Theology of the Body in Simple Language

by Pope John Paul II

In the Prophets, adultery is a sin against love. Far more than just an offense against one partner’s “rights,” adultery contradicts marriage itself. What is marriage? A one-flesh union between one man and one woman. If polygamy were brought into the picture, the metaphor would lose all force.

The Wisdom books sought to teach virtue and uphold the moral order. While they didn’t challenge the legal system of their day, they are justly famed for their insight into the human heart. They appeal to the interior man—the conscience—and in that sense they prefigure Christ’s radical shift in the basis of morality.

The way we look reveals what is in our hearts. As we saw in our earlier reflections, sexuality flows from the gift-giving, nuptial meaning of the body. In marriage, husband and wife are called to become one flesh, forming a selfless communion of persons. But lust looks at the body in a way that denies its nuptial and procreative (life giving) meaning.

A psychologist might define lust as “desire for an object because of its value.” Jesus defines it as “adultery committed in the heart.” While not contradicting the psychological definition, Christ goes deeper, revealing how lust attacks the nuptial meaning of the body.

In the mystery of God’s creation, sexual attraction is a call to communion. Lust is a lie. It keeps us from hearing the call to self-giving inscribed in the body itself.

This is not to question sexual desire itself, which is directed towards union and procreation. Christ’s teaching is far from Manichaeism—the belief that the spirit is good and the body evil. True Christian belief has always affirmed the goodness of God’s creation, including the body, sexuality, and procreation. Disorder occurs when sexual desire seeks its own satisfaction rather than the communion of persons.

in light of Christ’s entire revelation, this interpretation must be broadened. Jesus affirms the Ten Commandments, but he doesn’t stop there—he sheds new light on them. Jesus criticized the wrong-headed, one-sided view of adultery that arose in a legal system that allowed for polygamy. In his teaching on adultery in the heart, we again find a truth that goes beyond the legal status of the man and woman in question.

In Christ’s example, the man’s relationship to the woman doesn’t change the fact that he commits adultery in his heart by looking lustfully. Even if she is his wife, if he reduces her to an object he is still guilty of adultery in his heart.

The nuptial relationship is one of free, mutual giving. Adultery—whether of the body or of the heart—attacks the core of this union. The Old Testament law placed many strict penalties on adultery, but it failed to fulfill the Sixth Commandment. Instead, it made legal concessions for lust and hardness of heart.

The body manifests the spirit. It expresses the person. The sexual embrace, too, was designed to express the invisible love and communion shared between spouses. In a way, then, the body and the sexual embrace are both sacramental. Both are physical signs of spiritual realities.

The right Christian attitude aims at purifying the heart so we can see the true value of the body and sex, according to God’s original plan. Christians believe in the redemption and resurrection of the body. Those who despise the body see nothing in it worth saving, and long for a wholly “spiritual” life free from the body.

First, Christ does not declare the heart a hopeless case, entirely captive to the whims of lust. Instead, he calls it to purity. If the heart was lustful at the core, it would be incapable of purity. Second, Christ offers the power of redemption. Purification isn’t something we do on our own—it is accomplished through Christ. God created us by grace, and he can redeem us by grace.

Though the word itself isn’t used, eros is present in Genesis—in the call to become one flesh. Biblically, eros is at the foundation of the communion of persons. When romantic love is channeled to this end, it is deeply connected to ethos—what is good and right in God’s eyes.

Passion (eros) and purity (ethos) are not opposed to one another. Instead, they are called to meet and bear fruit in the human heart. Christ’s words are not exclusively a prohibition. They are a call to experience the fullness of erotic love.

Everyone who accepts Christ’s teaching is called to fullness. That fullness includes the spontaneous expression of romantic love. Such spontaneity is the fruit of eros and ethos together. It arises from the careful discernment of our desires and motivations.

By reconnecting body and heart—the exterior man with the interior—Christ introduces a new ethos, a new way of living as an embodied person. In opposition to the teachers of the law, he shows that holiness is about far more than following the rules. This is the ethos of redemption. It was not only “new” to Jesus’ original audience, the heirs of the Old Testament. It is new and revolutionary for every sinful human being.

Christ did not come to redeem the “spiritual” aspect of man and leave the body behind. All of Christ’s work—the entire Gospel—is directed towards the redemption of the body.

Christ does not change the Law. He confirms the commandment, “Do not commit adultery.” At the same time, he leads us to the fullness of God’s original intent for this command. This fullness is discovered by examining our hearts in light of the new ethos of redemption. To the extent that our thoughts and actions are directed towards the redemption of the body, the man of lust gives way to the “new man.”

Sexual self-control is not simply about abstinence. It is not an emptiness, but a fullness. When we allow Christ to transform our desires, the true meaning of the body and the person is respected. Self-control protects the value—the attractiveness—of the other person, while lust only cheapens it.

The fruits of the Spirit aren’t acquired without effort. Behind each of these virtues—love, joy, peace, and so on—there are moral choices, acts of the will. But it is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that a person can overcome the flesh and choose goodness. Spirit-driven acts are not human “works”—they are gifts of God.

Paul’s statements about flesh and Spirit contain his entire theology of justification. They express his faith in the reality of Christ’s redemption and its transforming power. Christ’s saving work is cosmic, rescuing the entire universe from sin; but it begins with man and the redemption of the body.

The Gospel is an appeal to human freedom. It shifts the basis of morality away from external rules and regulations, relocating it in the heart. All of Christian morality finds its fulfillment in a single word—love.

Paul’s teaching about flesh and Spirit is a faithful echo of the Sermon on the Mount. Following Jesus, Paul says that purity and impurity are matters of the heart—not of anything external, such as dietary taboos and ritual washings. Paul places purity of heart within the context of a Spirit-driven life—a heart given over to Christ that expresses itself outwardly through self-control and acts of love.

Paul speaks of purity as a capacity that can be acquired through practice. But it requires strenuous exercise and discipline. To find purity, we must bring our desires under Christ’s control, directing them, with his help, towards the true, beautiful, and good.

The negative and positive poles of purity—abstinence and self-control—depend on each other. In order to control the body in holiness, a person must honor the bodily and sexual aspects of human existence. To acquire purity, a person must honor both himself and every other human being, male and female.

Self-control is not needed because the body is evil—the truth is just the opposite. The body should be controlled with honor because it is worthy of honor. This is perhaps the most important theme in Paul’s doctrine of purity.

Science can give us an objective description of the body; but it can only describe the body as a physical object. It cannot describe the entire human person, who is expressed through the body and, in a sense, is the body. All of human culture—literature, visual art, sculpture, dancing, theatre, and so on—witness to the importance of the body in expressing the person.

When Paul writes of its “unpresentable parts,” we remember the shame experienced by the first human beings as a result of sin. That shame reminds us of our original innocence. The sexual parts of the body are not unpresentable because of any dishonor. They are only unpresentable because of shame and lust—the fruits of sin.

How does the body become God’s temple? Through the reality of Christ’s redemptive work. For Paul, the redemption is not just an article of faith—it is a life-giving, life-transforming power. When the Word became flesh, the human body was brought into the life of the Trinity. Christ imprinted a new dignity on the body of every man and woman.

The fruit of redemption is the Holy Spirit, who dwells within the body as a temple. The Spirit is a sanctifying gift of God. And by accepting the Spirit, the Christian receives himself again as a gift. He becomes who he was meant to be.

In Paul’s letters, we see the organic link between purity and love. On the surface, purity means abstaining from immorality. But on a deeper level, purity is an experience of the love inscribed by God on the whole human person. Purity is reverence for the image of God in the body.

Purity is both a virtue and a gift. The virtue of self-control prepares our hearts to receive the gift, which is the sight of God. The gift, in turn, strengthens the virtue, enabling us to enjoy the beautiful fruits of a pure life in the Spirit.

By creating man in the image of God, precisely as male and female, God inscribed his love in the human body. Our complementary bodies, masculine and feminine, carry the sign of the gift.

Jesus’ words are realistic. He doesn’t tell us to return to the state of innocence—that is impossible. Instead, he urges us to acquire purity of heart. How is this possible for sinful men? By opening our hearts to the Spirit, who actualizes within each Christian the redemption of the body won by Christ.

With purity of heart, we come to see other persons in light of the original, nuptial meaning of the body—created masculine and feminine as a gift for each other and a sign of God’s love. This is a truth that sets us free.

The theology of the body is the most suitable education in being human. In modern times, science has taught us a great deal about the workings of the body. But it cannot tell us anything about the body as a manifestation of the human spirit, a sign of the person.

What is needed is an integrated view of man as a spiritual, embodied being. For that, we must turn to Scripture. The theology of the body is a “spirituality of the body,” leading us, through spiritual maturity, to a richer experience of the body.

science, when it reduces the body to a object, only clouds our understanding. The depersonalizing effects of reductionist science are evident throughout the modern world. Only when it is accompanied by spiritual maturity can biological knowledge of the body point towards its true meaning.

audience. If the theology of the body is a true education in being human, how can we foster a cultural climate in which it will flourish? What is the role of art in encouraging purity of heart? Our closing reflections will consider these questions.

The naked human body has a “language.” It expresses the spirit. When given in trust and love, the body is the basis of a communion of persons. Because the naked human body has such importance, it must be depicted with great care to preserve its meaning in art.

For Christians, if there is any question whether the naked body is a fit subject for art, the Song of Songs should put it to rest.

We should always live in a way that affirms the dignity of the body. This applies to all areas of life—personal, social, and cultural. The affirmation of the body is essential for fostering a healthy culture, one that leads the heart towards goodness, beauty, and truth.

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But in this life, there will always be a struggle—an opposition between body and spirit that we must overcome. In the age to come, this opposition will be completely eliminated. The law of sin will be vanquished from the body, and our spiritualization will be perfected. This spiritualization is not dehumanizing. It is the opposition between body and spirit that limits our human potential. The resurrected body will not be less human, but more.

Since God created the human being as a unity of body and soul, human perfection could never involve an opposition between them. Human perfection means a deep harmony between body and soul. And we must not conceive of this harmony as a victory of spirit over body, but as a perfect participation of the body in the mystery of the spirit.

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In the world to come, the human will be fully permeated by the divine. Humanity will reach a fullness of life immeasurably beyond what could be experienced on earth. Divinization is an entirely new state for the body—humanity in perfect union with God, intimately connected to the Trinity in a perfect communion of persons. This intimacy will not efface the personality of individual human beings. In the resurrection, we will not be less ourselves, but more fully ourselves. We were created for the fully realized humanity that comes from perfect communion with God.

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