particularly children. “Sexual intercourse, through its link to procreation, constitutes
12 While in Roman Catholic literature the “unitive and procreative” elements stand for the full meaning of sex, including its sacramental meaning under the unitive, I believe it is important to maintain the distinction between the two. Grenz utilizes this distinction when he argues against the acceptance of homosexual marriages. He contends that while homosexuals may be able to give themselves to one another in love and mutual submission—thus fulfilling one of the meanings of sex in marriage—their unions will never represent the “unity in difference” that the male/female union symbolizes as a prefiguring of the eschatological union between God and Church. The nuance in Grenz’s argument should not be missed especially considering that it can be argued that homosexual unions can image (in a sacramental way) the Trinitarian union of persons just as well if not better than heterosexual unions—given the fact that God is beyond sex/gender distinctions (suggesting their irrelevance or limited value to the argument of union in difference), or is symbolically portrayed as a union of same sex/gender persons (Father and Son). Here, the eschatological union between God and humanity must be maintained as the meaning of unity in difference and the basis for the argument. Of course, Rosemary Radford Ruether and other feminists have wisely warned of the dangers of a symbolic universe which identifies God with the male and humanity with the female. Their arguments on the limits of analogical language and the dangers of unnecessary applications of such symbolism must be heeded.
13 Stanley J. Grenz, Sexual Ethics: An Evangelical Perspective (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1990), 22-30. Both Grenz and John Paul II take for granted that there is a fundamental connection between biological sex and “affective sexuality” (i.e., socio-cultural gender expression).
14 Grenz, Social God and Relational Self; summarized by Grenz in “The Social God and the Relational Self: Toward a Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei,” in Trinitarian Soundings in Systematic Theology, Paul Louis Metzger, ed. (London and New York: T & T Clark International, 2005), 87-100.
15 Grenz, Sexual Ethics, 88-89.
an apt human analogy to the expansive love of God, which likewise creates the other as its product.”16
The Context of the Critique
The significance of the overlap in these two theological visions of sex, gender, marriage, and spirituality should not be missed. There is a powerful common witness of these two major players in conservative American Christianity that many find
compelling. The critique that follows should not be interpreted as an attempt to
undermine this common witness. Rather, it is an effort to strengthen it by affirming some general principles, acknowledging their limitations, and pushing beyond these limits to a more comprehensive theology of human persons made in the image of God.
BINARY DIFFERENCE IN ROMAN CATHOLIC AND EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGIES
The Binary Model in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body
John Paul II begins his homilies on the Theology of the Body with the same text examined in chapter 2 of this dissertation: Matthew chapter 19:1-12. He begins with Jesus’ words in verses 1-8 but interrupts a complete analysis of the passage by jumping to Genesis, and inserting Jesus’ statements about the indissolubility of marriage (Mt. 19:8;
Mk. 10:6-9), lust (Mt. 5:28) and the resurrection of the body (Mt. 22:30; Mark 12:25;
Luke 20:35-35), followed by Paul’s teaching on the resurrection in I Corinthians 15, before returning to attend to the last verses of the pericope, Matthew 19:9-12. After reading “eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom” through the Pauline language of I Corinthians 7, the late Pope concludes with a long exposition on the sacrament of marriage (Eph. 5:21-33), and its implications for the continuing authority of Humanae
16 Ibid., 90-91.
Vitae—the prohibition of artificial contraceptives penned by Pope Paul VI in 1969. This is the shape of his text as he describes it.17
Given his admission of the purposes of his work, one should not find it surprising that his Theology of the Body only considers certain types of bodies—those that fall into the binary pattern of Adam and Eve—while excluding others. He does not consider what the bodies of eunuchs, intersex bodies, have to say for any theology of the body. Rather, following the pattern of many Church fathers, he briefly acknowledges the physical nature of eunuchism but defines it as “the physical defects that make the procreative power of marriage impossible.”18 Unfortunately, this is an ambiguous phrase that could include everything from impotence to infertility. Avoiding the gender ambiguity of eunuchs altogether, he reads the eunuch through the lens of continence or virginity translated into spiritual marriage.19
John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is built upon heterosexual complementarity—
which guides not only sexual ethics but is developed to ground the meaning of human existence and even Christian spirituality:
The human body, with its sex—its masculinity and femininity—seen in the very mystery of creation, is not only a source of fruitfulness and of
procreation, as in the whole natural order, but contains ‘from the beginning’
the ‘spousal’ attribute, that is the power to express love: precisely that love in which the human person becomes a gift and—through this gift—fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence.20
His proposal takes Jesus’ statement in Matthew 19:4-5 very seriously:
17 John Paul II, Man and Woman, 659-663; homily 133.
18 Ibid., 416; 74:1.
19 John Paul II reads “eunuch for the sake of the kingdom” through I Cor. 7, Rev. 14:4, Mt. 22:30;
Mk. 12:25; Lk. 20:35-36; see Man and Woman, 414- 462; homilies 73-86.
20 Ibid., 185-186; 15:1, italics original to John Paul II.
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’”?
The nuptial meaning of the body insists that masculinity and femininity exist “for this reason,” i.e., to direct women and men to marriage. And marriage, according to John Paul II, exists as the primary metaphor for Christian love in the Scriptures. (The question of whether or not marriage should be seen as the primary metaphor for Christian love is the subject of the next chapter. For now, we focus our attention on the late Pope’s construal of masculinity and femininity.)
According to John Paul II, masculinity and femininity are relational terms.
Neither can be understood apart from the other.
Thus, as Gen 2:23 already shows,21 femininity in some way finds itself before masculinity, while masculinity confirms itself through femininity. Precisely the function of sex [that is, being male and female], which in some way is
‘constitutive for the person’ (not only ‘an attribute of the person’), shows how deeply man, with all his spiritual solitude, with the uniqueness and unrepeatability proper to the person, is constituted by the body as ‘he’ or
‘she.’22
Unfortunately, the late Pope does not unpack what he means by sex as “constitutive” of the person rather than a mere “attribute.” This is regrettable, given the weight he places upon it. What he does unpack is the connection he sees between femininity and
motherhood and masculinity and fatherhood.
According to his Theology of the Body, masculinity and femininity are ordered toward fatherhood and motherhood.
[T]he mystery of femininity manifests and reveals itself in its full depth through motherhood… In this way, what also reveals itself is the mystery of
21 “The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called
“woman,” for she was taken out of man.’”
22 John Paul II, Man and Woman, 166, 10:1.