Theology of the Body

Pope John Paul II, “The Theology of the Body” [Male and Female He Created Them]

[Numbers in brackets refer to the sections of the original catecheses. Chapter and subject headings are taken from Pope John Paul’s unpublished book, Male and Female He Created Them, which served as the basis of the catecheses. Subject heading translations from the original Polish are by Fr. Wojtek Janusiewicz, revised by Michael Waldstein

1. The analysis of purity is an indispensable completion of the words spoken by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, on which the cycle of our present reflections is centered. When Christ, explaining the correct meaning of the commandment “You shall not commit adultery,” appealed to the interior man, he specified at the same time the fundamental dimension of purity that marks the mutual relations between man and woman both in marriage and outside it. The words: “But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:27-28), express what is opposed to purity. At the same time, these words demand the purity which, in the Sermon on the Mount, is included in the list of the beatitudes: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8). In this way Christ makes an appeal to the human heart: he calls upon it, he does not accuse it, as we have already clarified previously.

2. Christ sees in the heart, in man’s inner self, the source of purity - but also of moral impurity - in the fundamental and most generic sense of the word. That is confirmed, for example, by the answer given to the Pharisees, who were scandalized by the fact that his disciples “transgress the tradition of the elders. For they do not wash their hands when they eat” (Mt 15:2). Jesus then said to those present: “Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man” (Mt 15:11). To his disciples, on the other hand, answering Peter’s question, he explained these words as follows: “ . . . what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man” (cf. Mt 15:18-20; also Mk 7:20-23).

When we say “purity,” “pure,” in the first meaning of these words, we indicate what is in contrast with dirty. “To dirty” means “to make filthy,” “to pollute.” That refers to the various spheres of the physical world. We talk, for example, of a “dirty road,” a “dirty room,” we talk also of “polluted air.” In the same way also man can be “filthy,” when his body is not clean. To remove the dirt of the body, it must be washed.

In the Old Testament tradition, great importance was attributed to ritual ablutions, e.g., to wash one’s hands before eating, of which the above-mentioned text speaks. Numerous and detailed prescriptions concerned the ablutions of the body in relation to sexual impurity, understood in the exclusively physiological sense, to which we have referred previously (cf. Lev 15). According to the state of the medical science of the time, the various ablutions may have corresponded to hygienic prescriptions. Since they were imposed in God’s name and contained in the Sacred Books of the Old Testament legislation, observance of them acquired, indirectly, a religious meaning; they were ritual ablutions and, in the life of the man of the Old Covenant, they served ritual “purity.”

3. In relation to the aforesaid juridico-religious tradition of the Old Covenant, there developed an erroneous way of understanding moral purity [1]. It was often taken in the exclusively exterior and “material” sense. In any case, an explicit tendency to this interpretation spread. Christ opposes it radically: nothing “from outside” makes man filthy, no “material” dirt makes man impure in the moral, that is, interior sense. No ablution, not even of a ritual nature, is capable in itself of producing moral purity. This has its exclusive source within man: it comes from the heart.

It is probable that the respective prescriptions in the Old Testament (those, for example, that are found in Leviticus 15:16-24; 18:1 ff., or 12:1-5) served, in addition to hygienic purposes, also to attribute a certain dimension of interiority to what is corporeal and sexual in the human person. In any case Christ took good care not to connect purity in the moral (ethical) sense with physiology and its organic processes. In the light of the words of Matthew 15:18-20, quoted above, none of the aspects of sexual “dirtiness”, in the strictly bodily, biophysiological sense, falls by itself into the definition of purity or impurity in the moral (ethical) sense.

4. The aforesaid assertion (Mt 15:18-20) is important above all for semantic reasons. Speaking of purity in the moral sense, that is, of the virtue of purity, we make use of an analogy, according to which moral evil is compared precisely to uncleanness. Certainly this analogy has been a part of the sphere of ethical concepts from the most remote times. Christ takes it up again and confirms it in all its extension: “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man.” Here Christ speaks of all moral evil, of all sin, that is, of transgressions of the various commandments, and he enumerates “evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander,” without confining himself to a specific kind of sin. It follows that the concept of “purity” and “impurity” in the moral sense is in the first place a general concept, not a specific one: so that all moral good is a manifestation of purity, and all moral evil is a manifestation of impurity.

The statement of Matthew 15:18-20 does not limit purity to one area of morality, namely, to the one connected with the commandment “You shall not commit adultery” and “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife,” that is, to the one that concerns the mutual relations between man and woman, linked to the body and to the relative concupiscence. Similarly we can also understand the beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount, addressed to “the pure in heart,” both in the general and in the more specific sense. Only the actual context will make it possible to delimit and clarify this meaning.

5. The wider and more general meaning of purity is present also in St. Paul’s letters, in which we shall gradually pick out the contexts which explicitly limit the meaning of purity to the “bodily” and “sexual” sphere, that is, to that meaning which we can grasp from the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount on lust, which is already expressed in “looking at a woman”, and is regarded as equivalent to “committing adultery in one’s heart” (cf. Mt 5:27-28).

It is not St. Paul who is the author of the words about the three forms of lust. They occur, as we know, in the First Letter of John. It can be said, however, that similarly to what is for John (1 Jn 2:16-17) the opposition within man between God and the world (between what comes “from the Father” and what comes “from the world”) - an opposition which is born in the heart and penetrates into man’s actions as “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life” - St. Paul points out another contradiction in the Christian. It is the opposition and at the same time the tension between the “flesh” and the “Spirit” (written with a capital letter, that is, the Holy Spirit): “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would” (Gal 5:16-17). It follows that life “according to the flesh” is in opposition to life “according to the Spirit.” “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their, minds on the things of the Spirit” (Rom 8:5).

In subsequent analyses we shall seek to show that purity - the purity of heart of which Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount - is realized precisely in life “according to the Spirit.”

1. “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.” Today we wish to study further these words of St. Paul in Galatians (5:17), with which we ended our reflections last week on the correct meaning of purity. Paul has in mind the tension existing within man, precisely in his heart. It is not a question here only of the body (matter) and of the spirit (the soul), as of two essentially different anthropological elements which constitute from the beginning the essence of man. But it presupposes that disposition of forces formed in man with original sin, in which every historical man participates. In this disposition, formed within man, the body opposes the spirit and easily prevails over it.[2] The Pauline terminology, however, means something more. Here the prevalence of the flesh seems almost to coincide with the threefold lust “of the world,” according to Johannine terminology. In the language of St. Paul’s letters, [3] the flesh indicates not only the “exterior” man, but also the man who is “interiorly” subjected to the “world.” [4] He is closed, in a way, in the area of those values that belong only to the world and of those ends that it is capable of imposing on man—values, therefore, to which man as flesh is sensitive. Thus Paul’s language seems to link with the essential contents of John. The language of both denotes what is defined by various terms of modern ethics and anthropology, such as humanistic autarchy, secularism or also, in a general sense, sensualism. The man who lives according to the flesh is ready only for what is of the world. He is the man of the senses, the man of the threefold lust. His actions confirm this, as we shall say shortly.

2. This man lives almost at the opposite pole as compared with what the Spirit wants. The Spirit of God wants a different reality from the one desired by the flesh. He aspires to a reality different from the one which the flesh aspires to, and that already within man, already at the interior source of man’s aspirations and actions—”to prevent you from doing what you would” (Gal 5:17).

Paul expresses that in an even more explicit way. Elsewhere he writes of the evil he did, though he did not want to do it, and of the impossibility—or rather the limited possibility—of carrying out the good he wants (cf. Rom 7:19). Without going into the problems of a detailed exegesis of this text, it could be said that the tension between the flesh and the spirit is immanent, even if it is not reduced to this level. It is manifested in his heart as a fight between good and evil. That desire of which Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Mt 5:27-28), although it is an interior act, is certainly—according to Pauline language—a manifestation of life according to the flesh. At the same time, that desire enables us to see how, within man, life according to the flesh is opposed to life according to the Spirit. We see how the latter, in man’s present state, in view of his hereditary sinfulness, is constantly exposed to the weakness and insufficiency of the former, to which it often yields, if it is not strengthened interiorly to do precisely what “the Spirit wants.” We can deduce from this that Paul’s words, which deal with life according to the flesh and according to the Spirit, are at the same time a synthesis and a program. It is necessary to understand them in this key.

3. We find the same opposition of life according to the flesh and life according to the Spirit in Romans. Here too, as in Galatians, it is placed in the context of the Pauline doctrine on justification by means of faith, that is, by the power of Christ himself operating within man by the Holy Spirit. In this context Paul takes that opposition to its extreme consequences when he writes: “Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh. You are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness “ (Rom 8:5-10).

4. The horizons that Paul delineates in this text can clearly be seen. He goes back to the “beginning”—that is, in this case, to the first sin from which life according to the flesh originated. It created in man the heritage of a predisposition to live only such a life, together with the legacy of death. At the same time Paul anticipates the final victory over sin and death. The resurrection of Christ is a sign and announcement of this: “He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom 8:11). In this eschatological perspective, St. Paul stresses justification in Christ. This is already intended for historical man, for every man of “yesterday, today and tomorrow” in the history of the world and also in the history of salvation. This justification is essential for the interior man. It is destined precisely for that heart to which Christ appealed, when speaking of purity and impurity in the moral sense. This justification by faith is not just a dimension of the divine plan for our salvation and sanctification, but according to St. Paul, is a real power that operates in man and is revealed and asserts itself in his actions.

5. Here again are the words of Galatians: “Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like...” (5:19-21). “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...” (5:22-23). In the Pauline doctrine, life according to the flesh is opposed to life according to the Spirit. This is not only within man, in his heart, but, as can be seen, it finds an ample and differentiated field to express itself in works. Paul speaks of the works which spring from the flesh—it could be said, from the works in which the man who lives according to the flesh is manifested. He also speaks of the fruit of the Spirit, that is of the actions,[5] of the ways of behaving, of the virtues, in which the man who lives according to the Spirit is manifested. In the first case we are dealing with man abandoned to the threefold lust, which John said is “of the world.” In the second case we have before us what we have already called the ethos of redemption. Only now are we able to clarify fully the nature and structure of that ethos. It is expressed and affirmed through what in man, in all his “operating,” in actions and in behavior, is the fruit of dominion over the threefold lust—of the flesh, of the eyes, and of the pride of life (of all that the human heart can rightly be “accused” of, and which man and his interiority can continually be suspected of).

If mastery in the sphere of ethos is manifested and realized as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”—as we read in the Letter to the Galatians—then behind each of these realizations, these ways of behaving, these moral virtues, there is a specific choice, that is, an effort of the will, the fruit of the human spirit permeated by the Spirit of God, which is manifested in choosing good. Speaking with the language of Paul, “The desires of the Spirit are against the flesh” (Gal 5:17). In these desires the Spirit shows himself to be stronger than the flesh and the desires brought forth by the threefold lust. In this struggle between good and evil, man proves himself stronger, thanks to the power of the Holy Spirit, who, operating within man’s spirit, causes his desires to bear fruit in good. Therefore, these are not only—and not so much—”works” of man, as “fruit,” that is, the effect of the action of the Spirit in man. Therefore Paul speaks of the fruit of the Spirit, intending this word with a capital letter.

Without penetrating the structures of human interiority by means of the subtle differentiations furnished to us by systematic theology (especially from Thomas Aquinas), we limit ourselves to a summary exposition of the biblical doctrine. This enables us to understand, in an essential and sufficient way, the distinction and the opposition of the flesh and the Spirit.

We have pointed out that among the fruits of the Spirit the Apostle also puts self-control. This must not be forgotten, because in our further reflections we will take up this subject again to deal with it in a more detailed way.

1. What does the statement mean: “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh” (Gal 5:17)? This question seems important, even fundamental, in the context of our reflections on purity of heart, which the Gospel speaks of. However, in this regard the author of Galatians opens before us even wider horizons. This contrast between the flesh and the Spirit (Spirit of God), and between life according to the flesh and life according to the Spirit, contains the Pauline theology about justification. This is the expression of faith in the anthropological and ethical realism of the redemption carried out by Christ, which Paul, in the context already known to us, also calls the redemption of the body. According to Romans 8:23, the “redemption of the body” also has a “cosmic” dimension (referred to the whole of creation), but at its center, there is man: man constituted in the personal unity of spirit and body. It is precisely in this man, in his heart, and consequently in all his behavior, that Christ’s redemption bears fruit, thanks to those powers of the Spirit which bring about justification, that is, which enable justice to abound in man, as is inculcated in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Mt 5:20), that is, to abound to the extent that God himself willed and which he expects.

2. It is significant that speaking of the “works of the flesh” (cf. Gal 5:19-21), Paul mentions not only “fornication, impurity, licentiousness...drunkenness, carousing.” This is everything that, according to an objective way of understanding, takes on the character of carnal sins and of the sensual enjoyment connected with the flesh. He names other sins too, to which we would not be inclined to also attribute a carnal and sensual character: “idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy...” (Gal 5:20-21). According to our anthropological (and ethical) categories, we would rather be inclined to call all the works listed here sins of the spirit, rather than sins of the flesh. Not without reason we might have glimpsed in them the effects of the lust of the eyes or of the pride of life, rather than the effects of the lust of the flesh. However, Paul describes them all as works of the flesh. That is intended exclusively against the background of that wider meaning (in a way a metonymical one), which the term flesh assumes in the Pauline letters. It is opposed not only and not so much to the human spirit as to the Holy Spirit who works in man’s soul (spirit).

3. There exists, therefore, a significant analogy between what Paul defines as works of the flesh and the words Christ used to explain to his disciples what he had previously said to the Pharisees about ritual purity and impurity (cf. Mt 15:2-20). According to Christ’s words, real purity (as also impurity) in the moral sense is in the heart and comes from the heart of man. Impure works in the same sense are defined not only as adultery and fornication, and so the sins of the flesh in the strict sense, but also “evil thoughts...theft, false witness, slander.” As we have already noted, Christ uses here both the general and the specific meaning of impurity (and, indirectly also of purity). St. Paul expresses himself in a similar way. The works of the flesh are understood in the Pauline text both in the general and in the specific sense. All sins are an expression of life according to the flesh, which contrasts with life according to the Spirit. In conformity with our linguistic convention (which is partially justified), what is considered as a sin of the flesh is, in Paul’s list, one of the many manifestations (or species) of what he calls works of the flesh. In this sense, it is one of the symptoms, that is, actualizations of life according to the flesh, and not according to the Spirit.

4. Paul’s words written to the Romans: “So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh; for if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live” (Rom 8:12-13)—introduce us again into the rich and differentiated sphere of the meanings which the terms “body” and Spirit have for him. However, the definitive meaning of that enunciation is advisory, exhortative, and so valid for the evangelical ethos. When he speaks of the necessity of putting to death the deeds of the body with the help of the Spirit, Paul expresses precisely what Christ spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount, appealing to the human heart and exhorting it to control desires, even those expressed in a man’s look at a woman for the purpose of satisfying the lust of the flesh. This mastery, or as Paul writes, “putting to death the works of the body with the help of the Spirit,” is an indispensable condition of life according to the Spirit, that is, of the life which is an antithesis of the death spoken about in the same context. Life according to the flesh has death as its fruit. That is, it involves as its effect the “death” of the spirit.

So the term “death” does not mean only the death of the body, but also sin, which moral theology will call “mortal.” In Romans and Galatians, the Apostle continually widens the horizon of “sin-death,” both toward the beginning of human history, and toward its end. Therefore, after listing the multiform works of the flesh, he affirms that “those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:21). Elsewhere he will write with similar firmness: “Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure man, or one who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of God” (Eph 5:5). In this case, too, the works that exclude inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God—that is, the works of the flesh—are listed as an example and with general value, although sins against purity in the specific sense are at the top of the list here (cf. Eph 5:3-7).

5. To complete the picture of the opposition between the body and the fruit of the Spirit—it should be observed that in everything that manifests life and behavior according to the Spirit, Paul sees at once the manifestation of that freedom for which Christ “has set us free” (Gal 5:1). He writes: “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’“ (Gal 5:13-14). As we have already pointed out, the opposition body/Spirit, life according to the flesh/ life according to the Spirit, deeply permeates the whole Pauline doctrine on justification. With exceptional force of conviction, the Apostle of the Gentiles proclaims that justification is carried out in Christ and through Christ. Man obtains justification in “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6), and not only by means of the observance of the individual prescriptions of Old Testament law (in particular, that of circumcision). Justification comes therefore “from the Spirit” (of God) and not “from the flesh.” Paul exhorts the recipients of his letter to free themselves from the erroneous carnal concept of justification, to follow the true one, that is, the spiritual one. In this sense he exhorts them to consider themselves free from the law, and even more to be free with the freedom for which Christ “has set us free.”

In this way, following the Apostle’s thought, we should consider and above all realize evangelical purity, that is, the purity of the heart, according to the measure of that freedom for which Christ “has set us free.”

1. St. Paul writes in the Letter to the Galatians: “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’“ (Gal 5:13-14). We have already dwelled on this enunciation. However, we are taking it up again today, in connection with the main argument of our reflections.

Although the passage quoted refers above all to the subject of justification, here, however, the Apostle aims explicitly at driving home the ethical dimension of the “body-Spirit” opposition, that is, the opposition between life according to the flesh and life according to the Spirit. Here he touches the essential point, revealing the anthropological roots of the Gospel ethos. If the whole law (the moral law of the Old Testament) is fulfilled in the commandment of charity, the dimension of the new Gospel ethos is nothing but an appeal to human freedom. It is an appeal to its fuller implementation and, in a way, to fuller “utilization” of the potential of the human spirit.

2. It might seem that Paul was only contrasting freedom with the law and the law with freedom. However, a deeper analysis of the text shows that in Galatians St. Paul emphasizes above all the ethical subordination of freedom to that element in which the whole law is fulfilled, that is, to love, which is the content of the greatest commandment of the Gospel. “Christ set us free in order that we might remain free,” precisely in the sense that he manifested to us the ethical (and theological) subordination of freedom to charity, and that he linked freedom with the commandment of love. To understand the vocation to freedom in this way (“You were called to freedom, brethren”: Gal 5:13), means giving a form to the ethos in which life “according to the Spirit” is realized. The danger of wrongly understanding freedom also exists. Paul clearly points this out, writing in the same context: “Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another” (ibid.).

3. In other words: Paul warns us of the possibility of making a bad use of freedom. Such a use is in opposition to the liberation of the human spirit carried out by Christ and contradicts that freedom with which “Christ set us free.” Christ realized and manifested the freedom that finds its fullness in charity, the freedom thanks to which we are servants of one another. In other words, that freedom becomes a source of new works and life according to the Spirit. The antithesis and, in a way, the negation of this use of freedom takes place when it becomes a pretext to live according to the flesh. Freedom then becomes a source of works and of life according to the flesh. It stops being the true freedom for which “Christ set us free,” and becomes “an opportunity for the flesh,” a source (or instrument) of a specific yoke on the part of pride of life, the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh. Anyone who lives in this way according to the flesh, that is, submits—although in a way that is not quite conscious, but nevertheless actual—to the three forms of lust, especially to the lust of the flesh, ceases to be capable of that freedom for which “Christ set us free.” He also ceases to be suitable for the real gift of himself, which is the fruit and expression of this freedom. Moreover, he ceases to be capable of that gift which is organically connected with the nuptial meaning of the human body, with which we dealt in the preceding analyses of Genesis (cf. Gn 2:23-25).

4. In this way, the Pauline doctrine on purity, a doctrine in which we find the faithful and true echo of the Sermon on the Mount, permits us to see evangelical and Christian purity of heart in a wider perspective, and above all permits us to link it with the charity in which the law is fulfilled. Paul, in a way similar to Christ, knows a double meaning of purity (and of impurity): a generic meaning and a specific meaning. In the first case, everything that is morally good is pure, and on the contrary, everything that is morally bad is impure. Christ’s words according to Matthew 15:18-20, quoted previously, clearly affirm this. In Paul’s enunciations about the works of the flesh, which he contrasts with the fruit of the Spirit, we find the basis for a similar way of understanding this problem. Among the works of the flesh Paul puts what is morally bad, while every moral good is linked with life according to the Spirit. In this way, one of the manifestations of life according to the Spirit is behavior in conformity with that virtue which Paul in the Letter to the Galatians seems to define rather indirectly, but which he speaks directly of in the First Letter to the Thessalonians.

Purity—”Keeping the Passions Away” or “Keeping the Body with Holiness and Reverence”? [§ 53.4]

5. In the passages of the Letter to the Galatians, which we have previously already submitted to detailed analysis, the Apostle lists in the first place among the works of the flesh: fornication, impurity and licentiousness. Subsequently, however, when he contrasts these works with the fruit of the Spirit, he does not speak directly of purity, but names only self-control, enkrateia. This control can be recognized as a virtue which concerns continence in the area of all the desires of the senses, especially in the sexual sphere. It is in opposition to fornication, impurity and licentiousness, and also to drunkenness and carousing. It could be admitted that Pauline self-control contains what is expressed in the term “continence” or “temperance,” which corresponds to the Latin term temperantia. In this case, we would find ourselves in the presence of the well-known system of virtues which later theology, especially Scholasticism, will borrow from the ethics of Aristotle. However, Paul certainly does not use this system in his text. Since purity must be understood as the correct way of treating the sexual sphere according to one’s personal state (and not necessarily absolute abstention from sexual life), then undoubtedly this purity is included in the Pauline concept of self-control or enkrateia. Therefore, within the Pauline text we find only a generic and indirect mention of purity. Now and again the author contrasts these works of the flesh, such as fornication, impurity and licentiousness, with the fruit of the Spirit—that is, new works, in which life according to the Spirit is manifested. It can be deduced that one of these new works is precisely purity, that is the one that is opposed to impurity and also to fornication and licentiousness.

6. But already in First Thessalonians, Paul writes on this subject in an explicit and unambiguous way. We read: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity; that each one of you know how to control his own body [6] in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like heathens who do not know God” (1 Th 4:3-5). Then: “God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” (1 Th 4:7-8). In this text we also have before us the generic meaning of purity, identified in this case with holiness (since uncleanness is named as the antithesis of holiness). Nevertheless, the whole context indicates clearly what purity or impurity it is a question of, that is, the content of what Paul calls here uncleanness, and in what way purity contributes to the holiness of man.

And therefore, in the following reflections, it will be useful to take up again the text of the First Letter to the Thessalonians, which has just been quoted

§54. St. PAUL’S TEACHING on the SANCTITY and RESPECT of the HUMAN Body (28 Jan.1981)

1. St. Paul writes in the First Letter to the Thessalonians: “...this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honour , not in the passion of lust like heathens who do not know God” (1 Th 4:3-5). After some verses, he continues: “God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” (ibid. 4:7-8). We referred to these sentences of the Apostle during our last meeting. We take them up again today because they are especially important for the subject of our meditations.

2. The purity which Paul speaks of in First Thessalonians (4:3-5, 7-8) is manifested in the fact that man “knows how to control his own body in holiness and honour , not in the passion of lust.” In this formulation every word has a particular meaning and therefore deserves an adequate comment.

In the first place, purity is a “capacity,” that is, in the traditional language of anthropology and ethics, an aptitude. In this sense it is a virtue. If this ability, that is, virtue, leads to abstaining from unchastity, that happens because the man who possesses it “knows how to control his own body in holiness and honour , not in the passion of lust.” It is a question here of a practical capacity which makes man capable of acting in a given way, and at the same time of not acting in the opposite way. For purity to be such a capacity or aptitude, it must obviously be rooted in the will, in the foundation of man’s willing and conscious acting. In his teaching on virtues, Thomas Aquinas sees in an even more direct way the object of purity in the faculty of sensitive desire, which he calls appetitus concupiscibilis. Precisely this faculty must be particularly mastered, subordinated and made capable of acting in a way that is in conformity with virtue, in order that purity may be attributed to man. According to this concept, purity consists in the first place in containing the impulse of sensitive desire, which has as its object what is corporeal and sexual in man. Purity is a different form of the virtue of temperance.

3. The text of the First Letter to the Thessalonians (4:3-5) shows that in Paul’s concept, the virtue of purity consists also in the mastery and overcoming of the passion of lust. That means that the capacity for controlling the impulses of sensitive desire, that is, the virtue of temperance, belongs necessarily to its nature. At the same time, however, this Pauline text turns our attention to another role of the virtue of purity. It could be said that this other dimension is more positive than negative. That is, the task of purity, which the author of the letter seems to stress above all, is not only (and not so much) abstention from unchastity and from what leads to it, and so abstention from the passion of lust, but, at the same time, the control of one’s own body and, indirectly, also that of others, in holiness and honour , .

These two functions, abstention and control, are closely connected and dependent on each other. It is not possible to “control one’s body in holiness and honour “ if that abstention from unchastity and from what leads to it is lacking. Consequently it can be admitted that control of one’s body (and indirectly that of others) in holiness and honour confers adequate meaning and value on that abstention. This in itself calls for overcoming something that is in man and that arises spontaneously in him as an inclination, an attraction, and also as a value. This acts above all in the sphere of the senses, but often not without repercussions on the other dimensions of human subjectivity, and particularly on the affective-emotional dimension.

4. Considering all this, its seems that the Pauline image of the virtue of purity—an image that emerges from the very eloquent comparison of the function of abstention (that is, of temperance) with that of “control of one’s body in holiness and honour “—is deeply right, complete and adequate. Perhaps we owe this completeness to nothing else than the fact that Paul considers purity not only as a capacity (that is, an aptitude) of man’s subjective faculties, but at the same time, as a concrete manifestation of life according to the Spirit. In this life, human capacity is interiorly made fruitful and enriched by what Paul calls in Galatians 5:22 the “fruit of the Spirit.” The honour that arises in man for everything that is corporeal and sexual, both in himself and in any other person, male and female, is seen to be the most essential power to control the body in holiness. To understand the Pauline teaching on purity, it is necessary to penetrate fully the meaning of the term “honour ,” which is obviously understood here as a power of the spiritual order. Precisely this interior power confers its full dimension on purity as a virtue, that is, as the capacity of acting in that whole field in which man discovers within himself the multiple impulses of the passion of lust and for various reasons, sometimes surrenders to them.

Analysis of the Pauline “Description of the Body” (1 Cor 12:18–27) [§ 54.5]

5. To grasp better the thought of the author of First Thessalonians, it will be a good thing to keep in mind also another text, which we find in First Corinthians. Paul sets forth in it his great ecclesiological doctrine, according to which the Church is the Body of Christ. Paul takes the opportunity to formulate the following argumentation about the human body: “...God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose” (1 Cor 12:18). Further on he said: “On the contrary, the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those parts of the body which we think less honour able we invest with the greater honour , and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another” (ibid. 12:22-25).

6. The specific subject of the text in question is the theology of the Church as the Body of Christ. However, in connection with this passage it can be said that Paul, by means of his great ecclesiological analogy (which recurs in other letters, and which we will take up again in due time), contributes, at the same time, to deepening the theology of the body. While in First Thessalonians he writes about control of the body in holiness and honour , in the passage now quoted from First Corinthians he wishes to show this human body as worthy of honour . It could also be said that he wishes to teach the receivers of his letter the correct concept of the human body.

Therefore, this Pauline description of the human body in First Corinthians seems to be closely connected with the recommendations of the First Letter to the Thessalonians: “...that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honour “ (1 Th 4:4). This is an important thread, perhaps the essential one, of the Pauline doctrine on purity.

§55. St. PAUL’S DESCRIPTION of the BODY and TEACHING on PURITY (4 Feb.1981)

1. In our last considerations last Wednesday on purity according to the teaching of St. Paul, we called attention to the text of the First Letter to the Corinthians. In it the Apostle presents the Church as the Body of Christ. That offers him the opportunity to reason as follows about the human body: “...God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose.... On the contrary, the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those parts of the body which we think less honourable we invest with the greater honour, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another” (1 Cor 12:18, 22-25).

2. The Pauline description of the human body corresponds to the reality which constitutes it, so it is a realistic description. At the same time, a very fine thread of evaluation is intermingled with the realism of this description, conferring on it a deeply evangelical, Christian value. Certainly, it is possible to describe the human body, to express its truth with the objectivity characteristic of the natural sciences. But such a description—with all its precision—cannot be adequate (that is, commensurable with its object). It is not just a question of the body (intended as an organism, in the somatic sense) but of man, who expresses himself through that body and in this sense is, I would say, that body. So that thread of evaluation, seeing that it is a question of man as a person, is indispensable in describing the human body. Furthermore, it is necessary to say how right this evaluation is. This is one of the tasks and one of the perennial themes of the whole of culture: of literature, sculpture, painting, and also of dancing, of theatrical works, and finally of the culture of everyday life, private or social. This is a subject that would be worth dealing with separately.

3. The Pauline description in First Corinthians 12:18-25 certainly does not have a scientific meaning. It does not present a biological study on the human organism or on human somatics. From this point of view it is a simple pre-scientific description, a concise one made up of barely a few sentences. It has all the characteristics of common realism and is unquestionably sufficiently realistic. However, what determines its specific character, what especially justifies its presence in Holy Scripture, is precisely that evaluation intermingled with the description expressed in its narrative-realistic tissue. It can be said with certainty that this description would not be possible without the whole truth of creation and also without the whole truth of the redemption of the body, which Paul professes and proclaims. It can also be affirmed that the Pauline description of the body corresponds precisely to the spiritual attitude of respect for the human body, due because of the holiness (cf. 1 Th 4:3-5, 7-8) which springs from the mysteries of creation and redemption. The Pauline description is equally far from Manichaean contempt for the body and from the various manifestations of a naturalistic cult of the body.

4. The author of the First Letter to the Corinthians 12:18-25 has before his eyes the human body in all its truth, and so the body permeated in the first place (if it can be expressed in this way) by the whole reality of the person and of his dignity. At the same time, it is the body of historical man, male and female, that is, of that man who, after sin, was conceived, so to speak, within and by the reality of the man who had had the experience of original innocence. In Paul’s expressions about the unpresentable parts of the human body, as also about the ones which seem to be weaker or the ones which we think less honourable, we seem to find again the testimony of the same shame that the first human beings, male and female, had experienced after original sin. This shame was imprinted on them and on all the generations of historical man as the fruit of the three forms of lust (with particular reference to the lust of the flesh). And at the same time there is imprinted on this shame—as has already been highlighted in the preceding analyses—a certain “echo” of man’s original innocence itself: a “negative,” as it were, of the image whose “positive” had been precisely original innocence.

5. The Pauline description of the human body seems to confirm perfectly our previous analyses. There are, in the human body, “unpresentable parts,” not because of their somatic nature (since a scientific and physiological description deals with all the parts and organs of the human body in a neutral way, with the same objectivity), but only and exclusively because there exists in man himself that shame which perceives some parts of the body as unpresentable and causes them to be considered such. At the same time, that shame seems to be at the basis of what the Apostle writes in the First Letter to the Corinthians: “Those parts of the body which we think less honourable we invest with the greater honour, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty” (1 Cor 12:23). Hence it can be said that from shame springs respect for one’s own body, respect which Paul, in First Thessalonians (4:4), urges us to keep. This control of the body in holiness and honour is considered essential for the virtue of purity.

6. Returning again to the Pauline description of the body in First Corinthians 12:18-25, we wish to draw attention to the following fact. According to Paul, that particular effort which aims at respecting the human body, and especially its weaker or unpresentable parts, corresponds to the Creator’s original plan, that is, to that vision which Genesis speaks of, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gn 1:31). Paul writes: “God has so composed the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior parts, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another” (1 Cor 12:24-25). As a result of discord in the body, some parts are considered weaker, less honourable, and so unpresentable. This discord is a further expression of the vision of man’s interior state after original sin, that is, of historical man. The man of original innocence, male and female, did not even feel that discord in the body. In Genesis 2:25 we read that they “were naked, and were not ashamed.” The Creator endowed the body with an objective harmony, which Paul specifies as mutual care of the members for one another (cf. 1 Cor 12:25). This harmony corresponded to a similar harmony within man, the harmony of the heart. This harmony, that is precisely purity of heart, enabled man and woman in the state of original innocence to experience simply (and in a way that originally made them both happy) the uniting power of their bodies, which was, so to speak, the unsuspected substratum of their personal union or communio personarum.

7. As can be seen in the First Letter to the Corinthians 12:18-25, the Apostle links his description of the human body with the state of historical man. At the threshold of this man’s history there is the experience of shame connected with “discord in the body,” with the sense of modesty regarding that body (especially those parts of it that somatically determine masculinity and femininity). However, in the same description, Paul also indicates the way which (precisely on the basis of the sense of shame) leads to the transformation of this state to the point of gradual victory over that discord in the body. This victory can and must take place in man’s heart. This is the way to purity, that is, “to control one’s own body in holiness and honour.” Paul connects First Corinthians 12:18-25 with the honour which First Thessalonians 4:3-5 deals with. He uses some equivalent expressions when he speaks of honour, that is, esteem for the less honourable, weaker parts of the body, and when he recommends greater modesty with regard to what is considered unpresentable in man. These expressions more precisely characterize that honour, especially in the sphere of human relations and behavior with regard to the body. This is important both as regards one’s own body, and of course also in mutual relations (especially between man and woman, although not limited to them).

We have no doubt that the description of the human body in First Corinthians has a fundamental meaning for the Pauline doctrine on purity as a whole,

§56. THE VIRTUE of PURITY is the EXPRESSION and FRUIT of LIFE ACCORDING to the SPIRIT (11 Feb.1981)

1. During our recent Wednesday meetings we have analyzed two passages taken from the First Letter to the Thessalonians 4:3-5 and the First Letter to the Corinthians 12:18-25. This was with a view to showing what seems to be essential in St. Paul’s doctrine on purity, understood in the moral sense, that is, as a virtue. If in the aforementioned text of the First Letter to the Thessalonians we can see that purity consists in temperance, in this text, however, as also in the First Letter to the Corinthians, the element of respect is also highlighted. By means of such respect due to the human body (and let us add that, according to the First Letter to the Corinthians, respect is seen precisely in relation to its element of modesty), purity as a Christian virtue is revealed in the Pauline letters as an effective way to become detached from what, in the human heart, is the fruit of the lust of the flesh.

Abstention from unchastity implies controlling one’s body in holiness and honor. This abstention makes it possible to deduce that, according to the Apostle’s doctrine, purity is a capacity centered on the dignity of the body. That is, it is centered on the dignity of the person in relation to his own body, to the femininity or masculinity which is manifested in this body. Understood as capacity, purity is precisely the expression and fruit of life according to the Spirit in the full meaning of the expression. It is a new capacity of the human being, in which the gift of the Holy Spirit bears fruit.

These two dimensions of purity—the moral dimension, or virtue, and the charismatic dimension, namely the gift of the Holy Spirit—are present and closely connected in Paul’s message. That is emphasized particularly by the Apostle in the First Letter to the Corinthians, in which he calls the body “a temple [therefore, a dwelling and shrine] of the Holy Spirit.”

2. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own”—Paul said this to the Corinthians (1 Cor 6:19), after having first instructed them with great severity about the moral requirements of purity. “Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body” (1 Cor 6:18). The peculiar characteristic of the sin that the Apostle stigmatizes here lies in the fact that this sin, unlike all others, is against the body (while other sins are outside the body). In this way, we find in the Pauline terminology the motivation for expressions such as “the sins of the body” or “carnal sins.” These sins are in opposition precisely to that virtue by force of which man keeps his body in holiness and honor (cf. 1 Thess 4:3-5).

3. Such sins bring with them profanation of the body: they deprive the man’s or woman’s body of the honor due to it because of the dignity of the person. However, the Apostle goes further: according to him, sin against the body is also “profanation of the temple.” In Paul’s eyes, it is not only the human spirit, thanks to which man is constituted as a personal subject, that decides the dignity of the human body. But even more so it is the supernatural reality constituted by the indwelling and the continual presence of the Holy Spirit in man—in his soul and in his body—as fruit of the redemption carried out by Christ.

It follows that man’s body is no longer just his own. It deserves that respect whose manifestation in the mutual conduct of man, male and female, constitutes the virtue of purity. This is not only because it is the body of the person. When the Apostle writes: “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God” (1 Cor 6:19), he intends to indicate yet another source of the dignity of the body, precisely the Holy Spirit, who is also the source of the moral duty deriving from this dignity.

4. The reality of redemption, which is also redemption of the body, constitutes this source. For Paul, this mystery of faith is a living reality, geared directly to every person. Through redemption, every man has received from God again, as it were, himself and his own body. Christ has imprinted on the human body—on the body of every man and every woman—new dignity, since, in himself, the human body has been admitted, together with the soul, to union with the Person of the Son-Word. With this new dignity, through the redemption of the body, a new obligation arose at the same time. Paul writes of this concisely, but in an extremely moving way: “You were bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:20). The fruit of redemption is the Holy Spirit, who dwells in man and in his body as in a temple. In this Gift, which sanctifies every man, the Christian receives himself again as a gift from God. This new, double gift is binding. The Apostle refers to this binding dimension when he writes to believers, aware of the Gift, to convince them that one must not commit unchastity. One must not sin “against one’s own body” (ibid. 6:18). He writes: “The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (ibid. 6:13).

It is difficult to express more concisely what the mystery of the Incarnation brings with it for every believer. The fact that the human body becomes in Jesus Christ the body of God-Man obtains for this reason, in every man, a new supernatural elevation, which every Christian must take into account in his behavior with regard to his own body and, of course, with regard to the other’s body: man with regard to woman and woman with regard to man. The redemption of the body involves the institution, in Christ and through Christ, of a new measure of the holiness of the body. Paul refers precisely to this holiness in the First Letter to the Thessalonians (4:3-5) when he writes of “controlling one’s own body in holiness and honor.”

5. In chapter six of the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul specifies the truth about the holiness of the body. He stigmatizes unchastity, that is, the sin against the holiness of the body, the sin of impurity, with words that are even drastic: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two shall become one flesh.’ But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:15-17). According to the Pauline teaching, purity is an aspect of life according to the Spirit. That means that the mystery of the redemption of the body as part of the mystery of Christ, started in the Incarnation and already addressed to every man through it, bears fruit in it.

This mystery bears fruit also in purity understood as a particular commitment based on ethics. The fact that we were “bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:20), that is, at the price of Christ’s redemption, gives rise to a special commitment, that is, the duty of controlling one’s body in holiness and honor. Awareness of the redemption of the body operates in the human will in favor of abstention from unchastity. It operates in acts for the purpose of causing man to acquire an appropriate ability or capacity, called the virtue of purity.

What can be seen from the words of the First Letter to the Corinthians (6:15-17) about Paul’s teaching on the Christian virtue of purity as the implementation of life according to the Spirit is of special depth and has the power of the supernatural realism of faith. We will have to come back to reflection on this subject more than once.

§57. THE PAULINE DOCTRINE of PURITY as LIFE ACCORDING to the SPIRIT (18 Mar.1981)

1. At our meeting some weeks ago, we concentrated our attention on the passage in the First Letter to the Corinthians in which St. Paul calls the human body “a temple of the Holy Spirit.” He writes: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:19-20). “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Cor 6:15). The Apostle points out the mystery of the redemption of the body, carried out by Christ, as a source of a special moral duty which commits the Christian to purity. This is what Paul himself defines elsewhere as the necessity of “controlling his own body in holiness and honor” (1 Thess 4:4).

2. However, we would not completely discover the riches of the thought contained in the Pauline texts, if we did not note that the mystery of redemption bears fruit in man also in a charismatic way. According to the Apostle’s words, the Holy Spirit enters the human body as his own “temple,” dwells there and operates together with his spiritual gifts. Among these gifts, known in the history of spirituality as the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (cf. Is 11:2, according to the Septuagint and the Vulgate), the one most congenial to the virtue of purity seems to be the gift of piety (eusebeia, donum pietatis).[7] If purity prepares man to “control his own body in holiness and honor” (1 Th 4:3-5), piety, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, seems to serve purity in a particular way. It makes the human subject sensitive to that dignity which is characteristic of the human body by virtue of the mystery of creation and redemption. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you.... You are not your own” (1 Cor 6:19). Thanks to the gift of piety, Paul’s words acquire the eloquence of an experience of the nuptial meaning of the body and of the freedom of the gift connected with it, in which the profound aspect of purity and its organic link with love is revealed.

3. Although control of one’s body in holiness and honor is acquired through abstention from immorality—and this way is indispensable—yet it always bears fruit in deeper experience of that love, which was inscribed from the beginning, according to the image and likeness of God himself, in the whole human being and so also in his body. Therefore, St. Paul ends his argumentation in chapter six of the First Letter to the Corinthians with a significant exhortation: “So glorify God in your body” (v. 20). Purity as the virtue is the capacity of controlling one’s body in holiness and honor. Together with the gift of piety, as the fruit of the dwelling of the Holy Spirit in the temple of the body, purity brings about in the body such a fullness of dignity in interpersonal relations that God himself is thereby glorified. Purity is the glory of the human body before God. It is God’s glory in the human body, through which masculinity and femininity are manifested. From purity springs that extraordinary beauty which permeates every sphere of men’s common life and makes it possible to express in it simplicity and depth, cordiality and the unrepeatable authenticity of personal trust. (There will perhaps be an opportunity later to deal with this subject more fully. The connection of purity with love and also the connection of purity in love with that gift of the Holy Spirit, piety, is a part of the theology of the body which is little known, but which deserves particular study. That will be possible in the course of the analysis concerning the sacramentality of marriage.)

4. And now a brief reference to the Old Testament. The Pauline doctrine about purity, understood as life according to the Spirit, seems to indicate a certain continuity with regard to the Wisdom books of the Old Testament. For example, we find there the following prayer to obtain purity in thought, word and deed: “O Lord, Father and God of my life...remove from me evil desire, let neither gluttony nor lust overcome me” (Sir 23:4-6). Purity is, in fact, the condition for finding wisdom and following it, as we read in the same book: “I directed my soul to her [that is, to Wisdom], and through purification I found her” (Sir 51:20). We could also consider the text of the Book of Wisdom (8:21), known by the liturgy in the Vulgate version: “Scivi quoniam aliter non possum esse continens, nisi Deus det; et hoc ipsum erat sapientiae, scire, cuius esset hoc donum.” [8]

According to this concept, it is not so much purity that is a condition for wisdom, but wisdom that is a condition for purity, as for a special gift of God. It seems that already in the above-mentioned Wisdom texts the double meaning of purity takes shape: as a virtue and as a gift. The virtue is in the service of wisdom, and wisdom is a preparation to receive the gift that comes from God. This gift strengthens the virtue and makes it possible to enjoy, in wisdom, the fruits of a behavior and life that are pure.

5. Just as Christ, in his beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount which referred to the “pure in heart,” highlights the “sight of God,” the fruit of purity, and in an eschatological perspective, so Paul in his turn sheds light on its diffusion in the dimensions of temporality, when he writes: “To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are corrupted. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their deeds...” (Tit 1:15f.). These words can also refer both to the general and to the specific meaning of purity, as to the characteristic note of all moral good. For the Pauline concept of purity, in the sense spoken of in the First Letter to the Thessalonians (4:3-5) and the First Letter to the Corinthians (6:13-20), that is, in the sense of life according to the Spirit, the anthropology of rebirth in the Holy Spirit (cf. also Jn 3:5ff.) seems to be fundamental—as can be seen from these considerations of ours as a whole. It grows from roots set in the reality of the redemption of the body, carried out by Christ—redemption, whose ultimate expression is the resurrection. There are profound reasons for connecting the whole theme of purity with the words of the Gospel, in which Christ referred to the resurrection (and that will be the subject of the further stage of our considerations). Here we have mainly linked it with the ethos of the redemption of the body.

6. The way of understanding and presenting purity—inherited from the tradition of the Old Testament and characteristic of the Wisdom Books—was certainly an indirect, but nonetheless real, preparation for the Pauline doctrine about purity understood as life according to the Spirit. That way unquestionably helped many listeners of the Sermon on the Mount to understand Christ’s words when, explaining the commandment, “You shall not commit adultery,” he appealed to the human heart. In this way our reflections as a whole have been able to show, at least to a certain extent, how rich and profound the doctrine on purity is in its biblical and evangelical sources themselves,

1. Before concluding the series of considerations concerning the words Jesus Christ uttered in the Sermon on the Mount, it is necessary to recall these words once more and briefly retrace the thread of ideas whose basis they constitute. Here is the tenor of Jesus’ words: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:27-28). These concise words call for deep reflection, in the same way as the words in which Christ referred to the beginning. The Pharisees had asked him, referring to the law of Moses which admitted the so-called act of repudiation: “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He replied: “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female?... For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.... What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mt 19:3-6). These words, too, called for a deep reflection, to derive all the riches contained in them. A reflection of this kind enabled us to outline the true theology of the body.

2. Following the reference Christ made to the beginning, we dedicated a series of reflections to the relative texts in Genesis, which deal precisely with that beginning. An image of the situation of man—male and female—in the state of original innocence emerged from that analysis, as well as the theological basis of the truth about man and about his particular vocation. This springs from the eternal mystery of the person—the image of God, incarnate in the visible and corporeal fact of the masculinity or femininity of the human person. This truth is at the basis of the answer Christ gave about the nature of marriage, and especially its indissolubility. It is truth about man, truth rooted in the state of original innocence, truth which must therefore be understood in the context of that situation prior to sin, as we tried to do in the preceding series of reflections.

3. At the same time, however, it is necessary to consider, understand and interpret the same fundamental truth about man, his being male and female, in the prism of another situation—that is, of the one that was formed through breaking the first covenant with the Creator, that is, through original sin. Such truth about man—male and female—should be seen in the context of his hereditary sinfulness. It is precisely here that we find Christ’s enunciation in the Sermon on the Mount. It is obvious that in the Scriptures of the Old and the New Covenant there are many narratives, phrases and words which confirm the same truth, that is, that historical man bears within him the inheritance of original sin. Nevertheless, Christ’s words spoken in the Sermon on the Mount seem to have—with all their concise enunciation—a particularly rich eloquence. This is shown also by the previous analyses, which gradually revealed what those words contain. To clarify the statements concerning lust, it is necessary to grasp the biblical meaning of lust itself—of the three forms of lust—and principally that of the flesh. Then, little by little, we arrive at understanding why Jesus defined that lust (looking at lustfully) as adultery committed in the heart. Making the relative analyses, we tried at the same time to understand what meaning Christ’s words had for his immediate listeners. They had been brought up in the tradition of the Old Testament, that is, in the tradition of the legislative texts, as well as the prophetic and sapiential ones. Furthermore, we tried to understand what meaning Christ’s words can have for the person of every other era, especially for modern man, considering his various cultural conditionings. We are convinced that these words, in their essential content, refer to the man of every time and every place. Their comprehensive value consists also in this: they proclaim to each one the truth that is valid and substantial for him.

4. What is this truth? Unquestionably, it is a truth of an ethical nature and therefore a truth of a normative nature, just as the truth contained in the commandment: “You shall not commit adultery,” is normative. The interpretation of this commandment, made by Christ, indicates the evil that must be avoided and overcome—precisely the evil of lust of the flesh—and at the same time it points out the good for which the way is opened by overcoming desire. This good is purity of heart, which Christ spoke of in the same context of the Sermon on the Mount. From the biblical point of view, purity of heart means freedom from every kind of sin or guilt, not just from sins that concern the lust of the flesh. However, we are dealing here especially with one of the aspects of that purity, which constitutes the opposite of adultery committed in the heart. If that purity of heart, about which we are concerned, is understood according to St. Paul’s thought as life according to the Spirit, then the Pauline context offers us a complete image of the content present in the words Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount. They contain a truth of an ethical nature. They warn us against evil and indicate the moral good of human conduct. In fact, they direct listeners to avoid the evil of lust and acquire purity of heart. Therefore these words have a meaning that is both normative and indicative. Directing toward the good of purity of heart, at the same time they indicate the values toward which the human heart can and must aspire.

5. Hence the question: what truth, valid for every man, is contained in Christ’s words? We must answer that not only an ethical truth, but also the essential truth, the anthropological truth about man is contained in them. Precisely for this reason we go back to these words in formulating here the theology of the body. It is closely related to and is in the perspective of the preceding words in which Christ had referred to the beginning. It can be affirmed that, with their expressive evangelical eloquence, the man of original innocence is, in a way, recalled to the consciousness of the man of lust.

But Christ’s words are realistic. They do not try to make the human heart return to the state of original innocence, which man left behind him at the moment when he committed original sin. On the contrary, they indicate to him the way to a purity of heart which is possible and accessible to him even in the state of hereditary sinfulness. This is the purity of the man of lust. However, he is inspired by the word of the Gospel and open to life according to the Spirit (in conformity with St. Paul’s words), that is, the purity of the man of lust who is entirely enveloped by the redemption of the body Christ carried out. For this reason we find in the words of the Sermon on the Mount the reference to the heart, that is, to the interior man. The interior man must open himself to life according to the Spirit, in order to participate in evangelical purity of heart, to rediscover and realize the value of the body, freed through redemption from the bonds of lust. The normative meaning of Christ’s words is deeply rooted in their anthropological meaning, in the dimension of human interiority.

6. According to the evangelical doctrine, developed in such a stupendous way in Paul’s letters, purity is not just temperance or abstention from unchastity (cf. 1 Th 4:3). At the same time, it also opens the way to a more and more perfect discovery of the dignity of the human body. The body is organically connected with the freedom of the gift of the person in the complete authenticity of his personal subjectivity, male or female. In this way, purity in the sense of temperance matures in the heart of the person who cultivates it and tends to reveal and strengthen the nuptial meaning of the body in its integral truth. This truth must be known interiorly. In a way, it must be felt with the heart, in order that the mutual relations of man and of woman—even mere looks—may reacquire that authentically nuptial content of their meanings. In the Gospel, purity of heart indicates precisely this content.

7. If in the interior experience of man (that is, the man of lust), temperance takes shape as a negative function, the analysis of Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount and connected with the texts of St. Paul enables us to shift this meaning toward the positive function of purity of heart. In mature purity man enjoys the fruits of the victory won over lust, a victory which St. Paul writes of, exhorting man to “control his own body in holiness and honor” (1 Th 4:4). The efficacy of the gift of the Holy Spirit, whose “temple” the human body is (cf. 1 Cor 6:19), is partly manifested precisely in such mature purity. This gift is above all that of piety (donum pietatis), which restores to the experience of the body—especially when it is a question of the sphere of the mutual relations of man and woman—all its simplicity, its explicitness and also its interior joy. As can be seen, this is a spiritual climate which is very different from the “passion of lust” of which Paul writes (and which we know, moreover, from the preceding analyses; cf. Sir 26:13, 15-18). The satisfaction of the passions is one thing, and the joy that man finds in mastering himself more fully is another thing. In this way he can also become more fully a real gift for another person.

The words spoken by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount direct the human heart precisely towards this joy. We must entrust ourselves, our thoughts and our actions to them, in order to find joy and give it to others,

1. The time has now come to conclude the reflections and analyses based on the words Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount, with which he appealed to the human heart, exhorting it to purity: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:27-28). We have said several times that these words, spoken once to the limited number of listeners to that Sermon, refer to people of all times and places. They appeal to the human heart, in which the most interior and, in a way, the most essential design of history is inscribed. It is the history of good and evil (whose beginning is connected, in Genesis, with the mysterious tree of the knowledge of good and evil). At the same time, it is the history of salvation, whose word is the Gospel, and whose power is the Holy Spirit, given to those who accept the Gospel with a sincere heart.

2. If Christ’s appeal to the human heart and, still earlier, his reference to the beginning, enable us to construct or at least to outline an anthropology which we can call the theology of the body, such a theology is, at the same time, a pedagogy. Pedagogy aims at educating man, setting before him the requirements, motivating them, and pointing out the ways that lead to their fulfillment. Christ’s pronouncements have also this purpose: they are pedagogical enunciations. They contain a pedagogy of the body, expressed in a concise and at the same time extremely complete way. Both the answer given to the Pharisees with regard to the indissolubility of marriage, and the words of the Sermon on the Mount concerning the mastery of lust, prove—at least indirectly— that the Creator has assigned as a task to man his body, his masculinity and femininity; and that in masculinity and femininity he, in a way, assigned to him as a task his humanity, the dignity of the person, and also the clear sign of the interpersonal communion in which man fulfills himself through the authentic gift of himself. Setting before man the requirements conforming to the tasks entrusted to him, at the same time the Creator points out to man, male and female, the ways that lead to assuming and discharging them.

3. Analyzing these key texts of the Bible to their very roots, we discover that anthropology which can be called the theology of the body. This theology of the body is the basis of the most suitable method of the pedagogy of the body, that is, the education (the self-education) of man. This takes on particular relevance for modern man, whose science in the field of biophysiology and biomedicine has made great progress. However, this science deals with man under a determined aspect and so is partial rather than global. We know well the functions of the body as an organism, the functions connected with the masculinity and femininity of the human person. But in itself, this science does not yet develop the awareness of the body as a sign of the person, as a manifestation of the spirit.

The whole development of modern science, regarding the body as an organism, has rather the character of biological knowledge. This is because it is based on the separation of that which is corporeal in man from that which is spiritual. Using such a one-sided knowledge of the functions of the body as an organism, it is not difficult to arrive at treating the body, in a more or less systematic way, as an object of manipulations. In this case man ceases to identify himself subjectively with his own body, because it is deprived of the meaning and the dignity deriving from the fact that this body is proper to the person. We here touch upon problems often demanding fundamental solutions, which are impossible without an integral view of man.

4. Precisely here it appears clear that the theology of the body, which we derive from those key texts of Christ’s words, becomes the fundamental method of pedagogy, that is, of man’s education from the point of view of the body, in full consideration of his masculinity and femininity. That pedagogy can be understood under the aspect of a specific “spirituality of the body.” In its masculinity or femininity the body is given as a task to the human spirit (this was expressed in a stupendous way by St. Paul in his own characteristic language). By means of an adequate maturity of the spirit it too becomes a sign of the person, which the person is conscious of, and authentic “matter” in the communion of persons. In other words, through his spiritual maturity, man discovers the nuptial meaning proper to the body.

Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount indicate that lust in itself does not reveal that meaning to man, but on the contrary dims and obscures it. Purely biological knowledge of the functions of the body as an organism, connected with the masculinity and femininity of the human person, is capable of helping to discover the true nuptial meaning of the body only if it is accompanied by an adequate spiritual maturity of the human person. Otherwise, such knowledge can have quite the opposite effect. This is confirmed by many experiences of our time.

5. From this point of view it is necessary to consider prudently the pronouncements of the modern Church. Their adequate understanding and interpretation, as well as their practical application (that is, pedagogy) demand that deep theology of the body which we derive mainly from the key words of Christ. As for the pronouncements of the Church in modern times, it is necessary to study the chapter entitled, “The Dignity of Marriage and the Family,” of Pastoral Constitution of the Second Vatican Council (Gaudium et Spes, part II, chap. 1) and, subsequently, Paul VI’s Encyclical Humanae Vitae. Without any doubt, the words of Christ, which we have analyzed at great length, had no other purpose than to emphasize the dignity of marriage and the family. Hence there is a fundamental convergence between them and the content of both the above-mentioned statements of the modern Church. Christ was speaking to the man of all times and places. The pronouncements of the Church aim at applying Christ’s words to the here and now. Therefore they must be reread according to the key of that theology and that pedagogy which find roots and support in Christ’s words.

It is difficult here to make a total analysis of the cited pronouncements of the supreme Magisterium of the Church. We will confine ourselves to quoting some passages. Here is how the Second Vatican Council—placing among the most urgent problems of the Church in the modern world the dignity of marriage and the family—characterizes the situation that exists in this area: “The happy picture of the dignity of these partnerships (that is, marriage and the family) is not reflected everywhere, but is overshadowed by polygamy, the plague of divorce, so-called free love and similar blemishes; furthermore, married love is too often dishonoured by selfishness, hedonism, and unlawful contraceptive practices (Gaudium et Spes 47). Paul VI, setting forth this last problem in the encyclical Humanae Vitae, writes, among other things: “Another thing that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection” (Humanae Vitae 17).

Are we not here in the sphere of the same concern which once dictated Christ’s words on the unity and indissolubility of marriage, as well as those of the Sermon on the Mount, concerning purity of heart and mastery of the lust of the flesh, words that were later developed with so much acuteness by the Apostle Paul?

6. In the same spirit, speaking of the demands of Christian morality, the author of Humanae Vitae presents at the same time the possibility of fulfilling them when he writes: “The mastery of instinct by one’s reason and free will undoubtedly demands an asceticism”—Paul VI uses this term—so that the affective manifestations of conjugal life may be in keeping with right order, in particular with regard to the observance of periodic continence. Yet this discipline which is proper to the purity of married couples, far from harming conjugal love, rather confers on it a higher human value. It demands a continual effort [this effort was called above asceticism], yet, thanks to its beneficent influence, husband and wife fully develop their personalities, [and] enrich each other with spiritual values.... It favors attention for one’s partner, helps both parties to drive out selfishness, the enemy of true love, and deepens their sense of responsibility...” (Humane Vitae 21).

7. Let us pause on these few passages. They—particularly the last one—clearly show how indispensable, for an adequate understanding of the pronouncements of the Magisterium of the modern Church, is the theology of the body, whose foundations we sought especially in the words of Christ himself. It is precisely that theology—as we have already said—that becomes the fundamental method of the whole Christian pedagogy of the body. Referring to the words quoted, it can be affirmed that the purpose of the pedagogy of the body lies in ensuring that the “affective manifestations”—particularly those “proper to conjugal life”— be in conformity with the moral order, or, in a word, with the dignity of the person. In these words the problem returns of the mutual relationship between eros and ethos, which we have already dealt with. Theology, understood as a method of the pedagogy of the body, prepares us also for further reflections on the sacramentality of human life and especially married life.

The Gospel of purity of heart, yesterday and, today: concluding with this phrase this cycle of our considerations—before going on to the next one, in which the basis of analyses will be Christ’s words on the resurrection of the body—we still wish to devote some attention to “the need of creating an atmosphere favorable to education in chastity,” with which Paul VI’s encyclical deals (cf. Humanae Vitae 22), and we wish to focus these observations on the problem of the ethos of the body in works of artistic culture, referring especially to the situations we encounter in modern life,

1. In our preceding reflections—both in the analysis of Christ’s words, in which he refers to the “beginning”, and during the Sermon on the Mount, that is, when he refers to the human “heart”—we have tried systematically to show how the dimension of man’s personal subjectivity is an indispensable element present in theological hermeneutics, which we must discover and presuppose at the basis of the problem of the human body. Therefore, not only the objective reality of the body, but far more, as it seems, subjective consciousness and also the subjective experience of the body, enter at every step into the structure of the biblical texts, and therefore require to be taken into consideration and find their reflection in theology. Consequently theological hermeneutics must always take these two aspects into account. We cannot consider the body an objective reality outside the personal subjectivity of man, of human beings, male and female. Nearly all the problems of the ethos of the body are bound up at the same time with its ontological identification as the body of the person. They are also bound up with the content and quality of the subjective experience, that is, of the “life” both of one’s own body and in its interpersonal relations, especially in the perennial man-woman relationship. Without any doubt, the words of the First Letter to the Thessalonians, in which the author exhorts us to “control our own body in holiness and honor” (that is, the whole problem of “purity of heart”) indicate these two dimensions.

2. They are dimensions which directly concern concrete, living men, their attitudes and behavior. Works of culture, especially of art, enable those dimensions of “being a body” and “experiencing the body” to extend, in a way, outside these living men. Man meets the “reality of the body” and “experiences the body” even when it becomes a subject of creative activity, a work of art, a content of culture. Although generally speaking, it must be recognized that this contact takes place on the plane of aesthetic experience, in which it is a question of viewing the work of art (in Greek aisthá nomai: I look, I observe)—and therefore that, in the given case, it is a question of the objectivized body, outside its ontological identity, in a different way and according to the criteria characteristic of artistic activity—yet the man who is admitted to viewing in this way is a priori too deeply bound up with the meaning of the prototype, or model, which in this case is himself:—the living man and the living human body—to be able to detach and separate completely that act, substantially an aesthetic one, of the work in itself and of its contemplation from those dynamisms or reactions of behavior and from the evaluations which direct that first experience and that first way of living. By its very nature, this looking is aesthetic. It cannot be completely isolated, in man’s subjective conscience, from that looking of which Christ speaks in the Sermon on the Mount: warning against lust.

3. Therefore, in this way the whole sphere of aesthetic experiences is, at the same time, in the area of the ethos of the body. Rightly we must think here too of the necessity of creating a climate favorable to purity. This climate can be threatened not only in the way in which the relations and society of living men take place, but also in the area of the objectivizations characteristic of works of culture; in the area of social communications, when it is a question of the spoken or written word; in the area of the image, that is, of representation and vision, both in the traditional meaning of this term and in the modern one. In this way we reach the various fields and products of artistic, plastic and dramatic culture, as also that based on modern audio-visual techniques. In this field, a vast and very differentiated one, we must ask ourselves a question in the light of the ethos of the body, outlined in the analyses made so far on the human body as an object of culture.

4. First of all it must be noted that the human body is a perennial object of culture, in the widest meaning of the term. This is for the simple reason that man himself is a subject of culture, and in his cultural and creative activity he involves his humanity, including his body. In these reflections, however, we must restrict the concept of object of culture, limiting ourselves to the concept understood as the subject of works of culture and in particular of works of art. It is a question, in a word, of the thematic nature, that is, of the “objectivation” [sic] of the body in these works. However, some distinctions must be made here at once, even if by way of example. One thing is the living human body, of man and of woman, which creates in itself the object of art and the work of art (for example, in the theater, in the ballet and, to a certain point, also in the course of a concert). Another thing is the body as the model of the work of art, as in the plastic arts, sculpture or painting. Is it possible to also put films or the photographic art in a wide sense on the same level? It seems so, although from the point of view of the body as object-theme, a quite essential difference takes place in this case. In painting or sculpture the human body always remains a model, undergoing specific elaboration on the part of the artist. In the film, and even more in the photographic art, it is not the model that is transfigured, but the living man is reproduced. In this case man, the human body, is not a model for the work of art, but the object of a reproduction obtained by means of suitable techniques.

5. It should be pointed out right away that the above-mentioned distinction is important from the point of view of the ethos of the body in works of culture. It should be added at once that when artistic reproduction becomes the content of representation and transmission (on television or in films), it loses, in a way, its fundamental contact with the human body, of which it is a reproduction. It often becomes an anonymous object, just like an anonymous photographic document published in illustrated magazines, or an image diffused on the screens of the whole world. This anonymity is the effect of the “propagation” of the image-reproduction of the human body, objectivized first with the help of the techniques of reproduction, which—as has been recalled above—seems to be essentially differentiated from the transfiguration of the model typical of the work of art, especially in the plastic arts. This anonymity (which, moreover, is a way of veiling or hiding the identity of the person reproduced) also constitutes a specific problem from the point of view of the ethos of the human body in works of culture, especially in the modern works of mass culture, as it is called.

Let us confine ourselves today to these preliminary considerations, which have a fundamental meaning for the ethos of the human body in works of artistic culture. Subsequently these considerations will make us aware of how closely bound they are to the words which Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount, comparing “looking lustfully” with “adultery committed in the heart.” The extension of these words to the area of artistic culture is especially important, insofar as it is a question of “creating an atmosphere favorable to chastity,” which Paul VI spoke of in Humanae Vitae. Let us try to understand this subject in a deep and fundamental way.

61. REFLECTIONS on the ETHOS of the HUMAN BODY in WORKS of ARTISTIC CULTURE (22 April 1981)

Let us now reflect—with regard to Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount—on the problem of the ethos of the human body in works of artistic culture. This problem has very deep roots. It is opportune to recall here the series of analyses carried out in connection with Christ’s reference to the beginning, and subsequently to the reference he made to the human heart, in the Sermon on the Mount. The human body—the naked human body in the whole truth of its masculinity and femininity—has the meaning of a gift of the person to the person. The ethos of the body, that is, the ethical norms that govern its nakedness, because of the dignity of the personal subject, is closely connected with that system of reference. This is understood as the nuptial system, in which the giving of one party meets the appropriate and adequate response of the other party to the gift. This response decides the reciprocity of the gift.

The artistic objectivation [sic] of the human body in its male and female nakedness, in order to make it first of all a model and then the subject of the work of art, is always to a certain extent a going outside of this original and, for the body, its specific configuration of interpersonal donation. In a way, that constitutes an uprooting of the human body from this configuration and its transfer to the dimension of artistic objectivation—the specific dimension of the work of art or of the reproduction typical of the film and photographic techniques of our time.

In each of these dimensions—and in a different way in each one—the human body loses that deeply subjective meaning of the gift. It becomes an object destined for the knowledge of many. This happens in such a way that those who look at the body, assimilate or even, in a way, take possession of what evidently exists, of what in fact should exist essentially at the level of a gift, made by the person to the person, not just in the image but in the living man. Actually, that “taking possession” already happens at another level—that is, at the level of the object of the transfiguration or artistic reproduction. However it is impossible not to perceive that from the point of view of the ethos of the body, deeply understood, a problem arises here. This is a very delicate problem, which has its levels of intensity according to various motives and circumstances both as regards artistic activity and as regards knowledge of the work of art or of its reproduction. The fact that this problem is raised does not mean that the human body, in its nakedness, cannot become a subject of works of art—but only that this problem is not purely aesthetic, nor morally indifferent.

2. In our preceding analyses (especially with regard to Christ’s reference to the “beginning”), we devoted a great deal of space to the meaning of shame. We tried to understand the difference between the situation—and the state—of original innocence, in which “they were both naked, and were not ashamed” (Gn 2:25), and, subsequently, between the situation—and the state—of sinfulness. In that state there arose between man and woman, together with shame, the specific necessity of privacy with regard to their own bodies.

In the heart of man, subject to lust, this necessity serves, even indirectly, to ensure the gift and the possibility of mutual donation. This necessity also forms man’s way of acting as “an object of culture,” in the widest meaning of the term. If culture shows an explicit tendency to cover the nakedness of the human body, it certainly does so not only for climatic reasons, but also in relation to the process of growth of man’s personal sensitivity. The anonymous nakedness of the man-object contrasts with the progress of the truly human culture of morals. It is probably possible to confirm this also in the life of so-called primitive populations. The process of refining personal human sensitivity is certainly a factor and fruit of culture.

Beyond the need of shame, that is, of the privacy of one’s own body (on which the biblical sources give such precise information in Genesis 3), there is a deeper norm. This norm is the gift, directed toward the very depths of the personal subject or toward the other person—especially in the man-woman relationship according to the perennial norms regulating the mutual donation. In this way, in the processes of human culture understood in the wide sense, we note—even in man’s state of hereditary sinfulness—quite an explicit continuity of the nuptial meaning of the body in its masculinity and femininity. That original shame, known already from the first chapters of the Bible, is a permanent element of culture and morals. It belongs to the genesis of the ethos of the human body.

3. The person of developed sensitivity overcomes the limit of that shame with difficulty and interior resistance. This is seen clearly even in situations which justify the necessity of undressing the body, such as in the case of medical examinations or operations. Mention should also be made especially of other circumstances, such as those of concentration camps or places of extermination, where the violation of bodily shame is a method used deliberately to destroy personal sensitivity and the sense of human dignity.

The same rule is confirmed everywhere—though in different ways. Following personal sensitivity, man does not wish to become an object for others through his own anonymous nakedness. Nor does he wish the other to become an object for him in a similar way. Evidently he does not wish this to the extent to which he lets himself be guided by the sense of the dignity of the human body. Various motives can induce, incite and even press man to act in a way contrary to the requirements of the dignity of the human body, a dignity connected with personal sensitivity. It cannot be forgotten that the fundamental interior situation of historical man is the state of threefold lust (cf. 1 Jn 2:16). This state—and, in particular, the lust of the flesh—makes itself felt in various ways, both in the interior impulses of the human heart and in the whole climate of interhuman relations and social morals.

4. We cannot forget this, not even when it is a question of the broad sphere of artistic culture, particularly that of visual and spectacular character, as also when it is a question of mass culture. This is so significant for our times and connected with the use of the media of audiovisual communication. A question arises: when and in what case is this sphere of man’s activity—from the point of view of the ethos of the body—regarded as pornovision, just as in literature some writings were and are often regarded as pornography (this second term is an older one).

Both take place when the limit of shame is overstepped, that is, of personal sensitivity with regard to what is connected with the human body with its nakedness. They take place when in the work of art or by means of the media of audiovisual reproduction the right to the privacy of the body in its masculinity or femininity is violated—and in the last analysis—when those deep governing rules of the gift and of mutual donation, which are inscribed in this femininity and masculinity through the whole structure of the human being, are violated. This deep inscription—or rather incision—decides the nuptial meaning of the human body, that is, of the fundamental call it receives to form the “communion of persons” and take part in it.

Breaking off at this point our consideration, which we intend to continue next Wednesday, it should be noted that observance or non-observance of these norms, so deeply connected with man’s personal sensitivity, cannot be a matter of indifference for the problem of creating a climate favorable to chastity in life and social education,

1. We have already dedicated a series of reflections to the meaning of the words spoken by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he exhorts to purity of heart, calling attention even to the “lustful look.” We cannot forget these words of Christ even when it is a question of the vast sphere of artistic culture, particularly that of a visual and spectacular character, as also when it is a question of the sphere of “mass” culture—so significant for our times—connected with the use of the audiovisual communications media. We said recently that the above-mentioned sphere of activity is sometimes accused of pornovision, just as the accusation of pornography is made with regard to literature. Both facts take place by going beyond the limit of shame, that is, of personal sensitivity with regard to what is connected with the human body and its nakedness. It happens when in the artistic work by means of the media of audiovisual production the right to the privacy of the body in its masculinity or femininity is violated, and—in the last analysis—when that intimate and constant destination to the gift and to mutual donation, which is inscribed in that femininity and masculinity through the whole structure of the being-man, is violated. That deep inscription, or rather incision, decides the nuptial meaning of the body, that is, the fundamental call it receives to form a communion of persons and to participate in it.

2. It is obvious that in works of art, or in the products of audiovisual artistic reproduction, the above-mentioned constant destination to the gift, that is, that deep inscription of the meaning of the human body, can be violated only in the intentional order of the reproduction and the representation: it is a question, in fact—as has already been previously said—of the human body as model or subject. However, if the sense of shame and personal sensitivity is offended in these cases, that happens because of their transfer to the dimension of social communication, therefore owing to the fact that what, in man’s rightful feeling, belongs and must belong strictly to the interpersonal relationship—which is linked, as has already been pointed out, with the communion of persons itself, and in its sphere corresponds to the interior truth of man, and so also to the complete truth about man—becomes, so to speak, public property.

At this point it is not possible to agree with the representatives of so-called naturalism. They demand the right to “everything that is human” in works of art and in the products of artistic reproduction. They affirm that they act in this way in the name of the realistic truth about man. It is precisely this truth about man—the whole truth about man—that makes it necessary to consider both the sense of the privacy of the body and the consistency of the gift connected with the masculinity and femininity of the body itself, in which the mystery of man, peculiar to the interior structure of the person, is reflected. This truth about man must also be considered in the artistic order, if we want to speak of a full realism.

3. In this case, it is evident that the deep governing rule related to the communion of persons is in profound agreement with the vast and differentiated area of communication. The human body in its nakedness—as we stated in the preceding analyses (in which we referred to Genesis 2:25)—understood as a manifestation of the person and as his gift, that is, a sign of trust and donation to the other person, who is conscious of the gift, and who is chosen and resolved to respond to it in an equally personal way, becomes the source of a particular interpersonal communication.

As has already been said, this is a particular communication in humanity itself. That interpersonal communication penetrates deeply into the system of communion (communio personarum), and at the same time it grows from it and develops correctly within it. Precisely because of the great value of the body in this system of interpersonal communion, to make the body in its nakedness—which expresses precisely “the element” of the gift—the object-subject of the work of art or of the audiovisual reproduction, is a problem which is not only aesthetic, but also ethical. That “element of the gift” is, so to speak, suspended in the dimension of an unknown reception and an unforeseen response. Thereby it is in a way threatened in the order of intention, in the sense that it may become an anonymous object of appropriation, an object of abuse. Precisely for this reason the integral truth about man constitutes in this case the foundation of the norm according to which the good or evil of determined actions, of behavior, of morals and situations, is modeled. The truth about man, about what is particularly personal and interior in him—precisely because of his body and his sex (femininity-masculinity)—creates here precise limits which it is unlawful to exceed.

4. These limits must be recognized and observed by the artist who makes the human body the object, model or subject of the work of art or of the audiovisual reproduction. Neither he nor others who are responsible in this field have the right to demand, propose or bring it about that other people, invited, exhorted or admitted to see, to contemplate the image, should violate those limits together with them, or because of them. It is a question of the image, in which that which in itself constitutes the content and the deeply personal value, that which belongs to the order of the gift and of the mutual donation of person to person, is, as a subject, uprooted from its own authentic substratum. It becomes, through social communication, an object and what is more, in a way, an anonymous object.

As can be seen from what is said above, the whole problem of pornovision and pornography is not the effect of a puritanical mentality or of a narrow moralism, just as it is not the product of a thought imbued with Manichaeism. It is a question of an extremely important, fundamental sphere of values. Before it, man cannot remain indifferent because of the dignity of humanity, the personal character and the eloquence of the human body. By means of works of art and the activity of the audiovisual media, all those contents and values can be modeled and studied. But they can also be distorted and destroyed in the heart of man. As can be seen, we find ourselves continually within the orbit of the words Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount. Also the problems which we are dealing with here must be examined in the light of those words, which consider a look that springs from lust as “adultery committed in the heart.”

It seems, therefore, that reflection on these problems, which is important to create a climate favorable to education to chastity, constitutes an indispensable appendage to all the preceding analyses which we have dedicated to this subject in the course of numerous Wednesday meetings,

1. In the Sermon on the Mount Christ spoke the words to which we have devoted a series of reflections for almost a year. Explaining to his listeners the specific meaning of the commandment, “You shall not commit adultery,” Christ expressed himself as follows: “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:28). The above-mentioned words seem to refer also to the vast spheres of human culture, especially those of artistic activity, which we have recently dealt with in the course of some of the Wednesday meetings. Today it is opportune for us to dedicate the final part of these reflections to the problem of the relationship between the ethos of the image—or of the description—and the ethos of the viewing and listening, reading or other forms of cognitive reception with which one meets the content of the work of art or of audio-vision understood in the broad sense.

Here we return once more to the problem already mentioned: whether and to what extent can the human body, in the whole visible truth of its masculinity and femininity, be a subject of works of art and thereby a subject of that specific social communication for which these works are intended? This question referred even more to modern mass culture, connected with the audiovisual media. Can the human body be such a model-subject, since we know that with this is connected that objectivity “without choice” which we first called anonymity, and which seems to bring with it a serious potential threat to the whole sphere of meanings, peculiar to the body of man and woman because of the personal character of the human subject and the character of communion of interpersonal relations?

One can add at this point that the expressions pornography and pornovision—despite their ancient etymology—appeared in language relatively late. The traditional Latin terminology used the word obscaena, indicating in this way everything that should not appear before the eyes of spectators, what should be surrounded with opportune discretion, what cannot be presented to human view without any choice.

3. Asking the preceding question, we realize that, de facto, during whole periods of human culture and artistic activity, the human body has been and is such a model-subject of visual works of art. Similarly, the whole sphere of love between man and woman, and, connected with it, also the mutual donation of masculinity and femininity in their corporeal expression, has been, is and will be a subject of literary narrative. Such narration found its place even in the Bible, especially in the text of the Song of Songs, which it will be opportune to take up again on another occasion. It should be noted that in the history of literature or art, in the history of human culture, this subject seems quite frequent and is especially important. In fact, it concerns a problem which in itself is great and important. We showed this right from the beginning of our reflections, following the scriptural texts. These reveal to us the proper dimension of this problem, that is, the dignity of man in his masculine and feminine corporeity, and the nuptial meaning of femininity and masculinity, inscribed in the whole interior—and at the same time visible—structure of the human person.

4. Our preceding reflections did not intend to question the right to this subject. They aim merely at proving that its treatment is connected with a special responsibility which is not only artistic, but also ethical in nature. The artist who undertakes that theme in any sphere of art or through audiovisual media, must be aware of the full truth of the object, of the whole scale of values connected with it. He must not only take them into account in abstracto, but also live them correctly himself. This corresponds also to that principle of purity of heart, which in determined cases must be transferred from the existential sphere of attitudes and ways of behavior to the intentional sphere of creation or artistic reproduction.

It seems that the process of this creation aims not only at making the model concrete (and in a way at a new “materializing”), but at the same time, at expressing in such concretizing what can be called the creative idea of the artist. This manifests his interior world of values, and so also his living the truth of his object. In this process a characteristic transfiguration of the model or of the material takes place and, in particular, of what is man, the human body in the whole truth of its masculinity or femininity. (From this point of view, as we have already mentioned, there is a very important difference, for example, between the painting or sculpture and the photograph or film.) Invited by the artist to look at his work, the viewer communicates not only with the concretizing, and so, in a sense, with a new “materializing” of the model or of the material. But at the same time he communicates with the truth of the object which the author, in his artistic “materializing,” has succeeded in expressing with his own specific media.

5. In the course of the various eras, beginning from antiquity—and above all in the great period of Greek classical art—there are works of art whose subject is the human body in its nakedness. The contemplation of this makes it possible to concentrate, in a way, on the whole truth of man, on the dignity and the beauty—also the “suprasensual” beauty—of his masculinity and femininity. These works bear within them, almost hidden, an element of sublimation. This leads the viewer, through the body, to the whole personal mystery of man. In contact with these works, where we do not feel drawn by their content to “looking lustfully,” which the Sermon on the Mount speaks about, we learn in a way that nuptial meaning of the body which corresponds to, and is the measure of, “purity of heart.” But there are also works of art, and perhaps even more often reproductions, which arouse objection in the sphere of man’s personal sensitivity—not because of their object, since the human body in itself always has its inalienable dignity—but because of the quality or way of its reproduction, portrayal or artistic representation. The various coefficients of the work or the reproduction can be decisive with regard to that way and that quality, as well as multiple circumstances, often more of a technical nature than an artistic one.

It is well known that through all these elements the fundamental intentionality of the work of art or of the product of the respective media becomes, in a way, accessible to the viewer, as to the listener or the reader. If our personal sensitivity reacts with objection and disapproval, it is because in that fundamental intentionality, together with the concretizing of man and his body, we discover as indispensable for the work of art or its reproduction, his simultaneous reduction to the level of an object. He becomes an object of “enjoyment,” intended for the satisfaction of concupiscence itself. This is contrary to the dignity of man also in the intentional order of art and reproduction. By analogy, the same thing must be applied to the various fields of artistic activity—according to the respective specific character—as also to the various audiovisual media.

6. Paul VI’s Encyclical Humanae Vitae emphasizes the “need to create an atmosphere favorable to education in chastity” (n. 22). With this he intends to affirm that the way of living the human body in the whole truth of its masculinity and femininity must correspond to the dignity of this body and to its significance in building the communion of persons. It can be said that this is one of the fundamental dimensions of human culture, understood as an affirmation which ennobles everything that is human. Therefore we have dedicated this brief sketch to the problem which, in synthesis, could be called that of the ethos of the image. It is a question of the image which serves as an extraordinary “visualization” of man, and which must be understood more or less directly. The sculpted or painted image expresses man visually; the play or the ballet expresses him visually in another way, and the film in another way. Even literary work, in its own way, aims at arousing interior images, using the riches of the imagination or of human memory. So what we have called the ethos of the image cannot be considered apart from the correlative element, which we would have to call the ethos of seeing. Between the two elements the whole process of communication is contained, independently of the vastness of the circles described by this communication, which, in this case, is always social.

7. The creation of the atmosphere favorable to education in chastity contains these two elements. It concerns a reciprocal circuit which takes place between the image and the seeing, between the ethos of the image and the ethos of seeing. The creation of the image, in the broad and differentiated sense of the term, imposes on the author, artist or reproducer, obligations not only of an aesthetic, but also of an ethical nature. In the same way, “looking,” understood according to the same broad analogy, imposes obligations on the one who is the recipient of the work.

True and responsible artistic activity aims at overcoming the anonymity of the human body as an object “without choice.” As has already been said, it seeks through creative effort such an artistic expression of the truth about man in his feminine and masculine corporeity, which is, so to speak, assigned as a task to the viewer and, in the wider range, to every recipient of the work. It depends on him, in his turn, to decide whether to make his own effort to approach this truth, or to remain merely a superficial consumer of impressions, that is, one who exploits the meeting with the anonymous body-subject only at the level of sensuality which, by itself, reacts to its object precisely without choice.

We conclude here this important chapter of our reflections on the theology of the body, whose starting point was the words Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount. These words are valid for the man of all times, for the historical man, and for each one of us.

The reflections on the theology of the body would not be complete, however, if we did not consider other words of Christ, namely, those when he referred to the future resurrection. So we propose to devote the next cycle of our considerations to them.

[1] Alongside a complex system of prescriptions concerning ritual purity, on which legal casuistry was based, the concept of moral purity also existed in the Old Testament. It was handed down by means of two channels.
The Prophets demanded behavior in conformity with God's will, which presupposes conversion of heart, interior obedience and complete uprightness before him (cf. for example, Is 1:10-20; Jer 4:14; 24:7; Ez 36:25ff.). A similar attitude is required also by the Psalmist:
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord... / He who has clean hands and a pure heart... / will receive blessing from the Lord (Ps 24:3-5).
According to the priestly tradition, man is aware of his deep sinfulness and, not being able to purify himself by his own power, he beseeches God to bring about this change of heart, which can only be the work of a creative act of his:
Create in me a clean heart, O God... / wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow... / a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (Ps 51:10, 7, 17).
Both Old Testament channels meet in the beatitude of the "pure in heart" (Mt 5:8), even if its verbal formulation seems to be closer to Psalm 24 (cf. J. Dupont, Les Béatitudes, vol. III; Les Evangélistes [Paris: Gabalda, 1973], pp. 603-604).

[2] “Paul never, like the Greeks, identified ‘sinful flesh’ with the physical body....
Flesh, then, in Paul is not to be identified with sex or with the physical body. It is closer to the Hebrew thought of the physical personality—the self including physical and psychical elements as vehicles of the outward life and the lower levels of experience. It is man in his humanness with all the limitations, moral weakness, vulnerability, creatureliness and morality, which being human implies....
Man is vulnerable both to evil and to God; he is a vehicle, a channel, a dwelling place, a temple, a battlefield (Paul uses each metaphor) for good and evil. Which shall possess, indwell, master him—whether sin, evil, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience, or Christ, the Holy Spirit, faith, grace—it is for each man to choose.
That he can so choose brings to view the other side of Paul’s conception of human nature, man’s conscience and the human spirit (R. E. O. White, Biblical Ethics [Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1979], pp. 135-138).

[3] The interpretation of the Greek word sarx (flesh) in Paul’s letters depends on the context of the letter. In Galatians, for example, at least two distinct meanings of sarx can be specified.
Writing to the Galatians, Paul was fighting two dangers which threatened the young Christian community.
On the one hand, converts from Judaism were trying to convince converts from paganism to accept circumcision, which was obligatory in Judaism. Paul reproaches them with “wanting to make a good showing in the flesh,” that is, of restoring hope in the circumcision of the flesh. So “flesh” in this context (Gal 3:1-5, 12; 6:12-18) means “circumcision,” as the symbol of a new submission to the laws of Judaism.
The second danger in the young Galatian Church came from the influence of the “Pneumatics” who understood the work of the Holy Spirit as the divinization of man rather than as a power operating in an ethical sense. That led them to underestimate moral principles. Writing to them, Paul calls “flesh” everything that brings man closer to the object of his lust and entices him with the tempting promise of a life that is apparently fuller (cf. Gal 5:13; 6:10).
Sarx, therefore, “makes a good showing” of the “Law” as well as of its infraction, and in both cases promises what it cannot fulfill.
Paul distinguishes explicitly between the object of the action and sarx. The center of the decision is not in the flesh: “Walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Gal 5:16).
Man falls into the slavery of the flesh when he trusts in the flesh and in what it promises (in the sense of the “Law” or of infraction of the law). (Cf. F. Mussner, Der Galaterbrief, Herders Theolog. Kommentar zum NT, IX [Freiburg: Herder, 1974), p. 367; R. Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms, A Study of Their Use in Conflict Settings, Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchistentums, X [Leiden: Brill, 1971], pp. 95-106).

[4] In his letters Paul stresses the dramatic character of what is going on in the world. Since men, through their fault, have forgotten God, “therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity” (Rom 1:24), from which there also comes all moral disorder, which distorts both sexual life (cf. Rom 1:24-27), the operation of social and economic life (cf. Rom 1:29-32) and even cultural life; in fact, “though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them” (Rom 1:32).
From the moment that, through one man, sin came into the world (cf. Rom 5:12), “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor 4:4). Therefore too “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth” (Rom 1:1).
Therefore “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God...because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:19-21), that liberty for which “Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1).
The concept of “world” in St. John has various meanings: in his first Letter, the world is the place in which the threefold lust is manifested (cf. 1 Jn 2:15-16) and in which the false prophets and adversaries of Christ try to seduce the faithful. But Christians defeat the world thanks to their faith (cf. 1 Jn 5:4). The world, in fact, passes away with its lust, and he who does the will of God lives forever (cf. 1 Jn 2:17).
(Cf. P. Grelot, “Monde,” Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, Ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, fascicules 68-69, Beauchesne, p. 1628ff. Furthermore, J. Mateos J. Barreto, Vocabulario teologico del Evangelio de Juan [Madrid: Edic. Cristianidad, 1980], pp. 211-215).

[5] Exegetes point out that, although for Paul the concept of "fruit" is sometimes applied also to the "works of the flesh" (e.g., Rom 6:21; 7:5), yet "the fruit of the Spirit" is never called "work."
For Paul, "works" are the specific acts of man (or that in which Israel lays hope, without a reason), for which he will be answerable before God.
Paul also avoids the term "virtue," arete; it is found only once, in a very general sense, in Phil 4:8. In the Greek world this word had a too anthropocentric meaning; the Stoics especially stressed the self-sufficiency or autarchy of virtue.
On the other hand, the term "fruit of the Spirit" emphasizes God's action in man. This "fruit" grows in him like the gift of a life whose only Author is God. Man can, at most, promote suitable conditions, in order that the fruit may grow and ripen.
The fruit of the Spirit, in the singular form, corresponds in some way to the "justice" of the Old Testament, which embraces the whole of life in conformity with God's will; it also corresponds, in a certain sense, to the "virtue" of the Stoics, which was indivisible. We see this, for example, in Eph 5:9-11: "The fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.... Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness...."
However, "the fruit of the Spirit" is different both from "justice" and from "virtue," because "in all its manifestations and differentiations which are seen in the lists of virtues" it contains the effect of the action of the Spirit, which, in the Church, is the foundation and fulfillment of the Christian's life.
Cf. H. Schlier, "Der Brief an die Galater," Meyer's Kommentar (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck-Ruprecht, 1971-5), pp. 255-264; O. Bauernfeind, "Arete," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. 1, ed. G. Kittel, G. Bromley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978-9), p. 460; W. Tatarkiewicz, Historia Filozofii (Warszawa: PWN, 1970), p. 121; E. Kamlah, "Die Form der katalogischen Paränese im Neuen Testament," Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 7 (Tübingen: Mhr, 1964), p. 14.

[6] Without going into the detailed discussions of the exegetes, it should, however, be pointed out that the Greek expression to heautou skeuos can refer also to the wife (cf. 1 Pt 3:7).

[7] In the Greco-Roman period eusebeia or pietas generally referred to the veneration of the gods (as “devotion”), but it still kept its broader original meaning of respect for vital structures.
Eusebeia defined the mutual behavior of relatives, relations between husband and wife, and also the attitude due by the legions toward Caesar or by slaves to their masters.
In the New Testament, only the later writings apply eusebeia to Christians; in the older writings this term characterizes “good pagans” (Acts 10:2, 7; 17:23).
And so the Greek eusebeia, as also the donum pietatis, while they certainly refer to divine veneration, have a wide basis in the connotation of interpersonal relations (cf. W. Foerster, art. eusebeia, “Theological Dictionary of the New Testament”, Vol. 7, ed. G. Kittel, G. Bromley [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971], pp. 177-182).

[8] This version of the Vulgate, retained by the Neo-Vulgate and by the liturgy, quoted several times by Augustine (De S. Virg., par. 43; Confess. VI, 11; X, 29; Serm. CLX, 7), changes, however, the meaning of the original Greek, which can be translated as follows: “Knowing that I would not have obtained it [Wisdom] otherwise, if God had not granted it to me....