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.

Sichselbstnichtsogesetzthaben and the Natural Law

IN HIS THE CHRISTIAN FAITH (Der Christliche Glaube nach den Grundsäzen der Evangelsichen Kirchen im Zusammenhange Dargestellt, Vol. 1, p. 17 (§ 4) (2nd ed. 1830), the great German classicist and Romantic philosopher Friederich Ernst David Schleiermacher (1768-1834) refers to the awareness that one has not brought existence upon himself as Sichselbstnichtsogesetzthaben, "not-having-posited oneself," or a feeling of Irgendwiegewordensein, a "somehow-having-come-to-be." While Schleiermacher sees this as a subjective sentiment, a feeling, and it surely is, it seems that this is also an objective, self-evident reality, a truth of the objective order which cannot be denied without absurdity.

[I]n every self-consciousness there are two elements, which we might call respectively a self-caused element (ein Sichselbstsetzen) and a non-self caused element (ein Sichselbstnichtsogesetzthaben); or a Being and a Having-by-some-means-come-to-be (ein Sein und ein Irgendwiegewordensein). the latter of these presupposes for every self-consciousness another factor besides the Ego [dem Ich], a factor which is the source of the particular determination, and without which the self-consciousness would not be precisely what it is.

(Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, H. R. Mackintosh, trans. (New York: Continuum Publishing, 2000), 13)

As Louis Dupré summarizes this aspect of Scheiermacher's thought: "However powerful a person may be, he remains aware of the fact that he is not responsible for his being-there: he has not brought himself into existence." (Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 2008), 102.) It is self-evident that none of us had any role in bringing ourselves to be, and that we owe both our existence and our essence to Someone other than ourselves, and so, at best, are only relatively autonomous, and not absolutely so. Because both our essence and existence rely on an Other, the question arises as to whether that Other has a claim of right upon us: whether there is a Law promulgated by this Other which we must acknowledge at the risk of absurdity by contradicting something that is self-evident: that, in a fundamental way, we have not made ourselves to be. Naturally, the awareness of Sichselbstnichtsogesetzthaben ought to lead us to ask that question with which the Baltimore Catechism begins:

1. Who made us?

And we ought to at least acknowledge that a possible answer may be: God made us.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the Protestant (Pietist) Schleiermacher is to be regarded as reliable in all things, and from the little I know of his thought I would not give him a ringing endorsement. There are problems with his theology which relies excessively on "feeling" (Gefühl) at the expense of reason, and his theism is at best ambiguous, as he tends toward pantheistic or panentheistic expressions. Similarly, his notions of dogma are deficient, at least from an orthodox Catholic perspective. (Dupré, 100-01, 104). His biblical exegesis and hermeneutics are also to be wary of. But in his notion of Sichselbstnichtsogesetzthaben, Schleiermacher seems to have hit on a great truth, even if obliquely. Both in our subjective awareness of Sichselbstnichtsogesetzthaben, and, more importantly, as a self-evident datum of speculative reason, we can predicate a reasoned argument for the existence of an Eternal Lawgiver and his Eternal Law in which we participate, a law in our hearts and in our conscience, and this participation is the Natural Law.

Universal Ethic-Conclusion

Conclusion

113. The Catholic Church, aware of the necessity for men to search in common the rules of a life together in justice and in the peace, desires to share with the religions, wisdoms and philosophies of our time the resources of the concept of natural law. We call natural law the foundation of a universal ethics that we try to extract from the observation of and reflection upon our common human nature. It is the moral law written in the heart of men and of which humanity always takes greater and greater conscience the more history advances. This natural law has not nothing static in its expression; it does not consist in a list of definitive and unchanging precepts. It is a source of inspiration that gushes forth always in the search for an objective foundation for a universal ethic.


114. Our conviction of faith is that Christ reveals the fullness of man, realizing it in His person. But such revelation, however specific, reaches and confirms elements that are already resident in the rational thought of the wisdom of humanity. Therefore, the concept of natural law is first of all philosophical and, as such, it allows for a dialogue which, in respect of the religious convictions of each, is able to appeal to that which is universally human in all human beings. An exchange on the level of reason is possible when one tries to test and to state what is common to guide all men who have been given reason and to establish the requirements of life in society.

115. The discovery of the natural law answers the search for a humanity that always strives to give itself rules for the moral life and for life in society. This life in society concerns an arc of connections that range from the family cell to international relations, passing through the economic life, civil society, and the political community. To be able to to be recognized by all men and in all the cultures, the rules of behavior in society should have their source in the same human person, in his needs, in his inclinations. Such norms, elaborated with the reflection and supported by right, are to be thus internalized by all. After World War II, the nations of all the world knew enough to give themselves a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man, which suggests implicitly that the source of inalienable human rights is found in the dignity of every human person. The present contribution has no other end than to help to ponder on this source of personal and collective morality.

116. Offering our contribution to the search for a universal ethic, and proposing a rationally justifiable foundation, we want to invite experts and spokespersons of the great religious, wisdom, and philosophical traditions of humanity to proceed to an analogous work derived from their own sources to arrive to a common recognition of universal moral norms that are based on a rational approach on reality. This work is necessary and urgent. We should be able to tell each other, beyond our religious convictions and the variety of our cultural premises, what are the fundamental values of our common human nature, so as to work together to promote understanding, reciprocal recognition, and peaceful cooperation between all the members of the human family.

(The subject "Toward the Search for a Universal Ethic: A New Look at the Natural Law" was submitted to the study of the International Theological Commission. In preparation for this study, a subcomssion was formed composed of the Most Excellent Monsignor Roland Minnerath, of the Most Reverend Professors: p. Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P. (President of the Subcomission), Geraldo Louis Borges Hackmann, Pierre Gaudette, Tony Kelly CssR, Jean Liesen, John Michael McDermott, SJ, of professors, Dr. Johannes Reiter and Dr. Barbara Hallensleben, with the collaboration of s.e. mons. Luis Ladaria, SJ, secretary general, with the contributions of the other members as well. The general discussion was itself carried out on the occasion of the full sessions of the same CTI, had in Rome, in October 2006 and 2007 and in December 2008. The document was unanimously approved by the Commission in the session of December 1-6, 2008, and was then submitted to its president, William J. Cardinal Levada, who has given his approval for the publication.)

Universal Ethic-Jesus Christ, the End of the Natural Law 3-The Holy Spirit and New Law of Freedom

5.2. The Holy Spirit and the New Law of Freedom

110. Jesus Christ is not only an ethical model to imitate, but with His mystery and in His paschal mystery, He is the Savior that gives to men the real possibility of carrying out the law of love. In fact, the paschal mystery culminates in the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love common to the Father and to the Son, that unites the disciples amongst themselves, to Christ, and finally to the Father. "Since the love of God was poured in our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit" (Rom 5:5), the Holy Spirit becomes the inner principle and the supreme rule of the acts of the believer. They fulfill spontaneously and in just manner all the requirements of love. "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh” (Gal 5:16). Thus is completed the promise: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit with you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My commandments" (Ez. 36:26-27).(101)


111. The grace of the Holy Spirit constitutes the main element of the new Law or the Law of the Gospel.(102) The preaching of the Church, the celebration of the sacraments, the dispositions taken from the Church to favor among her members the development of the life in the Spirit: all are directed to the personal growth of every believer in the sanctity of love. With the new Law, which it is essentially an internal law, "the perfect law, the law of the freedom" (James 1:25), the desire of autonomy and of freedom in truth that is present in the heart of man reaches here the most perfect realization. From the most intimate of the person, where Christ is present and where the Spirit transforms, is born one’s moral acts.(103). But this freedom is at the service of love: "For you were called to freedom, brothers; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another" (Gal 5:13).

112. The new Law of the Gospel includes, takes on, and carries to completion the requirements of the natural law. The orientations of the natural law are not therefore norms external in respect to the new Law. They are a constituent part of it, even if secondary and ordered to the main element, that is, the grace of Christ.(104) So it is through the light of enlightened reason now illuminated by a live faith that man recognizes better the orientations of the natural law, which indicate to him the way to the full development of his humanity. Thus it is that the natural law, on the one hand, maintains "a fundamental connection with the new law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus and, on the other hand, offers an ample base for dialogue with persons of other orientations or of other formations, in view of the search for the common good."(105)

(101) Cf. also Jer. 31:33-34

(102) Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 106, art. 1: " Now that which is preponderant in the law of the New Testament, and whereon all its efficacy is based, is the grace of the Holy Ghost, which is given through faith in Christi. Consequently the New Law is chiefly the grace itself of the Holy Ghost, which is given to those who believe in Christi. (Id autem quod est potissimum in lege novi testamenti, et in quo tota virtus eius consistit, est gratia Spiritus sancti, quae datur per fidem Christi. Et ideo principaliter lex nova est ipsa gratia Spiritus sancti, quae datur Christi fidelibus)".

(103) Cf. ibid, Ia-IIae, q. 108, art. 1, ad 2: "Since then the grace of the Holy Ghost is like an interior habit bestowed on us and inclining us to act aright, it makes us do freely those things that are becoming to grace, and shun what is opposed to it. Accordingly the New Law is called the law of liberty in two respects. First, because it does not bind us to do or avoid certain things, except such as are of themselves necessary or opposed to salvation, and come under the prescription or prohibition of the law. Secondly, because it also makes us comply freely with these precepts and prohibitions, inasmuch as we do so through the promptings of grace. It is for these two reasons that the New Law is called "the law of perfect liberty" (James 1:25). (Quia igitur gratia Spiritus sancti est sicut habitus nobis infusus inclinans nos ad recte operandum, facit nos libere operari ea quae conveniunt gratiae, et vitare ea quae gratiae repugnant. Sic igitur lex nova dicitur lex libertatis dupliciter. Uno modo, quia non arctat nos ad facienda vel vitanda aliqua, nisi quae de se sunt vel necessaria vel repugnantia saluti, quae cadunt sub praecepto vel prohibitione legis. Secundo, quia huiusmodi etiam praecepta vel prohibitiones facit nos libere implere, inquantum ex interiori instinctu gratiae ea implemus. Et propter haec duo lex nova dicitur lex perfectae libertatis, Iac 1:25)

(104) Id., Quodlibeta, IV, q. 8, to. 2: "The new law, law of liberty and constitute of the moral precepts of the natural law, from the articles of belief and from the sacraments of grace (Lex nova, quae est lex libertatis [...] est contenta praeceptis moralibus naturalis legis, et articulis fidei, et sacramentis gratiae)".

(105) John Paul II, Speech of January 18, 2002, in AAS 94 (2002) 334.