The West-Schindler Debate Over Concupiscence in the Theology of the Body

David Delaney at the blog Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex has posted a summary of an article that will appear in the December Homiletic Pastoral and Review on the debate over the correct interpretation of concupiscence in John Paul II's Theology of the Body. I will give a few excerpts from the summary and then offer some comments from a Reformed, Evangelical perspective in red in between quotations.

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"The ongoing Theology of the Body debate between Christopher West and his critics (including Alice Von Hildebrand, David Schindler and Dawn Eden) is an important one. For those not familiar with it, I suggest reading David Schindler’s initial open letter, Christopher West’s public response and Dawn Eden’s thesis. West’s public response correctly identifies the primary issue; concupiscence. It, at least in part, underlies most of his critic’s concerns." [For those unfamiliar with this debate the above links are a good introduction. A bit of searching on Google, however, can lead to more relevant articles.]

"Schindler claims that West’s understanding of concupiscence is deficient because he neglects to understand “that concupiscence dwells ‘objectively’ in the body, and continues its ‘objective’ presence in the body throughout the course of our infralapsarian existence.” Eden explicitly quotes Schindler citing the same concern.

West admits he may have under emphasized the “fierce” and enduring nature of concupiscence in the past. Nevertheless, he doesn’t retreat from his emphasis that redemption brings about liberation from concupiscence, and for good reason. The words come from JPII. West points to 15 references in the TOB catecheses in support of this. Accordingly, one of West’s central themes is “mature purity.”

West believes mature purity excludes continence. Rather than turning away from temptations, it is an achievement in which one no longer need turn away." [West is here teaching something quite recognizable to anyone familiar with the Reformed tradition; we have encountered it before in the Wesleyan and Holiness traditions of sinless perfection.]

"West correctly interprets John Paul II’s demand that we can and must cooperate with grace in order to overcome concupiscent temptations. We have to demand self-mastery from ourselves in each and every temptation, explicitly demanding we orient our will toward the authentic good. For example, when tempted to reduce a woman to her sexual value because he notices the shape of her body, a man must demand of himself that he see and affirm her as created by God for her own sake. He must endeavor to recover the habitually threatened spousal meaning of the body (TOB 32:3). West rightly emphasizes this point." [John Paul II, in his section: "The 'Heart': Accused or Called?" (pp. 301-321) rightly emphasizes the fact that Jesus calls us to sanctification rather than simply using the law to lay bare our sin, guilt and need of grace. From a Reformed perspective, we would say he is embracing what Calvin called the "third use of the law," that is, as an aid to living a holy life.]

"In general, West is correct about that which John Paul explicitly teaches in this regard. However, I think that he seriously errs when he leaves JPII’s explicit words to concretely apply TOB. . . . Ultimately, West’s view about liberation from continence contradicts Catholic tradition; something John Paul II never does. Rather, John Paul synthesizes the tradition with new insights from phenomenological personalism, though mature purity is not a new insight. It is an articulation of St. Thomas Aquinas’s anthropology." [I think Delaney is exactly right in drawing this conclusion.]

[Here Delaney clarifies the difference between John Paul II and West. Note carefully:] "What John Paul II actually means by liberation is from the “constraint of the body” which arises with the advent of concupiscence (TOB 32:2). The constraint of concupiscence makes authentic total self-gift virtually impossible (TOB 32:6). He also uses constraint to describe the instinct of animals who cannot but follow their urges (TOB 14:6). Something like constraint to instincts is what happens to the man of concupiscence. This constraint is insuperable until the advent of Redemption. However, liberation from this constraint is not the same as near immunity from concupiscence for those who have become “pure” as West puts it.

John Paul holds to tradition saying that “immediate continence,” together with self-mastery and habitual temperance are all simultaneously needed to live the ethos of redemption (see TOB 49:4, 53:5). Continence is “a definite and permanent moral attitude, …a virtue” (TOB 124:4; emphasis mine). He doesn’t say continence can ever be set aside." [There is a huge difference between saying that, in this life, we can overcome the tug of concupiscence and make the sincere gift of the self to the spouse, on the one hand, and saying that we can, in this life, become free of the tug of concupiscence altogether. One is victorious Christian living by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit; the other is sinless perfection. Note: what I am calling "victorious Christian living" does not involve the disappearance of temptation; it involves deliverance from the power of sin but not the presence of sin. The freedom from concupiscence that West talks about is not part of the progressive sanctification, but part of glorification (or final, competed sanctification), which happens only at death or the return of Christ and involves having a resurrected, glorified body. It is not that what West wants is not part of salvation; it is just that it is unattainable in this life. If Delaney is right in his arguments, the upshot is that John Paul II is closer to the Reformed doctrine of sanctification than to the Wesleyan-Holiness doctrine, as well as being a good Thomist, as Delaney stresses.]

A final comment is that my Reformed position is informed by the Evangelical stress on the transformation of character and so is closer to that of Jonathan Edwards than to certain strands of the Reformed tradition which are highly suspicious of experience and reject revivalism. This makes me closer to John Paul II than some Reformed theologians, but not closer to the Wesleyan-Arminian-Holiness tradition, as I hope this discussion shows.

Interview on Contraception

The Interim, Canada's Life and Family Newspaper, recently interviewed me on the subject of contraception. The interview is available on their website as "A Baptist's Opposition to Contraception." Joseph Jalsevac was the interviewer and he had great questions. I think the interview is a good beginning point for anyone who wants to reflect on contraception as a moral issue.

A Review of "Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II's Theology of the Body"

Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II's Theology of the Body by Carl Anderson and Jose Granados (Doubleday, 2009) takes a unique approach to John Paul II's Theology of the Body by using John Paul's poetry and plays as a way of illustrating the major themes of the Theology of the Body. Anyone familiar with the outline of Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body will recognize that the book follows the outline of John Paul's work without directly quoting from it extensively. Instead there is constant reference to his poetry, especially Roman Triptych, and the major plays, especially The Jeweler's Shop and Radiation of Fatherhood.

This book is readable and even lyrical in its beauty at times. It does not presuppose knowledge of John Paul's other writings, but introduces the main themes in an accessible and enticing manner. Thus, it functions as a fine introduction to the Theology of the Body.

But there is something here also for the reader who is already familiar with the Theology of the Body. The authors are to be commended for demonstrating how deeply rooted are John Paul's ethical, philosophical and theological writings in his early literary thought. One result of reading this book is the gaining of an appreciation for the integration in John Paul's thought between his literary and his more abstract, scholarly thought.

Highly recommended.

The TOB #5: Sanctification and Purity of Heart

In this post, I want to look at John Paul II's teaching on sanctification and life in the Spirit. This was one of the aspects of his theology that most surprised me as an Evangelical when I read it for the first time. He sounds just like an Evangelical calling for personal holiness and grounds his appeal in Galatians 5 and the work of the Spirit in the hearts of Christians.

In Chapter Two, Christ Appeals to the Human Heart, John Paul II bases his teaching on Christ's words in the Sermon on the Mount where he says that the lustful look is committing adultery in the heart (Matt. 5:27-28). But instead of understanding this verse negatively only, John Paul II also sees in it not merely condemnation of the sinful heart of man, but also a call to purity of heart.

This focus on the attitudes toward the woman and not merely on external actions opens up the possibility of having a change of mind and heart in which we no longer objectify a woman for her potential to gratify our desires, but rather relate to her as a person whom we love for her own sake. Instead of fearing or loathing erotic desires, John Paul II follows St. Augustine in seeking to discipline them and re-direct them into marriage. This is the opposite of Manicheanism because it links purity of heart with the love of the spouse, rather than with the suppression of desire. One of his section headings reveals this emphasis: "Purity - 'Keeping the Passions Away' or 'Keeping the Body with Holiness and Reverence'?" (p. 340)

In Part 6 "Purity as Life According to the Spirit" John Paul II deals with the meaning of "body" and "Spirit" in Paul's writings and concludes that what Paul means by "flesh" in Gal. 5 is not the bodily part of man with its passions, but rather the "man 'interiorly' subjected to the world" (331), that is, the man whose heart is subject to the "concupiscence that comes from the world." (330) He writes: "The man who lives 'according to the flesh (sarx)' is the man disposed only to that which comes 'from the world': he is the man of the 'senses,' the man of the three-fold concupiscence." (331) It is not merely a matter of the fact of the bodily passions existing, rather it is a matter of the inner man, in his "heart," desiring to live sinfully by giving in to bodily passions against the will of God or, in John Paul II's terms drawing on Paul, going against "what the Spirit wants." (332)

John Paul II sketches out how it is the power of Jesus Christ himself working through his Spirit that enables the Christian to live a life of integrity and victory over sin. The life in the Spirit is a matter of what John Paul II calls "the anthropological and ethical realism of the redemption brought about by Christ, whic Paul . . . also calls the 'redemption of the body.'" (335) It is significant that in talking about the works of the flesh which are overcome by the Spirit's power, Paul mentions many sexual sins including fornication, impurity, licentiousness, etc. These are actually, says John Paul II, sins of the human spirit, rather than sins of the flesh and the work of ths Spirit sets us free from slavery to them.

In his discussion of the fruit of the Spirit, John Paul II says "we should consider and above all realize evangelical purity, that is, purity of the heart according to the measure of that freedom for which Christ 'has set us free.'" (338) One aspect of this freedom that will become significant in the discussion of natural family planning is the fruit of the Spirit called "self-control." John Paul II equates "self-mastery" with "continence" and "self-control." Although Paul does not refer to the Greek virtue of temperance, nevertheless the meaning of purity in Paul's thought as a result of the work of the Spirit in the life of the believer is very close to the meaning of temperance in the tradition. (341)

One last quote: "Since 'purity' should be understood as the right way of treating the sexual sphere, depending on one's personal state of life (and not necessarily absolute abstinence from sexual life, such 'purity' is doubtlessly included in the Pauline concept of 'mastery or enkrateia." (341) Here John Paul II clarifies and deepens the traditional understanding of sex within marriage as being in no sense a concession or venal sin, but rather as inherently good in and of itself. Therefore the married person can be sanctified just as much as the consecrated celibate and the participation in sexual union with one's lawful spouse in no way compromises or reduces purity of heart - which is what Jesus calls for in the Sermon on the Mount and what Paul teaches is the work of the Spirit in Galatians 5.

My previous post on the Theology of the Body can be accessed here:

The TOB #1: Teaching John Paul II to Evangelicals
The TOB #2: The Rejection of Modern Dualism
The TOB #3: Comparing TOB to Evangelical Theology
The TOB #4: Scripture and Metaphysics

Theology of the Body #4: Scripture and Metaphysics

This is #4 in an occasional series on John Paul II's Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body.

One of the distinctive features of John Paul II's theology of the body is the way he combines philosophical sophistication in both contemporary phenomenology and also Thomism with expertise in biblical theology. John Paul II occasionally engages in detailed exegesis in TOB but he constantly engages with the text of Scripture; his method is more synthetic than analytical.

He is doing biblical theology by interpreting texts in the context of Scripture as a whole, rather than focusing on placing the text against the backdrop of the historical situation in which it was written (or edited). He is not against historical exegesis, the literal meaning or the historical-critical method, but his goal is to understand the canonical witness as a whole in terms of what it says about human sexuality and marriage. In this respect he stands very clearly in a tradition that extends back through Barth, Calvin, Luther, Thomas, Augustine and Athanasius.

Genesis 1-2 as Basis for a Philosophical Anthropology
In Part I, John Paul begins with Christ's words in Matt. 19 in reply to the Pharisees' question about divorce in which he directed them back to Gen. 1-2 to discern the truest and deepest intention of God concerning marriage. In this post, I want to examine how he grounds a Thomistic metaphysical doctrine of the human person in Gen. 1-2. Protestants may not be used to using biblical theology to under gird a metaphysics, and certainly not a Thomistic one, but that is the Pope's project here.

The second (older) creation narrative is the Yahwist account (named thus because it uses the covenant name for God revealed to Moses in Ex. 3:14)

“One can say that this depth is above all subjective in nature & thus in some way psychological. . . When we compare the two accounts, we reach the conviction that this subjectivity corresponds to the objective reality of man created ‘in the image of God’” (TOB, p. 137)

So JP II is saying that Gen 2 explains what Gen 1 means by our having been created in God’s image. What JP II is doing here is seeking to root his Christian anthropology in metaphysical reality, rather than in human reason or will. The truth about marriage is thus rooted in the ontological nature of man as created in God’s image. He is saying that Jesus, in appealing to ‘the beginning’ was rooting the truth of historical man (i.e. our experience of fallenness) in the boundary between primeval innocence and historical man’s consciousness of sin. Gen. 2 deals with the boundary (and connection) between original innocence & original sin, the state of integral nature and the state of fallen nature.

Modern Subjectivity
In his penetrating study of Wojtyla, Kenneth Schmitz argues that the most significant challenge to which Wojtyla’s personalism responds is a certain understanding of personal subjectivity and interiority that gained wide currency in the modern age. A particular emphasis on subjectivity, Schmitz shows, emerged from the sixteenth century onward together with the rise of a mechanistic account of nature.” (At the Center of the Human Drama, p. 131-7) Schmitz writes:

“The mechanistic account of human nature in the wake of Bacon & Descartes denied the interiority of material beings and consequently the kinship of the human person with the subrational natural cosmos. Alone in an inhospitable world that had been deprived of inner meaning, the freedom of the conscious subject becomes ‘absolute,’ detached from sources of meaning: ‘This, then, is the genesis of the modern sense of self as subjectivity. We might say that subjectivity is the self-defense by which consciousness fends off a world either hostile to its inhabitation or at least without companionate room for it, even while consciousness subverts the integrity of that world by its imperious demands. The modern shift gave to the human subject an absolute status precisely in its character qua consciousness; for human consciousness not only sets its own terms but the terms for reality itself.” (Kenneth Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, pp. 135-6)

JP II versus Modern Subjectivity
He is saying 2 things in response to modern subjectivity:

1. That metaphysics cannot be rejected so easily as modernity thinks because man is a being whose historical existence is rooted in revealed, pre-historical theological truth

2. That the metaphysical truth of who man is is rooted in Genesis, (i.e. in the Word of God), not in mere philosophical speculation, which means that Christians cannot accept modern subjectivity with its starting point in the autonomous subject. This is so because Jesus drew a normative conclusion about our historical existence from our original state.

So we have a biblical-theological basis for a philosophical anthropology which is identical with the Thomist view of man. John Paul II rejects the modern dualism of mind and body and roots his understanding of subjectivity, not in the mind as opposed to the body as modern Cartesian philosophy does, but in the body itself, which speaks a language of its own and is not merely the tool of the person, but is the person.

This rooting of anthropology in biblical theology allows John Paul II to transcend the modern dualism and yet, at the same time, to give a personalist account of the human being that incorporates what is good about the modern emphasis on subjectivity and what we could call the integrated personhood of the human person.

The Theology of the Body #3: Comparing TOB to Evangelical Theology

Before we dive into the exegetical and theological meat of TOB, I thought I should make a few observations about the way in which the whole structure of the TOB is different from liberal Protestant and, increasingly, much of Evangelical Protestant theological writing about marriage. This difference is what makes so many Evangelicals so open to John Paul II's thought when they encounter it for themselves.

Let us take two books by Evangelicals that represent a conservative and a not-so-conservative approach. First, consider God, Marriage and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation by Adreas J. Kostenberger with David Jones (Crossway, 2004). This book has the advantage of being very biblical in its approach and certainly takes the "correct" conservative position on many issues.

It attempts to be comprehensive and begins with chapters that deal with marriage in the OT, marriage in the NT, the nature of marriage, family in the OT, family in the NT and then two chapters on special topics relating to family: the issue of having or not having children (contraception, abortion, artificial reproductive technologies and adoption) and the issue of parenting methods. Then it turns to question of singleness as a divine gift, homosexuality as the abandonment of natural relations, divorce and family-related qualifications for church leadership for husbands.

This book reminds me of Millard Erickson's Systematic Theology in that it is hard to criticize the substance of his theology all that much but it is written in such a plodding style that it fails to engage any but the most determined reader. It also fails utterly to engage with the Catholic moral theology of marriage and treats the Catholic view as one of the rival views along with secularism and liberal Protestantism.

This book does have the following significant strengths, however. First, it deals somewhat seriously with the issue of contraception, rather than simply ignoring it as a non-issue, and it does condemn types of contraception that really cause early abortions. It does not, however, relate the contraceptive mentality to increasing social acceptance of homosexuality, although it does condemn contraception outside of marriage. Secondly, it makes a good case for viewing marriage as a covenant, rather than a contract, which is a beginning in critiquing modern deformations of marriage. It builds a positive view of what marriage is and then evaluates deviations from this norm, rather than beginning from contemporary human experience of sexual lifestyles as so many books do, including the next one we are about to consider.

Judith K. Balswick and Jack O. Balswick are professors in the School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary and they have written Authentic Human Sexuality: An Integrated Christian Approach (IVP, 2nd ed., 2008). The very structure of this book gives away its perspective. The book is divided into three sections: the origin and structure of sexuality, authentic sexuality and inauthentic sexuality. The choice of a theraeuptic term like "authentic," rather than an theological term like "responsible" or "natural" or a term like "biblical" is soon revealed to be no mistake or oversight. The method at work in the book is clearly to move from contemporary experience to theological conclusions and the goal is to bring Scripture into alignment with the best of "modern experience."

Significantly, homosexuality is not placed in the "Inauthentic Sexuality" section of the book, but in the first section on the origin and formation of sexuality. The Balswicks claim that there are only five passages in the Bible that are relevant to homosexuality and the only significant exegetical work done in the book is an attempt to explain these passages away. For example, the prohibitions in the Holiness Code in Leviticus are discounted because "Christ came to abolish the law" (p. 118) [They might want to re-read Matt. 5:17 again, which says the opposite!] They argue that I Corinthians 6:9-10 only condemns sexual relationships in which there is a significant power differential (such as between men and boys), thus implying that adulterous and homosexual relationships would be considered by Paul (and the Holy Spirit) to be fine as long as the people involved were close in age and status. There is no point in continuing to examine the dreary rehashing of the appallingly lame and inaccurate liberal arguments that they present (without refutation by Evangelical interpreters) in this highly unfortunate chapter.

By the time they get to the end of the chapter, the reader is prepared for them to say that they therefore advocate the acceptance of homosexual acts as normal and good, but they pull back at the last minute and do not do so. But they don't have to; they have already made the argument and any reader who is convinced by their writing will draw the conclusion for himself.

One interesting thing to note is that the Balswicks have managed to write a 300 page book on sexuality without hardly so much as mentioning children. One would never know from their book that sex often results in babies and that it is the means by which we all got here. They do have a whole chapter on "maximizing sexual fulfillment," however, which meshes with their therapeutic approach. And they spend a chapter puzzling over whether or not pre-marital sex and cohabitation is good, bad or indifferent. They finally conclude that the Church should "offer grace over law." (p. 178) While recognizing the negative effects of cohabitation, they find themselves agonizing to take a clear position that is counter-cultural.

The interesting thing to note in comparing the two books is that the only one that takes Scripture seriously also takes a complementarian, rather than an egalitarian, stand on the role of husband and wife in marriage. Only those Evangelicals who actually oppose secular feminism are, apparently, able to take a counter cultural stance on marriage and family issues. This gives a person who wants to take a pro-feminist and anti-same sex marriage postion some cause for discomfort. It is clear that the Balswicks and those influenced by them are moving rapidly in the direction of a secular view of marriage as basically a matter of sex and mutuality without any relevance to children. Such a view of heterosexual marriage makes it nearly impossible to assert logically that two men cannot "marry" in this sense just as well as a man and a woman can.

Unless marriage is understood as an inter-generational institution designed for the raising, nurture, education and Christian formation of children, it is going to be impossible to resist the cultural pressure to accept homosexual "marriage." And if the experience of modern feminists is enough to overthrow "patriarchial" approaches to marriage, the same experience-based methodology will inevitably lead to the acceptance, not only of same-sex "marriage" but to the expansion of the term "marriage" to cover all sorts of deviant sexual relationships.

In the TOB, the method John Paul II employs is to utilize phenomenology in such a way as to keep it firmly subordinated to the authority of Scripture by rejecting modern, gnostic, philosophical anthropologies and allowing the biblical vision of Genesis, as reiterated by Jesus, to shape the substance of his moral theology of marriage including his understanding of human sexuality. John Paul II begins by allowing Scripture to inform our theology of marriage and then he only deals with deviations from the norm after the substance of a theology is firmly in place.

Kostenberger also takes biblical exegesis seriously, but I agree with the reaction of my students in my Marriage in Theological Perspective class in viewing John Paul II's handling of Scripture as having far more depth and seriousness than Kostenberger's. In reflecting on why this is so, I think that it is because John Paul II's critique of modern philosophical assumption about anthropology is much more profound and penetrating with the result that he is able to challenge the shallow modern view of man as individual and replace it with a Trinitarian understanding of the image of God in man (which he derives from Karl Barth).

John Paul II structures the TOB around three statements by Jesus in the Gospels. First, there is the story in Matt. 19 in which he appeals to the beginning. In reply to the question of why Moses allowed divorce, Jesus directs his interlocutors back to God's original design for marriage as found in Gen. 1-2. He thus grounds permanent, procreative, loving marriage as closely related to the image of God and as rooted in creation.

Second, John Paul II deals with the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount in which Christ makes clear that the adulterous look is as bad as adultery, which clarifies both that our sexuality is fallen and that this falleness leads directly to objectification and lust. John Paul II interprets the teaching of our Lord here in the light of the Spirit-flesh struggle as described by Paul in Galatians and views Jesus as calling us to a life of holiness and self-control. Lust is something that can disfigure even a marital relationship and control of our sexual urges is necessary for the total gift of self in marriage that makes sexual union a personal act.

Third, John Paul II considers the words of Jesus in response to the question of the Sadducees as to whose wife the woman with seven husbands would be in the resurrection. Jesus here tells us that although we will still be male and female in our resurrected bodies, we will not participate in marriage as we know it here in this life. Thus, Jesus points us toward our eschatological destiny to be married to Jesus Christ as the bride of Christ and he alerts us to the provisional, anticipatory nature of marriage as we know it.

Then, fourthly, John Paul II turns to Paul's great analogy of marriage as a pointer to the relationship of Christ and his Church in Ephesians 5 and to the prefiguring of this in the Song of Songs. The importance of human marriage here and now is not limited to the satisfaction and well-being of the husband and wife; rather, it is so important because it signifies and is a figure of the relationship of God and Israel, Christ and the Church and the soul and God. Marriage is built into creation, marred by the Fall and a key aspect of the redemption that has already begun in the Spirit and will be carried forward to completion in the Resurrection.

It is only when the full theological significance of marriage is seen that its ultimate beauty and seriousness can be appreciated. The Balswick's book represents a lamentable falling away from the Christian understanding of marriage and sexuality with its shallow, modern, experience-based, therapeutic approach. The question Evangelical theologians need to ponder is whether there is enough depth and serious theological substance in books like that of Kostenberger to prevent Evangelicalism from sliding into liberalism. I fear that there is not, which is why I thank God for the witness of John Paul II and the tremendous deepening and development of the tradition that he provides us in his Theology of the Body.

The Theology of the Body #2: The Rejection of Modern Dualism

One of the main themes running through John Paul II's TOB (Theology of the Body) is the rejection of modern gnostic tendencies that are enshrined in modern philosophy, twisted in Romanticism, implemented in technology and finally worshiped in liberal theology. It is, after all, a theology of the body. But why does John Paul II put it this way? Why call it a theology of the body? I think there are many reasons one could point to in answer to this question, but let me just suggest two in the space of this blog post.

The Biblical Doctrine of Creation as the Foundation of Biblical Theology
First, John Paul II's project is a theological anthropology grounded in the doctrine of creation. God created man as a body-soul complex and the body is neither incidental to our true nature nor dispensable. We are our bodies. So John Paul II can speak of the "language of the body" as if the body was a person - because it is. I am my body and I speak through my body; this is what is behind the common phrase "body language." How if fidget, whether I make eye contact, what I do with my hands - all these things are part of the way "I" communicate. The person who is Craig Carter is a body and this fact is the reason why physical death is so unnatural and so fearsome; we rightly fear death because we fear the disintegration of the person as the body dies. We do not take lightly the loss of our bodies for the very good reason that we are our bodies and we are therefore talking about the loss of self.

For John Paul II, the Bible is a unified revelation that speaks to the way we are, what is wrong with us and how we can become what we were created to become. He finds a teleological understanding of human being not only in reason, but in Divine revelation. The Bible begins with the marriage of Adam and Eve and ends with the marriage supper of the Lamb. The heart of the Bible is the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

In the OT the relationship between Yahweh and Israel is compared to that between a bride and her husband and in the NT the relationship between Christ and the Church is compared to that of a bridegroom and bride. Near the physical center of Scripture is the Song of Songs, about which John Paul II thinks everybody is right. He thinks that the Fathers and the mystics who treated it as an allegory of the relationship of the soul to God were right on one level. But he also has sympathy for modern Evangelical literalists who interpret it as Middle Eastern love poetry and argue that God must not be embarrassed by sexual joy. John Paul II thinks it is about that too. And those who, like Barth, see it as linking the old and new covenants by foreshadowing the relationship between Christ and the Church in the context of the prophetic teaching on marriage as the relationship between the LORD and Israel are also right. Bodies do just fine, John Paul II thinks, as analogies for the Divine human relationship.

The point is that the Bible has an awful lot to say about bodies. Those who think it is a "spiritual" book are not wrong but bodies have spiritual significance and any sort of body-spirit dualism that says that one has little or nothing to do with the other does not understand biblical spirituality. For John Paul II, our bodies are at the center of God's creative activity, they are fallen as a result of sin, yet the image of God is not destroyed by sin and God is at work to redeem our bodies, a process which one day will culminate in the resurrection of the body into a glorious new divinized, spiritualized, glorified order of existence. The Bible, one might say with little exaggeration, for John Paul II, is all about bodies.

The Biblical Doctrine of Creation as the Basis for the Rejection of Modern Philosophical Anthropology
The second reason it is called a theology of the body is that John Paul II is here attempting to provide an alternative to the modern philosophical anthropology that has become dominant since Descartes.

For early modern philosophers like Bacon and Descartes the quest for power over nature was extremely important and a new concept of subjectivity was developed in which a dualism was created between the self, the consciousness, which was exalted to a divine status, and, on the other hand, the body, which was regarded as part of a mechanistic nature subject to the mechanical laws of nature described by Newton. So humans are, in this dualistic understanding, immaterial centers of consciousness, which are free, and bodies, which are subject to impersonal laws of physics. Here is an extended quote from philosopher Kenneth Schmitz, describing the situation that John Paul II faced:

"The mechanistic account of human nature in the wake of Bacon and Descartes denied the interiority of material beings & consequently the kinship of the human person with the subrational natural cosmos. Alone in an inhospitable world that had been deprived of inner meaning, the freedom of the conscious subject becomes ‘absolute,’ detached from sources of meaning: ‘This, then, is the genesis of the modern sense of self as subjectivity. We might say that subjectivity is the self-defense by which consciousness fends off a world either hostile to its inhabitation or at least without companionate room for it, even while consciousness subverts the integrity of that world by its imperious demands. The modern shift gave to the human subject an absolute status precisely in its character quaconsciousness; for human consciousness not only sets its own terms but the terms for reality itself.” (Kenneth Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, pp. 135-6)

So, in modernity, the non-material center of consciousness is sovereign, rational and free but the body is not.

John Paul II's TOB is an attempt to put the human creature back together on the basis of the biblical doctrine of creation. Man is a body-soul complex, not a dualistic mind somehow connected to a physical body (the mind-body problem of modern philosophy). John Paul II is a Thomist so he does not accept modern philosophy, but in TOB he is not concerned to replace modern philosophical anthropology with a Thomist anthropology; rather, he is concerned to appeal to the doctrine of creation as discovered through biblical exegesis. John Paul II has this weird idea that Thomism is actually biblical and that God has created the world and revealed truth about the world that actually cohere! (See Veritatis Splendor, Par. 44-45 and the work of Matthew Levering, especially his recent Biblical Natural Law (Oxford, 2008).

So for John Paul II, unlike modern dualism, the body is as much an aspect of the person as the mind is. We are as much bodies as we are minds. Of course, the account of sin given in Scripture reveals that we experience a lack of cohesion as persons under the conditions of the fall, and modern dualism is a reflection of that sinful disintegration (which is one reason sin and death are so closely related in Pauline theology, for example). But we were created as unified, coherent beings and our redemptive destiny is reintegration. So Christian theology cannot follow modern philosophy into a dualism in which the body becomes basically as tool of the self, a means by which the self acts in the world but not really the true self. Christian theology, in order to be biblical and reform modern distortions, must therefore be a theology of the body.

For moderns, it is easy to see how the body becomes a despised tool of the self; modern use their bodies to achieve their goals but the body is just ultimately a part of nature. For John Paul II, on the other hand, the body has all the dignity of the person. We should respect our bodies and express ourselves through our bodies rather than using our bodies. The modern tendency for people to "use" each other's bodies for fleeting pleasure is thus preceded by the habit of using their own bodies in that manner. In the TOB bodies are too important to use as tools, manipulate with technology and treat impersonally as means rather than as ends.

How all this relates to personhood will be the subject of a following post.

Evangelicals and the Contraceptive Mentality

In teaching the Marriage course last semester at Tyndale I encountered no opposition of any kind to the fact that I assigned as my main text John Paul II's Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. The students liked it and no one from the administration or other faculty expressed any concern. Now, I'm well aware of the fact that my fortunate situation is not replicated on all Evangelical campuses. I was talking to a friend at another Evangelical liberal arts college who has witnessed significant anti-Catholicism, including prejudice against Natural Family Planning and the TOB (Theology of the Body).

The TOB in an Evangelical Context
There are two reasons why someone might be concerned about someone teaching TOB in an Evangelical context. One arises from anti-Catholic sentiment and the other from a liberal accommodation to the sexual revolution. I submit that the former is not so much of a concern in most Evangelical liberal arts colleges; there might well be opposition to hiring a Roman Catholic professor, but not to reading Catholic books. This is especially true in philosophy and moral theology, where the major theological differences between Evangelicals and Roman Catholics are not so prominent.

On the other hand, the real likelihood of opposition to the TOB comes from Evangelicals who have embraced aspects of the sexual revolution, second wave feminism and relatively liberal views of Scripture. The problem with John Paul II, in their view, is not that he is Roman Catholic, but rather that he is conservative. If a Protestant advocated the views on sexual morality taught in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, he would be rejected just as quickly as the Pope.

Embracing the Contraceptive Mentality
Are Evangelicals embracing the contraceptive mentality? I consider the contraceptive mentality (which I will define in a moment) to be the heart of the anti-Christian sexual revolution that has spread over the Western world during the past century and especially since the 1960s. The contraceptive mentality is a view of human sexuality that is uniquely modern and which views the meaning of sexual activity as having nothing essential to do with procreation. The separation of sexual activity from procreation means the separation of sex from children and, ultimately, from marriage. When sexual activity is detached from reproduction, women are objectifyed as sex objects by which the lusts of men can be satisfied.

The Pill plays a big role in this objectifying because it makes women available every day of the month and the monthly cycle that differentiates women from men becomes irrelevant to woman's sexual identity. Natural Family Planning works around the monthly cycle and makes family planning a joint project in which a woman's body is respected rather than medicated and mutilated.

The sexual revolution makes pleasure (in the sense of the physical and psychological sense of well-being that is derived from sexual intercourse) central to the meaning of sex. In the traditional view of marriage, pleasure is a by product of sexual activity but not its meaning. Procreation is the meaning and sex is designed to conceive children and also to bind the husband and wife together is a mutual relationship of love, which creates the ideal environment for the nurture, care, education and raising of children.

When pleasure becomes the main meaning of sex, the marriage becomes a matter of what each person gets out of it. It is a contract for the mutual use of each other's bodies for pleasure and when the pleasure ceases the relationship loses its purpose. It is the genius of John Paul II's TOB to join together the two purposes of sexuality, procreation and mutuality, into one thing. The problem with Evangelicals today is not just that they have accepted contraception; the greater problem is that in doing so they have allowed the use of artificial contraception to alter their understanding of the meaning of human sexuality.

The contraceptive mentality makes the woman continuously available for sex and removes the need for periodic continence. It thus has a negative and a positive effect. Negatively, it removes the necessity for husbands and wives to develop the virtue of self-control, which is a fruit of the Spirit. Positively, it puts the focus on pleasure as the heart of the sexual relationship instead of procreation. Thus, contraception trains us to think of sex as a "need" and as something good "in itself" (i.e. detached from its procreative purpose). The result is that sex becomes a "power," that is, a good structure of creation that bursts its boundaries and becomes an idol by assuming too much importance in and of itself.

The TOB does not have a negative view of sexual activity; on the contrary, it views the sexual relationship between husband and wife as having dignity and purity when it serves its natural end - the conception of children and the binding together of husband and wife as the foundation of the home in which those children can be nurtured with the love that parents naturally lavish on their own offspring.

The TOB does not say that sex has no purpose other than conceiving children - as if a couple with four children should only have had intercourse a handful of times in 20 years. But the TOB wisely teaches that sex for pleasure's sake reduces sex to a trivial recreation and deprives it of its power, its beauty and its seriousness.

The contraceptive mentality is not simply a natural law debate about the morality of a single act of intercourse; it is a vision of human sexuality which is shallow and depersonalizing. The implications of the contraceptive mentality are seen in the fact that when it has a chance to develop and become dominant in a society that society loses its ability to understand why homosexual "marriage" is not "just as good" as heterosexual marriage.

Conclusion
If Evangelicals do not recover the traditional understanding of marriage as an inter-generational institution that revolves around the raising and educating of the children by parents (and grandparents), then we will lose our ability to resist the sexual revolution and all its poison fruit (divorce, cohabitation, homosexuality, promiscuity, etc.)

I do not see how we can balance forever between the traditional and the revolutionary views accepting part of both and yet ever so slowly drifting toward the modern view. Evangelicals must reject the contraceptive mentality if they wish to build strong families and resist of acids of modernity that threaten to dissolve all human relationships into contracts that create shallow relationships and temporary "family structures" instead of the natural family built on a covenant between husband and wife, a covenant that is enacted and re-enacted in every act of marriage.

So it begins . . .

The line is from The Return of the King (Gandalf on the walls of Minas Tirith, for anyone who does not readily recognize quotes from the greatest work of fiction in the 20th century).

In my predictions (the ink on which is scarcely dry - or whatever the digital equivalent of that old saying is), I predicted that in 2010 Evangelicals (among others) would begin the process of receiving the John Paul II's Theology of the Body. Four days into 2010, BIOLA graduate Matthew Lee Anderson announces on his blog Mere Christianity that he has just signed a contract to write a book for Bethany House called Body Matters: Overcoming the New Gnosticism of Young Evangelicals in which he states his intention to interact extensively with Roman Catholic moral theology and John Paul II's theology of the body in particular.

The influence of John Paul the Great on Dale Keuhne (Sex and the iWorld: Rethinking Relationship beyond an Age of Individualism - Baker, 2009) is obvious, although it is not referred to explicitly so far as I can see. And it is clear that the theology of the body is becoming known in a small circle of Evangelicals who have come to love the Great Tradition, but it is still only a cloud in the sky. If anyone knows of other works by Evangelicals that interact with the TOB, I would greatly appreciate it if you could let me know in the comments section.

And stay tuned for the revolt against the revolution - an undertaking as audacious and ridiculous as Aragorn and his companions riding up to the Black Gate and demanding the surrender of the Dark Lord. But like Aragorn and his friends, we well know that victory, if it should come, will not come by our power and strength.

The Theology of the Body #1: Teaching John Paul II to Evangelicals

One of my predictions for the new year was that appreciation for John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" would grow among Evangelicals, as well as among all conservative Christians including Eastern Orthodox, Confessional Protestants, etc. A couple of comments call for some further discussion of this prediction. I intend to post regularly throughout the year on the TOB, but I want to start off by recounting my experience this past semester.

I taught a new course, RLGS 3943 Marriage in Theological Perspective, this past semester and I had 23 students in the course. Seven were married and several were engaged and all were very interested in the course; it was a pure elective for most.

My working assumption was that we are all bombarded with the sexual revolution and the liberal view of sex, marriage and family every day and so the course content was to examine the only two serious alternatives to the liberal view, which is now the establishment view in the West, namely conservative Evangelicalism and the TOB. We used a book by Andreas Kostenberger called God, Marriage and Family for the first few weeks and then studied Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body by John Paul II. Each student also did a review of a different book and made presented a 10-15 minute presentation on the book to the class.

Here is a sample of the books we read:

1. Pornified - Pamela Pauls (a non-Christian journalist examines pornography in the Internet age)

2. Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student - by Miriam Grossman (originally published anonymously out of fear of reprisals)

3. You're Teaching My Child What? A Physican Exposes the Lies of Sex Education and How They Harm Your Child by Miriam Grossman (a look at the philosophy of SIECUS and Planned Parenthood and how they are influencing public education)

4. The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It by Philip Longman (a counter intuitive, but convincing study using UN data)

5. Omnigender: A Trans-Religious Approach by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott (a glimpse into the long term agenda of the pansexual movement by a cross-dressing, lesbian English professor who started out as an Evangelical)

6. Return to Modesty and The Good Girl Revolution by Wendy Shalit (two books by a young, Jewish graduate of Wellsley who thinks the pendulum is about start swinging back)

7. The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: The 25 Year Landmark Study by Judith Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis and Sandra Blakeslee (one of the few studies of the longterm effects of divorce)

8. Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family by Lee Silver (a fascinating exercise in futurology by a Princeton bioethicist and molecular biologist)

But what I really wanted to stress in this post is how positive the students were toward John Paul II's book. They were mostly surprised to be reading a biblical-theological study by a Roman Catholic that seemed to them to be informed by a high view of Scriptural authority and a deep engagement with the text. They found him to be Evangelical in his view and very convincing.

By the end of the class about half were convinced that artificial contraception is wrong and most of the rest were very open to the idea of Natural Family Planning. All found John Paul II's arguments to be impressive and not to be dismissed lightly. In fact, I have arranged for a speaker from the Couple to Couple League to come to campus on Feb. 4 to make a presentation on the practical questions surrounding NFP.

My experience is that the problem is simply ignorance. Evangelicals and Roman Catholics live in "two solitudes" and communication is bad. Christopher West, who has devoted his life to spreading the message of TOB, was in Toronto for a conference in Nov. and I attended with about 8 of my current and former students. It was quite an experience to be in such a heavily Catholic environment. (We even attended the 8 am Mass with Archbishop Thomas Collins as homilist and main celebrant and, no, we did not communicate.)

But John Paul II is bigger than Roman Catholicism, if I might be permitted to put it that way. He represents the Tradition and he also represents the apostolic message of Scripture as the fount of that Tradition. I have a student doing an honours thesis this year on how John Paul II's TOB differs from the teaching of St. Augustine, which is a very interesting topic. The TOB is for the whole church. I believe it is a gift given by God now for the post-sexual revolution Church in the West and I agree with George Weigel's famous prediction that it is a time bomb set to go off some time in the third millennium with great blessings for the entire world.

Some of the topics I want to post on in the coming weeks include:

1. The TOB and Feminism
2. Sexual Complementarity and the Dignity of Women
3. The Center of the Biblical Revelation on the Meaning of Sexuality
4. Marriage as a Sacrament: A Proposal for Catholic-Protestant Agreement
5. The Song of Songs in Relation to Genesis, Isaiah and Ephesians
6. Evangelicals and the Contraceptive Mentality
7. Four Views of Marriage (Traditional, Revolutionary, Evangelical and TOB)

I know that not all Protestants are open to John Paul II's insights just because he is Catholic, but I think that the answer is to present his views as "the conservative and traditional view" of sex as grounded in Scripture. It will be necessary for most Evangelicals to encounter this teaching first in a book written by an Evangelical and I hope to write such a book eventually. But once most conservative Evangelicals get past their prejudice and actually encounter the content of the TOB, their response is almost guaranteed to be positive to one extent or another.

Theology of the Body Conference in Toronto

A Toronto organization called "God, Sex and the Meaning of Life," in cooperation with the Natural Family Planning Association, is bringing Christopher West to Toronto for a conference Friday evening and Saturday, Oct. 16-17, 2009. West will be speaking on Pope John Paul II's "Theology of the Body." The event will be held at Canada Christian College and organizers are hoping for a thousand people to attend. 700 have registered already, so don't put off registering if you are interested in going. Details are here.

Christopher West is an expert on Pope John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" and has written several popular books on the subject of human sexuality, as well as "The Theology of the Body Explained" a 600 page commentary on John Paul II's work. He leads "The Theology of the Body Institute." From the press release:

"Most people have heard the “whats” of Catholic teaching, but very few have ever heard the “whys.” With profound insight, Christopher West demonstrates that the Church’s teaching on sex and marriage “makes sense”, and, in fact, is the “logic” of Christianity—because it corresponds perfectly with the deepest stirrings and desires of the human heart.

World renowned Catholic author and international speaker, Christopher West, received his Master of Theological Studies degree from the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. He teaches Theology of The Body in the U.S. and Australia, and is a research fellow for Theology of the Body Institute in Pennsylvania."

This conference is suitable for teens and adults and is one of the few opportunities we have in a secularized culture to hear the Biblical basis for the distinctive and transformative Christian view of human sexuality. I encourage everyone to consider taking advantage of this opportunity.

Chastity and Resentment

In chapter 3 of Love and Responsibility Wojtyla says that chastity is a virtue in need of rehabilitation and explains why by referring to Max Scheler's concept of "resentment""

"Scheler saw a need for the rehabilitation of virtue because he discerned in modern man a characteristic spiritual attitude which is inimical to sincere respect for it. He has called this attitude 'resentment.'"

"Resentment arises from an erroneous and distorted sense of values. It is a lack of objectivity is judgment and evaluation, and it has its origin in weakness of will. The fact is that attaining or realizing a higher value demands a greater effort of will. So in order to spare ourselves the effort, to excuse our failure to obtain this value, we minimize its significance, deny it the respect which it deserves, even see it as in some way evil, although objectivity requires us to recognize that it is a good. Resentment possesses, as you can see, the distinctive characteriatics of the cardinal sin called sloth. St. Thomas defines sloth (aceida) as 'a sadness arising from the fact that the good is difficult. . . Resentment, however, does not stop at this: it not only distorts the features of the good but devalues that which rightly deserves respect, so that man need not struggle to raise himself to the level of the true good, but can 'light-heartedly' recognize as good only what suits him. . .

Chastity, more than any other, seems to be the virtue which resentment has tended to outlaw from the soul, the will and the heart of man. A systematic case has been built up against it, which seeks to show that it is not beneficial but harmful to human beings. . . But chastity and continence are seen above all as dangerous enemies of love . . . Christianity regards this tendency as one of the results of original sin." (143-4)

It was interesting to read in yesterday's The Toronto Star a perfect example of resentment, as described in 1960 by this "out of touch old cleric." An article "How 'Virginity' is a Dangerous Idea: The Author of a New Book Argues Against Purity Cults." The article begins: [My comments in black within square brackets]

"There is a moral panic in America over young women's sexuality – and it's entirely misplaced. [Panic? What panic? This is an imaginary crisis. Let's see what her purpose is in inventing such a panic.] Girls "going wild" aren't damaging a generation of women, the myth of sexual purity is. [So the porn industry is the friend of women; does anyone outside that multi-billion dollar industry believe that? And sexual purity is dangerous? No one ever died of virginity but plenty die every year of promiscuity.] The lie of virginity – the idea that such a thing even exists – [interesting, she is claiming that no such thing as verginity exists! What planet is she just in from? And why would she expect us to believe that existing things are unreal just because she says so?] is ensuring that young women's perception of themselves is inextricable from their bodies, and that their ability to be moral actors is absolutely dependent on their sexuality. [The 2nd century church father Irenaeus would say: "Ah, Gnosticism, are you still having trouble with that old heresy?] It's time to teach our daughters that their ability to be good people depends on their being good people, not on whether or not they're sexually active." [So being sexually active is the new euphemism for fornication and adultery! And sexual immorality isn't immoral because I say so. Got it.]

One's first reaction, upon reading this article, (purportedly written by a woman), is to wonder if it is a scam. Is it a commissioned piece for the pornography industry disguised as a news story? Is it what passes for "feminism" today in the Toronto Star? If so, it sounds more like advertising copy for Penthouse magazine model recruitment campaigns or for the "Girls Gone Wild" conglomerate that makes (a lot of) money by convincing intoxicated young women to expose themselves on camera. Very empowering, that. At the end of the article it is time for "True Confessions."

"My reasons for wanting to write this book weren't entirely altruistic, however. I was once that teenage girl struggling with the meaning behind my sexuality and how my own virginity, or lack thereof, reflected whether or not I was a good person. I was the cruelly labelled slut, the burgeoning feminist [So feminism = being sexually loose?] who knew that something was wrong with a world that could peg me as a bad person for sleeping with a high school boyfriend while ignoring my good heart, sense of humour and intelligence. [So she committed fornication and feels that society (or perhaps the Church?) is cruel to view her as morally guilty. I suppose that God and the moral law should just change to please her? Does it get any more pathetic than this?] Didn't the intricacies of my character count for anything? The answer, unfortunately, was no, they didn't. [The intricacies of my character - ah yes; isn't everyone allowed one pet sin? Who is God to condemn me!] It was a hard lesson to learn, and one that too many young women are dealing with nationwide."

What a perfect example of modern resentment against the virtue of chastity. It reminds me of Chesterton's comment that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, but found difficult and not tried. Interestingly, just as Wojtyla predicted, the sinner who finds virtue too strenuous tends to blame the Church, the Law, the moral standard, (anything!), except him or herself. Through a curious moral inversion, the Church and the Bible become the problem. There is nothing wrong with me. If God just wasn't so strict, it would be easy to be good. Resentment against traditional sexual morality has been building over the past forty years and is now reaching the point of active persecution of those who refuse to abandon biblical morality.

Update: For another take on the spiritual blindness of Jessica Valenti, the author of this article, see Dawn Eden's thoughtful post here.

Procreation and the Sexual Revolution

In his book, Love and Responsibility, published in Polish in 1960, Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, provided a critique of the main ideas of the sexual revolution and re-stated in modern, philosophical terms, the rationale for the Christian vision of love and marriage. I will try to re-state it as clearly as possible.

In Chapter 1 of this great work, he does some rather technical work that establishes a terminology with which he can undertake his constructive work later in the book. First, he distinguishes between two usages of the verb "to use." The first meaning of "to use" is the straightforward case in which one person employs another person as a means to an end. Wojtyla agrees with Kant that to a person must always be an end and never merely a means. Persons must always be subjects and never be reduced to the level of objects. So when a man seduces a woman gains sexual pleasure from the use of her body only to drop her as soon as the conquest is over, he is using her. This is what often happens in the casual sexual encounters of today's "hook-up culture."

The second meaning of the vert "to use" is more complicated. It occurs when two people decide it is in their mutual interest to allow the other use of their bodies for the purpose of each individual gaining sexual pleasure from the other. In such a case, each uses the other as a means to his or her own end. The fact that there is consent and reciprocity does not change the fact that the relationship is based on a utilitarian ethic and so never rises to the level of a personal act. The two persons do not treat each other as persons for each is merely a means to the other's end. The relationship is based on what each gets out of it; it is ultimately selfish and inherently unstable. As soon as one decides that his or her "needs" are no longer being met, the relationship is in danger of being ended.

Another reason why the relationship is not really personal is that the two persons give themselves to the other with reservation and are not really ontollogically changed by the giving and receiving of the gift of the self. The fact that the focus is on what I get out of it means that I remain in charge of myself even though I give my body to the other person. This kind of relationship is what we call "affectionate sex" as opposed to "casual sex" and characterizes the boyfriend-girlfriend relationship in which people mistake mutual use for real love. But many marriages never rise above this level either.

For Wojtyla, the truely conjugal act is a personal act when it occurs in a relationship ordered by the "personalistic norm." For this to occur the two people must treat each other as persons, rather than as mere means to selfish ends. How can this happen? To get at Wojtyla's answer, I find it helpful to think about Aristotle's definition of friendship. Friends have common objects of love and interest. To be a friend is to share a common goal or concern or value. In such a case, one is not using the other for one's own selfish interest; rather, both share the same goal and work toward it. St. Augustine uses this idea of "common objects of love" to define the difference between the city of man and the city of God.

Wojtyla suggests that a man and a woman enter into marriage with the common goal of procreation and this is what draws them together into a common work. Procreation here must be understood broadly as the conception, birth, raising, educating and nurturing of children in a Christian home so that they eventually embrace a personal and mature Christian faith and themselves establish Christian families of their own. Such a work is inter-generational, life-long work and involves being immersed into a web of relationships that henceforth define one's identity; one becomes not only wife or husband, but also father or mother, uncle or aunt, grand father or grandmother etc. One's vocation is deterimined in large measure by this common goal and one's life is lost in the pursuit of it.

When a husband and wife make procreation in this sense their common goal, certain occasions require that one of them submit him or herself to the other, while other occasions demand that both submit themselves to the common goal. But even when the husband is called upon to submit himself to his wife it is for the sake of their common goal, and the same is true when she is called to submit herself to him. Neither uses the other for his or her own selfish ends; rather the two are joined together in working for a common end. Ironically, this kind of relationship is far more "egalitarian" than relationships that remain stuck at the second level. (Jesus apparently was right that it is only by losing our lives that we really find them, which is a paradox those stuck at the level of utilitarianism can never grasp.)

In order for the standards of the personalistic norm to be met, the common goal must be (1) objective, (2) good and (3) freely chosen. Procreation, the transmission of life, is an objective good and it is freely chosen when people enter into the covenant of marriage. Procreation, therefore, is the common goal that raises the marriage relationship to the personal level. It is what allows the husband and wife to engage in sexual relations without using one another and so it is what allows them to relate to each other as persons. It is only when this happens that Wojtyla is willing to call the relationship love. To reduce love to the level of the utilitarian use of another's body for the fleeting pleasures of physical and emotional intimacy is to reduce love to a sub-personal level and love must be personal to be itself.

This is why procreation must be integral to and central in the marriage relationship. True love is fruitful and open, not sterile and closed in upon itself. True love is not pleasure; pleasure can never be more than a by-product of true love. The sexual revolution is the attempt to de-couple sex from reproduction, love from procreation, pleasure from the context of a personal relationship. Fornication, cohabitation, adultery, divorce, "same sex marriage," "trial marriage, "open marriage," serial monogamy, polyamory, and prostitution are all ways of separating procreation from sex and none of them makes sense except in the context of the contraceptive mentality.

Contraception, it seems, is the crucial factor in training us to conceive of sex as non-procreative and therfore the point at which we begin to conceptualize sub-personal sex as a good, rather than a temptation. It is, of course, only an illusion of the good and not a real good. But the fact that people today conceptualize sub-personal sex as a good goes a long way toward explaining why chastity and the Christian vision for marriage are so hated - and why modern society is so enamoured with artificial contraception.

Singleness and the Christian Vision of Marriage and Family

A question was raised by my post on the Chastity Ethic versus the Promiscuity Ethic. What about singleness? Is celibacy not an important part of the Christian witness? Does not an ethic that exalts marriage inevitably denigrate singleness? (I think this captures the spirit of the question.)

First, single people are part of families. Everyone has a mother and a father and, hopefully, siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents etc. Everyone has been raised in some sort of family and has personally benefited from that family (or in many cases, of course, been harmed). Everyone a single person knows and is in community with is also a product of a family. And single people inevitably will know more married people than single people (unless they live in a monastery or convent). The average local congregation will have many families in it. So, the point is that single people, just like everyone else in society, have a serious interest in the well-being of the family as an institution and how it is doing in contemporary society. (Strong families improve everything from the crime rate to the amount of mental illness in a given society.) And single people will very often have an impact on families as friends, mentors, teachers of children, uncles or aunts etc. We must never think that singles are somehow indifferent to families and the influence (for good or ill) flows both ways. (This is similar to argument that everyone should pay taxes to support public schools, rather than only the parents of children in the schools.)

Second, Luther was wrong to urge the destruction of the monasteries and convents. I believe it was a political move and endeared his version of the Reformation to land greedy princes. Apart from the shoddy politics, however, it was a theological mistake. He thought that most people should marry and that no one should be forced into a life of celibacy. Both points are undoubtedly true, but they do not justify the denigration of the celibate life or the positive contribution celibates have made to the Church down through the centuries. At times, the secular clergy have been so abysmally corrupted and the Church so weak and in need of reform that the Church was literally saved by celibate monks being appointed bishops and sometimes wearing their hair shirts under their colorful robes in the execution of their duties. (Study the history of the island monastery of Lerins, which at one point provided most of the bishops of Gaul.)

Luther was also wrong because the celibate is a living rebuke to the calumny that all must inevitably succumb to the temptation to sin sexually. Of course some celibates have fallen into to sexual temptation, but that many have not is the thing that should cause wonder. And indeed, the world is always gleeful when a priest or monk falls because that provides a rationalization for its sins. But when a celibate lives a chaste life, that is in itself a rebuke to licentiousness.

Luther was also wrong because humans created in the image of God are rational, moral creatures with the power of moral choice. We can, through repeated sinful acts, fall into vice and become sexually addicted. But we can also, with the help of grace, through repeated resistance to temptation, develop the virtue of chastity. Protestantism has, I believe, offered such feeble resistance to the sexual revolution in part because it does not have a monastic movement helping to hold up the virtue of chastity for the Church as a whole.

Third, much of the Christian Tradition, building on Paul's words in I Cor. 7 has viewed the celibate state as the superior one. This is going too far; a balanced view sees both the celibate and the married state as good and virtuous (both being founded alike on the virtue of chastity) but different in the goods that each one embodies. The most important good of the celibate state is not the functional one - i.e. the ability to serve Christ and the world in ways that a married person could not. This is a good, but not the highest good. The highest good of the celibate state is that single persons bear a witness to future eschatological state of the kingdom in which, as Jesus said, there will be no more marrying or giving in marriage. Just as Christian marriage witnesses to the goodness of God's creation and the continuities between creation and redemption (continuities relating to the central importance of love), so Christian celibacy witnesses to the goodness of God's plan of redemption and the goodness of the coming Kingdom (a goodness that has love at its core.)

Love is central both to the married and the celibate state. In both cases there is a need for the mortification (in the sense of the disciplining) of the flesh and the gift of self to the other. The celibate life enables a different (non-sexual but real) gift of the self to others; think of pioneer missionaries who took the Gospel to remote places of the earth and often suffered martyrdom. Celibacy enabled this costly witness. Celibacy can also enable less dramatic, but nevertheless significant ways of giving of the self in ministry and service.

To summarize, then, celibacy is a vocation within the Church and a witness to the Kingdom of God. It is not to be despised, but rather embraced by the Church as a necessary component of the Church's mission in the world. In the Kingdom, we will all be celibate. Yet, in that state, the virtues of marriage will not be left behind, but taken up and transfigured along with the resurrection body and the life in God. And this will be true both for those of us called to marriage in this life and also for those of us called to celibacy in this life. Both celibates and married people are one in the body of Christ. All of us are finally the bride and he is the groom.

The Promiscuity Ethic versus the Chastity Ethic

The battle today over the shape of marriage and family in the Western world is not really between pro- and anti-same sex marriage. It is actually between advocates of two mutually exclusive and competing versions of sexual ethics: the promiscuity ethic and the chastity ethic.

The chastity ethic is the traditional and Christian view that holds that sex is for marriage and marriage is an inter-generational institution for the raising of children and the disciplining of immature and selfish individuals toward the goals of maturity and mutual service. As such this vision of marriage forms the foundation for a society of free people who do not require support, indoctrination and heavy-handed direction in the details of life from the government and a class of professional planners and social engineers.

The promiscuity ethic is a 20th century phenomenon that holds that people should have sexual relations freely with anyone at all as desire dictates, rather than being constrained by the limits imposed by life-long, exclusive marriage relationships. The promiscuity ethic views all requirements for sexual self-discipline as "repression," which is basically the myth that you will die without sex. This ethic produces people who live in a perpetual state of adolescence and who are incapable of restraining their appetites and governing themselves. So accompanying the extreme hedonistic individualism of this ethic is an openness to the "nanny state" or "welfare state," which encroaches on the natural rights and responsibilities of the family in order to bring order into the chaos produced by permissiveness and personal irresponsibility. So the state begins to support children financially, determine how they will be educated, lay down detailed rules for how they will be entertained, indoctrinated and disciplined (or more likely not disciplined).

Now, there have been times in Western civilization when family life and sexual morality have broken down in ways similar to the present time, as for example in 18th century England or revolutionary France. But the novelty of our time is that such family breakdown, increased petty vices and crime, high suicide rates, public indecency and indolence is heralded by the deep thinkers of our intellectual and chattering classes as "progressivism in action."

The promiscuity ethic is seen in two main effects: no-fault, casual divorce and same sex marriage. Behind these two major social revolutions lie a view of sexuality as a trivial thing that we share in common with the animals. Young people are assumed to become sexually active at puberty and remain sexually active throughout their lives regardless of marital status. Sex is seen as being "like taking a drink of water," that is, as a natural function no more personal than eating or defecating.

It always was Christianity that has held a high view of sexuality, viewing it as something personal and human, something not reducible to a mere bodily function. Christians believe that sex reveals something of the nature of God when it is practiced with chastity and self-control. The total giving of the self to another and the union of two persons in matrimony is seen as imaging the Triune God, as Genesis 1 teaches. Any society that holds a high view of marriage will attain a level of humanistic values that other societies never can attain. The Christian influence on society in this regard is extremely valuable.

The chastity ethic holds that sexual self-control is possible because persons are created in God's image as rational and moral creatures capable of making choices. The virtue of chastity allows the person to make a gift of the self to the other in such a way as to join the other in a joint pursuit of a common good, that is, children and family. The virtue of chastity is necessary all through life because to be committed to one's husband or wife in the project of marriage, including child-rearing, will mean giving up sexual gratification for varying periods of time due to the exingencies of life.

The virtue of chastity makes sexual union a personal union, rather than a mutual use of one another's bodies for gratification. Such a personal union is not closed in upon itself, but is open to the transmission of life, which means more than we usually think of as procreation. It means the raising, education and nurture of children in the faith so that they come to a personal, mature, Christian faith of their own and eventually marry and establish Christian families of their own. This is a life-long, inter-generational project and not something fleeting, temporary or reversible. Immersion in such a project is a school of character and an aid to sanctification. It is also a witness to the reality and nature of God.

Divorce destroys the permanence necessary to marriage as an inter-generational project. Same sex marriage is inherently non-procreative. Both are ordered to the fulfillment of the desires of the individual, rather than to procreation. Therefore both ultimately destroy marriage in the traditional sense and trivialize sexuality. Promiscuity is essentially the trivialization of sex. The sexual revolution of the last 40 years is doomed to self-destruct eventually, just as certainly as was the Soviet Union, and for similar reasons; both are built on a flawed anthropology. Human beings were made for better and the human spirit will eventually rebel against trivialization and de-personalization.

Christianity has few gifts more precious, beneficial and profoundly humanizing to offer the wider society. For the Church to conform to the increasingly nihilistic, hedonistic, individualism of the late modern West, instead of maintaining this counter-cultural witness, is tragic. It is nothing less than a failure to be salt and light in the world and a failure to seek the peace of the city in which we are exiled. The task of the Church is conservative insofar as we are speaking about conserving the family as the bedrock of society and the institution that civilizes citizens and humanizes life in the world. For those who pay close attention to the witness of the Church in this area, the Gospel of Jesus Christ will appear clearly as Christians live the Christian life out in the context of sex, marriage, children, and family. "You are the light of the world." (Matt. 5:14)

Chastity: The Foundation of Love

Here is a very good (and brief) article by Robert Colquhoun on chastity at:

He defines chastity as:
"The virtue of chastity is a power that controls one’s sex drive to place it in the service of authentic human love according to one’s state in life."

He explains that chastity is more than simply not having intercourse:
"It is possible to technically remain a virgin whilst not living a chaste life. Even within marriage, John Paul II stated that man can commit adultery with his wife if he treats her as an object to satisfy instinct. Catholic acts of morality depend on the object chosen, the intention, and the circumstance. (CCC 1750). "

The Christian virtue of chastity is much neglected even among Evangelicals. Modern people no longer believe that the sex drive is even under rational control and think that promiscuity is inevitable. They do not distinguish between instinct on the level of the body and the rational power to make moral choices on the level of the soul. To speak of "a power that controls one's sex drive" makes no sense to modernists because they do not believe we have such a power. The sad part is that if I do not have the power to control my instincts, then I can never use my body to express authentic love. Even when I want to have sex with you, it just means I have instinctual needs that I want to use you to meet. It can't mean that I choose to love you and give myself to you completely as the one to whom I commit my life. Without chastity, sex is thus separated from true love.