See part I here.

See part II here.

See part III here.

See part IV here.

5. “…and man fully alive is the vision of God” (St. Irenaeus of Lyons,  Against Heresies, Bk. 4, 20, 7).

An interpretation of the image of God as principally concerning man’s intellect (which, unlike sex, is proper to the intellectual creature, and not common to him and the beasts)–such an interpretation will not tend to express the end of man in the same way as TOB. Indeed, it is very hard to maintain seriously in such a view that sexual “ecstasy,” for instance, is a foretaste of heavenly bliss. It is  indeed so, in the sense that it is a good, and all good things are a participation in the supreme good. But it seems that there would be other goods proper to man that would be closer to the joys of Heaven, goods that are at least of the same genus as heavenly bliss, such as the spiritual delights of contemplation, which even Plato and Aristotle considered to be more delightful than bodily pleasures. These delights are not sexual. Strictly speaking, they are not even sensual, they are not bodily, though many of them will have concomitant bodily effects. The fact is, if you can feel it, it’s not God, but some concomitant effect due to the overflow from your contemplation of God. Spiritual delights are the delights of the will in the good of the truth known. The Dan Brownian interpretation of Bernini’s statue of the ecstasy of St. Teresa of Avila is not the guide here.

We all grant that the goal of our striving is some kind of communion with God. But what is that communion with God?  Does it mean hugging Him?  Does it mean having a barbecue with Him?  Does it mean sitting by the fireside with Him?  More seriously, does it mean feeling Him?  How does the rational creature become united to Him?  I am sure many will say (along with Scotus) that it means loving Him. But the fact is, we already have that. At Baptism, we are granted the theological virtue of charity, which attains to God as He is in Himself. Our charity can always grow, but as far as its object is concerned, there is nothing left for it to be perfected. That’s precisely why Faith and Hope pass away in Heaven, for they are per se imperfect, but charity remains. And yet, we still strive after Baptism. There is a union that we still lack, a union toward which charity itself impels us (caritas Christi urget nos). Charity is love; and love in the absence of the beloved desires; in the presence of the beloved, it delights. How do we pass from absence to presence?  From desire to delight?  From striving to rest? What is the union with God that charity desires?

It is not sex. It is not feeling him emotionally. It is not just loving him more, for even if our charity continued to grow forever in this life (there is no limit to how much it can grow), we would still not pass over to from desire to rest, we would still await something. It is not being somehow closer to Him, for local proximity only has place with regard to bodies. And God is not a body (what about the Incarnation?  Well, even if we had our bodies in local proximity to Christ’s body, as we will have in Heaven after the general resurrection, charity would still desire something more. The Apostles were not yet in full union with God when our Lord walked among them, though certainly his presence was a cause of utmost joy). God is a spirit. God is immaterial. How is one united to something that is immaterial?  By knowing it. Knowledge is nothing other than a union between the known and the knower. But such a union cannot take place in a material manner. The intellect, itself immaterial, is precisely that power in nature by which things can be united immaterially. Even in the case of our knowledge of material things, knowledge is the possession of the other material thing as other, without taking their matter into ourselves, but abstracting their form from the matter, by the light of the agent intellect, which renders the object immaterial, abstracting the common from the many. Immateriality is the condition required for a thing to be united to our intellect. But immateriality also makes a thing unattainable by our senses. God is supremely immaterial, having absolutely no admixture of potency. He is, therefore, supremely understandable, supremely able to be united to the intellect, but also supremely unattainable by the senses. What the will informed by charity desires is to know God. This is the union we all desire, the goal of our striving. And this union is not an operation of our sensitive powers, but an operation of the intellect, eternally gazing upon the divine essence. This is what it means to see God “face-to-face,” to “see Him as He is.”  It is what we mean by the Beatific Vision, for vision is a term denoting cognition.

Certainly, there are some creatures for which the good of sexual intercourse is the highest possible participation in the Supreme Good that they will experience. As a friend of mine pointed out, it’s the closest a barnacle can get, endowed only with the sense of touch. But we who have cognition, we who have intellects should be able to get closer than that, even in this life, endowed as we are with Faith and Charity, which attain to God as He is in Himself, and not to some creaturely participated goodness. If such delights exist, they seem more worthy of being called a foretaste of Heavenly Bliss.

It is no accident that one’s view of the end of man will correspond to one’s view of where the image of God lies. Indeed, as we have said, being created in the image of God is a property of the intellectual creature. And as Aristotle pointed out, a thing’s end is its own proper activity. A knife’s proper activity is to cut, and this is also its end. A house’s proper activity is to shelter, and this is also its end. If we say that the image of God is found in the distinction of the sexes, we will tend to see Heaven and the delights of spiritual contemplation as somehow like sexual delight. But if we place the image of God in the intellect, it is evident that the end of man is an intellectual operation, with its concomitant delight in the will.

This is something the pagans knew. It is a basic foundation in Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics and in the newly found Protrepticus. It is the basic conclusion of Plato’s Symposium. In this work, Socrates refuses Alcibiades’ offer to “give himself” in exchange for Socrates’ tutoring for the simple reason that the exchange is not fair: it is “gold for bronze.”

(Of course, one might say that this example proves nothing. Alcibiades offered something that was morally reprehensible, i.e., homosexual intercourse.  The argument would not work so well if what was being offered to Socrates was the holy union of matrimony. I agree that this is true. But even in matrimony, there are two aspects: the union itself, and the “matrimonial act.”  What Socrates was refusing was sensible delight. In matrimony, this comes with the matrimonial act. The union of matrimony which makes it so much more than mere sensible delight is the maxima amicitia, the greatest friendship that St. Thomas says should exist between husband and wife [Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. III, 123]. And if we cull from the other texts on friendship in Aristotle and Aquinas, friendship is the greater where more spiritual delights are shared. Those marriages are certainly the happiest where husband and wife share the goods of virtue and contemplation. If this were offered to Socrates, perhaps it would have given him pause. But the point is that even this happiest of matrimonies presupposes the primacy of spiritual delights over sensual, and man’s happiness being in his proper activity.)

Now, once again, I admit that TOB in its rigorous form would admit all of the above. But with David Schindler and Fr. Granados and I am sure many others, I cannot help but notice a “pansexualism” that often accompanies TOB. We would do better to inform people of what their true goal is, where their Faith and Charity actually tend, rather than continuing to try to offer them bronze. At some point, we should grant them the meat after the milk, instead of bread and circuses that will certainly tickle their fancy

See part vi here

See part vii here.

See part I here.

See part II here.

See part III here.

4. The image of God is according to the mind.

Hence, we  may certainly take TOB to be included in theology insofar as it attempts to discourse about God. The next question is, what does the human body tell us about God?  What does it tell us about God that no other material creature can tell us?

As I understand it, TOB approaches this question in this way: man is a body, but it is clear that he is also a person, insofar as he experiences himself as the subject of his acts. And these two are always going to be intertwined, since all of man’s personal acts are performed through a body.

A person, moreover, can only fulfill himself or herself in a self-gift which is reciprocated, thereby entering into a communion of persons. This is, as it were, the end of the person (though many personalists will deny that it is the only possible ultimate end able to be intended, since free choice, in their view, entails not only indetermination about the means, but also about the end). I think that there are three main supporting arguments for this:

a. Experience. We experience a kind of fulfillment when we give of ourselves. This is a sign that total self-gift alone fulfills the person.

b. The nature of a person, not insofar as it is incommunicable (i.e., an individual substance of a rational nature), but insofar as the person is the subject of its own acts. The argument goes that, since the person is a free acting subject, it is most free and most “person” in that act where there is found least of all the tendencies of nature, and most found the sign of total freedom. And this is found in that act which includes no taking, which has no bit of self or nature at its center, but focuses totally on the other. And this is the act of total self-gift (note: this view has its own problems, but I am not interested in getting into them here).

c. We are made in the image of God. God is a trinity of persons in which the Father totally gives himself to the Son, and both give themselves to each other, forming the ecstasy that is the Holy Spirit. We have to image that more perfectly if we want to fulfill ourselves as image of God.

These three arguments all together have only told us that we must give of ourselves. They cannot yet tell us how.

The body enters into the reasoning when it comes time to reflect on what it means to be in the image of God, which will affect what it means to give oneself totally. And this is where TOB probably has its most radical difference with the theological tradition.

The theological tradition was pretty well unanimous that man was made to the image of God according to his intellect. As one example among many, I will quote St. Thomas:

Not every likeness, not even what is copied from something else, is sufficient to make an image; for if the likeness be only generic, or existing by virtue of some common accident, this does not suffice for one thing to be the image of another. For instance, a worm, though from man it may originate, cannot be called man’simage , merely because of the generic likeness. Nor, if anything is made white like something else, can we say that it is the image of that thing; for whiteness is an accident belonging to many species. But the nature of an image requires likeness in species; thus the image of the king exists in his son: or, at least, in some specific accident, and chiefly in the shape; thus, we speak of a man’s image in copper. Whence Hilary says pointedly that “an image is of the same species.”  Now it is manifest that specific likeness follows the ultimate difference. But some things are like to God first and most commonly because they exist; secondly, because theylive ; and thirdly because they know or understand; and these last, as Augustine says (QQ. 83, qu. 51) “approach so near to God in likeness, that among all creatures nothing comes nearer to Him.” It is clear, therefore, that intellectual creatures alone, properly speaking, are made to God’s image (ST, I, q. 93, a. 2).

TOB, on the other hand, seems to indicate that man is made in the image of God according to his body, and specifically, in the distinction of sexes.  As Christopher West puts it:

This “mystery hidden in God” refers to the eternal union of the three Persons of the Trinity and our privileged invitation in Christ to share in the Trinity’s eternal exchange of love. This is the “theology” that the human body signifies. How? Precisely through the beauty of sexual difference and union. In the normal course of events, the union of the “two” leads to a “third.” Here, in a way, we see a trinitarian image. Thus, John Paul concludes that we image God not only as individuals, but also through the union of man and woman.

This interpretation is understandable. Does not the book of Genesis say, “To the image of God he created him: male and female he created them”?

The main problem with this interpretation is the fact that all higher animals have sexual differentiation. They all also engage in sexual union, and they all reproduce by means of it. If this were the way in which God was imaged, then all higher animals would be in the image of God.

Of course, one could object that we have sex differently than the beasts. They just engage in it through instinct, whereas in us, there is a personal dimension. This is true. But that still means that the image of God is found in us primo and per se according to the intellect. Sex in us would image God only secondarily, presupposing the intellect.  St. Thomas averts to this as well, although through a different discursive iter:

First, we may consider in [the image of God] that in which the image chiefly consists, that is, the intellectual nature. Thus the image of God is moreperfect in the angels than in man, because their intellectual nature is more perfect , as is clear from what has been said. Secondly, we may consider the image of God in man as regards its accidental qualities, so far as to observe in man acertain imitation of God, consisting in the fact that man proceeds from man, as God from God; and also in the fact that the whole human soul is in the whole body, and again, in every part, as God is in regard to the whole world. In these and the like things the image of God is moreperfect in man than it is in the angels. But these do not of themselves belong to the nature of the Divine image in man, unless we presuppose the first likeness, which is in the intellectual nature; otherwise even brute animals would be to God’s image. Therefore, as in their intellectual nature, the angels are more to the image of God than man is, we must grant that, absolutely speaking, the angels are more to the image of God than man is, but that in some respects man is more like to God (ibid., a. 3).

But what about Genesis 1:27?

As Augustine says (De Trin. xii, 5), some have thought that the image of God was not in man individually, but severally. They held that “the man represents the Person of the Father; those born of man denote the person of the Son; and that the woman is a third person in likeness to the Holy Ghost, since she so proceeded from man as not to be his son or daughter.” All of this is manifestly absurd; first, because it would follow that the Holy Ghost is the principle of theSon, as the woman is the principle of the man’s offspring; secondly, because one man would be only the image of one Person; thirdly, because in that case Scripture should not have mentioned the image of God in man until after the birth of the offspring. Therefore we must understand that when Scripture had said, “to the image of God He created him,” it added, “male and female He created them,” not to imply that the image of God came through the distinction of sex, but that the image of God belongs to both sexes, since it is in the mind, wherein there is no sexual distinction (ibid, a. 6, ad 2).

None of this mean that the Medievals thought that the body had nothing to tell us about God.  We have already seen that  the sexual distinction in man images God in a way that the angels cannot, though secondarily and per accidens. Just as God proceeds from God, so man proceeds from man. But this is not the principal way in which the body imaged God in the Patristic/Medieval view.

Although the image of God in man is not to be found in his bodily shape, yet because “the body of man alone among terrestrial animals is not inclined prone to the ground, but is adapted to look upward to heaven, for this reason we may rightly say that it is made to God’s image and likeness, rather than the bodies of other animals,” as Augustine remarks (QQ. 83, qu. 51). But this is not to be understood as though the image of God were in man’s body; but in the sense that the very shape of the human body represents the image of God in the soul by way of a trace (ibid., ad 3).

The 12th century canon Adam of Dryburgh conveys the same idea, quoting Ovid in support:

He created you according to His image and likeness. We read in the Psalm that, “The Lord our God is upright, and there is no iniquity in Him” (Ps. 92: 15). He created you upright, since He is upright. He created you upright, I say, but you made yourself bent down. And perhaps that passage of Ecclesiastes approaches this: “This I have found, that God made man upright, and he mixed himself up in infinite questions” (Eccl. 7:29). And thus, He made him upright in mind, just as also in body. For indeed, the uprightness of the latter is the example and incentive to the uprightness of the former. It is exceedingly uncomely that you should be upright in body and bent down in mind. To show yourself a man in body and a beast in mind is a kind of monster. For the body to be inclined to the lowest things is beastly; but for it to be directed to the highest things is human. Hence, we have even these words of the pagan:

On earth the brute creation bends its gaze,
but man was given a lofty countenance
and was commanded to behold the skies;
and with an upright face may view the stars. (PL 198, 448; citation from Ovid, Metam., I, 84)

Men and angels are made in the image of God according to the intellect. And man’s body is full of the signs of that intellect.

An upright stature was becoming to man for four reasons. First, because the senses are given to man, not only for the purpose of procuring the necessaries of life , which they are bestowed on other animals, but also for the purpose of knowledge. Hence, whereas the other animals take delight in the objects of the senses only as ordered to food and sex, man alone takes pleasure in the beauty of sensible objects for its own sake. Therefore, as the senses are situated chiefly in the face, other animals have the face turned to the ground, as it were for the purpose of seeking food and procuring a livelihood; whereas man has his face erect, in order that by the senses, and chiefly by sight, which is more subtle and penetrates further into the differences of things, he may freely survey the sensible objects around him, both heavenly and earthly, so as to gather intelligible truth from all things. Secondly, for the greater freedom of the acts of the interior powers; the brain, wherein these actions are, in a way, performed, not being low down, but lifted up above other parts of the body. Thirdly, because if man’s stature were prone to the ground he would need to use his hands as fore-feet; and thus their utility for other purposes would cease. Fourthly, because if man’s stature were prone to the ground, and he used his hands as fore-feet, he would be obliged to take hold of his food with his mouth. Thus he would have a protruding mouth, with thick and hard lips, and also a hard tongue, so as to keep it from being hurt by exterior things; as we see in other animals. Moreover, such an attitude would quite hinder speech, which is reason’s proper operation (ST, I, q. 91, a. 3, ad 3)

The body can tell us many things about God, just as it tells us many things about our rational nature, which is the closest a creature can get to God. To put it more bluntly: man’s body is not just about sex; in fact, sex is common to it and the animals.  I think that these considerations are important to keep in mind. As Dr. Schindler put it so well,  “One must always be clear that the theology of the body is not synonymous with a theology of sexuality.”

See part V here.

See part vi here

See part vii here.