#560: Reclaiming the Body (TOB 23) + C&C

What a theology of the body has to say to a decadent world.

MLA: I am continuing to write through a ‘theology of the body.’ I think I am getting better at writing this for everyone, not only those who might be reading John Paul II’s imposing work. Become a member for more. Also, I appended some ‘clips and comments’ to this issue, for kicks. Happy reading.

Our modern society has fractured our vision of what it means to be human, even as it has fragmented into different standpoints and perspectives. The scientific approach will speak intelligibly about the body’s organs and chemistry, all the while attempting to give us the means to bring resolution and healing to it. By contrast, the psychologies promise to help us gain a glimpse of our own internal (dis)functioning when it becomes opaque and mysterious to us. One regards the body as an object, which is externally apprehended and manipulable through the technologies we have developed. The other is focused on the subject and, depending on the context, his or her history. 

Together, these standpoints offer us only what Karl Barth describes as “phenomena of the human”—or what John Paul II calls “partial conceptions of the human.” The vision they offer of what it means to live life well is helpful, so long as it stays within sharp limits and does not claim the totalizing perspective that they would offer. Both struggle to integrate the other into their orbit, as there is nothing immanent in their respective outlooks that absolutely requires the other perspective to be complete. 

Moreover, neither standpoint can offer what a “theology of the body” attempts, namely, a description of the “meaning of the human body in the structure of the personal subject,” to use John Paul II’s phrase. Or, to be more precise, neither outlook can adequately distill that meaning in a way hat ties it to the objective conditions of the body. While psychology might have much to say about the body and its relevance to the individual subject, its therapeutic orientation means it will struggle to make normative claims about what the meaning of the body is or should be. If it finds meaning in the body, it risks doing so in the kinds of voluntaristic ways that are so commonplace today, in which the body’s meaning is established and determined by the individual subject. (Or it will react strongly against this tendency, and give itself over to the body and its tendencies altogether—as I gather some cheap versions of ‘somatic therapy’ are tempted to do.) 

That is to say, a “theology of the body” aims at a vision of humanity that is comprehensive or “integral.” The meaning of the body is deeply intertwined with the mysteries of creation and redemption: it confirms and establishes the original goodness of God’s creative work, even while its confrontation with death points forward to the need for God’s liberatory work of redemption. The meaning of the body is, on the one hand, nuptial: the body is given to us in order to be given in freedom to another. On the other hand, the meaning of the body is generative: in the knowledge of ourselves and each other that happens in such free self-giving and receiving, we possess our humanity and transcend ourselves through the creation of a third, a child. A theology of the body shapes our vision so that we grasp these meanings and incorporate them into our own practices and lives. It gives a coherence to our vision of ourselves and the world that neither the psychological or scientific approaches can. 

Such an “integral vision” has a political dimension, to be sure: it counteracts the truncated, desiccated construal of “the body” currently on offer, which effectively reduces our flesh to a lump of plastic for our various forms of technologies and technique (whether medical or psychological). Yet it also has more fundamental purchase in the quotidian moments of our lives, where we are interacting with other persons or enjoying marriage or taking out the trash. A “theology of the body” that frames the person in light of the mystery of God’s radiant goodness, if it is to have its pedagogical effects, must engender radiant persons, whose eyes both see in other embodied persons the mystery they point to and reveal such a mystery. 

This vision is, of course, impeded by sin—which darkens the eye and obscures the glory of the person. There is no going back to the ‘beginning’ of our creation: we can only go forward into the mystery of our redemption and see there how the grace of God liberates us from sin to live within the freedom of the gift of ourselves to another, in marriage or in other contexts. No wonder, then, that we will turn next to the question of desire out of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, after which we will have to consider the power of the resurrection. For only by walking such a path will we not only discover the fullness of the integral vision of humanity, but learn to embody it within our own lives.

Around the Web (Extended Edition)

I admire Yuval Levin and Carter Snead a lot, but this is not a very good analysis of the Alabama abortion ruling. The claim that this case “had essentially nothing to do with abortion” might be true on the surface. But the two cases it cites as precedent both involved questions about the viability threshold that Roe vs. Wade set down.

The second case (Hamilton v. Scott) included an extended treatment by Chief Justice Parker on the limits of Roe itself, and how it does not apply beyond abortion. But the ruling was praised by pro-life legal advocates for granting unborn children legal protections. I have made my own thoughts about this ruling clear in this newsletter—but there is no world where this ruling can be separated from America’s abortion politics, as it fundamentally forces the question of whether embryos are persons who merit our protection and care or not.

In related news: my friend Jeff Bishop writes eloquently about artificial intelligence and humanity.

I did a talk earlier this month at the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota on “The Politics of Reading.” They were perfect hosts and I had a lovely time. I only wish I had read this from Jean Twenge first, on the decline of reading among Gen Z. Remember, though: the only way this reverses is if Gen X, Millennials, Boomers, and everyone else sets down their smartphones first and takes up and reads.

I was interested in Felicia Su Wong’s review of Antón Barba-Kay’s A Web of Our Own Making, which is a book that helps explain why I am not on social media at the moment. I thought her conclusion was precisely right: “Like a fever dream, A Web of our Own Making works on the reader in fits and starts, circling in and swooping down on the fact that the key threat to today’s technology lies in our own selves. In this way, he delivers a strong dose of tough love—a prophetic word that may not be welcomed, but very much needs to be heard.” We still await the definitive take on this book from the brilliant Michael Sacacas at

The Convivial Society

, I think.

A Reader Endorsement

Called into Questions is still a book you can buy, read, and/or review! Here’s what one reader of this newsletter emailed me to say about it:

“I’m primarily an at-home mother, with a side of music-making and teaching. Your free newsletter with the comment that you hoped mothers would read the book was what finally pushed me over the edge to buying it.

I am so glad I did. The chapter on suffering helped me make some sense out of my own fears and longings after watching my firstborn fight for his life after birth, and then giving him injections every few days his first year of life. He’s fine now, contrary to what the doctor’s predictions were, but the deep suffering that the life of a child can endure was a shock, and my despair dismayed me. I know deep suffering will come again at some point, but I hope this time I can grieve without being aggrieved.”

This is the kind of kind encouragement that (seriously) keeps a writer from the despair that our efforts are not vanity. I am deeply in debt to those of you who have read it and commended it to others.

And if you are interested, you can become an annual member of this newsletter for $20 (US only) and I’ll mail you a copy of the book.

From the Drafts Folder

The transparency of our hearts to each other is constitutive of our beatitude. In Sermon 306, Augustine argues that life without the transparency of perfect trust would be imperfect. As he notes, in the eschaton nobody deceives or is disappointed, which means there is no basis for suspecting evil of each other. “A very great many of the ills of the human race, after all, have no other source but false and unfounded suspicions,” Augustine laments. We believe that people who hate us are friends and through “crooked suspicions” (prauam suspicionem) we become most hostile to our most intimate friends. Our inability to reveal our hearts means that even protesting friendship can be insufficient to restore it; hence our need to wait until the Lord reveals our hearts as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:5 (which Augustine repeats in this context). This “darkness” that hovers over our social relationships entails that our happiness will not be perfected until the light of God’s revelation has eliminated any fear of deception. While we obviously want the defeat of death and suffering the resurrection secures, Augustine contends that we would also want to “be able to look directly into each other's hearts, without looking askance at them,” seeing them “in the light of the divine truth, not in the murk of human suspicion” (humana suspicione). In Augustine’s arresting phrase, we want “truth to be added to life,” so that we “know one another’s hearts” and are not “deceived by our suspicion.” Only then will our happiness be so secure that we will not fall away from it.

Referrals

Substack has rolled out a ‘referral’ program. Two new subscribers to this newsletter will earn you three months(!) of membership. Four referrals gets you half a year. What is stopping you?

McDonald Centre Conference in Oxford

This year’s conference is on the ‘Public Legitimacy of the Church of England’ and looks characteristically provocative. David Fergusson, Graham Tomlinson, my friend and teacher Joshua Hordern, Tom Holland—who runs a podcast, I am told—the lineup looks excellent. I will likely be around for it, so if you are in the area, I commend it to you!

The Penultimate Word

“The primary ascesis required of a Christian is trust. By trust we give up illusory claims to omniscience. We give ourselves into God's hands and choose to be reformed according to his purpose. Only he can realize his likeness in us, uniting in a chaste whole the disparate factors that make up our history and personality.

An error Christians have often made is to assume that chastity is somehow normal; but no, it is exceptional. Virtue does not come easily to us: when we try to practise it, we find that sin's wounds cut deep. They condition us to fail of our purpose. Even as we labour to learn charity, patience, courage and so forth, we must labour to become chaste, letting grace do its slow, transformative work. Short of fulgurant exceptions, growth in grace, like other growth, is organic. It happens slowly, secretly, we know not how (cf. Mark 4.27). But it does, in time, bear fruit.” — Erik Varden