Papal Explosives
Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body
by Pope John Paul II
translated and introduced by Michael Waldstein
Pauline Books and Media, 2006
(735 pages, $29.95, paperback)
reviewed by Patrick C. Beeman
The person is a body; he does not have a body. In a series of 129 catecheses delivered early in his pontificate—collectively known as the “theology of the body”—Pope John Paul II defended this thesis and brought out its implications for Christian life, examining man as male and female from the state of original innocence to lapsarian confusion and culminating with a penetrating study of “redeemed man” in his eschatological condition wrought by Christ.
As a cardinal, then Karol Wojtyla wrote the text in Polish. After his ascension to the papacy, he made some changes to the text, broke it into 15-minute homilies, and delivered it at most of his Wednesday general audiences from September 1979 to November 1984. It is, believes the editor of this latest translation, the one-piece culmination of John Paul II’s thinking and a significant part of his papal teaching.
Clothing a Naked Text
This translation by Michael Waldstein, Francis of Assisi Professor of New Testament at the International Theological Institute in Austria, is not the first single-volume version of the theology of the body. But previous editions suffered from inconsistencies in translation and omitted John Paul’s original section headings, resulting in misunderstandings of the pope’s argument and making it difficult to remain oriented within the theology’s complex structure.
Waldstein devotes his long introduction (over one hundred pages) to situating the theology of the body in the contexts of modernity and of John Paul II’s own thought. He writes that “the purpose of [the theology of the body] is to defend the spousal meaning of the body against the alienation between person and body in the Cartesian vision of nature.”
The first principle of the Cartesian view is that “the human body, together with all matter, shall be seen as an object of power.” By contrast, John Paul sees the body “from the beginning” as containing a “spousal attribute, that is, the power to express love: precisely that love in which the human person becomes a gift and—through this gift—fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence” ( emphasis in original). The human body is not merely an object of domineering power but rather is the basis of the person’s power to love.
Waldstein traces the evolution of the theology of the body through three stages. Before becoming pope, Wojtyla encountered the mystical poetry of St. John of the Cross. The origin of the theology lay in Wojtyla’s development of what Waldstein calls “the Sanjuanist triangle”: “love is a gift of self; spousal love is the paradigmatic gift of self; the Trinity is the archetype of such a gift.”
In the second stage, Wojtyla examined the challenge to this “Carmelite point of departure” from the modern understanding of personal subjectivity and human nature. Instead of being that which “alone is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine,” the human body is a thing devoid of intrinsic meaning and thus raw material for technological manipulation.
The result is that, in achieving a superior biological knowledge of the body, modernity has lost the person. Knowing more of the details than ever before, we know nearly nothing of the essence.
Patrick C. Beeman was formerly a lecturer in philosophy at Cleveland State University. He is currently the president of the Catholic Medical Students Association and in 2008 was a Pellegrino Fellow at the Georgetown University Center for Clinical Bioethics. He is a medical student at the University of Toledo and attends Holy Rosary Cathedral with his wife and two children.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
32.6—November/December 2019
An Open Letter to Christian Readers of Jordan Peterson & Roger Scruton by James Bryson
28.6—Nov/Dec 2015
on the Deepest Longings of the Restless & the Lonely by William Graddy
30.3—May/June 2017
Insider Attempts to Disorient the Orthodox by Alexander F. C. Webster
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
