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An
Introduction to John Paul II's Theology of the Body
Father Richard M. Hogan |
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Chapter 1
George Weigel in his book, Witness to Hope, suggests that
John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is a “theological time bomb
set to go off, with dramatic consequences, sometime in the third
millennium of the Church.”
While completed in November 1984, until recently, the Theology of the
Body has not elicited much comment or interest. In fact, only a
handful of Catholics had ever heard of the Theology of the Body
before Weigel’s book was published. Weigel’s remark and his discussion
of the Theology of the Body are partly responsible for a renewed
interest in this significant papal work.
The Theology of the Body of Pope John Paul II is a series of
addresses given at the Wednesday papal audiences in Rome from September
1979 to November 1984. (There were some rather lengthy interruptions in
this series, e.g., during the Holy Year of the Redemption in 1983, the
audiences were devoted to other topics.) The Wednesday papal audiences
are given as an opportunity for visitors and pilgrims to Rome to see and
hear the Pope. Previous Popes of the second half of the twentieth
century have given addresses at these audiences as Pope John Paul II
does. However, John Paul II’s predecessors have not tried to give a
series of addresses devoted to one theme in successive audiences.
Rather, each address stood on its own and treated a subject matter
appropriate to that particular Wednesday, e.g., on a saint’s feast day,
Pope Paul VI might have spoken about that particular saint; or during
the Easter season, Pope John XXIII might have addressed the joys of
Easter and the promise of the resurrection of the body implicit in
Christ’s resurrection. John Paul II has decided to use the Wednesday
audiences to give a series of addresses devoted to one central theme.
The first of these series was the Theology of the Body. A
series, given once a week to totally different audiences over several
years, is not the easiest task to attempt. Each address needs to stand
on its own and make sense to the particular audience who hears it.
Still, it also must fit into the series and be part of a much larger
effort to address the central theme.
The Theology of the Body comprises 129 individual addresses.
These are divided into six different cycles. The first three cycles are
reflections on the remarks of Christ pertaining to marriage. In the
first cycle (nos. 1-23) John Paul discusses Christ’s answer to the
Pharisees when they ask him about whether a man can divorce his wife.
The second cycle (nos. 24-63) are a reflection on Christ’s remarks in
the Sermon on the Mount about adultery, “You have heard that it was
said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you, everyone who
looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in
his heart.”
The third cycle (nos. 64-72) discusses the resurrection of the body. In
this cycle, John Paul analyzes Christ’s answer to the Sadducees when
they come to him and ask him about a woman who had married seven
brothers. They want to know which brother will be the man’s wife in
heaven. (The fictional case the Sadducees posed to Christ rested on the
so-called Levirate law. If a husband died without children, his brother
was supposed to marry the widow and father a son who would be considered
the son of the dead brother.
In the case presented by the Sadducees, a particular woman married the
first brother and he died before fathering any children. A second
brother married the widow and he also died without children. Eventually,
the woman married each of the seven brothers and never had any children.
The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the body. They were
posing the question in order to “trick” Christ who, they knew, taught
the resurrection of the body.)
The second set of three cycles do not rest on particular words of
Christ, but are the application of the points previously discussed to
celibacy and virginity, marriage, and contraception. The fourth cycle
(nos. 73-86) applies the conclusions of the first three cycles to
celibacy and virginity for the sake of the kingdom. The fifth cycle
(nos. 87-113), a particularly vital one, is an extensive analysis of the
fifth chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians in light of the
conclusions previously reached in the first three cycles of the
Theology of the Body. In this chapter, Paul compares the mystery of
the Church to marriage, especially in light of Christ’s elevation of
marriage to the level of a sacrament. The sixth cycle (nos. 114-129)
applies the conclusions of the first three cycles to the teaching of the
Church regarding contraception.
From the very first words of the Theology of the Body, one
realizes that John Paul’s approach to theology differs from those taken
by the great representatives of the Catholic theological tradition:
Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Saint Augustine represents the
first attempt in the West to develop a unified presentation of the faith
through the use of a particular philosophical system. In adapting
Plato’s philosophical thought to the data of Revelation, Augustine
formulated a synthesis of the Catholic faith. This synthesis was the way
the faith was taught from Augustine’s death in 430 until the thirteenth
century.
By the thirteenth century, modes of thought and the culture had
changed. Arabic translations of works of Aristotle, unknown to medieval
Europe, translated into Latin in Spain, became available to scholars in
Europe. Later, direct translations from the Greek to Latin were
available through the crusading states established in the Holy Land.
Not only did these new translations provide more accurate texts of works
already known, previously unknown works, at least to medieval Europeans,
became available. Aristotle’s works changed the academic world of the
twelfth century as did other factors as well. No longer did the
Augustinian system convey the faith in terms easily understood. It was
necessary to develop a new synthesis, a new way of conveying the faith.
St. Thomas did what Saint Augustine did, except that instead of Platonic
philosophy, St. Thomas used Aristotle. The resulting theological
synthesis was the second mode of conveying the faith in the West.
While rooted in both the Augustinian and Thomistic traditions, it is
crystal clear that John Paul’s Theology of the Body has a
startling and unexpected new “twist.” It, together with his other
works, represents a new synthesis, a new way of conveying the faith to
the modern world. This new approach is necessary because most people in
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries do not think and act in the
categories of either Saint Thomas or Saint Augustine.
Both Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas lived and taught in a
culture which might be described as objective, deductive, and
principled. The modern world is primarily subjective, inductive, and
experiential. Objective means that something is real, i.e., it is true,
regardless of whether or not I know it to be true. For example, if a
blind man is outside, but cannot see the trees, the trees are still
there. Even though he does not perceive them, the trees are truly
there. The existence of the trees does not depend on whether the blind
man perceives them or not. Objective reality exists independent of
one’s perception. The subjective view of reality claims that only that
which I perceive to be real is actually real. Generally, the subjective
view of reality is not applied to trees and physical objects. However,
it is applied to non-physical realities, e.g., truths about the
existence of God, truths about morality. The subjective view of reality
is clearly captured by the phrase, “That may be true for you, but not
for me!” In other words, what is true depends on what I believe or
accept, or better phrased, on what I perceive. In the medieval world,
such a claim would be utter nonsense. In fact, to most medieval
academics, the truths of the faith, both dogmatic and moral truths, were
more real than physical objects. The medieval world was objective. We
are subjective.
The medieval world was also deductive which is corollary of its
objective view of the world. Knowledge was derived from principles by
the process of deduction, often illustrated in syllogisms. One started
with a “given” which was accepted, e.g., God is a pure spirit, and added
what was called the minor term, e.g., a pure spirit does not have a
body, and drew a conclusion, e.g., God does not have a body. We
determine what is true by experiments, by our own experience and by
counting heads—whatever the majority believes. This method of reaching
truth or knowledge is the inductive method and it is a different process
than the deductive method.
The third difference, i.e., between a principled and an experiential
worldview, is implied by the other two. The medieval world was based on
widely accepted truths from which conclusions were drawn, i.e., on
principles. The modern world derives knowledge from personal
experiences.
Since most in our era think subjectively, inductively, and
experientially, they are ill prepared to hear, or even less, understand
the truths and practices of the faith taught in a structure and outline
which is objective, deductive, and principled. Even the vocabulary and
language used in either the Thomistic or Augustinian synthesis is
foreign to the modern ear. If the Revelation of Christ is to be grasped
and understood today, it needs to be presented to people in their own
language and in their own modes of thought. In a word, it needs to have
a subjective, inductive, and experiential garb and it needs to use words
which are part of the common coinage of modern culture. The difficulty,
however, is to take the “jewels” of the faith—the Revelation of
Christ—and present them in a new way with a new philosophical system
without changing the content of these “jewels.” We need to have
another genius, another Saint Augustine, another Saint Thomas, who would
do for our era what each of these saints did for his.
John Paul II is another Saint Thomas, another Saint Augustine. He is
recasting the “jewels” of the faith into a mode and garb which makes
them understandable to our age The Church needs to convey the content of
Revelation in a way that is understandable to people of every
generation. That is what St. Thomas did for the thirteenth century—and
make no mistake, there were those who insisted on continuing to use the
traditional explanations, i.e., the synthesis of St. Augustine—and what
John Paul II is doing for our generation. If one understands the
Thomistic or Augustinian synthesis, is there any harm in using them? Of
course not, and they need to be taught to every generation of
theologians. However, as a way of conveying the faith to the people of
the twenty-first century, it seems that the new John Paul II synthesis
is more effective. Many will insist that John Paul II is a Thomist. Of
course, he is! St. Thomas was an Augustinian. Each new synthesis builds
on the previous ones. There is no question that John Paul II is a
Thomist. But there is also no question that he is building a new
theological synthesis which will be one of the building blocks of the
Church in the twenty-first century and beyond. The Augustinian
synthesis was the way the Church thought about Revelation for about
eight hundred years! St. Thomas’ synthesis was in place for more than
seven hundred years. If the pattern holds, John Paul II’s synthesis
will be with us for centuries.
For some, such a claim may be startling. It is not often that one hears
a contemporary living person compared favorably with one of the icons of
western culture. However, there are a serious of coincidences and
extraordinary events surrounding John Paul II’s life and papacy which
lend some credence to the claim. No one of these coincidences or events
would make the case, but all of them, put together, cannot be mere
happenstance. All together, through these facts it seems that the Holy
Spirit is telling all of us that we should pay attention to this Pope.
Further, the reason why we should pay attention is precisely the new
synthesis of the faith he is offering to the Church and the world.
First of all, although only in his early forties, the then Bishop
Wojtyla spoke at the Second Vatican Council. Further, he and a team he
assembled in Poland wrote the original draft of the Pastoral
Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes.
The original draft was edited, but as it stands today, it is
predominantly what was drafted in Poland.. He also contributed
substantially to the other constitution on the Church of the Second
Vatican Council, The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen
Gentium. Since the Second Vatican Council was primarily about the
Church (the word Church is the most used substantive word in the
conciliar documents), John Paul II had a significant influence on its
work. Since the Second Vatican Council was the most important council
in Church history since Trent, John Paul’s influence on it is a landmark
of his life.
Second, Pope Paul VI appointed him to the commission which was examining
the area of contraception, the so-called “birth control” commission.
John Paul’s book, Love and Respoonsibility, as well as a speech
he gave in Milan, Italy, shortly before Pope Paul VI issued Humanae
Vitae, influenced Paul VI to decide the issue of the birth control
pill the way he did. Arguably, Humanae Vitae was the most
important papal document since the Reformation and John Paul II had a
large part in its drafting.
Third, neither he nor John Paul I were expected to be chosen as Pope in
1978. In the papal elections of the twentieth century, the two or three
candidates for each election were fairly well-known. Almost always, the
new Pope was one of the two or three mentioned in the media as
possibilities.
Fourth, John Paul I and then John Paul II both took a double name. The
Pope at the time of his election has since the tenth century taken a new
name, but only one. To some, this may seem rather insignificant, but if
one realizes the force of custom at the Vatican, the double name becomes
incredibly important. Only with great difficulty and much thought are
customs changed. For example, when John Paul I died, they still made
sure the Pope was actually dead by hitting him three times on the
forehead with a hammer and calling out his baptismal name. This method
was used in past centuries to make sure the Pope had died. Even though
the physicians have assured everyone that the Pope has died, they still
use the hammer because that was the way it was done centuries ago! In
the face of such persistent custom, for John Paul I and then John Paul
II to take two names is astounding. In fact, when the cardinal dean
asked the new Pope, John Paul I, what he wanted to be called, and the
new Pope said, “John Paul,” the cardinal must have replied, “Well, you
can have either “John” or “Paul” but not both. The new Pope must have
responded with something to the effect that, “I can have two names
because I want it that way and I am the Pope!”
Fifth, John Paul II was the third Pope in a year of three Popes: Paul
VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II. There has not been three Popes in a
single year since 1648.
Sixth, John Paul II is Polish, not Italian. There has not been a
non-Italian Pope since 1523.
Seventh, John Paul II was from a Communist country and yet, without him,
the Iron Curtain would not have fallen.
Eighth, despite challenges to all of us to live up to the moral
teachings of Christ regarding drugs and sexual practices, John Paul II
is immensely popular and many cannot understand how he can issue such
challenges and still be so welcomed by so many people, especially the
young. Of course, his popularity is based on the appeal of the truth of
the Gospel which people recognize when he preaches because it is taught
in a language and a method they can understand.
Ninth, he has traveled more than any Pope in history—a very significant
fact when one remembers that for almost a century, the Pope never left
Rome and its surroundings.
Tenth, the assassination attempt on his life in May, 1981 was clearly
sponsored by the Bulgarian government. Such an attempt, sponsored by a
government, on the person of the Pope has not occurred since some thugs
of King Philip IV of France roughed up Pope Boniface VIII in 1303.
Eleventh, John Paul II is both a philosopher and a theologian. Most
Popes in modern times have been diplomats or canon lawyers. There has
not been a academic theologian on the throne of Peter for centuries.
Twelfth, as Pope John Paul has issues a the Catechism of the Catholic
Church. There was on one other in history, the so-called, Roman
Catechism, at the time of the Reformation.
Thirteenth, also as Pope, John Paul has issued a new code of Canon Law.
The last time the Church issued such a code was 1917 and the time before
that was 1240!
Fourteenth, as Pope, John Paul is issuing revisions of the liturgical
books.
Fifteenth, he has suggested an additional five mysteries to the Rosary.
The Rosary has never been changed. Furthermore, the 150 “Hail Marys” of
the Rosary were supposed to match the 150 Psalms in the Book of Psalms.
Now, there are 200 “Hail Marys!”
Sixteenth, without counting St. Peter, John Paul is the second longest
reigning Pope in history—behind only Pius IX of the last century who was
the successor of Peter for more than thirty-two years.
Taken all together, these sixteen different coincidences and facts
suggest that this Pope is very important. We are to “read the signs of
the times.” It seems that the Holy Spirit is paintng a very clear sign
for us to read regarding Pope John Paul II. He is vital, not for all of
these events and coincidences taken together or considered separately,
but because he is giving the Church and the world a new way of
presenting the Gospel of Christ.
John Paul II’s new approach does not change the faith at all. If one
thinks of thecontent of the faith, the Revelation of Christ, as a very
large diamond sitting on a pedestal under a skylight in the middle of a
room in a museum, it is a bit easier to understand what John Paul II is
doing. The diamond can be viewed from any point on the 360 degree
circumference. The viewpoint of the onlooker is defined by philosophy.
St. Augustine looked at the diamond from one vantage point, using
Platonic philosophy. St. Thomas moved to another point on the
circumference using Aristotle. John Paul has defined a third point.
Nevertheless, they are all looking at the same, exact diamond. Further,
one onlooker can point out a feature to another onlooker. In other
words, St. Thomas sees the same thing as St. Augustine or John Paul II,
but he describes it differently. But they each describe the same feature
of the diamond. Therefore, it is possible to “translate” the description
of any feature of the diamond from Augustine to Thomas, to John Paul II,
from Thomas to Augustine and John Paul II, and from John Paul II to
Thomas and Augustine. It is always the same diamond.
The new “twist” in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is
precisely the application of a new theological synthesis to the problems
of sexuality, marriage, and family life. Through the use of a
philosophical movement called phenomenology, John Paul has been able to
present the content of Christ’s Revelation in a subjective, inductive,
and experiential way without doing damage to its content.
In his Witness To Hope, Weigel, quoting Angelo Scola, writes that
“virtually every thesis in theology—God, Christ, the Trinity, grace, the
Church, the sacraments—could be seen in a new light if theologians
explored in depth the rich personalism [the usual name of the new
synthesis of Pope John Paul II] implied in John Paul II’s theology of
the body.”
Of course, this remark is absolutely true. It is true for two reasons.
First, the new synthesis of Pope John Paul II is clearly apparent in his
Theology of the Body and it can be studied and learned from its
use in these addresses. Once learned and studied, it will be
recognized in other writings of the Pope and his initial work can be
furthered and developed. (It should be noted that the founder of a new
synthesis does the initial work, but centuries are devoted to “mining”
the riches and depth of a particular synthesis. Saint Augustine
developed his synthesis using Platonic philosophy, but it was studied
and developed further over eight centuries. Similarly, Saint Thomas was
the founder of the fusion of Aristotle’s philosophy and the content of
Revelation, but the study and development of his work goes on even
today.) Certainly, if the new synthesis of John Paul II were to be
studied in the Theology of the Body, and then recognized and
applied to other areas “virtually every thesis in theology . . . could
be seen in a new light.”
Secondly, Weigel’s remark is also true because every area of Revelation
has an impact on other areas. How one understands the mystery of
Christ, both His Incarnation and Redemption, will impact one’s
understanding of the Church, of grace, of the sacraments. How one
understands the mystery of our Creation in the image and likeness of
God, clearly impacts one’s concept of the second Person of the Trinity
becoming man. Revelation is a unified whole. It is Christ. Christ
cannot be subdivided. A new approach in one area will impact all
others. So, of course, the fruit of John Paul II’s new approach
in the area of sexuality, marriage, and family life---the results of the
Theology of the Body—impacts every thesis in theology and “every
thesis in theology. . . could be seen in a new light.” Weigel’s remark
is true because the method of the new synthesis can be learned
from the Theology of the Body and because the fruits found
in the Theology of the Body have implications for the other areas
of theology.
As we have mentioned, John Paul II’s new synthesis is the result of the
use of a philosophical movement called phenomenology. The founder of
phenomenology was a German philosopher named Edmund Husserl
(1859-1938). Briefly, Husserl focused on the subjective, individual
experience of people. He collected these experiences one at a time from
different people. Phenomenology is a subjective, inductive, and
experiential philosophical method. Husserl was interested in discovering
how things are in the world (the being of things—what philosophy always
investigates) through the interior perception of the world by individual
people. In this way, he linked the interior powers of the mind, will,
self-awareness (consciousness) to the real world and was able to
overcome the division between the interior life of the mind and the real
world which had entered philosophical thought first through Descartes. (Descartes’s
“I think, therefore I am,” divorced reality--the exterior world--from
the interior life of every person because it grounded existence only in
interior thought.)
Karol Wojtyla first encountered phenomenology through Roman Ingarden who
was a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Cracow
where the future Pope was earning his doctorate in philosophy. Ingarden
had been one of Husserl’s students. Through his studies, which focused
on ethics, Wojtyla saw that phenomenology was able to provide a link to
reality, a way to ground ethical norms in reality, and not only in
interior ideas. An earlier German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
had taught ethical norms are unknowable because they lie beyond
immediate human experience. But morality (good order in human
existence) requires that we act according to the traditional norms.
Therefore, we should always act in accordance with these norms even
though they are unknowable—this is what Kant meant by the “categorical
imperative.” Kant divorced ethics from reality. Wojtyla saw that
phenomenology provided a way to re-link ethical norms to reality.
Wojtyla wrote his doctoral dissertation on Max Scheler who also had been
a student of Husserl. Scheler was particularly interested in ethics and
attempted to come to knowledge of ethical norms through phenomenology.
Scheler argued that every human experience is connected with a value. We
are either attracted to the value or repulsed by it. By studying human
experience from the subjective, interior point of view, Scheler believed
he could identify values. These values actually existed in the real
world. They were concrete and objective, but they were known through
subjective, individual experience. Scheler thus provided an alternative
to Kant’s “categorical imperative.” Further, he linked the values to the
interior, subjective experience of the person. Values are objective and
real, but only known through the interior perception of experiences.
Instead of being commands and norms which one is compelled from the
outside to follow, values (ethical norms) are part of one’s own interior
experience.
Wojtyla was critical of Scheler because Scheler failed to provide an
objective order of values. Since values were known through the
subjective experience of each person, they could differ radically from
one person to another. Further, the relative importance of these values
was determined by the intensity of the response to each value. The value
which elicited the most intense emotional response from an individual
was, for that individual, the most important value. Therefore, even if
two people had a similar set of values, the hierarchy of these values
would differ from person to person. In Scheler’s thought, there was no
way to establish an objective order of morality. Of course, Scheler
avoided any kind of appeal to duty or responsibility because he was
reacting against Kant’s “categorical imperative.”
Wojtyla was also critical of Scheler because the German philosopher did
not notice that through our ethical choices, we each become what we do.
We become good or evil by doing good or evil acts. An ethical act not
only has effects outside of oneself, but it also has an internal effect.
Visiting a friend in the hospital not only benefits him, it also has an
interior effect on me: I become a visitor of the sick.
Despite the criticisms Wojtyla made of Scheler’s work, he saw that
Scheler’s use of phenomenology provided a powerful tool for the study of
Christian ethics. If the Christian norms taught by Revelation could be
understood as interior norms, i.e., if these norms could be perceived
through experience, they would cease to have the character of external
laws imposed on one from the outside. Further, one could speak about
these values in a subjective way appropriate to the modern world.
More importantly, phenomenology provides a tool for examining
personhood. Phenomenology studies human experiences from the interior
point of view. Since through these experiences, we become who we are,
the study of these experiences and their internal effects gives us a
tool to come to some understanding of human personhood from the
inside. Since personhood is one of the most important concepts in
Christianity, the phenomenological method provides a new way of studying
and perceiving Christian Revelation. Saint Thomas using Aristotle
studied personhood more or less “from the outside” in an objective way.
“He did not adequately develop the subjective side of the life of the
person.”
Using the phenomenological method, John Paul is able to develop the
subjective side of the person while in no way compromising or altering
the fundamental objective truths of Revelation.
It is precisely because the person is vital to revealed truth that there
can be a synthesis of phenomenology and the faith. Phenomenology begins
its investigation with the individual human person. It begins with our
conscious experience of ourselves as acting agents. Phenomenology then
leads to the mystery of human personhood. Phenomenology, subjective as
it is, “opens the door” to the full truth about man revealed in the
objective order by God. John Paul II makes this link between
phenomenology and the objective order of the faith through the text in
Genesis: “Let us make man in our image.”
Man is a person (has an awareness of his own acts, one of the most
important marks of personhood) because he is like God, made in God's own
image. The reference to the Creation of human persons in God’s image at
one and the same time saves the subjective insight of the
phenomenologists without losing the objectivity of the Gospel. The true
nature of human persons is revealed in the objective order but
experienced and studied in a subjective way. The content of Revelation,
truths centered on personhood—the personhood of God and each human
being--is given to each individual human person and yet is experienced
in a subjective way. The objective order of Revelation is linked in this
fashion with the subjective experience of each human person. It is no
wonder that one of the hallmarks of John Paul II’s pontificate is the
repeated and insistent teaching on the dignity (value) of each and every
human person.
The new synthesis of John Paul II encompasses the entire diamond, the
entire content of Christ’s Revelation. The teachings of Christ can be
outlined in seven general subject areas: God (as One and Triune),
Creation, Incarnation, Church, Sacraments, Grace, and Commandments.
Under each of these is an immense amount of material which in turn is
divided into sub-categories. For example, any complete discussion of the
mystery of Creation necessarily includes the Creation of the angels, the
Creation of human persons, the mystery of the fall and of original sin,
the effects of sin, and even the Providence of God shown to the people
of the Old Testament. John Paul II’s new approach embraces the entire
content of Revelation, the entire diamond. While there are a few subject
matters in Revelation which John Paul has not addressed extensively,
these can easily be studied according to the approach and mind of John
Paul II. He has at least briefly addressed each area and from these
remarks the direction of his thought is clear. Others can analyze these
areas further. The John Paul II synthesis is also apparent from the
subject areas he has exhaustively treated, e.g., the Theology of the
Body.
The Theology of the Body certainly is a subjective, interior look
at what happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before and after
the first sin. The results of this examination of the experiences of
our first parents are then applied to important areas related to
sexuality, marriage and family life. John Paul actually acknowledges
specifically that he wishes to look at the subjective, interior reality
of the lives of our first parents when he remarks that one of his
absolutely central texts, the second chapter of Genesis, “presents the
Creation of man especially in its subjective aspect.”
The phenomenological method is also apparent in John Paul’s work on the
Church entitled, Sources of Renewal.
Written as a reflection on the Church ten years after the opening of the
Second Vatican Council, Sources of Renewal begins with the
question the conciliar fathers put to themselves, “Church, what do you
say of yourself?”
If the Church can ask itself a question (and, obviously, expect an
answer), it is a personal subject—it is a person. In fact, the Church
is the mystical person of Christ.
Every person has a mind and a will. Every one knows what he or she
knows and knows what he or she chooses. This self-awareness of what we
know and choose is called our consciousness. Through this
self-awareness, we watch ourselves when we learn and when we act. Our
consciousness stores what we have learned and what we have done. It
stores our experiences. This storage function of our consciousness
results in our becoming what we do. Through what is stored in our
consciousness, we determine ourselves—we shape ourselves into those
things we have experienced. If we practice the piano, these experiences
are stored and we gradually shape ourselves into a piano player. (Of
course, we can never completely alter and even less, destroy, what is
given to us in Creation by God, i.e., that, as persons, we are created
in His image and likeness.) In addition, the storing of these
experiences means we have a memory of what we have done. Phenomenology
probes the depths of our consciousness, in its memory function, to study
our experiences.
Since the Church is the mystical person of Christ with a mind and a
will, it also has a self-awareness of its own acts. Therefore, the
Church can be studied as a subject, as a person, from within. In
Sources of Renewal, the future Pope endeavors to probe the Church’s
self-awareness of its acts of knowing, i.e., its faith, and its
self-awareness of its choices. Wojtyla studies the Church from within
applying the phenomenological method to a theological investigation of
the Church. After the introduction in Part I, Parts II and III of the
book are an examination of the Church’s acts of knowing and of its acts
of willing, respectively. Part II is entitled, “Formation of
Consciousness” and Part III is entitled, “The Formation of Attitudes.”
Wojtyla (at least in the English translation) uses consciousness to mean
the self-awareness of what the Church knows (its faith) and attitudes to
mean the Church’s self-awareness of what it chooses (its acts). The
study of the Church from within as a personal subject is clearly the
application of the phenomenological method to one of the major topics of
Revelation. The Pope’s new “twist” is not only present in his
Theology of the Body series.
We find similar uses of the phenomenological method in most of the
encyclicals and documents of John Paul II’s papacy. The startling and
exciting new way is present in the very first words of the very first
encyclical: “The Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the
universe and of history.
The same startling turn of phrase is found in other places in that
encyclical, e.g., when John Paul writes about the Church and teaches
that man “is the primary and fundamental way for the Church.”
In Laborem Exercens, On Human Work,
the Pope refers to the primary purpose of work: the shaping of an
individual into someone who acts like God, who participates in God’s
creative work by subduing “the earth.”
In working, human persons imitate God. They act as He acted when He
“worked” to create the world. In acting as images of God through work,
human persons shape themselves more and more into who they are: images
of God. In this way, they fulfill themselves.
In Familiaris Consortio, The Apostolic Exhortation on the
Family, one of the headings in Part III is “Family, become what you are”
and this phrase is also found in the body of the text.
One of his most interesting applications of the phenomenological method
is the analysis of the parables of Christ and of the experiences of
people with Christ. In his encyclical on morality, Veritatis
Splendor, The Splendor of Truth, in the first chapter, the Pope
examines the meeting of the rich young man with Christ.
He analyzes in great depth the experience of the young man in meeting
Christ and argues that the young man’s questions are the interior
questions all of us have. By analyzing this experience and those of
others who met Christ, the Pope comes to some understanding of human
personhood. One of his conclusions is that we all have certain
questions: questions not unlike the questions put to Christ by the rich
young man. Through these subjective, phenomenological studies, the Pope
uncovers the aspects of our own interior experiences: e.g., that we all
have questions about ourselves.. But there is more here because these
meetings are with God, Himself. Christ answers the questions and the
Pope is able to study how those people who met Christ experienced the
answers (Revelation) given by the Lord.
In his second encyclical, Dives et Misericordia, Riches in Mercy,
John Paul has an extensive discussion of the parable of the Prodigal
Son.
He analyzes the story from the point of view of the prodigal son, i.e.,
from the interior experiences of the prodigal affirming that the
prodigal’s experiences are common to all of us. “That son . . . in a
certain sense is the man of every period.” The prodigal demands his
inheritance from his father, moves away to a distant country, squanders
his money, and is reduced to working as a hireling on a farm. Almost
starving and wishing he could devour the food the pigs were given, the
prodigal comes to his senses and decides to return to his father. At
this point, the Pope writes that “the analogy turns clearly towards
man’s interior.” The prodigal has not only squandered money, but the
prodigal has an “awareness of squandered sonship,” of the loss of his
own dignity. The prodigal’s return to his father is a personal
experience of forgiveness but it also contains important objected
revealed truths. Through a phenomenological study of this parable, the
Pope offers us some new and surprising insights. It is one thing to
know something objectively. It is quite different to experience it. For
example, I may have heard that cars need motor oil or they will
eventually cease to function. But it is quite a different thing to
experience one’s car stopping dead on a highway for lack of oil.
Phenomenology allows us to probe experiences of people and in the study
of the Scriptures, actually to probe people’s experiences of
Revelation. This is what the Pope offers us in his application of
phenomenology to Revelation.
The new personalism of Pope John Paul II is without a doubt a brilliant
solution to a problem which has plagued the Church and its theology
since the Renaissance and Reformation period. The Renaissance focused
on human beings in a way which was foreign to the Middle Ages. While it
is something of a oversimplification, there is some truth in the
statement that medieval thought began with God and Renaissance thought
began with human beings.. The Protestant Reformation furthered the
emphasis on individual human beings and especially on the individual
with its insistence on the private interpretation of Scripture. The same
tendency can be seen in the development of science and in the scientific
method which gradually developed from the Renaissance onward. Science
is based on observation of individual phenomena, i.e., on
experimentation and the recording of the data gleaned from
experiments. Science and the scientific method so dominate society
that people are loathe to accept conclusions from principles. When an
individual’s “real” experience is quoted, people tend to accept
conclusions based on that event. It is observable and individual. The
focus on the individual is also one of the touchstones of democracy.
The emphasis on the individual and freedom has its roots in the
Renaissance, the Reformation, the rise of science and in the development
of democracy. It results in a concept of the world which is subjective,
inductive and experiential. The subjective turn of John Paul II’s new
synthesis allows Revelation to be taught to the world of the
twenty-first century in its own language and categories.
February 25, 2003 - Fr. Richard Hogan
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