuitive
• Free makes free choices, creates himself and
  impacts the world around him
• Relational is designed to love and be loved

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Powerful Metaphysical Context

• Man cannot be reduced to the world.
• Procreation places him in the world of time and
  becoming.
• The goodness of creation introduces the notion
  of value.

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Blessing of Fertility

• In the mystery of creation on the basis of
  the original and constituent solitude of his
  being man was endowed with a deep unity between
  what is, humanly and through the body, male in
  him and what is, equally humanly and through the
  body, female in him. On all this, right from the
  beginning, the blessing of fertility descended,
  linked with human procreation (cf. Gn128). (TOB,
  47)

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Genesis 2 7, 18-19

• Yahweh God fashioned man of dust from the
  soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath
  of life and thus man became a living
  being.Yahweh God said, It is not good that the
  man should be alone. I will make him a helpmate.
  So from the soil Yahweh God fashioned all the
  wild beasts and all the birds of heaven. These he
  brought to the man to see what he would call
  them each one was to bear the name the man would
  give it.

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Original Solitude of Adam
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Original Solitude

• Names the animals
• dominion
• different
• Self-aware
• Alone

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Genesis 220-22

• But no helpmate suitable for man was found for
  him. So Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep
  sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his
  ribs and enclosed it in flesh. Yahweh God built
  the rib he had taken from the man into a woman,
  and brought her to the man.

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Genesis 223

• The man exclaimed This at last is bone of my
  bone and flesh from my flesh! This is to be
  called woman, for this was taken from man.

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Original Innocence

• The man and his wife were both naked, yet they
  felt no shame.
• They had no disordered passions.

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Original Unity

• Intersubjectivity They were one in their
  thoughts.
• They could participate in the freedom of the
  gift.
• They were transparent to each other.
• They were a Communion of Persons.
• They did not use each other.
• They simply delighted in each other.

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Nuptial Meaning of the Body

• The body is an outward SIGN of an inner reality.
• Adam and Eve were made for each other.
• They are complete only as a whole.
• We are all meant to give to others and receive
  from others.

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Key Terms

• Original Solitude
• Original Unity
• Nuptial Meaning of the Body
• Communion of Persons
• Naked without Shame
• Freedom of the Gift
• Language of the Body
• Shame

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OriginalSin
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Results of Original Sin

• Disunity/Fragmentation
• Of Man from God
• Of male and female from each other
• Of the passions within each person
• Shame

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Language of the Body
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Human Sexualityis a Language

• I want to give myself completely to you and to
  receive you as a gift.
• I will respect you as a person.
• I will deserve your trust.
• I will not use or exploit you.
• I will delight in your otherness.
• I am willing to be a parent with you.

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Need for Self-Mastery
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St Paul
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Universal Call to Holiness

• What God wants is for you all to be holy. He
  wants you to keep away from fornication, and each
  one of you to know how to use the body that
  belongs to him in a way that is holy and
  honourable, not giving way to selfish lust like
  the pagans who do not know God. He wants nobody
  at all ever to sin by taking advantage of a
  brother in these matters. (Thessalonians 4 3-5)

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Christ as Bridegroom
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Celibacy

• There are eunuchs who were born thus from their
  mothers womb and there are eunuchs who have made
  themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heavens
  sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept
  it. (Matt 1912)
• For when they rise from the dead, men and women
  do not marry no, they are like the angels in
  heaven. (Mark 1225)

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St. Paul on Celibacy

• I would like to see you free from all worry.
  An unmarried man can devote himself to the Lords
  affairs, all he need worry about is pleasing the
  Lord but a married man has to bother about the
  worlds affairs and devote himself to pleasing
  his wife he is torn two ways. I say this only
  to help you, not to put a halter round your
  necks, but simply to make sure that everything is
  as it should be, and that you give your undivided
  attention to the Lord. (1 Cor. 7 32-35)

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Continence for the Kingdom

• Celibacy is a charismatic sign. The human
  being, male and female, who, in the earthly
  situation where people marry, freely chooses
  continence for the kingdom of heaven, indicates
  that in that kingdom, which is the other world of
  the resurrection, people will no longer marry (Mk
  1225). This is because God will be everything
  to everyone (1 Cor 1528). (TOB, 267)

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Celibacy Eschatological Sign

• Earthly continence for the kingdom of heaven
  is undoubtedly a sign that indicates this truth
  and this reality. It is sign that the body,
  whose end is not the grave, is directed to
  glorification. Already by this very fact,
  continence for the kingdom of heaven is a witness
  among men that anticipates the future
  resurrection. (TOB, 267)

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Mystic Marriage Of St. Catherine
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Celibacy a Spousal Relationship

• Continence for the sake of the kingdom of
  heaven, the choice of virginity or celibacy for
  ones whole life, has become in the experience of
  Christs disciples and followers the act of a
  particular response of love for the divine
  Spouse. Therefore it has acquired the
  significance of an act of nuptial love, that is,
  a nuptial giving of oneself for the purpose of
  reciprocating in a particular way the nuptial
  love of the Redeemer. (TOB, 282)

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Wives be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord
(Eph. 52)

• the author does not intend to say that the
  husband is the lord of the wife and that the
  interpersonal pact proper to marriage is a pact
  of domination of the husband over the wife.
  Instead, he express a different concept that
  the wife can and should find in her relationship
  with Christ, who is the one Lord of both the
  spouses, the motivation of that relationship with
  her husband which flows from the very essence of
  marriage and of the family. (TOB, 310)

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Mutual Submission

• The husband and wife are in fact subject to
  one another, and are mutually subordinated to
  one another. The source of this mutual subjection
  is to be found in Christian pietas, and its
  expression is love.Love excludes every kind of
  subjection whereby the wife might become a
  servant or slave of the husband, an object of
  unilateral domination.The community or unity
  which they should establish through marriage is
  constituted by a reciprocal donation of self,
  which is also a mutual subjection. (TOB, 310)

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Contraception violates the Language of the Body

• It can be said that in the case of an
  artificial separation of these two aspects, a
  real bodily union is carried out in the conjugal
  act, but it does not correspond to the interior
  truth and to the dignity of personal communion
  communion of persons. This communion demands that
  the language of the body be expressed
  reciprocally in the integral truth of its
  meaning.

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Cont.

• If this truth be lacking, one cannot speak
  either of the truth of self-mastery, or of the
  truth of the reciprocal gift and of the
  reciprocal acceptance of self on the part of the
  person. Such a violation of the interior order of
  conjugal union, which is rooted in the very order
  of the person, constitutes the essential evil of
  the contraceptive act. (TOB, 398)

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