The Second Voyage

Applying the Theology of the Body to the study of Scripture

06/19/2025

Today we commence our last mile in our “Long Walk with Jesus” by applying Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body to interpreting Sacred Scripture. John Paul had initially used the Theology of the Body to examine and establish the immorality of contraception.

But he acknowledged that application was only the maiden voyage of the Theology of the Body. In his last address, he elaborated on the need for future voyages:

One must immediately observe, in fact, that the term “theology of the body” goes far beyond the content of the reflections here [on contraception]. These reflections do not include many problems belonging, with regard to their object, to the theology of the body (e.g., the problem of suffering and death, so important to the biblical message) (660).

Someone else who had seen this wider application, these further voyages, was Angelo Scola, who accurately predicted:

Virtually every thesis in theology – God, Christ, the Trinity, grace, the Church, the sacraments – could be seen in a new light if theologians explored in depth the rich personalism implied in John Paul II’s theology of the body (George Weigel, Witness to Hope, 343).

In other words, Captain John Paul has now proven that the vessel of the Theology of the Body is sea-worthy. Therefore, we can confidently take her out on open water again for her second voyage to explore Sacred Scripture.

One day a young girl came home from school where her teacher was talking about where people come from. She first went to her father and asked him, “Daddy, where do people come from?” The father answered, “Well, dear, first there were apes and monkeys and all humans eventually descended from them.”

Wanting to fact check her father, she asked her mother: “Mommy, were do people come from?” The mother replied, “Well, sweetie, God created Adam and Eve and all the people eventually descended from them.” Puzzled, the little girl continued: “Well, why did daddy say we came from monkeys?” The mom smiled: “Well, dear, your father was talking about his side of the family and I was talking about my side.”

If the little girl had questioned John Paul II about where people come from, the pope-saint would have agreed with the mother. Why? Well, the central thrust of the Theology of the Body is that man and woman act most like God – and least like apes – when we unite in marriage. Genesis teaches that man was created “in the image and likeness of God” (Gn 1:26).

Difficult as it may be to grasp, the Holy Father nonetheless maintains that the marital communion of human persons imitates – albeit analogously – the eternal Communion of the Holy Trinity, “an inscrutable communion of the three divine Persons” (163). This understanding of the personalist principle – human persons reflect diving Persons – is precisely why Christians assert that man descended from Adam and Eve, not from apes.

I realize such suppositions of the Theology of the Body seem to fly in the face of most – though not all – modern science. But science does not have a monopoly on the truth; indeed, if it is misused, science can, at times, even blind us to the truth. C. S. Lewis warned back in 1949:

[Y]ou and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth” (Weight of Glory, 31).

As we embark on this second voyage of the Theology of the Body, on the high seas of Sacred Scripture, bear in mind that modern science will not be our main sextant to guide us. Indeed, science sometimes turns out to be the siren song that shipwrecks unwary sailors.

Many years ago if a child exclaimed on the playground: “Ah, I sure do love the monkey bars!” Another would tease him: “If you love it so much, why don’t you just marry it?!” I would suggest to you that taunt touches the deepest chord of the scriptural narrative, namely, God is so enamored with humanity, the pinnacle of his creation, that he plans to marry us! And therefore the Theology of the Body – concerned chiefly with marriage as well – is an infallible guide to correctly interpret Sacred Scripture as nothing less than God’s marriage proposal to humanity.

When the inspired authors of the Bible talk about marriage to God, they employ the highly charged word “covenant.” Many people confuse a covenant with a contract, but the difference could not be greater. A covenant is an exchange of persons; whereas, a contract is an exchange of goods and services. Put a little crudely, a covenant differs from a contract like marriage differs from prostitution. The former exchanges persons, the latter exchanges services.

When we read Scripture with this meaning of covenant as marriage in mind, we discover that the Bible is in fact punctuated by six successive covenant/marriages that God establishes with humanity. At the beginning of the Bible, we find the paradigmatic passage on marriage that sets the stage for the subsequent drama of salvation history: “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gn 2:24).

At the other end of the scriptural timeline, we hear allusions to another betrothal: “And I saw the holy city...prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rv 21:2). In other words, we don’t want to marry a monkey, like the woman in the joke, we want to marry a Lamb, Jesus, the Lamb of God. Rv 19:9 describes this mixed-marriage between God and man: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

My parents proudly display the wedding portraits of my brother and sister in their home. And by the way, my ordination picture hangs high above theirs on the wall. Those portraits display how marriages mark the natural milestones of our personal Antony family history.

Covenants, likewise, are the sacred milestones that mark our collective Christian family history. Just as human history is a story of marriages, so salvation history is a story of covenants. That is, Holy Matrimony is the undercurrent surging throughout the Holy Bible. And it is neatly captured in a childish taunt: “If you love it so much, why don’t you just marry it?!”

Praised be Jesus Christ!