Theology of the Body

The Theology of the Body is the principal twentieth-century papal teaching on the theological-philosophical foundations of Catholic teaching on sexuality, marriage, and the body.

"The body alone is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God." (Theology of the Body, audience 19)

Wojtyła's Christian personalism — the dignity of the human person as bodily-spiritual unity, the gift-of-self structure of authentic love — is the philosophical-anthropological foundation of the entire series.

"Man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self; the body itself is created to enable this gift of self in the conjugal and the celibate forms of life." (Theology of the Body, audience 15, citing Gaudium et Spes 24)

Wojtyła's extensive philosophical formation in phenomenology — particularly the phenomenology of the body and of intersubjectivity (Merleau-Ponty, Marcel) — shapes the descriptive method of the Theology of the Body.

"The body, in its visible femininity and masculinity, has the meaning of the human person's capacity to express love in which one becomes a gift; this meaning we must attempt to describe before we attempt to prescribe." (Theology of the Body, audience 13)

The theology is metaphysically and ethically realist about the embodied human person, the natural-moral order of sexuality, and the sacramental significance of marriage.

"The body is not a Cartesian instrument inhabited by a separate soul; the person is the bodily-spiritual unity, and the body itself carries the meaning of the person." (Theology of the Body, audience 7)

The natural-law framework — the inherent structure of sexuality, marriage, and reproduction as accessible to reason apart from revelation — is rationalist Catholic teaching.

"The sexual-personal structure of human existence is not merely a religious teaching but a feature of the human person accessible to reason." (Theology of the Body, audience 122)

The Theology of the Body engages the Greek-patristic tradition on the body and on creation in ways that have been welcomed in Orthodox-Catholic dialogue.

"The patristic tradition, Eastern and Western alike, has always held that the body shares in the dignity of the human person and is destined for resurrection." (Theology of the Body, audience 65)

The Theology of the Body has been read with substantial sympathy by Evangelical-Protestant moral theology on marriage and sexuality.

"What is common to the Christian tradition on the body and on marriage transcends our denominational divisions." (Theology of the Body, audience 88)

Roman Catholic tradition.