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The Personalism in John Paul IIs Theology of the Body

Introduction

This is life-giving truth, not just an academic exercise.

Personalist foundations

KW, Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the human being. This is the key to hispersonalism. It has been said that TOB is difficult to read. That is true of this essay too! KW

distinguishes cosmological and a personalist understanding of man. In the former, man isconsidered from without. In the latter, man is considered from within. That is, as heexperiences himself consciously in his being. First, he is experienced in his objectivity. Inthe second, in his subjectivity, his interiority.

In order to get as man as person, we need to look at him not just from without but as he

reveals himself from within. KW keeping his balance between the objectivity and thesubjectivity.

Think about my coming death. Mortality: I am part of this universal mortality. I make noessential distinguishing of my coming death from that of others. It is hard to say I in thiscosmological vision of man.

Looking at it in a more personalist way, I am pierced with the realisation that I will one

day die. I shudder at the thought not at the universal mortality of nature but of my own

death. At this point my own subjectivity is awakening.

I see my coming death as I will experience it from myself.

In this subjective vision of myself I experience myself AS PERSON. The more I experiencemyself as the subject of my death the more personal is my experience.

NB The cosmological approach MUST NOT BE REPLACED.

But there is something highly personal that we need to consider. And this is what is

involved in the personalist approach.

It is a more friendly language: See it in terms of third- and first-person. Personalist

approach is a first-person approach. Here, I say I with great emphasis and with this Iexperience myself strongly as subject ofe.g. my death. The cosmological approach is thirdperson. It is not lived from the centre of my being but it is a fact.

This connection between turning to first-person perspective and discovering the personalin human beings is so important to KW: Newman said, describing transition of objective to

subjective view of human beings, they emerge for us as persons: nothing is more difficultthan to realise that every man has a distinct soul, that every one of all the millions ... is aswhole and independent a being as if there were no-one in the world but he.

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... eg in an army each soldier has a soul. General in an army sees it as objective. ... Thisinstance will show how open we all lie to the remark that we do not understand the

doctrine of the distinct individuality of a human soul. We collect them in masses...

This is what KW calls a REDUCTION in man.

Newman continues: every part [of towns] is full of life... we get an ida of opulence andenergy. ... He breaks through to the truth that each is person.

Newman is turning to the subjectivity of the person.

Every being in that great concourse is his own centre.... he has his own hopes, fears,desires, judgments, aims. He has an infinite abyss of existence. The scene of which he ispart is a gleam of sunshine on its service.

Once we turn to the inner centre of where someone lives we lift him out of the crowd inwhich he was lost.

The social scene which had swallowed him up is now relativised. This turn to subjectivityis vindicated.

We touch here on the distinctly contemporary side of KWs mind: the philosophy adaptedto the personalist perspective (phenomenology) has developed forms of analysis to dowith LIVED EXPERIENCE. He compares Aristotelian categories like substance and

accidence etc with phenomenological categories like interiority, self-presence,objectification etc an argues that these latter are better suited to first-person personalism.

The personalist basis of TOB

This is all borne out in JPs focus on the marriage act. Only if we enter into subjectivity ofthe marital act do we notice something that has no counterpart in cosmological view. It isfound in first-person view: personalist significance of the two-in-one flesh.

For centuries, Christians thought about the meaning and justification of procreation. In

twentieth century there was more focus on unitive.

If we consider that the rise of the personalist perspective coincides with this enriched

understanding, we can surmise a connection between the two: the personalist perspectivegives us intellectual resources to do justice to self-donation of spouses in marital intimacy.

Reconstruction of JPIIs personalist path:

From subjectivity to inter-subjectivity. From I-perspective to we-perspective. Buber: I

can come to myself as person only by showing respect for the other. Only if I grant to theother a spiritual space in which to live from his personal centre can I really say I inliving my own life. If I take the other as an object to be manipulated then I become more a

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hardened ego. I found myself only by making a sincere gift of myself, as JPII, building onGs, says so often.

There are different ways of living my intersubjectivity.

One way is way in which man and woman love each other. It finds its completion inmarriage. This is distinguished from all other human love (even maternal love) throughself-surrender: abandoning oneself for just one other.

The talk of self-gift sometimes is too quickly identified with man/woman. Mother-childtoo, but just without the making of oneself BELONG to the other as in a spousal way.

Spousal love and human sexuality

JP says that in sexual intimacy, man and woman live and enact in an incomparable bodily

way their spousal self-surrender. This self-surrender is first of all and in itself somethingproperly personal. At same time though, this self-surrender is lived in an irreplaceable

way in sexual intimacy. Only if lived through the body by becoming one flesh.

So we see how JPII by means of his personalism discerns in the sexual union of spouses

not only procreation but also the enactment of spousal love.

He gives a name to the capacity of body to do this: nuptial (spousal) mfeaning of the body.

It is the central category (see Newton talk).

It is the ability of the body to stand in the service of the full enactment of spousal love. It isimportant for all of us to understand just how countercultural the thought of NMB reallyis.

JPII thinks that the modern world is not only afflicted by materialism that reduces man to

body, but also by an aversion to the body! It is a neo-Manichean culture that conceivespersons as estranged from their bodies. The real enemy is materialism. In Vs, JPII tracesmuch of the disorder is failure to understand embodiment in persons. Many people see

persons as disembodied centres of consciousness. Therefore it is natural that they can onlyfound biological meaning in body and cannot find NMB.

e.g. God doesnt care what we do with each others bodies. He just cares whether or notwe respect each other as persons. So therefore homosexual activity is fine, on this reading.Human body has no spousal meaning in this view.

The originality of JPII in TOB is that he breathes new life into the truth that we exist asembodied persons. All kinds of personal meanings are inscribed in our bodily meaning.

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In TOB he elaborates the truth that the body is not just physical but also sacramental. Anexpression of the invisible interiority. He says that it is not good for us to be alone and that

we can find ourselves ONLY in a sincere gift of ourselves.

Indeed this is best understood in context of man and woman.

Christianity hates the body, it is often said.

JPIIs view is not this at all. He is the great friend of the human body.

The way out of this mischief of not seeing the body correctly is by looking at the bodiesthing in a subjective way.

We might say that there is a connection between intersubjectivity and bodily being, weexperience ourselves as empowered for self-donation. JPII is listening to our bodily

subjectivity.

On the basis of discerning the deep personal meaning of body, JPII goes on to see

trinitarian image of God in each person.

Persons ordered to each other

Such a triune God may be expected to impart his interpersonal structure. He wont createdpeople as monads: i.e. people who relate only after they have become persons. People

come to themselves only after coming through encounter with each other.

If this vocation to love takes on one eminent form in man and woman and if it is inscribedin our bodies as male and female, then how can we fail to find an image of God in manand woman? Nothing reveals dignity of man/woman difference than this ability to image

the triune God.

This image is not limited to the Spirit in man but comprises the body too.

The indispensable basis for recognising this image of God is FIRST recognising the nuptial

meaning of the body. A human body whose only meaning is physical/biological does notimage God. Only a body personalised by love can image him.

In spousal meaning of body we see that in turning to subjectivity, JPII tries to bring to lightthe eminently personal character of man and woman and their love.

JPII comments on Gn 1: its more objective and metaphysical; Gn 2: its more subjective,

which talks of man and woman in terms of the solitude that man experiences beforewoman comes or in terms of shame they felt after sin. These experiences are not simplypsychological that can be bracketed out of a consideration. They are involved.

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A danger of personalism

Once we discover the first-person perspective and all the personalist riches of subjectivity,there is the temptation to disparage the cosmological perspective as if it were now to bereplaced with the personalist. This plays out disastrously in marriage act. Otherwise you

dont see connection of unity and procreation. (Its not only about deep spousal self-

donation though!) Seeing every act being open to procreation is too physicalist, somemight say. Others, that personalism puts too much emphasis on the subjective. JPII aimsonly to complement the cosmological with the personal.

He finds a way to integrate openness to procreation as a way to found the self-gift so as to

support both.

JPII argues that consummation which is distinct from procreation is intrinsically connectedto openness.

Fertility is situated in the realm of personal love. If this is not seen, then it all becomessomething for use only.

Pro-contraceptionists need to look more at their spousal subjectivity and they will find

connection to procreation, says JPII.

Disorders of spousal inter-subjectivity

1. Do we need more realism about way that love of man and woman works out? Howdoes JPII deal with fallenness of man/woman relations His thought here is again

eminently personalist.

TOB 43 October 8th 1980: this one caused the firestorm in the international press. He

says that adultery in the heart can be committed even within marriage. If you thinkthat the sexual intimacy of a man and woman is morally ordered just because theyare open to children then you are thinking to objectively. There could be a serious

moral defect in their intersubjectivity. He could be using her in terms of personalgratification. He may not be looking at her as a subject, as someone who can say I.Her sexual attractiveness is meant to awaken his love for her but that attractiveness

may cease to be transparent to her as person with the result that the NMB loses itsmeaning. JPII is very sensitive to the very ways of LOOKING at the spouse. Someways honour her; some degrade her.

The cosmological approach is to register such distinctions.

2. SHAME. There is of course a shame that we feel by some bad deed. But JPII is thinkingabout the shame that a woman feels when she is looked at as an object of sexualconsumption. She knows she is a subject but she is being looked at as an object. This is

not just a mistake at level of cognition. But this way of looking, concupiscible, threatensher. So she defends herself by subduing her attractiveness. This subduing gesture iswhat shame is. This subduing of her sexual values is not neutering, for in concealing

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them she conceals them only to a certain extent so that in combination with the valueof the person they can still be a point of origin for love. The subduing of them enables

her to be looked at properly.

Sexual shamelessness is refusing to defend yourself against the lustful look of

the other. One abandons ones subjectivity by way of shamelessness. His thoughton this subject is always surrounded by hope.

JPIIs focus on hope is about the original innocence that man/woman felt. They could

see in the body of the other the person of the other. It is not just that they mastered

themselves, this is too extrinsic a view of domination of soul over body, rather they

were totally taken up with each other.

Of course then the rupture appeared. The body now acquired the capacity to obscure,consume the other too. The freedom of original nakedness gave way to experience of

shame. JPII derives hope not just by looking back to original innocence but also forward toredemption: the reintegration of bodily and sexual life in personalism. This is theredemption of the body that begins already now. Affirmation of the power of theredemption of the body can make itself shown even now.

That is why the danger of adultery in marriage never comes over as a discouraging

accusation. He is always calling us beyond our brokenness to the recovery of lostinnocence. Hence John Paul II is indeed a witness to hope!

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