Workshop (7) A Primordial Sacrament - The Heart of the Matter

In the seventh workshop Dr. Waldstein reached the goal, the heart of the matter, for understanding the theology of the body. It is the astounding and exhilarating idea that the human person, embodied as male and female, provides the primordial sacrament of God's good creation. Here is a key passage from the audience of February 20, 1980:

Thus, in this dimension, a primordial sacrament is constituted, understood as a sign that transmits effectively in the visible world the invisible mystery hidden in God from time immemorial. This is the mystery of truth and love, the mystery of divine life, in which man really participates. In the history of man, original innocence begins this participation and it is also a source of original happiness. The sacrament, as a visible sign, is constituted with man, as a body, by means of his visible masculinity and femininity. The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God, and thus be a sign of it.

Sacrament requires a physical sign; what could be more fundamental and more important than the human body, in its sexuality, as the visible sign of the invisible God. It is a sign of the gift of creation in a double sense because man receives existence as a gift and can participate in the giving of gift. "Man appears in the visible world as the highest expression of the divine gift, because he bears within him the interior dimension of the gift."

So the very sacramentality of creation, the sacramentality of the world was revealed in a way, in man created in the image of God. By means of his corporality, his masculinity and femininity, man becomes a visible sign of the economy of truth and love, which has its source in God himself and which was revealed already in the mystery of creation.

The economy of "truth and love," is that which makes the human distinctly human. The original source for the awareness and perfection of the human is the beauty of marriage. Waldstein explains that the economy of truth and love also refers to the economy of salvation in Christ and the Holy Spirit, as the two processions of the Son and Spirit. But the astounding notion here is that "the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God," is manifest originally in the embodied human being. John Paul ends this talk with the reaffirmation that the "consciousness of the meaning of his own body, man, as male and female," provides the primordial entry into "the world as a subject of truth and love." Perhaps we can readily understand the body as a sign of love, but truth also? It is the truth of the gift, the truth of creation, the primoridal truth denied by so many in the modern world of technology and reductionism.

He says that in "the original fullness of the experience of the nuptial meaning of the body" we encounter "a feast of humanity, which draws its origin from the divine sources of truth and love in the mystery of creation," a feast of celebration and joy over the truth and goodness of creation.  But he ends with a warning: "the horizon of sin and death will be extended over that original feast (cf. Gn 3)." But we can continue to "draw a first hope, that is, that the fruit of the divine economy of truth and love," in the mystery of creation.  We find in the creation of male and female, the "call to glory" (cf. Rom 8:30).

In his Letter to Families, John Paul II will explain how the horizon of sin and death press more tightly over modern consciousness because of the loss of the truth of creation (see section §19).  The reduction of man to matter and the dualism of body and spirit raise the specter of a new Manichaeism. We have "given up the attempt to be a 'civilization of love'." We are alienated from God and ourselves:

The modern age has made great progress in understanding both the material world and human psychology, but with regard to his deepest, metaphysical dimension contemporary man remains to a great extent a being unknown to himself. Consequently the family too remains an unknown reality. Such is the result of estrangement from that "great mystery" spoken of by the Apostle.

With the the destruction of the integrity of marriage through contraception and divorce, and the very denial of  marriage as between male and female, we stand on "the brink of a dreadful ethical defeat." 
The theology of the body offers a ray of hope. John Paul II was fully inspired to develop the theology of the body through his meditation upon Gaudium et spes 22 and 24: "The richest source for knowledge of the body is the Word made flesh. Christ reveals man to himself. In a certain sense this statement of the Second Vatican Council is the reply, so long awaited, which the Church has given to modern rationalism."

Our Lady of Mt Carmel

I am reposting a piece from last year, please click here for John Paul II on Mt Carmel

Workshop (6) c- The Freedom and Beauty of the Gift

The thrid and last of the series on the spousal meaning of the body, selected by Dr Waldstein to display the heart of the teaching on the Theology of the Body is from the general audience of January 16 2008 and it may be found here.

First, the notion of gift preuspposes the freedom of the man and woman to give themselves; there must a measure of self-possession and self-restraint.

It can be said that, created by Love, endowed in their being with masculinity and femininity, they are both "naked" because they are free with the freedom of the gift. This freedom lies at the basis of the nuptial meaning of the body. The human body, with its sex, and its masculinity and femininity seen in the very mystery of creation, is not only a source of fruitfulness and procreation, as in the whole natural order. It includes right from the beginning the nuptial attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love, that love in which the person becomes a gift and - by means of this gift - fulfills the meaning of his being and existence. . . .  We mean here freedom especially as mastery of oneself (self control).

John Paul II also finds in this passage and in this phenomenon the truth about man as expressed in Gaudium et spes 24.3:

This truth about man, which the conciliar text states precisely in the words quoted above, has two main emphases. The first affirms that man is the only creature in the world that the Creator willed "for its own sake." The second consists in saying that this same mm, willed by the Creator in this way right from "the beginning," can find himself only in the disinterested giving of himself. Now, this truth about man, which seems in particular to grasp the original condition connected with the very beginning of man in the mystery of creation, can be reread in both directions, on the basis of the conciliar text.

The teaching also highlights the beauty of love and the importance of the uniqueness and unrepeatability of the person:

The human body, oriented interiorly by the sincere gift of the person, reveals not only its masculinity or femininity on the physical plane, but reveals also such a value and such a beauty as to go beyond the purely physical dimension of sexuality. In this manner awareness of the nuptial meaning of the body, connected with man's masculinity-femininity, is in a way completed. On the one hand, this meaning indicates a particular capacity of expressing love, in which man becomes a gift. On the other hand, the capacity and deep availability for the affirmation of the person corresponds to it. This is, literally, the capacity of living the fact that the other - the woman for the man and the man for the woman - is, by means of the body, someone willed by the Creator for his or her own sake. The person is unique and unrepeatable, someone chosen by eternal Love.

Workshop (6) b- The Spousal Meaning of the Body, con.

John Paul II, at the audience of January 9, 198, said that he body is a "witness" to the the gift character of existence and to reciprocal giving:

This is the body - a witness to creation as a fundamental gift, and so a witness to Love as the source from which this same giving springs. Masculinity and femininity - namely, sex - is the original sign of a creative donation and an awareness on the part of man, male-female, of a gift lived in an original way. Such is the meaning with which sex enters the theology of the body.

 (In the Waldstein edition see p. 182-183 the audience of January 9, 1980; on Vatican website look here).

Dr Waldstein put it very simply: upon seeing the body one should say, "Ah, gift." The body is for gift, that is for love. John Paul II sees this a the way the body appears in human experience, if not reduced or distorted through disordered appetite. And he sees this truth as a matter of original revelation. When scripture says that it is not good for man to be alone, and that he needs "a help" (and that the order of animal creation surrounding him does not complete his aloneness or provide the help to overcome that aloneness) . One must be "with" another person and "for"another person. The help is so as not to be alone.John Paul II says:

In this way, these two expressions, namely, the adjective "alone" and the noun "helper," seem to be the key to understand the essence of the gift at the level of man, as existential content contained in the truth of the "image of God." The gift reveals, so to speak, a particular characteristic of personal existence, or rather, of the essence of the person. When God-Yahweh said, "It is not good that man should be alone," (Gn 2:18) he affirmed that "alone," man does not completely realize this essence. He realizes it only by existing "with someone" - and even more deeply and completely - by existing "for someone."

 John Paul II derives a "norm for existence" from this truth of the theology of the body.

This norm of existence as a person is shown in Genesis as characteristic of creation, precisely by means of the meaning of these two words: "alone" and "helper." These words indicate as fundamental and constitutive for man both the relationship and the communion of persons. The communion of persons means existing in a mutual "for," in a relationship of mutual gift. This relationship is precisely the fulfillment of "man's" original solitude.

The exclamation by Adam, "she is flesh from my flesh and bone from my bone," acknowledges the wonder of personal existence in its capacity for reciprocal gift; JP2 said: "Exclaiming in this way, he seems to say that here is a body that expresses the person." The alternative is to first approach sex without "person," without reciprocal gift. But that too would leave man in his solitude, alone, and with out a "helper."

Theology of the body is the alternative to reductionism. Waldtsein's translation is superior here: "This simultaneity [affirming sexuality and personhood] is essential. In fact, if we dealt with sex without the person, this would destroy the whole adequacy of the anthropology that we find in Genesis. Moreover, for our theological study, it would veil the essential light of the revelation of the body, which shines through these first statement with such great fullness."

Workshop (6) - The Spousal Meaning of the Body

At long last we get to the theology of the body. Dr. Waldstein leads us to the basic concept of the spousal meaning of the body and the key passages in the talks given by Blessed John Paul II on January 2, 9 and 16 of 1980. In the Waldstein text (Man and Woman He Created Them) they are found of pages 178-189. On the Vatican website the first talk may be found here:
January 2, 1980

Look at paragraphs 7 and 8 of the Jan 2 talk:

par 7: The Bible texts contain the essential elements of this anthropology, which are manifested in the theological context of the "image of God." This concept conceals within it the root of the truth about man. This is revealed through that "beginning," which Christ referred to in the talk with the Pharisees (cf. Mt 19:3-9), when he treated of the creation of the human male and female. It must be recalled that all the analyses we make here are connected, at least indirectly, precisely with these words of his. Man, whom God created male and female, bears the divine image imprinted on his body "from the beginning." Man and woman constitute two different ways of the human "being a body" in the unity of that image.

Waldstein explained that the image of the Trinity stands at the back of this passage (Gaudium et spes 24:3) because the image of God imprinted in the body -- not just in the spiritual powers of man -- is the image of self-giving as signified in sexual differentiation and the recognition of the gift of existence and love. The body of the male and the body of the female are made for giving in love. Thus, par 8:

Now, it is opportune to turn again to those fundamental words which Christ used, that is, the word "created" and the subject "Creator." They introduce in the considerations made so far a new dimension, a new criterion of understanding and interpretation, which we will call "hermeneutics of the gift." The dimension of the gift decides the essential truth and depth of meaning of the original solitude, unity and nakedness. It is also at the heart of the mystery of creation, which enables us to construct the theology of the body "from the beginning," but demands, at the same time, that we should construct it in this way.

We cannot get around the gift character of existence as signified in our very bodies.We can live disembodied, or abstractly, in denial of our vocation to love. But the denial, nay the refusal of mystery, is the very definition of rationalism, as we learn from Newman. Waldstein insightfully links this passage on the hermeneutics of the gift  with John Paul II's Letter to Families:

How far removed are some modern ideas from the profound understanding of masculinity and femininity found in Divine Revelation! Revelation leads us to discover in human sexuality a treasure proper to the person, who finds true fulfilment in the family but who can likewise express his profound calling in virginity and in celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

Modern rationalism does not tolerate mystery. It does not accept the mystery of man as male and female, nor is it willing to admit that the full truth about man has been revealed in Jesus Christ. In particular, it does not accept the "great mystery" proclaimed in the Letter to the Ephesians, but radically opposes it. It may well acknowledge, in the context of a vague deism, the possibility and even the need for a supreme or divine Being, but it firmly rejects the idea of a God who became man in order to save man. For rationalism it is unthinkable that God should be the Redeemer, much less that he should be "the Bridegroom", the primordial and unique source of the human love between spouses. Rationalism provides a radically different way of looking at creation and the meaning of human existence. But once man begins to lose sight of a God who loves him, a God who calls man through Christ to live in him and with him, and once the family no longer has the possibility of sharing in the "great mystery", what is left except the mere temporal dimension of life? Earthly life becomes nothing more than the scenario of a battle for existence, of a desperate search for gain, and financial gain before all else.

In the mystery of life the gift of existence is a sure point of orientation; we may not be able to explain it adequately (our life or our love) but gratitude wells up as a response. Waldstein explains that the gift must be received and we must respond. Do not we respond one way or another? We respond either with thanks and blessing or with anger and curse. Is there really any other alternative? (I understand better now the message of Mary at LaSalette -- she warned us about the sinful habit of taking God's name in vain. Such is the refusal of the gift) But here is the concluding point -- we have the capacity to understand the gift character of existence (in reason and in faith I would say) and we must respond one way or another, with the language of gift and self-giving or with the language of self sufficiency and self-demand.

As the "image of God," man is capable of understanding the meaning of gift in the call from nothingness to existence. He is capable of answering the Creator with the language of this understanding. [the language of "gift"] Interpreting the narrative of creation with this language, it can be deduced from it that creation constitutes the fundamental and original gift. Man appears in creation as the one who received the world as a gift, and it can also be said that the world received man as a gift.

From this fundamental understanding of creation as gift AND the image of gift imprinted in the very body of man and woman we shall come to appreciate the full theology of the body.

Workshop (5) - Scheler's contribution

John Paul II studied the thought of Max Scheler and from this study began his to develop his critique of Kant. Scheler used phenomenology and literature to criticize the formalism and individualism of Kantian ethics. As much as Wojtyla learned from Scheler, the outcome was limited by the phenomenological method. Experience of God is more important than the reality of God:

For the Phenomenologist, man is a theomorphic being only and exclusively by virtue of experiencing the idea of God. Scheler is not concerned with the real relation to God as an existing, positive and defined reality. He is concerned with experiencing the idea of God.

As a movement toward the things themselves, and as a way to see the expansiveness of experience, or to cherish the "lived experience" of human things, Wojtyla would benefit from his study of phenomenology. Later in his life Pope John Paul II said this:

Phenomenology is primarily a style of thought, a relationship of the mind with reality whose essential and constitutive features it aims to grasp, avoiding prejudice and schematisms. I mean that it is, as it were, an attitude of intellectual charity to the human being and the world, and for the believer, to God, the beginning and end of all things. To overcome the crisis of meaning which is characteristic of some sectors of modern thought, I insisted, in the Encyclical Fides et Ratio (cf. n. 83), on an openness to metaphysics, and phenomenology can make a significant contribution to this openness. JOHN PAUL II TO THE WORLD INSTITUTE OF PHENOMENOLOGY OF HANOVER

 To develop the theology of the body John Paul II combined theology, philosophy of nature, metaphysics, scriptural theology and moral theology to better understand the human person as male and female and the significance of marriage. In the subsequent workshop sessions the key points of this theology were explained.

Some pages by Waldstein on Scheler can be found here

Coolidge on the Spiritual Roots of the Declaration

In 1926 President Coolidge gave a speech commemorating the 150th anniversary of our founding. The speech was given at the newly constructed Sesqui-centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia. My grandparents were present at the event, as my grandfather was a Naval officer stationed at the Navy Ship Yard, adjacent the exposition park. I have their invitation to the formal opening on May 31, 1926, shown to the left. The speech by Coolidge is recommended by Leon Kass in the July 1 edition of the Wall Street Journal. (Find a copy Kass's column here; for the entire speech by Coolidge look  here)

I am struck by similarities between Coolidge and John Paul II on the religious roots of freedom, and our Declaration. 

Here is an excerpt from Coolidge:

A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if its roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause. . . .

No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped."

Pope John Paul II made this statement to Ambassador Boggs:

Indeed, it may be asked whether the American democratic experiment would have been possible, or how well it will succeed in the future, without a deeply rooted vision of divine providence over the individual and over the fate of nations. As the Year 2000 draws near and Christians prepare to celebrate the bi-millennium of the birth of Christ, I have appealed for a serious examination of conscience regarding the shadows which darken our times (cf. Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 36). Nations and States too can make this a time of reflection on the spiritual and moral conditions of their success in promoting the integral good of their people. It would truly be a sad thing if the religious and moral convictions upon which the American experiment was founded could now somehow be considered a danger to free society, such that those who would bring these convictions to bear upon your nation's public life would be denied a voice in debating and resolving issues of public policy. The original separation of Church and State in the United States was certainly not an effort to ban all religious conviction from the public sphere, a kind of banishment of God from civil society. Indeed, the vast majority of Americans, regardless of their religious persuasion, are convinced that religious conviction and religiously informed moral argument have a vital role in public life. (Speech may be found here)

Pope John Paul II also warned of the danger of consumerism, what Coolidge called "pagan materialism," whose tide continues to rise and inundates the souls of our fellow citizens. In Centisimus annus he warned that the materialism of the west could be as devastating as Marxist materialism:

A given culture reveals its overall understanding of life through the choices it makes in production and consumption. It is here that the phenomenon of consumerism arises. In singling out new needs and new means to meet them, one must be guided by a comprehensive picture of man which respects all the dimensions of his being and which subordinates his material and instinctive dimensions to his interior and spiritual ones. If, on the contrary, a direct appeal is made to his instincts — while ignoring in various ways the reality of the person as intelligent and free — then consumer attitudes and life-styles can be created which are objectively improper and often damaging to his physical and spiritual health. Of itself, an economic system does not possess criteria for correctly distinguishing new and higher forms of satisfying human needs from artificial new needs which hinder the formation of a mature personality. Thus a great deal of educational and cultural work is urgently needed. §36

We must affirm the concluding remarks of Leon Kass, adding only that John Paul II would back both Tocqueville and Coolidge on this issue of religion and political life:

Coolidge was no religious fanatic. He appreciated our constitutional strictures against religious establishment and religious tests for office, limitations crucial to religious freedom and toleration, also principles unique to the American founding. But he understood that free institutions and economic prosperity rest on cultural grounds, which in turn rest on religious foundations.

Like Tocqueville, who attributed America's strength to its unique fusion of the spirit of liberty and the spirit of religion, Coolidge is rightly concerned about what will happen to the sturdy tree of liberty should its cultural roots decay. It is a question worth some attention as we eat our barbecue and watch the fireworks.

Workshop (4) - TOB as a "deadly blow" against Cartesianism

"If God saw that everything was very good, goodness must really reside in things, which strikes a deadly blow into the very heart of the Cartesian philosophical presuppositions of modern science or vice versa." Michael Waldstein








In order to provide the context for the significance of the Pope's achievement in developing the theology of the body, Waldstein sets out the sources and principles of modern philosophy concerning the body.


First we must understand the influence of Francis Bacon. His nominalism denies that there is an intrinsic order to nature. He also redefines the purpose of science to be the mastery of nature. 


The 3 points of logos are:
1. A radical openness to Being
2. Radical priority of the speculative over the practical
3. An appeal to the desire for the infinite, for God
Find pages on Greek logos here 


The new science of nature denies all three points. Thus Waldstein explains the importance of rediscovering the integrity of the body and authentic love which modern science and modern philosophy have denied and degraded:


"This form of the fact-value and science-religion distinction, which has been widely accepted by Christians as part of the dominant culture of the West ever since Bacon and Descartes and the systematic elaboration of their principles by Kant, is not only bad philosophy, but it directly contradicts Scripture. 'God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good' (Gen 1:31). If God saw that everything was very good, goodness must really reside in things, which strikes a deadly blow into the very heart of the Cartesian philosophical presuppositions of modern science or vice versa. That being is good is a philosophical principle called for by Scripture itself.

“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Gen 1:31). This is why one can say with certainty that the first chapter of Genesis has formed an incontrovertible point of reference and solid basis of a metaphysics and also for an anthropology and an ethics according to which “ens et bonum convertuntur [being and good are convertible].” Of course, all this has its own significance for theology as well, and above all for the theology of the body (John Paul II, TOB 2:5)."

It is interesting to note that the “Majority Report” of John XXIII’s birth control commission adopted the Baconian-Cartesian view of nature. Waldstein explains, when it "proposed the moral legitimacy of contraception, [it] emphatically and unequivocally embraces the Baconian program." The report contains this idea -- "The story of God and of man, therefore, should be seen as a shared work. And it should be seen that man’s tremendous progress in control of matter by technical means and the universal and total 'intercommunication' that has been achieved, correspond entirely [omnino] to the divine decrees." (see Waldstein on the Birth Control Commission, and the moderns here, pp 271-272.)


Waldstein continues with the thought of Blessed John Paul II: "Compare this submissive allegiance to the Baconian program with John Paul II’s prophetic warning in Evangelium vitae. 'Nature itself, from being 'mater' (mother), is now reduced to being “matter”, and is subjected to every kind of manipulation. This is the direction in which a certain tech- nical and scientific way of thinking, prevalent in present-day culture, appears to be lead- ing when it rejects the very idea that there is a truth of creation which must be acknowledged, or a plan of God for life which must be respected." §22. This text shows that John Paul II sees the issues of Humanae vitae in the context of the Baconian program. He penetrates to the core of 'a certain technical and scientific thinking' and identifies the blindness of such thinking to the very notion of a divine plan. He shows that the subjection of matter to every kind of manipulation is not only an ethical problem; it determines the deep structures of seeing and understanding nature."

John Paul II frequently made references to Cartesianism as a challenge to Christian theology. See my article on Descartes, here


In the remaining lessons of the workshop, Waldstein shows how the theology of body provides a phenomenological and concrete refutation of Cartesianism dualism and opens the way to a restoration of authentic human dignity.