The First Word, Part 4

Learning to pronounce Original Nakedness

01/01/2024

The pope calls the third insight (or “syllable” as we are considering them) in his analysis of Christ’s first word “Original Nakedness”, which he takes from Gn 2:25. There we read: “The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.” Original Nakedness, then, is the third and last syllable of Christ’s first word about our origins. But John Paul II spills more ink on this third syllable than he did on the first and second syllables combined. Whereas the Holy Father dedicated about ten pages on Original Solitude (pp. 146-56), and approximately thirteen pages on Original Unity (pp. 156-69), he now spends a whopping thirty-five pages (pp. 169-204) on Original Nakedness. Clearly, this third syllable is significant for John Paul II. Christopher West understood this significance well which is why he named his cassette-tapes on the theology of the body “Naked Without Shame.”

John Paul explained this unusual emphasis: "In fact, Genesis 2:25 presents one of the key elements of the original revelation, just as decisive as the other elements of the text (Gen 2:20, 23) that have already allowed us to determine the meaning of man’s original solitude and original unity. To these we must add, as a third element, the meaning of original nakedness, which is clearly highlighted in the context; in the first biblical sketch of anthropology, it is not something accidental. On the contrary, it is precisely the key for understanding it fully and completely” (Man and Woman He Created Them, 170). In other words, we cannot fully understand Original Solitude and Original Unity until we grasp Original Nakedness, the crown of these three original experiences. Speaking grammatically, Original Nakedness is the syllable where you put the accent mark on Christ’s first word.

The pope subjects this phrase “naked without shame” in Gn 2:25 to an in-depth analysis. He believes this phrase hides deep and eternal truths, that is, more three-dimensional thinking instead of our conventional, shallow two-dimensional thinking. First, John Paul contrasts our ordinary experience of shame with Adam and Eve’s original experience of shame. We might say that the experience of sexual shame serves as a “bridge” allowing us to cross back over into the Garden of Eden because we find shame firmly planted on both sides. The pope writes: "We observed earlier that, by appealing ‘to the beginning’ (which we are here submitting to a series of contextual analyses), Christ indirectly established the idea of continuity and connection between the two states, thereby allowing us to go back, as it were, from the threshold of man’s ‘historical’ sinfulness to his original innocence. (Man and Woman He Created Them, 172). That is, sexual shame allows fallen man (you and me) to peek into the Garden of prelapsarian man (Adam and Eve) so that we can examine shame on both sides of the Fall: before and after Original Sin.

Now, you and I normally experience sexual shame when someone else sees our naked body. Again, notice how John Paul is preoccupied with the experience of shame, and uses phenomenology to shed light on our faith. Imagine you are taking a shower, and someone accidentally barges into the bathroom. What would you do? We automatically cover our sexual organs, and feel a keen sense of shame. The pope describes the underlying dynamic of sexual shame, stating: "In the experience of shame, the human being experiences fear in the face of the ‘second I’ (thus, for example, woman before man), and this is substantially fear for one’s own ‘I.’ With shame, the human being manifests ‘instinctively,’ as it were, the need for the affirmation and acceptance of this ‘I’ according to its proper value” (Man and Woman He Created Them, 173). According to the pope, therefore, below the experience of shame lies a deep and abiding fear of being threatened another person. Hence, I cover my sexual organs, “my family jewels” as we say, in order to defend my dignity and, in a sense, even to protect my progeny.

By contrast, Adam and Eve were “naked without shame” because they felt no fear or threat from each other. Indeed, they felt exactly the opposite. They enjoyed mutual acceptance and love to such a degree that they were essentially “a gift” to each other. This love and acceptance is what John Paul calls “the hermeneutic of the gift” (Man and Woman He Created Them, 179). Don’t be scared by the big word “hermeneutic.” It simply means “interpretation” or “understanding”, a way of explaining something, a key to unlock a door. In other words, being a gift explains or unravels the mystery of the phrase “naked without shame.” How so? Well, when you are a gift to another person, you “strike a pose” (as Madonna sang) of unconditional love towards another person. And this pose of unconditional love absolutely excludes using that person.

Now here is the critical point about being a gift for John Paul II, and it will again surprise us. The pope insists that the opposite of love is not hate. That old dichotomy between love and hate is another symptom of our two-dimensional thinking, like when we chanted back in the sixties, “Make love not war!” That is, love as opposed to hate. But for John Paul, the opposite of love is to use someone, like when we lust after someone and use them for our selfish pleasure. By the way, this is precisely what makes the pornography industry so sinister. Producers of pornography use people’s beautiful bodies for profit and convince consumers (you and me) that looking lustfully at people is acceptable, just another “consumer product.” Have you heard people in the porn industry referred to as “sex workers”? That is an attempt to dignify this degradation of the children of God. Pornography reduces these poor men and women to objects of sexual pleasure.

Now let’s go back to shame on the two sides of the Fall. The reason we cover our sexual organs today when someone accidentally barges into the bathroom and sees us naked is because we do not want them to lust after us. We don’t want to be used like someone in the porn industry. Sexual shame strongly suggests the worst thing about lust, namely, I am reduced to an object instead of respected as a person. But before the Fall, the pope insists, genuine love absolutely excluded the possibility of using another person because Adam and Eve were a gift to each other. The words “gift” and “love” are interchangeable in the lexicon of the theology of the body. Indeed, the Holy Father would go another step and maintain that Adam and Eve saw each other like God saw them. He explains:

"This reciprocal vision of each other is not only a share in the ‘exterior’ perception of the world, but also has an inner dimension of a share in the vision of the Creator himself – in that vision about which the account of Genesis 1 speaks several times, ‘God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good’ (Gen 1:31). Nakedness signifies the original good of the divine vision” (Man and Woman He Created Them, 177). In other words, when we see another person’s naked body like God sees it, we understand Original Nakedness. Think of how a father or mother would look at the naked body of their baby – even if that baby were thirty years old. They would not feel an ounce of lust but only overwhelming love. And God sees us with infinitely more love than our parents.

In my church office hangs a large painting of the “Last Judgment” by the Renaissance master Michaelangelo, which effectively covers the entire back wall of the Sistine Chapel. On April 8, 1994, Pope St. John Paul II celebrated Mass in the newly restored chapel with its stunning and brilliant frescoes. In that homily John Paul complimented Michaelangelo’s genius stating: "It seems that Michaelangelo, in his own way, allowed himself to be guided by the evocative words of the Book of Genesis which, as regards the creation of the human being, male and female, reveals, ‘The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame’ (Gn 2:25). The Sistine Chapel is precisely – if one may say so – the sanctuary of the theology of the human body” (Homily, no. 6). You probably know that most of the human figures in that painting are naked, like Adam and Eve were, and the pope invites us to see them, and indeed all people, through the eyes of God, that is, “naked without shame.”

There is a delightfully humorous controversy that erupted when Michaelangelo decided to paint nude figures. The pope’s Master of Ceremonies, Biagio de Cesena, objected vigorously, criticizing: “It was most disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully, and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather for the public baths and taverns.” But Michaelangelo got the last laugh because he painted Cesena’s face on the figure of Minos, the judge of the underworld, and a snake coiling around his body, and the snake’s head devouring his “you guess it”! In other words, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were “naked without shame” whereas in hell people are clothed with snakes instead of fig leaves. That is, this is the consequence of not learning to pronounce the third syllable of “Original Nakedness.”

In summary, Pope St. John Paul II has assiduously studied Christ’s first word about our origins in the Garden of Eden. In his theology of the body, he taught us that Christ’s first word had three syllables: Original Solitude, Original Unity, and Original Nakedness. We must agree whole-heartedly with the pope-saint when he reflects in awe: “We were able to realize how vast was the context of a sentence, or even a word, spoken by Christ” (Man and Woman He Created Them, 226). But thus far we have only learned how to pronounce Christ’s first word about our origins in Eden. We must still consider his third word about our destiny in heaven, and then return to explore Christ’s second word about our earthly pilgrimage.

Praised be Jesus Christ!