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A Disembodied Critique

Answering objections to John Paul II's Theology of the Body

A few months ago, a colleague handed me an article he knew would interest me. The author was Luke Timothy Johnson, the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. (Johnson has also written the popular books The Real Jesus and The Living Jesus.) The article was entitled, “A Disembodied ‘Theology of the Body’: John Paul II on Love, Sex, & Pleasure” (Commonweal, January 26, 2001). In this article, Johnson gives his assessment of the Pope’s teaching on conjugal love, particularly as expressed in The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Pauline Books & Media, 1997), a collection of conferences on the subject given by the Holy Father. Johnson’s conclusion: “John Paul II’s work represents a mode of theology that has little to say to ordinary people because it shows so little awareness of ordinary life.”

As an ordinary person living an ordinary life to whom John Paul II’s teaching has much to say, I would like to suggest that Johnson has misunderstood and, as a consequence, misrepresented the Pope’s teaching. I propose that it is in fact Johnson’s article that is “disembodied,” and in three significant ways.

The Body of the Text

The first way is that Johnson does not pay careful attention to the body of the Pope’s text. For example, when he describes an apparent discrepancy between two of the Pope’s messages as one of the “internal contradictions” of the conferences, Johnson misunderstands the first message and therefore its relationship to the second. “[O]n October 1, 1980,” Johnson writes, “the pope declares that a husband cannot be guilty of ‘lust in his heart’ for his wife, but a week later, in the conference of October 8, he states confidently that even husbands can sin in this fashion.”

Had Johnson considered the October 1, 1980, message in its entirety, he would have seen that the Pope states that we cannot hold such a reductionist view of Christ’s words about “adultery in the heart.” “Nevertheless,” the Popes says, “good grounds for doubt remain as to whether this reasoning [i.e., that a husband cannot commit “adultery in his heart” with regard to his wife] takes into account all the.aspects of revelation. . . . We must admit that the interpretation presented, with all its objective correctness and logical precision, requires a certain amplification and, above all, a deepening.” This is because Christ has “made the moral evaluation of the desire depend above all on the personal dignity itself of the man and the woman” (The Theology of the Body 155–156). Then, in the October 10, 1980, message, the Pope provides this “amplification” and “deepening.”

Johnson is again careless with the body of the text itself in claiming that the creation account of Genesis 2 “must be joined to that in Genesis 1 if an adequate appreciation of what Jesus meant by ‘from the beginning’ (Matt. 19:8) is to be gained.” By this he implies that the Pope did not do so—or at least, in Johnson’s words, not “vigorously” enough.

Were he to reread the Pope’s treatment of Genesis 2, Johnson would see that the Pope not only joins the two creation stories but gives their connection significant treatment. “It can be said with certainty that the first chapter of Genesis has established an unassailable point of reference and a solid basis for a metaphysic and also for an anthropology and an ethic” (The Theology of the Body 29). The Pope goes on to say, “It could be said that Genesis 2 presents the creation of man especially in its subjective.aspect. Comparing both accounts, we conclude that this subjectivity corresponds to the objective reality of man created ‘in the image of God’” (30).

The Body of Teaching

The second way Johnson’s critique is “disembodied” is in his attempt to interpret the conferences gathered in The Theology of the Body apart from the whole body of John Paul II’s teaching. For example, the Pope’s theology of the body gets reduced to a mere consideration of sexuality in Johnson’s interpretation: “Do not sins of gluttony and drunkenness and sloth have as much to do with the body as fornication, and are not all the forms of avarice also dispositions of the body? Reducing a theology of the body to a consideration of sexuality falsifies the topic from the beginning.”

The truth is that even before speaking of a “theology of sex” in The Theology of the Body (which he defines as a theology of masculinity and femininity), the Pope states that “the body reveals man” and that “the theology of the body is bound up with the creation of man in the image of God” (47). This indicates that the theology of the body has a much broader scope than merely sexuality. In fact, in Veritatis Splendor (47–50) the Pope addresses this “broader scope” and shows how a “theology of the body” is essential to a proper understanding of human beings and moral action in general.

Johnson fails to consider the whole body of the Pope’s teaching once again when he suggests that the Pope doesn’t recognize the goodness of sexual pleasure: “I would welcome from the pope some appreciation for the goodness of sexual pleasure—any bodily pleasure come to think of it! Pleasure is, after all, God’s gift also. . . . Sexual passion, in papal teaching, appears mainly as an obstacle to authentic love.”

Johnson should reread The Theology of the Body 168–173, where John Paul discusses the erotic experience and demonstrates how it can be properly and positively understood. Johnson would do well also to pick up the John Paul II’s Love and Responsibility, written before he became pope. Here Cardinal Karol Wojtyla argues that we must avoid two extreme points of view with regard to sexual pleasure, what he calls the “rigorist (or puritanical) interpretation” and the “libidinistic interpretation” (57–66). The future pope clearly champions sexual pleasure as a good (37) and states that “the sexual urge is there for man to use” (52). However, he warns that this urge “must never be used in the absence of, or worse still, in a way which contradicts, love for the person” (52). That is, the sexual urge must never be used in a way that reduces the person to an object of use and a means to an end (21–44, 228; see also The Theology of the Body 150–152).

Johnson also accuses the Pope of reducing the two “significances” of the conjugal act—the procreative and the unitive—to a “single significance.” Once again, a more careful reading of John Paul II’s works proves the contrary. The Pope maintains the two significances (Letter to Families 12; Familiaris Consortio 28–29, 32; Reflections on Humanae Vitae 32–33), but he explains how they are inseparable and intimately connected.

This is why a couple, however unintentionally, reduce one another to objects of use and means to an end by attempting to isolate one or the other significance (Love and Responsibility 224–244). Such an attempt violates what the Pope calls the personalistic norm (Love and Responsibility 41), which finds concrete expression in Christ’s great commandment (Matt. 22:37–39). It is important to note that the Pope would also regard conjugal relations for the singular purpose of procreation as “using” one another (Love and Responsibility 58–60, 233).

The Body of Christ

Third, Johnson’s critique of John Paul II’s The Theology of the Body is “disembodied” in its separation from the Body of Christ: His conclusions contradict the constant Tradition of the Church. For example, Johnson creates a false dichotomy between “basic moral dispositions and single actions.” He argues, “[T]here is an important distinction to be maintained between basic moral dispositions and single actions. . . . The focus on each act of intercourse rather than on the overall dispositions of married couples is morally distorting.”

Pope John Paul II addresses this issue of the relationship between the disposition of a person and his acts in Veritatis Splendor: “Human acts are moral acts because they express and determine the goodness or evil of the individual who performs them. They do not produce a change merely in the state of affairs outside of man, but, to the extent that they are deliberate choices, they give moral definition to the very person who performs them, determining his profound spiritual traits” (VS 71, emphasis added; see also 65–83).

In other words, human acts have a self-determining character. While it is true that what we freely choose (our acts) flows from who we are (our dispositions/habits), it is equally true that what we freely choose makes us who we are. So a deliberate choiceto be closed to life in one conjugal act effects a new disposition in the souls of the man and the woman—namely, one opposed to life.

For this reason, there cannot be a “disposition-centered” moral theology that is separate from an “act-centered” moral theology. (This mistaken separation is precisely one of the errors Pope John Paul II works to overcome in Veritatis Splendor.) Since Johnson also suggests that the grave circumstances existing in some areas of the world or the good intentions of couple are sufficient for judging contraception as a good, it is important to note that “circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act ‘subjectively’ good or defensible as a choice” (VS 81).

In his assessment of the so-called “exceptive clause” for divorce found in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9, Johnson separates himself yet again from the Church’s Tradition on the indissolubility of marriage. He maintains that in The Theology of the Body Pope John Paul II “manages to use Matthew 19:3–9, on the question of marriage’s indissolubility, without ever adverting to the clause allowing divorce on the grounds of porneia (sexual immorality) in both Matthew 5:32 and 19:9. What does that exceptive clause suggest about the distance between the ideal ‘in the beginning’ evoked by Jesus, and the hard realities of actual marriages faced by the Matthean (and every subsequent) church?”

First, Jesus’ other statements about divorce prohibit it absolutely (Mark 10:11–12, Luke 16:18; see also 1 Cor. 7:10–11). Most scholars agree that these represent Jesus’ position on the subject.

Second, the “unlawfulness” (NAB) that Matthew proposes as a reason for divorce refers to a situation peculiar to his community—namely, the violation of the Mosaic law forbidding marriage between persons of certain blood or legal relationship (Lev. 18:6–18; see also footnote to Matthew 5:32 in The New American Bible). These “marriages” were regarded as incest or “prostitution” (Hebrew zenut; see also Acts 15:23–29). This is the specific and proper understanding of Matthew’s use of porneia, not sexual immorality or adultery in the broad sense as Johnson suggests. If this were the case a different word, moicheia, would have been used. It seems that some rabbis in Jesus’ time had allowed Gentile converts to Judaism to remain in such “marriages.” Matthew’s “exceptive clause” refuses such permissiveness for Gentile converts to Christianity specifically, and therefore does not constitute an exception when the marriage is lawful. (See the footnote to Matthew 5:32 in The New American Bible, the footnote to Matt. 19:9 in The New Jerusalem Bible, and The New Jerome Biblical Commentary 643). It is also important to note that since the “marriages” covered by Matthew’s “exceptive clause” were invalid or “unlawful,” a divorce was not granted per se, but rather a decree of nullity or annulment (The New Jerome Biblical Commentary 643).

Third, the indissolubility of a valid marriage between baptized persons (and therefore the prohibition of divorce and remarriage) has been the Church’s constant Tradition. It has been expressed by the magisterium in ecumenical councils (most recently Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes), in papal encyclicals and apostolic exhortations (e.g., Pope Pius XI’s Casti Connubii, Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, and Pope John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio), and in the catechisms produced with magisterial approval.

Johnson also clearly departs from Church Tradition in his position on contraception. Despite his belief that Humanae Vitae was a “flawed instrument,” a “pastoral and catechetical failure,” and “argumentatively inadequate,” it is a work of the ordinary magisterium and consistent with what the Church has taught throughout history. As such, it must be—at the least—accepted by the faithful with religious assent (Lumen Gentium 25, Catechism of the Catholic Church 892).

Besides, the popularity of a moral teaching is not the measure of its pastoral or catechetical “success,” nor whether or not it should be taught, nor the adequacy of its argumentation. If this were the case, Jesus’ teaching on the bread of life in John 6 would be a “pastoral and catechetical failure,” since because of it “many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him” (John 6:66). Paul VI foresaw that there would be opposition to his words (Humanae Vitae 18). Even so, he proclaimed the Church’s teaching with “humble firmness,” and history has proved him to be prophetic.

Beyond Disembodiment

Perhaps more troubling than the many intellectual difficulties in Johnson’s article is its tone. Noting the recent praise being given to the Pope’s teaching, Johnson asks the sarcastic question, “Have the rest of us missed out on a theological advance of singular importance?” He writes that he “recently devoted considerable time (and as much consciousness as he could muster)” to reading through the Pope’s work. He complains that the conferences are dense and difficult to read, so “what must they have been like to hear?” He bashes the Pope for intellectual arrogance and for asserting but not demonstrating. He suggests that the statements of the Pope and his apologists “continue to reveal the pervasive sexism obvious within the official church.” He implies that the Pope is prejudiced against homosexuals. He remarks, when criticizing the Pope’s alleged lack of concern for reality, that “an occasional glance toward human experience as actually lived may be appropriate, even for the magisterium.”

Johnson also rails against Pope Paul VI, accusing him of exercising his authority “not only apart from but also in opposition to the process of discernment” because the Pope spoke “in the face of the recommendations of his own birth-control commission” when he penned Humanae Vitae. This ignores the fact that the commission was strictly advisory. Its purpose was not to examine the moral licitness of contraception but to treat the specific questions of population growth and the birth-control pill. Also, as Pope Paul VI clearly explains in the encyclical, he disagreed with the commission’s findings precisely because it contradicted the Church’s constant teaching on marriage and conjugal love (Humanae Vitae 5–6).

It is apparent from his tone that Johnson has a bone to pick with the magisterium. His words often come across as condescending, sarcastic, and disrespectful. The article, far from being a thoughtful reflection, resembles a full frontal attack. This is irresponsible of him, both from the point of view of good scholarship and from the point of view of appropriate behavior for a Catholic theologian.

That Johnson has a flawed understanding of the Pope’s teaching on conjugal love should be clear. By failing to pay careful attention to the body of the text itself, by interpreting the Pope’s teaching in a single book apart from his whole body of teachings, and by drawing conclusions that contradict the Tradition of the Body of Christ, Luke Timothy Johnson has constructed a very “disembodied” critique of Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body.

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