Veritatis Splendor: Part 15--Corpus Humanum et Lex Naturalis

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NATURE AND FREEDOM, and the relationship between the nature of man and law, is an area which today is the center of heated argumentation: one might even say it is a sort of war on two fronts. The sides of an intense debate may roughly be categorized as: (i) advocates of an extreme form of scientific empiricism who unduly "narrow" human nature to scientific facts, and then, based upon these narrow scientific bases, advance an extreme scientific determinism, and (ii) advocates carrying a banner of an excessive human liberalism. At the center is the much beleaguered traditional, classical morality, which finds itself under siege, if not outright hostilities, with its implacable foes.

At the heart of the debate is the very notion of "nature," in particular human nature. The empiricist sees "nature" in solely empirical terms, limiting himself to "the world of the senses within space and time." The empiricist narrows his field of vision of human nature to dimensions that can be measured by instruments, by observation, by statistics. For the scientific empiricist, human nature, then, is nothing other than an amalgam of biological, psychological, cultural processes. By limiting man's nature to such empirically-verifiable measures an ethicist succumbs to the temptation to take these measures and the principle criterion of what is moral. At the extreme edge, some of these empiricists may even suggest that man cannot free himself from these unbreakable biological, psychological, and social laws, and thus is not free at all, but circumscribed by his own materialism. These view nature in a sort of mono-dimensional view: a one-dimensional man whose entire existence can be relegated to physical and biological processes.

In reaction, perhaps, to this excessive empiricism comes liberalism, which views human nature as something separate and distinct from human freedom and morality. Nature is viewed as something that is amoral, and not the source of any normative moral value. The liberal overlooks the "created dimension of nature," and therefore fails to grasp its "integrity," the message that is contained within it. Nature for these moralists is something over which man exercises power, including his moral power. It is not something which may be the source of moral norms or value. Nature is seen as a restriction to be overcome by man, and the source of man's morality is not nature, but is something constructed by man from his freedom which progressively must be exercised over and against nature which limits him. Others define man's nature as freedom, thus confusing the two categories resulting in making freedom "selfdefining and a phenomenon creative of itself and its values." In this latter instance, man ultimately does not even have a nature: it is essentially "his own personal life-project," man and his nature being "nothing more than his own freedom." VS, 46.

Either camp--scientific empiricism or moral liberalism--has misunderstood the notion of human nature. This misunderstanding is, in fact, displayed in the very objections the liberals commonly hurl against the traditional conception of natural law. Confused by their own principles, by their own limited understanding of nature as something empirical and divorced from creation, they accuse the traditional doctrine of natural law as being nothing other than forms of physicalism or naturalism, where physical or biological laws are simplistically extended to become moral laws.

Man is body and soul.

Such a view has even entered into the minds of "certain theologians," who accuse the Church's magisterial teachings as suffering from antiquated physicalism or naturalism, one which limits man's freedom, and fails to account for "both man's character as a rational and free being," and fails also to take into account "the cultural conditioning of all moral norms." These theologians would give to man the power to "freely determine the meaning of his behavior," so that, at best, "natural inclinations" would give rise only to a "general orientation towards correct behavior," but they in no way could "determine the moral assessment of individual human acts." For the liberal theologian, man, it would seem, is in the final analysis unmoored from his nature: that is a necessary implication of his freedom.

It is in the context of these notions that the Pope feels the need to "consider carefully the correct relationship existing between freedom and human nature," with a particular focus on "the place of the human body in questions of natural law." VS, 48.

The essential point of John Paul's view is that the human body is a significant aspect of man, and is an essential component of man's entire reality--who he is and what he is--and therefore is something that has within it moral meaning, a moral message. It is false, even in the name of freedom, to treat the human body as something without moral meaning.

A freedom which claims to be absolute ends up treating the human body as a raw datum, devoid of any meaning and moral values until freedom has shaped it in accordance with its design. Consequently, human nature and the body appear as presuppositions or preambles, materially necessary for freedom to make its choice, yet extrinsic to the person, the subject and the human act. Their functions would not be able to constitute reference points for moral decisions, because the finalities of these inclinations would be merely "physical" goods, called by some "pre-moral". To refer to them, in order to find in them rational indications with regard to the order of morality, would be to expose oneself to the accusation of physicalism or biologism. In this way of thinking, the tension between freedom and a nature conceived of in a reductive way is resolved by a division within man himself.

VS, 48. The Pope's assessment of such a theory is abrupt: "This moral theory does not correspond to the truth about man and his freedom." VS, 48. It is false to suggest that the human body does not inform man's freedom, and therefore has no intrinsic meaning in informing us who man is, and how his freedom ought to be exercised. The essential error stems from a misunderstanding of the human person.

It contradicts the Church's teachings on the unity of the human person, whose rational soul is per se et essentialiter the form of his body.* The spiritual and immortal soul is the principle of unity of the human being, whereby it exists as a whole — corpore et anima unus — as a person.**

VS, 48. In a sense, these modern theologians suffer from a sort of Gnostic deprecation of the body, a Manichean or Catharist tendency of viewing matter as evil, an evil that must be overcome in the name of freedom. They suffer further from the philosophical error that one may ascribe to Plato and Descartes, where the body is merely a sort of repository for the soul, and the only noble thing in man is his reasonable soul which is incarcerated or which pilots through the means of the human body, as if reason were a pilot separate from the ship.

This deprecatory view of the human body is philosophically false and unchristian, and fails to consider the dignity to be accorded the human body in God's natural and supernatural plan. It ignores, for example, the reality that "reason and free will are linked with all the bodily an sense faculties," and so misunderstands man in his nature. Moreover, it forgets that the "body . . . has been promised the resurrection," and therefore shares in man's "glory," in his redemption and salvation. Man is not saved from or apart from his body, but in his body.

There is therefore not one morality for the body and another for man's soul: morality for man involves the entire person of man, which necessarily involves man, body and soul:

The person, including the body, is completely entrusted to himself, and it is in the unity of body and soul that the person is the subject of his own moral acts. The person, by the light of reason and the support of virtue, discovers in the body the anticipatory signs, the expression and the promise of the gift of self, in conformity with the wise plan of the Creator. It is in the light of the dignity of the human person — a dignity which must be affirmed for its own sake — that reason grasps the specific moral value of certain goods towards which the person is naturally inclined. And since the human person cannot be reduced to a freedom which is self-designing, but entails a particular spiritual and bodily structure, the primordial moral requirement of loving and respecting the person as an end and never as a mere means also implies, by its very nature, respect for certain fundamental goods, without which one would fall into relativism and arbitrariness.

VS, 48. That is the philosophical error behind a false opposition of body and soul. There is also a theological error behind this notion, a theological error relating to human anthropology and moral theology:

A doctrine which dissociates the moral act from the bodily dimensions of its exercise is contrary to the teaching of Scripture and Tradition. Such a doctrine revives, in new forms, certain ancient errors which have always been opposed by the Church, inasmuch as they reduce the human person to a "spiritual" and purely formal freedom. . . . In fact, body and soul are inseparable: in the person, in the willing agent and in the deliberate act, they stand or fall together.

VS, 49.

The philosophical and theological errors, therefore, separate the personhood of man, which necessarily is composed of a union of body and soul. The traditional doctrine of the natural law does not suffer from these philosophical or theological errors. Quite the contrary, it is insistent that man must be treated as a person in his entirety, as a person in the unity of soul and body:

At this point the true meaning of the natural law can be understood: it refers to man's proper and primordial nature, the "nature of the human person", which is the person himself in the unity of soul and body, in the unity of his spiritual and biological inclinations and of all the other specific characteristics necessary for the pursuit of his end. "The natural moral law expresses and lays down the purposes, rights and duties which are based upon the bodily and spiritual nature of the human person. Therefore this law cannot be thought of as simply a set of norms on the biological level; rather it must be defined as the rational order whereby man is called by the Creator to direct and regulate his life and actions and in particular to make use of his own body."

VS, 50.***

The inclinations of the entire person--both spiritual inclinations and biological inclinations--must be considered in any doctrine of natural law. It is an error to predicate morality solely on biological inclinations, just as it is an error to predicate morality solely on rational or spiritual inclinations.

Only in reference to the human person in his "unified totality", that is, as "a soul which expresses itself in a body and a body informed by an immortal spirit," can the specifically human meaning of the body be grasped. Indeed, natural inclinations take on moral relevance only insofar as they refer to the human person and his authentic fulfillment, a fulfillment which for that matter can take place always and only in human nature. By rejecting all manipulations of corporeity which alter its human meaning, the Church serves man and shows him the path of true love, the only path on which he can find the true God.

VS, 50.†

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*For the principle that the soul is itself (per se) and essentially (essentialiter) the form of man's body, the Pope cites to the Ecumenical Council of Vienne, Constitution Fidei Catholicae: DS, 902 and the Fifth Lateran Ecumenical Council, Bull Apostolici Regiminis: DS, 1440. The first source reads as follows:

(De anima ut forma corporis.)
Porro doctrinam omnem seu positionem temere asserentem, aut vertentem in dubium, quod substantia animae rationalis seu intellectivae vere ac per se humani corporis non sit forma, velut erroneam ac veritati catholicae inimicam fidei, praedicto sacro approbante Concilio reprobamus: definientes, ut cunctis nota sit fidei sincerae veritas ac praecludatur universis erroribus aditus, ne subintrent, quod quisquis deinceps asserere, defendere seu tenere pertinaciter praesumpserit, quod anima rationalis seu intellectiva non sit forma corporis humani per se et essentialiter, tamquam haereticus sit censendus.

[The soul as a form of the body]. Furthermore, with the approval of the above mentioned sacred council we reprove as erroneous and inimical to the Catholic faith every doctrine or position rashly asserting or turning to doubt that the substance of the rational or intellective soul truly and in itself is not a form of the human body, defining, so that the truth of sincere faith may be known to all, and the approach to all errors may be cut off, lest they steal in upon us, that whoever shall obstinately presume in turn to assert, define, or hold that the rational or intellective soul is not the form of the human body in itself and essentially must be regarded as a heretic.

The second source reads as follows:

Cum ... zizaniae seminator ... nonnullos perniciosissimos errores, a fidelibus semper explosos, in agro Domini superseminare et augere sit ausus, de natura praesertim animae rationalis, quod videlicet mortalis sit, aut unica in cunctis hominibus, et nonnulli temere philosophantes, secundum saltem philosophiam verum id esse asseverent : contra huiusmodi pestem opportuna remedia adhibere cupientes, hoc sacro approbante Concilio damnamus et reprobamus omnes asserentes animam intellectivam mortalem esse, aut unicam in cunctis hominibus, et haec in dubium vertentes, cum illa non solum vere per se et essentialiter humani corporis forma exsistat, sicut in canone felicis recordationis Clementis papae V praedecessoris Nostri in (generali) Viennensi Concilio edito continetur, verum et immortalis, et pro corporum quibus infunditur multitudine singulariter multiplicabilis, et multiplicata, et multiplicanda sit . . .

Since in our days (and we painfully bring this up) the sower of cockle, ancient enemy of the human race, has dared to disseminate and advance in the field of the Lord a number of pernicious errors, always rejected by the faithful, especially concerning the nature of the rational soul, namely, that it is mortal, or one in all men, and some rashly philosophizing affirmed that this is true at least according to philosophy, in our desire to offer suitable remedies against a plague of this kind, with the approval of this holy Council, we condemn and reject all who assert that the intellectual soul is mortal, or is one in all men, and those who cast doubt on these truths, since it [the soul] is not only truly in itself and essentially the form of the human body, as was defined in the canon of Pope Clement V our predecessor of happy memory published in the (general) Council of Vienne, but it is also multiple according to the multitude of bodies into which it is infused, multiplied, and to be multiplied. . . . And since truth never contradicts truth, we declare every assertion contrary to the truth of illumined faith to be altogether false; and, that it may not be permitted to dogmatize otherwise, we strictly forbid it, and we decree that all who adhere to errors of this kind are to be shunned and to be punished as detestable and abominable infidels who disseminate most damnable heresies and who weaken the Catholic faith.

**For the principle that the body and soul are united as one in man's personhood (corpore et anima unus), the encyclical cites to Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 14.
***For the first quote, the encylical quotes Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 51. For the second, the encyclical cites to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation Donum Vitae (February 22, 1987), Introduction, 3: AAS 80 (1988), 74, and refers, further to Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae (July 25, 1968),10: AAS 60 (1968), 487-488.
†The quotation is from Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (November 22,1981),11: AAS 74 (1982), 92.

Long on Porter: "Close-In" Teleologies and the Natural Law

ONE OF THE MOST FREQUENTLY HURLED criticism against the natural law is that it is mere "biologism," it dumbs down the moral order to the order of mere biology. Biology, it seems sensible to believe, is not morality. Yet the natural law philosophy, opponents argue, does just this. It moves from biological fact to moral oughts, and this is a simplistic, uncouth, and medieval perception of nature, highly prejudicial to man's real autonomy, wedding him as it were to his biology. Such concerns particularly show themselves when criticizing the natural law teachings regarding human sexuality. To look at the biological function of the human sexual organs and to extrapolate moral norms from them is, in the view of the opponent, nothing less than crass biologism.*

There is, in fact, little danger of a natural law philosophy of falling into mere "biologism," and the accusation is a false one. What presents the greater danger is the opponent of the natural law falling into an anti-biologism.** The real danger is that, as a result of nothing but bias or result-driven thinking or mistaken concepts, one may ignore real moral evidence by shrouding it with the term "biologism" and thereby not advert to what Long calls the "'close-in' teleologies" of nature, "metaphysical biology," or "bodily teleologies." There are, in fact, inclinations at the "micro" perspective or "close-in" levels of human functioning which inform us of the underlying moral law and which we ignore to our peril. To ignore these clues of God's law is arbitrary and is fraught with moral danger. The "'close-in' teleologies" can provide a partial, and though partial important, account of the natural law. What is learned from these "'close-in' teleologies," of course, is not be understood in isolation of "'far-out' teleologies"*** or macro perspectives. What is learned from "'close-in' teleologies" must be further interpreted and analyzed in the greater "narrative of unified normative teleology" and within "the whole hierarchy of morally significant human ends." It is this situatedness within a greater picture that prevents the "'close-in' teleologies" from being mere biologism.

While such close-in teleological analysis cannot tell one everything one needs to know about the ethical character and import of the act in question, it seems that it must indeed supply something of ethical significance to one's analysis, on pain of having an account of a whole that has no teleologically commensurated parts. Indeed, insofar as there is an order of ends, it is the case that there subordinated ends, and that these are intelligible as ends. It follows that something about these ends is knowable in precision from their further ordering, even while it is doubtless the case that absent the finis ultimus there would be neither such order nor such intelligibility.

Long, 164.

So, for example, the function of the sexual organs is a datum which must be considered, though certainly not the entirety of the data, in a moral assessment as to their use and abuse.

[I]f . . . one means that no knowledge of ethical significance may be implied by the natural ordering of our sexual functions in precision from the integration of this ordering with the wider goods of human life, this seems to be false. For how do we know the whole, apart from reference to the parts as parts? . . . . Why, then, should it be impossible to draw any proximate knowledge of ethical significant whatsoever from the "close-in" teleologies of nature, including the close-in teleogies of sexual nature?

Long, 162. The accusation of "biologism" is particularly vociferous in the area of sexual ethics. The reason for this is particularly apparent. The obvious purpose or end of the sexual organs is procreation,**** which informs, in a very strong way, the natural law prescriptions as to their appropriate use. The function of the genital organs immediately suggests, in a very strong and no uncertain way, that contraception, that homosexual sexual acts, that masturbation are contra naturam. It is because the "close-in" teleology speaks so loudly in the area of the sexual faculties that the sexual libertines scream "biologism" louder still. Herod's wife Herodias could not brook the sight of St. John the Baptist who condemned her marriage. Similarly, the sexual libertine cannot stand the manifest signal given by the sexual organs as to their proper ends. He cannot suppress the clear evidence of God's and nature's intendment on the moral use of the sexual organs, so he resorts to neutralizing it with louder noise of his own. But this is not to listen. This is not to think. This is just to put one's fingers in one's ears and scream, sort of like a child who does not want to hear the truth.

"I refuse to listen to my body!"

The "close-in" teleology or "metaphysical biology" is extremely important in a realist, essential natural law, and it is this sort of openness to bodily clues that informs, for example, John Paul II's notion of the "theology of the body," which is a notion that is hardly "biologism." It is folly to ignore any information, including information that may be obtained by the nature of the body and the nature of the functions of its parts. The body is not some evil that must be overcome or apart from freedom and autonomy is to be found. Man is body and soul, and not some Platonic spirit forced as punishment into an uneasy relationship with a prison-body. The body itself gives clue to God's ratio, certainly not the entirety of all clues, but at least some clues.

[T]he close-in teleologies of the body yield some ethical determinacy (for instance, what has widely become known under the phrase of the Roman vomitorium is contra naturam, and this judgment is reached upon realizing that to choose an act and then persistently negate the teleology of the act is--absent some overarching therapeutic medical need such as to induce vomiting of poison through an emetic--contrary to reason).

Long, 179.

Indeed, there may be more of an analogy between the vomitorium of the Romans and the sexual libertinism of the moderns than meets the eye: both practices are full of moral bile, wasteful spillage, and all for pleasure's sake.

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*It is sometimes held up to ridicule, for example, by the irresponsible agnostic Robert Anton Wilson in his ramblings, rantings, and mumbo jumbo in his book lampooning natural law, Natural Law or Don't Put a Rubber on Your Willy (Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited, 1987). A brief view of that book makes you aware that there was something seriously wrong with that man. May he rest in peace.
**And not perhaps a little Gnostic hatred of the body and a perception that any limitations upon us by the body ought to be perceived as evil and something that ought to be overcome by the "magic" of technology.
***The term "'far-out' teleologies" is mine, not Long's.
****The purpose or end of the sexual organs is clearly distinct from the consequences of their use which are affected by all manner of contingencies. The fact that their use does not always result in the consequence of procreation does not mitigate against the clear evidence of their purpose or end, their intrinsic teleology. "Close-in teleological analysis is not mere observing of consequence . . . . [r]ather, teleological analysis involves distinguishing accidental from essential in such a manner as to achieve knowledge of the normative end that defines a certain type of act." Long, 163.

Theologia Corporis 2 - Homo Solus

HOMO SOLUS AUT DEUS AUT DAEMON, "Man alone is either God or a demon," goes the Latin saying, quoted among others by Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, which is an obvious borrowing from Aristotle's Politics where the Greek philosopher says that a man who lives alone--that is outside the Greek city-state, the polis--is either a god or a beast. Politics, 1253a 28-29. Aristotle, with his notion of man as a political animal, clearly refers to man's social tendencies, an observation true enough as far as it goes.

But there is a deeper, more fundamental way in which man is alone and yet not meant to be alone. And for this we must go away from Athens and go to Jerusalem, away from the philosophers to the prophets. We must begin at the beginning, that is we must turn to Genesis.

These are God the Trinity's own words, to the Jew the words of Yahweh, words which the Jews to their everlasting merit have preserved and bequeathed to us: "Non est bonum esse hominem solum . . . ." (Gen. 2:18) It is not good that man (אָדָם, ’adam) be alone . . . . It is significant to John Paul II that the Hebrew distinctions between male and female, i.e., אִישׁ, ’ish=male and אִשָּׁה, ’isha= female, arise only after the woman is created by God. Therefore, in his discussion on the Theology of the Body, John Paul II notes that the "original solitude" referred to by God in Genesis 2:18 refers to "the solitude of 'man' as such and not only to that of the male." [5.2, 147] The solitude referred to here, which is found only in the second account of creation (i.e., the Yahwist account), therefore, is not only the solitude of man (male) without a man (female), but, but also the solitude of man fundamentally. Thus Pope John Paul II:

It seems, therefore, on the basis of the whole context, that this solitude has two meanings: one deriving from man's very nature, that is from his humanity . . . , and the other deriving from the relationship between male and female, and in some way, this is evident on the basis of the first meaning.

[5.2, 147]

The issue of "original solitude," which chronologically existed before man's created division into male and female, is therefore a fundamental anthropological issue, more basic than gender. It is an issue chronologically prior to the separation of man into male and female, but also prior in an "existential sense." [5.3, 148]

Pope John Paul II finds man's solitude linked to his consciousness of being superior to all other living creatures on earth, a consciousness that is brought home to him when God "tests" man, that is, leads him into self-knowledge, by having him name all other creatures. [5.4, 148] In identifying and naming all other living beings (animalia), man comes to grips with two truths. He learns what he is not, but he also learns what he is.

As all animals march before him, man finds no other creatures like him; he finds himself, despite sharing some features with animals (a "body among bodies," [6.3, 152] his proximate genus), a creature sui generis, a unique being, dissimilar from all other animals, and therefore, in a manner of speaking, alone. There is a quality, a specific differentia, an "invisible" quality that distinguishes the "visible" qualities [7.4, 155-56] that man has vis-à-vis the animals. This quality comes from man's ability, before God, to know the visible world and with it to know the distinctiveness of his own being, the invisible soul; that is, man is conscious of both knowledge and self-knowledge, that he is, and he is aware that he is. In Aristotle's words he is aware of himself as a zoon noetikon, the animal rationale, the rational animal (and not Desmond Morris's "naked ape"; man's uniqueness is not in his lack of hirsuteness). In distinguishing himself thus from the world of living beings, man in his subjectivity "at the same time affirms himself in the visible world as a 'person.'" [5.6, 150] "In fact, in relatively few sentences, the ancient text sketches man as a person with the subjectivity characterizing the person." [6.1, 151] Added to this unique mix is the "aspect of choice and self-determination" of which man is made aware upon God's commandment regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore, the "concept of original solitude includes both self-consciousness and self-determination." [6.1, 151] This "deep meaning of man's original solitude" must be fathomed so that one can understand man's "primeval covenant with God," that which arises from his created situation, that is, from his condition as an image of God, the imago Dei. [6.1, 151] Thus, at the same time that man becomes aware of his original solitude, he also becomes aware of the way out of the solitude, he becomes aware that he is called to communion with God, to be a "partner of the Absolute." [6.2, 151]

Man is "alone": this is to say that through his own humanity, through what he is, he is at the same time set into a unique, exclusive, and unrepeatable relationship with God himself.

[6, 2, 151]

The anthropological definition that man acquires for himself by comparing himself with the animals, approaches therefore the theological definition that is found within the very Trinitarian mystery of God ("let us make man in our own image and our likeness," Gen. 1:26). Man's uniqueness, which prevails upon him in distinguishing himself as more than a "body among bodies," also makes him aware that he is, for all that uniqueness, still a "body among bodies." And so man's solitude, his awareness of his uniqueness from all other visible beings, also allows him to discover something which modern man, infected by Cartesian dualism, has discarded. And that is the "meaning of his own bodiliness," a body through which he is to "cultivate the earth" and "subdue it. " (Gen. 2:5; 1:28). [6.4, 153] At the same time aware of its complex structure, man becomes aware of the "relation between soul and body." [7.1, 153] John Paul II summarizes:

Man is a subject not only by his self-consciousness and by self-determination, but also based on his own body. The structure of this body is such that it permits him to be the author of genuinely human activity. In this activity, the body expresses the person. It is thus, in all its materiality ("he formed man with dust of the ground"), penetrable and transparent, as it were, in such a way as to make it clear who man is (and what he ought to be) thanks to the structure of his consciousness and self-determination. On this rests the fundamental precept of the meaning of one's own body, which one cannot fail to discovery when analyzing man's original solitude.

[7.2, 154]

Theologia Corporis-1-Ab Initio

TO ENGAGE US INTO CONVERSATION WITH CHRIST is what John Paul II asks us to do in approaching matters of marriage and family life. In sort of an Ignatian mediation, we are asked to imagine ourselves among the crowd in Judea. We have seen this God-Man heal persons of various ills, and he fascinates us. A small group of Pharisees approach Christ with questions of marriage, and, more specifically, its dissolution--divorce, but in a spirit of challenge, rather than as disciples open to his teaching. "Is it lawful," they ask him, "for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?" Matt. 19:3.

In response, Christ refers them to fundamentals, from the beginning, ab initio. Christ refers them to Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures. He refers them to the creation of man. He refers them to the creation of woman. He refers them to the first marriage. Ab initio. Christ does not refer to the Law of Moses to answer a question about the Law of Moses, of which the Pharisees are the greatest representatives. He does not refer his questioners to any divinely promulgated law, but to the First Law, the Law of Nature, the Law that inheres in the created order and reflects in a primordial manner, the Eternal Law, the law in the mind of God. His teaching is thus to all men, for all times, and not only to the Jews in Judea in the 1st century A.D. Were we to ask the Lord, "the laws of the State allow for divorce . . . ," or "Science has given us birth control . . . ," or "Advocates of human rights claim that two persons of the same sex may marry . . . " In arriving at answers, Christ would say, "Turn ab initio." Go back to the beginning, to the Natural Law in created nature.

To John Paul II, Christ's invocation of the beginning, his focus on the ab initio, is fundamental; it is the operative and normative basis for the entirety of Christ's teaching, and so John Paul II seeks to "try to penetrate into the 'beginning'" to which Christ appealed. [1.5, 133]

There are two narratives regarding creation in Genesis (Gen. 1:1-2:4, the so-called Priestly or Elohist version because it uses the word Elohim to refer to God; and Gen. 2:5-25, the so-called Yahwist version, because it uses the word Yahweh to refer to God). In his answer, Christ refers to them both. [As an aside, Christ's reference to both versions of the creation story may be something that biblical scholars of the critical school may keep in mind when they try to pit one version of scripture to another, as if putting truth against truth, seeking to separate and divide, instead of accepting both as God's word and finding the truth in a fruitful synthesis or harmony of truths.]

What does Christ teach by referencing the Elohist creation story? It is a reference to the objective order. He wishes to teach us that Man is in the world, part of created nature; yet he is also above the world, made in the image of God. He shares in the brute creation (that which is "separated" "called" "put" from chaos), and in the living creation (that which is "created" or "blessed"). [2.3 & n.1, 135] Yet when it comes to man, there is, as it were, a divine pause. "[T]he Creator seems to halt before calling [man] to existence, as if he entered back into himself to make a decision, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.' (Gen. 1:27)." [2.3, 135] Christ's reference to the ab initio in Genesis is therefore a reference to the rich ensemble that is man, who, at the instruction of the Lord, must answer questions about his end and the good by reference to cosmology, but also to theology; he must refer both to the natural and to the supernatural; he must refer to the physical and the metaphysical; he must refer to body and the soul; to the contingent here, and to the absolute beyond. He must also recall that he is both man, and woman.

Christ's invocation of the Yahwist creation narrative, on the other hand, is more a reference to the subjective order, the areas of psychology, of conscience. "One could say that Genesis 2 presents the creation of man especially in the aspect of subjectivity." [3.1, 138-39] But it is not as if the objective order is opposed to the subjective order. "When we compare the two accounts [of creation], we reach the conviction that this subjectivity corresponds to the objective reality of man created in the 'image of God.'" [3.1, 139]

In referring back to the Yahwist creation narrative, Christ also places us within the context of man's own history, specifically, the creation of man and woman, and the narrative of the Fall. It is significant that the "beginning" to which Christ refers, the ab initio, is the reality of man before the fall. In answering the question the Pharisees posed to him regarding divorce, Christ refers to man in the state of paradise. There is sufficiently left of this order for us to be able to refer to it even now. Theologians distinguish the state of man before the fall, in his state of original innocence, his status naturae integrae, from his state after the fall, in his state of sinfulness, his status naturae lapsae. [3.3, 141] The following is key:

When Christ, appealing to the 'beginning,' directs the attention of his interlocutors to the words written in Genesis 2:24, he orders them in some sense to pass beyond the boundary that runs, in the Yahwist text of Genesis, between man's first and second situation. He . . . appeals to the words of the first divine order, expressly linked in this text with man's state of original innocence. This means that this order has not lost its force, although man has lost his primeval innocence. Christ's answer is decisive and clear. For this reason, we must draw the normative conclusions from it, which have an essential significance not only for ethics, but above all for the theology of man and the theology of the body . . . .

[3.4, 141-42]

One may note, that on this insight of John Paul II alone, the entirety of Calvin's (and to a slightly lesser extent Luther's) notion of man's "total depravity" is blown to smithereens and shown to be manifestly unscriptural. Similarly, the Lutheran theologian Karl Barth's vehement, even vituperative rejection of natural theology and natural law is found wanting. If you want better to follow Christ, throw away your copy of Christian Institutes Presbyterians, and your Church Dogmatics Lutherans! Instead, follow Christ's lead and

First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchang'd, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.

Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744), An Essay on Criticism, Part 1.

This includes the art of being human, which is what morality and the theology of the body is all about.

Theologia Corporis--Introduction

The next series of blog entries will consist of reflections upon John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" (theologia corporis), as this was advanced in 129 reflections given by John Paul II in his Wednesday audiences at the Pope Paul VI Hall between September 1979 and November 1984. These reflections will rely upon the new translation of these talks by Dr. Michael Waldstein , Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline Books, 2006).

It is fitting, nay, it is mandatory, for a Theology of the Body to be the subject matter of a blog devoted to the Natural Law because a Theology of the Body is really nothing else other than a theological view of the Natural Law, and one with papal imprimatur. Pope John Paul II's theology of the body has a deep affinity with the Thomist doctrine of natural law, but one refined with modern psychological and philosophical insights. John Paul II's theology of the body avoids the Scylla of a mechanistic, materialistic view of the body and Charybdis of a Platonic idealismor Gnostic spiritualism. Based upon an incarnational view of the human, it seeks to learn of both man and God through a proper understanding of the body and the soul/body union.

Ecstasis and Telos: Renè Descartes and His Dreams

"COGITO ERGO SUM," the Cartesian Coordinate System (x, y, z), methodological doubt, and the pineal gland as seat of the soul (if Homer nods, Descartes lapsed into a full coma with that one) are some of the first things that come into mind when Renè Descartes (1596-1650) is mentioned. Commonly regarded the "Father of Modern Philosophy," Descartes ushered in what has been called the "epistemological turn" (Wolff) or "epistemological crisis" (MacIntyre), making him the watershed so to speak, between modern philosophy with its focus on epistemology (how or even if we know) from the philosophy before that time which focused on ontology or metaphysics (what we know). Some philosophical wag (Whitehead) said that the history of philosophy is a footnote to Plato. We may fairly say that the history of modern philosophy is a footnote to Descartes. The proto-skeptic (or perhaps more accurately the proto-neo-skeptic) Descartes looms large in any history of philosophy.

This is obviously not the forum to discuss Descartes in any depth, nor do I have the competency to tackle that subject, but we ought to identify and summarize those parts of Descartes's philosophical system (loosely called Cartesianism) that contradict the classical or traditional (read Christian) theory of Natural Law. The most important of these relate to Descartes's notion of Nature and of Man. Specifically, his rejection of any teleology in Nature, which constituted a rejection of the notion of an Eternal Law. We may also point to his theory of body and soul (what has been called "angelism" or "mind in the machine").

Although there are exceptions and qualifications (there almost always are), generally speaking, before Descartes, man's nature or substance was generally perceived hylomorphically, that is, as a blended duality, both matter and form, body and soul. (Hylomorphism is a word formed from two Greek words, ύλη (hylo), meaning "wood," and by extension, "matter," and μορφή (morphē) meaning "form" or "shape"). That notion is particularly prevalent in Aristotle's philosophy. In his philosophical musings, Descartes vehemently rejected such a conception. Descartes viewed man's nature as a duality of natures that lived in an uneasy joinder. The soul was seen as a sort of angelic pilot, a spiritual humuncular, a mini-spirit, which piloted the ship of the body. For Descartes, the great unprejudiced one, this navigation was done through the pineal gland. Jacques Maritain called this Cartesian teaching "Angelism": "Cartesian dualism breaks man up into two complete substances, joined to another no one knows how: on the one hand, the body which is only geometric extension; on the other, the soul which is only thought—an angel inhabiting a machine and directing it by means of the pineal gland." (Maritain, The Dream of Descartes, 179).

Like the poet Mallarme's aged dying patient in the hospital who was unwilling to accept the human condition, Descartes may be said to have exclaimed:

Je me mire et me vois ange!
I admire myself, and see myself angelic!

(Stéphane Mallarmé, Les fenêtres, "The Windows")

Matthew Levering views Descartes's thoughts on the relationship between body and soul as being of great significance (Levering, pp. 86 ff.) Among other places, Descartes's efforts in trying to derive a new philosophy is reflected in his Meditations. In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes addresses the relationship between body and soul.

It is manifest that Descartes distinguishes his "I" from his body, viewing his body as something wholly separate, though very closely engaged to or "mingled" with his "I." Levering, 90. Though his senses play well-enough the role of informing the body reliably of its needs, the senses are unreliable in the area of truth. Descartes views the body as a complex organic machine, "so built and composed of bones, nerves, muscles, veins, blood and skin," and responsive to laws that are independent of the mind. He repeated his fascination with the body as a "machine" both his Discourse on Method as well as his in his Treatise of Man, where he stated: “I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us.” The "I" is uncoupled and independent of the body. For Descartes, "it is not necessary to the 'I' that it have bodiliness, since even were bodiliness proven to be an illusion, the 'I' would be real." Levering, 89. It is this "I" alone, and not the "I with the body," which thinks. It is this "I" alone, and not this "I with the body," which certainly exists. Descartes is as far as can be from John Paul II's "theology of the body."

Descartes arrived at his views through intensive introspection in a series of meditations and the application of a methodology of radical doubt. Although Descartes's "looking within" for answers is not particularly novel or objectionable, what was new and what has turned out to be significant was his notion, as Charles Taylor in his Source of the Self (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989) puts it, that the moral sources are within us exclusively, and bear no relationship to any external reference, such as our body or the cosmos at large. Descartes brought about "a transposition by which we no longer see ourselves as related to moral sources outside of us, or at least not at all in the same way." (Taylor, Sources of the Self, 143.)

Descartes abandoned the notion of an Eternal Law, at least to the degree that it manifested itself in God's created world, the cosmos, including the body and mind of man. As Charles Taylor succinctly puts it: "Descartes utterly rejected [the] teleological mode of thinking and abandoned any theory of ontic logos." Sources of the Self, 144. And Levering concludes: For Descartes "Neither the 'I' nor the machine-body are identified by teleological ends." Levering, 90.

Descartes clearly had no patience for the philosophers and theologians before him. Convinced that he was fated to derive a true philosophy, Descartes jettisoned the past, and tried to start the philosophical journey afresh. There is thus another spirit in Descartes of which we should be aware. His distrust of received teaching, of tradition, of inherited culture was notable. He may have considered himself enlightened and unburdened by what he viewed as unreasonable prejudices of the past. But what blinded him was that he himself suffered from a prejudice perhaps more vicious. Descartes suffered from what Hans-George Gadamer would call "das Vorurteil gegen die Vorurteile," the prejudice against prejudices, which, of course, is a prejudice in itself. This impatience with the past simply because it is the past is something that the Enlightenment seems to have foisted upon us, and it carries particular weight in our country. Too often, this dissatisfaction with the past leads to a state of unrootedness, restlessness, a thirst for novelty, and frequently banality. The theory with the best press is the "newest" theory, the theory that claims to debunk an "old" theory, the titilating theory, and not necessarily the best theory.

Though there is obviously room for critical thought, and blind enslavement to the past simply because it is the past is never to be fostered, there has to be room for a prudent and intelligent reserve against change in favor of the inherited traditions of our culture. The critical intellect has to recognize the validity of St. Paul's injunction to "stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us." (2 Thess. 2:15) Else we run the risk of flailing in the winds of novelty.

There are few who can build a philosophy of life from scratch within their lifetimes. And Descartes's effort was audacious. Even if we have the talent, the honesty, and the grace, we will not have the time to think all things anew. With respect to the American penchant for rejecting the past, and embracing some progressive future, de Tocqueville observed: "Of all the countries in the world, America is the one in which the precepts of Descartes are least studied and best followed." (Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy in America (Geroge Lawrence, trans.) (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1969), 429.) This spirit is markedly different from that embraced by G. K. Chesterton, who, in his Orthodoxy, noted that "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."

Foundations once destroyed, what can the just man do? (Cf. Ps. 11 [10]:3). Though it was easy enough to pursue his methodological doubt, and reject a teleology in nature and the unity of body and soul, Descartes seems to have been at a loss in deriving a substitute basis for morality. While he nursed his doubts in his Discourse, Descartes advanced a "provisional morality" (une morale par provision) composed of four maxims. Though this provisional morality is one of outward conformity and practical conservatism, it is cowardly prudent, and not particularly edifying. It is hardly persuasive as a recipe for the good life that God calls us to live. In a way, Descartes is a type of the modern ethics which, in light of its inability to know the universal good, also calls for a highly dissatisfying "provisional morality," one largely based upon secular presumptions, and process not substance.

About 2,000 years ago, between Christ and Barabbas, we chose Barabbas. About 400 years ago, between Christ and Descartes, we chose Descartes. Perhaps its time for a reassessement? Perhaps its time for a turn?