Theology of the Body has been in the Catholic news a lot lately. TOB is something I have been thinking about for a while. The following six posts or so will be a collection of many of my thoughts on its merits and liabilities.
For the sake of fairness, it might be appropriate from the outset to let readers know where I am coming from. First, I am not into Theology of the Body. And this is not only due to the circumstances of my intellectual formation. I remember hearing the usual TOB-inspired arguments against fornication, contraception, etc., as a high school student, and even then, I wondered about their cogency. By way of example, I was never content with being told that contraception was wrong because it did not signify a total self-giving. The terms just seemed too indefinite. I thought things were much clearer and simpler if we just admitted that it was simply because it was not ordered to procreation, which remains the primary end of marriage. I know that Theology of the Body does not deny this. But the Thomistic approach makes it clearer, by going directly to the cause of the disorder of the act, while TOB, as it was presented to me, makes circumlocutions through sign-values. And these would only be cogent if significative power, and not order to an end, was the measure of morality (of course, there are those who define morality as the study of human actions insofar as they are pieces of communication, but I also find this unconvincing).
Second, I consider myself a Thomist, and while many see TOB and St. Thomas as not incompatible, I certainly find that they are very different. TOB is certainly connected with phenomenology and personalism, and many experts in Catholic versions of both of these schools practically begin their treatises by identifying the “shortcomings” of Aquinas. Whether one seems them as compatible or not, one thing is for certain: they are distinct.
Third, I have not read Christopher West. Hence, in what follows, I do not intend to give him particular consideration. I am simply unqualified to do so. However, I am acquainted with the Wednesday Audiences of Pope John Paul II. And I have read them in their more correct translation by Michael Waldstein. I would hazard that I have the gist of it. But I will readily admit that I am no expert.
So let the reader beware. My words here will not satisfy everyone. C. S. Lewis once said that one who dislikes science fiction is precisely unqualified to be a critic of science fiction. For this reason, the critique of Christopher West himself is better left to those who belong to the TOB school. And they have been doing so.
But, to take the analogy further, it certainly could pertain to an expert in literature to judge the relative merits of the different genres of literature and answer such questions as how science fiction fits in. In fact, it always pertains to the more universal art or science to judge the conclusions of the less universal art or science. Theology of the Body, simply by the addition of that descriptive phrase, is a particulated branch of theology. Thomism is at least an attempt to over the whole, springing from a time when Theology was simply the Theology of God; and that’s as universal as you can get. Of course, one could argue that I am not universal theology incarnate, and neither is St. Thomas; and that is, of course, true. But my study of theology has led me to have a definite opinion of TOB.
1. Theology of the Body is not very useful for discovering or demonstrating moral precepts.
I am a Moral Theologian, and a lot of Moral Theology is talking about what’s right and wrong, what is or is not against reason. For these particular questions, TOB by itself is not very helpful. And this is so for a very simple reason: most moral precepts belong to the natural law. Their proper principle is nature, not Revelation, and therefore, not theology. It is true that God has also revealed many moral precepts, coming to the aid of our ignorance. But most moral precepts, even those that have been revealed, regard the natural law. This is certainly true with regard to sexual matters: the norms that the Church proposes belong to us as men, not as Christians. The difference between philosophical ethics and moral theology is not to be found primarily in a new set of precepts, proper to believers, but rather, in new principles (grace, the infused virtues, the Gifts of the Holy Spirit), a new end (the Beatific Vision in the glory of the saints), and a new mode (e.g., natural temperance curbs appetites so as not to harm bodily health, whereas infused temperance “chastises the body, and makes it obey” one, and unites one to the sufferings of Christ, etc.). The substance of the acts is the same, though now their form is supernatural charity.
I know that most TOB experts will agree with this. But I think it is worth mentioning again because some have advocated a re-visiting of moral questions to find new solutions through Theology of the Body, as if the natural law has not or cannot give us a demonstrative answer. Or, even further, some speak as if the Catholic Church has been operating under an inability to arrive at a true understanding of sexual morality until Theology of the Body arrived on the scene.
The fact is that when we give an account for the reason that fornication, or contraception, etc. is wrong, to say that it does not adequately express the total personal self-giving of the Trinity will neither convince everyone (for unbelievers are not too concerned about the Trinity, and yet they are bound to the natural law), nor is it the real argument. It may be a true argument, as an added further effect and sign of the disorder of reason entailed in these acts. But such an argument would presuppose a disorder already present in the act. The primo and per se argument, that is, the argument that does not presuppose any other disorder, is the one that manifests the lack of due order to man’s end. The moral precepts that the Church has been defending in the 20th century are precepts of the natural law, not precepts from divine command added to the natural law. One does not need to have recourse to theology or Revelation or the Faith to defend them. They are proposed to all men. Theology of the Body can reinforce the arguments from the natural law. It can be an aid to believers. Indeed, it is often said that Pope John Paul II wrote it to defend Humanae Vitae. But it cannot do without the arguments from natural law. Indeed, as much as it may try to get away from them, it is actually based on them, for a thing cannot be a natural sign of something unless the reality entails the cause and effect relationship between the signified and the signifying.
***
Hi Kevin. Thank for this post. I look forward to future posts on this topic.
It might be helpful if you could be more specific with respect to those TOB experts who want to find “new solutions” through TOB because while many non-experts might think such things I am unaware of any real experts that do. And maybe it would be helpful if you offered your understanding of the purpose of TOB and its basic argument. How does TOB do without the arguments from natural law?
I would prefer not to mention names, as much of my contact with them is personal. As for my own understanding of the place of TOB (and I do think it has its place), that should be made clearer in later posts.
It is quite satisfying to see the clarity of Thomism put to work in (what seems to me) a very Neo-Scholastic bent. One of the root problems of TOB is that it stems from a method of doing theology (nouvelle theo.) which is often times ambigious at best. I’m glad to see that in your “thoughts” on the matter, the orders of nature and grace are distinguished as per their proper roles in identifying precepts which are un-coverable by discursive reasoning, and those precepts which we must rely upon revelation to conform our wills to. As you rightly stated, the natural order has to do with our end as rational men, and the supernatural order has to do with our end as creatures elevated by grace. Capreolus and Cajetan would be proud!
I have no problem in accepting the Teaching on contraception, but do not find cogent the intellectual arguments – as distinct from the theological ones – adduced for it. Thus, the “not ordered to procreation, which remains the primary end of marriage” is no more convincing to me than the “not signify a total self-giving”. Both are attempts to demonstrate the truth of the Teaching, but, in my view, their value is only “negative”, in the sense that they show that the Teaching is not irrational. But this doesn’t mean that they are “positively” compelling for somebody who has a problem of accepting the Teaching.
The TOB argument should be given chance to settle, and in the meantime studied constructively rather than destructively. All the more because in the traditional one there is still much to be wanted, in spite of the long time it had to settle.
It is by no means clear, for example, that the procreation is the primary end of marriage, and the most it would prove, if it were the primary end, is that the conjugal acts taken together, not necessarily each of them individually, should be open to procreation for the primary end to be achieved. Even so, it doesn’t seem certain that this potential state “should be” implies a moral obligation of the married couple to be actually open to procreation.
Ograd,
You are entitled to think so, and it remains to be seen if TOB will stand the test of time. But I certainly think it is a mistake to place the essential arguments against contraception in theology. Such a claim means that the immorality of contraception forms part of the deposit of the Faith, that it is something that follows from God’s Revelation, and not from the natural law, which, besides being explicitly contrary to Humanae Vitae, would make it inaccessible to those who do not believe.
The old arguments HAVE been given their time, and they HAVE settled. The fact that is not compelling to people today does not mean that it never was. It was widely accepted, not only by Catholics, but by all Christians until the 1930′s (the most vitriolic sermons against I’ve ever seen come from Luther and Calvin). Sins against nature are even prohibited by the Stoics, by Plato and Aristotle, and by the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Perhaps it’s not the argument that was the problem, but the modern world view. Ancient and Classical world views all recognized that the world was bigger than man, and that it had an order, and that it was an irreverence to act against that order, which was put there, not by random concatenations and the conflict for survival, but by an Intellect that gives to each thing its proper act. Modern man, on the other hand, is quite skeptical of world order, taught, as he is, that it is the result, not of wisdom, but of struggle and chance. And modern man sees himself, not as part of nature, but as completely separate from it. I have no doubt that the natural law arguments are not compelling to MODERN man. Pope John Paul II saw the same thing, and made the attempt to take modern man on his own terms, maintaining, in his moral philosophy, the primacy of the point of view of the subject. But in the end, this may be barking up the wrong tree. At some point, we just have to ask ourselves which is true: are we part of the universe, with our own role to play with it according to the Eternal Law established by the First Cause, or are we set up as gods next to God, mostly set to determine ourselves, with no concern for nature’s motions, since we are above nature anyway?
Kevin, thanks for comments, but they miss my points.
By the theological argument I mean the fact that the doctrine has been universally taught from the beginning, and that it is, therefore, proposed infallibly; and even if not infallibly it has been proposed with sufficient constancy and authority to command at least a religious assent. Compared with this the intellectual arguments are insignificant, and in any case not convincing to me. Of the two mentioned, the TOB should be given chance to develop, while the traditional one, the “thomistic”, had its chance, has turned out to be unsatisfactory, and I have briefly pointed to its loopholes.
Of course, the doctrine of “the immorality of contraception forms part of the deposit of the Faith” and “follows from God’s Revelation”, which does not mean “not from the natural law”, “explicitly contrary to Humanae Vitae”, or “inaccessible to those who do not believe”. However, if I were among the latter the intellectual arguments thus far produced wouldn’t mean much to me.
My contention is with your repetition that the Thomistic arguments have had their chance and have proven unsatisfactory. The simple historical fact is that they DID satisfy before the 1930′s. Even in the U.S., contraception was illegal in some states before Griswold vs. Connecticut.
As for the holes in the argument, I don’t think they are there. St. Thomas has an explanation for the “in omni actu” wrongness of contraception. The whole point is that one act of contraception belies a contempt for the order of the universe and the Creator’s order, a placing of one’s own particular ends over the order of things, a stand that my pursuit of delight is better than God’s order. St. Thomas says in ScG III, 123 that this is fine in the management of powers that pertain only to the individual, but for those powers that are directly ordered to the common good (i.e., sexuality), such actions belie an exaltation of the private good over the common good, which is always serious in the Thomistic viewpoint. Now, I personally am convinced by this argumentation, because I share St. Thomas’ worldview. Most people of the classical cosmological view of the universe also historically have shared that argumentation. But I do not expect people of today to accept it. It is hard for most people in the contemporary age to see that there are higher guidelines than self-determination and personal enhancement, that the order of the universe is a higher guide than the freedom of the person. Even for theists, the idea that man’s greatest vocation is to fit into the order to the common good of the universe is very difficult to come by, whereas it was the default view of the ancient, patristic, and medieval world. In the end, is the fault with the Thomistic argument, or is the fault with those who do not grant the major premise of the Thomistic argument? It is not easy for most people today, in or outside the Church, to grant Aristotle’s general principle that the common good is always the more divine, and that breaking from what is ordered to it, while it may not seem serious in one individual act, nevertheless belies an interior disposition of putting love of self above love of the common good, which is the root of all sin in St. Thomas synthesis.
I took that the “thomistic” argument was what I briefly challenged in my first post, and found no reply to it yet. Instead, there is now reference to the SCG III/123 which, in point of fact, deals with indissolubility of marriage, not with contraception.
That “one act of contraception belies a contempt for the order of the universe and the Creator’s order, a placing of one’s own particular ends over the order of things, a stand that my pursuit of delight is better than God’s order” is by no means self-evident, but should be proved as a conclusion from premises.
What “DID satisfy before the 1930′s” or what “in the U.S…. was illegal in some states” is irrelevant.
In the end I do not know what is meant by the “thomistic” argument in the two posts. Would it be possible to put it in the form of syllogism, of the kind Janet Smith has the arguments in her first book on contraception?