Transcript: Lesson 9 - Theology of the Body

Friends, Welcome back. In this unit, we've been thinking about the story of creation, and understanding  more how Genesis one and two sets the trajectory for everything else that we see in Scripture for  understanding who we are as male and female and understanding God's call on our lives. In this video,  we're going to reflect and do a little bit of digging into thinking about theology of the body. And in this  section, I'm actually specifically building on the theology of the body of Pope John Paul II who, probably  more than any contemporary theologian has really reflected on what it means to be embodied. And what  it means to understand ourselves as male and female, how we should think about marriage, how we  should think about singleness. And so in this section, I really try to build on it, what he does there, to  better understand who we are as God's people. And so a couple of questions I want to try to answer. The  first is what is the connection between the body and the person. And this gets a little bit to get a little bit  philosophical but hang with me as we as we think about this. When I think about who I am, as a person,  that includes more than you can see who I am, as a person involves my past. It involves my own  experience, my own experiences growing up within a certain family within a certain context. It involves  certain things that were great. And that really built me up as a person and involves certain things that  that were difficult struggles I had to walk through or, or wounds that happened to me because of how  people interact with me. So how do people know me? How do they come to encounter me? Well, it's  actually through my body, my body is visible makes, makes who I am, as a person visible to you. This is  even, even though we are connecting through video online, part of the reason you can know me and  know something about me is because I am the bodily present, where I'm right now, speaking to  articulating these things in this way. And so our bodies are really the place where we communicate,  where we encounter each other, and our body makes our person visible. And so when I engage, when I  encounter others, there's a sense that the body tells me something about who they are. It's it's the  location or the site where I begin to interact with him and understand who they really are. Because,  again, when I encounter somebody I can I can see their body, but it's as I engage with them as a person,  that I start to understand their emotions, their their history, their past, all the things that make them  who they are as unique person. And so we have to recognize that there's this dimension of who we are  this visible, our bodies, in this dimension of who we are, that is invisible, all the things that make us who  we are as a person, but that those are things that we encounter in through one another as we engage  with each other physically. So we there's this close connection between the body and the person, the  body makes the person visible. A second question here is, what is the spousal meaning of the body. This  is this is actually a really strange phrase, if you're not, if you're not used to it. But this is a phrase and  again, Pope John Paul II uses, and part of what he means by this is that what you see in Genesis and in  Ephesians 5 and in other places, is that what we see in who we are as spouses is that we are called to  give ourselves to our spouse. That part of what it means to be married to someone involves this total  giving of ourselves, that includes the total giving of our bodies. That's in part why our sexuality or our,  when we think about sexual union, that's something that Scripture says is reserved for our spouse,  because it's to our spouse, that we give ourselves totally including totally who we are physically in  sexual union. And so when we think about the spousal meaning of the body, what you see there is that in  marriage, we totally give ourselves to our spouse. And in doing that, we start to uncover who we really  are. And so what you see here is that this actually works against the story of individualism, the story of  individualism says you define you you figure out who you want to be and do those things. The spousal  meaning of the body essentially says, you find yourself truly, when you learn to give yourself away  totally and freely in love. And this is linked to our understanding of the body of Jesus, that what you see  in Jesus is that he gives himself totally and completely to the church to Ephesians 5 talks about the  church, his bride. And so as he gives himself totally to his bride, we understand that something about  our call as spouses that we totally give ourselves to one another. And so this is part of what we mean  when we talk about the spousal meaning of the body is that we, we begin to discover who we are, we  begin to understand who we're meant to be, when we learn to give ourselves away in that way, as 

spouses are called to do. And I've alluded to this a little bit already. But it's important to recognize what  marriage symbolizes in Ephesians 5:21 - 33. Paul says, that marriage between a husband and wife is  actually meant to symbolize is meant to point to Christ and the church. And so what we see in the way  that God has ordained things to be is that in a loving marriage, and in marriage that really gets what  marriage is about, where two spouses care for each other, where they're faithful, where they give their  lives to each other, where they love each other in, in concrete, everyday practical ways. In a marriage  like that, we actually start to get a glimpse of the reality of Christ's love for the church. And the way that  Jesus Himself pours himself out for the church the way that he, he seeks the good of the church before  his own. You know, he, he says in the Gospel of John, John 15, that he lays down his life for his friends for  us. And that gives us a picture of what marriage is actually supposed to be. And so this is where we have  to, I think, begin to cultivate the ability to see that marriage is not just about me, it's not just about  finding a romantic connection. But what marriage is meant to do is actually put on display the Gospel  story of who Jesus is, and help people see who God is, in this deeper way. Now, when we think about the  theology of the body, and understanding some of these concepts, I want to just briefly highlight three  different things that we see about human life in the beginning, that helps us again, dive deeper into this  marriage relationship, and understanding of who we are as human beings. So one of the things that you  see in the beginning is that Adam has this awareness of solitude, that that Adam has this awareness of  being alone, as I read in a previous video, God is says he wants to provide a suitable helper, but that  none of the animals fit that call. And so part of an emotion, this is of some of those dimensions, from time  to time, in some animals, there is no animal like the human being, that part of what it means to be  human is that we are created to love and created to be responsible for all God's creation. And so to  understand who we are as human beings, who says, here's who you are, here's what you're called to do,  and to be in my creation, and that we received that call and that we are responsible, that we are able to  respond to that in a way that that goes beyond just just animal instinct, but that we actually recognize  who God is. And we actually recognize who we are as, as image bearers in this distinct way, and that  we're called to love and respond appropriately to that. So Adam's, Adam's solitude, the fact that there is  no suitable helper in the animal kingdom helps us understand a little bit about what it means to be  human, to have this ability to love and to be responsible. You also see in the beginning, this reality of of  communion, communion of persons, that that this is one of the key features of the relationship between  Adam and Eve, husband and wife. And to understand this again, I want to, I want to unpack a little bit  what I mean by person, because Scripture says that body plus soul equals a living person. You see in  Genesis 2:7 it says God formed a man from the dust of the ground breathed into his nostrils the breath of  life, and the man became a living being a living person. A lot of times, people can just focus on one one  dimension, either body or soul. And this, in fact, is always going to warp our view of marriage, our view  of bodies, our view of sexuality, there are some in our culture, who would essentially erase the  dimension of who we are as soul as spiritual beings, and say, we are nothing more than bodies, we are  nothing more than matter. That's the view we talked about in terms of naturalism. That's a problem, it's  going to end up with a warped view of who we are. But in different ways, sometimes Christians can try  to erase the bodily dimension of who we are, as I mentioned a little bit in a previous session, there were  some or there have been some throughout the history of Christianity, that try to almost identify the body  with evil, and so blocked it out of the picture. But what you see in Genesis is that who we are as persons  is this body, soul unity, that we're not, we're not two things a body and a soul just smashed together. But  that we have this integrity of being this body, whole body soul unity. And that defines how we  understand human beings. This is, I would say, the big words on here, hang with me. What do I mean by  holistic anthropology by holistic, I mean, this connection, it's not just parts body and soul, but it's a  single whole. And it's a view of human beings that says, We are this body soul unity. I think that holistic  anthropology leads to a holistic view of sexual union. In other words, what, what I mean is, if we tend to  view ourselves, like naturalism does is just bodies as matter in motion, we are going to tend to treat 

other people as just bodies to be used, rather than people to be honored and loved and respected and  given dignity too when we think about sexual union. And so when scripture talks about one flesh, sexual  union, this includes physical sexual union, I think, obviously, but sexual union points to the reality that  two people are united here, this is not just the uniting of two bodies, but it's the uniting of two people  and two, peoples lives. That's why, you know, we often maybe don't fully get this when we read  Scripture, but if you pay attention, what you start to see is that scripture views marriage or scripture  views, sexual union, as a as a marital act. In other words, that to have sex with someone is to, in some  ways, to commit yourself to be married to them. That's a strange thing. I mean, I grew up in a in a  context where, you know, people will talk about having sex outside of marriage. And, again, I totally  understand what people mean when they when they say something like that. But part of the way the  Scripture talks about it, is that if you have sex with somebody, that's that's a miracle act, what's  happening there is not just a physical union, but this uniting of two persons, which is, which is why in I  Corinthians 6, Paul says, you cannot as men in the church, of course, you cannot go sleep with  prostitutes, because the meaning of sex is is it has this marital meaning it unites two people. And so  what we, what we see that in the biblical vision is that the body and person cannot be separated, I can't, I  can't look at somebody and not think about them as a person. I mentioned I Corinthians 6, this is where  Paul says, again, you can't go sleep with prostitutes, because sex has this meaning. You can't, we can  think about this in other ways as well. You cannot just look at pornography where you're essentially just  treating somebody as a body. Somebody that you're going to say, I'm going to get pleasure from looking  at this, but I'm not going to consider who they are as a person. But that's that's what's wrong is that we  try to divorce the body and person and Scripture says you can't do that you have to treat people as  persons they have to be treated in this holistic way, with dignity, with love, with respect, and  recognizing that there's this meaning to sexuality, meaning to sexual union, that what's happening here  is not just something physical, but it's an actual communion of persons So we have this understanding of  Scripture that solitude reveals who we are as persons. Sexual union involves this communion of persons.  And there's also this reality of nakedness, a theology of nakedness. Maybe you haven't thought about  this before. But Genesis 2:25 is very clear here, Adam and his wife were naked, and they felt no shame,  naked, and they felt no shame. Part of what that shows us is that there's something about how we look at  other people. That is crucial. Adam and his wife could be naked and unashamed because at that point,  sin had not yet entered the picture. Why is it that we cover ourselves after sin enters the picture? Well,  it's partly that not just because there's some sense of shame. But it's because we're trying to protect  ourselves, from others who might look at us and exploit us, others who might look at us and not see us  as persons not see us as image bearers. But see us as just an object. And so when we think about what  Scripture teaches in Genesis 2 about nakedness, it's really important to see this link between nakedness  and trust there between Adam and his wife, between between man and woman in the beginning. So part  of what we have to ask ourselves is how do we see others that, again, we have to be really clear here. A  bodies are not sinful, naked bodies are not sinful. What is sinful is a way of seeing other people that  looks at them merely as objects for our own pleasure. So Wendell Berry, one of my one of my favorite  thinkers, says this in his book, "Art of the Commonplace" in thinking about marriage and sex, he says,  "What must we do to earn the freedom of being unguardedly and innocently naked to someone? Our  own and other cultures suggested we must do a lot. We must make promises and keep them. We, we  assume many fearful responsibilities and do much work. We must build the household of trust." See  here, Barry's reflecting on this fact that, for Christianity, there's a sense of nakedness, sexual union goes,  belongs in the context of marriage where we have made commitments to someone where we have made  promises, where we say, not just I want to be with you sexually, but I promised to care for you in every  aspect of life, that, that that's a big deal. And that the more that we actually just treat sex, the more that  we treat bodies just flippantly as something to be used something to be exploited or just enjoy for my  own pleasure, and then cast aside the will we undermine what God's intentions really are, and how he's 

trying to show a little glimpse of who he is, through our marriages, and through our sexuality. And so  part of what we have to distinguish here is, I think, proper sexual desire versus lust. A lot of people will  use these terms, as synonyms, they'll just use last to mean the same thing as sexual desire. And I want to  be really careful here because I think we'll unpack lust a little bit more in a future video. Lust is not just  sexual desire. Sexual desire that looks at another person as an object that says, this all revolves around  me. Whereas proper sexual desire is looking at my spouse and saying, I desire them sexually. And it's  proper, because I'm going to treat them as a person, I'm not going to treat them as an object to be used.  So so this is really important, even when we think about struggling with things like pornography, which  is such a, which is such a huge struggle for many in our cultural context. What's going on here, it's not  just something physical or sexual, it's, it's I want that I want to use that person is a means to an end to  gratify myself to bring pleasure to myself. So it's important to distinguish between these so we can say in  the beginning, God's intention is that there is proper sexual desire. But that's not the same thing as lust,  and then closely linked to this is in Genesis, this notion of blessing your spouse, we see over and over  God blesses creation and says it's very good. And that spouses themselves are called to enter into that  blessing as God pronounces this blessing over them of who they are, who they're called to be. That's  very different from trying to grasp or possess somebody to control them to use them again, for my own  ends, and so to to understand what we're called to do, But it's, it's, we have to be willing to see other  people as people. And that is really, that's really at the heart of this sexual ethic, that male and female,  that they're sexually different people in this one plus union are called to see each other as people before  God. What this means, then is that how God has made us is that when we love each other as husband and  wife in this way, including sexual union, that new life comes because of that. And so there's this close  connection in Scripture, of recognizing that as man and woman, as husband and wife love each other  new life comes from that. And so these are not little things. these are not minor things that we're talking  about here. This is do you understand the nature of love. And do we understand the nature of life in  Scripture, in Genesis 1 and 2, these things are tied together, that just as God's love, creates, and gives life  to humanity, so our love for one another, is meant to bring forth new life. So as we enter into, and as we  think about the story of creation, we're aware of the fact that our bodies point us to this deeper reality  that we are not just bodies we're persons, we’re persons who are called to love, to be responsible. We  are persons who are called in marriage, to commune with our spouses. And we are called to recognize it,  that the nakedness that happens in marriage and in sexual union, is to point to this deep sense of  belonging to each other, and truly caring blessing one another, not just trying to grasp or possess or lust  after. And as we as we do that, as we enter into this way of life that is blessing this giving that is serving  our marriages, more and more, become a picture of the Gospel story of Jesus and help us help us and  help those around us see who God really is. So in this unit, we've thought about the story of creation,  what that means. In the next unit, we're going to look at sin and think a little bit more deeply about how  sin affects and corrupts how we think about ourselves, how we operate in terms of our bodies, our  sexuality, marriage, and singleness. So until next time, blessings.