Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul II

GENERAL AUDIENCE: 11 NOVEMBER, 1981
Marriage and celibacy in the light of the resurrection of the body

 On Wednesday, 11 November, at the General Audience held in the Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father resumed his catechesis on the theology of the body, basing his talk on the discussion between Our Lord and the Sadducees. Following is the text of the Pope's message.

 1. After a rather long pause, today we will resume the meditations which have been going on for some time now and which we have called reflections on the theology of the body.

 In continuing, it is opportune at this time to go back to the words of the Gospel in which Christ refers to the resurrection: words which are of fundamental importance for understanding marriage in the Christian sense and also the" renunciation" of conjugal life "for the kingdom of heaven".

 The complex casuistry of the Old Testament in the field of marriage not only drove the Pharisees to go to Christ to pose to him the problem of the indissolubility of marriage (cf. Mt 19:3-9, Mk 10:2-12) but also, another time, drove the Sadducees to question him about the law of the so-called levirate. This conversation is harmoniously reported by the Synoptic Gospels (cf. Mt 22:24-30; Mk 12: 18-27; Lk 20:27-40). Although all three accounts are almost identical, yet we note some differences, slight, but at the same time significant. Since the conversation is reported in three versions, those of Matthew, Mark and Luke, a deeper analysis is necessary, since it contains elements which have an essential significance for the theology of the body.

 Alongside the other two important conversations, namely, the one in which Christ refers to the "beginning" (cf. Mt 19:3-9; Mk 10: 2-12), and the other in which an appeal is made to man's inner self (to the "heart"), indicating desire and the lust of the flesh as a source of sin (cf. Mt 5:27-32), the conversation which we now propose to analyze constitutes, I would say, the third element of the triptych of the enunciations of Christ himself: a triptych of words that are essential and constitutive for the theology - of the body. In this conversation Jesus refers to the resurrection, thus revealing a completely new dimension of the mystery of man.
Christ refutes belief of Sadducees

 2. The revelation of this dimension of the body, stupendous in its content - and yet connected with the Gospel reread as a whole and in depth - emerges in the conversation with the Sadducees, "who say that there is no resurrection" (Mt 22: 23). They have come to Christ to set before him an argument which - in their judgment - confirms the soundness of their position. This argument was to contradict "the hypothesis of the resurrection". The Sadducees' argument is the following: "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the wife, and raise up children for his brother" (Mk 12: 19). The Sadducees are referring here to the so-called law of the levirate (cf. Deut 25:5-10), and drawing upon the prescription of this ancient law, they present the following "case": "There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no children; and the second took her, and died, leaving no children; and the third likewise; and the seven left no children. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife" (Mk 12:20-23).
Wisdom and power of God himself

 3. Christ's answer is one of the answer - keys of the Gospel, in which there is revealed - precisely starting from purely human arguments and in contrast with them - another dimension of the question, that is, the one that corresponds to the wisdom and power of God himself. Similarly, for example, the case had arisen of the tax coin with Caesar's image and of the correct relationship between what is divine and what is human (Caesar's) in the sphere of authority (cf. Mt 22: 15-22).

 This time Jesus replies as follows: "Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage. but are like angels in heaven" (Mk 12:24-25). This is the fundamental reply to the "case", that is, to the problem it contains. Christ, knowing the thoughts of the Sadducees, and realizing their real intentions, subsequently takes up again the problem of the possibility of resurrection, denied by the Sadducees themselves: "And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not a God of the dead, but of the living" (Mk 12:26-27). As we can see, Christ quotes the same Moses to whom t he Sadducees had referred, and ends with the affirmation: "You are quite wrong " (Mk 12:27).
Another affirmation

 4. Christ repeats this conclusive affirmation even a second time. In fact, he spoke it the first time at the beginning of his explanation. Then he said: "You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God": so we read in Matthew (22:29). And in Mark: "Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?" (Mk 12:24). In Luke's version (20:27-36), on the contrary, Christ's same answer is without polemical tones, without that "you are quite wrong". On the other hand he proclaims the same thing since in his answer he introduces some elements which are not found either in Matthew or in Mark. Here is the text: "Jesus said to them, 'The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection'" (Lk 20:34-36).

 With regard to the very possibility of resurrection, Luke - like the ether two synoptics - refers to Moses, that is, to the passage in the Book of Exodus 3:2-6, in which it is narrated in fact, that the great legislator of the Old Covenant had heard from the bush, which "was burning, but it was not consumed", the following words: "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Ex 3:6). In the same place, when Moses had asked God's name, he had heard the answer: "I am who am" (Ex 3:14).

 In this way, therefore, speaking of the future resurrection of the body, Christ refers to the very power of the living God. We wild have to consider this subject in greater detail later.

 
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 18 NOVEMBER, 1981
The living God continually renews the very reality of life

 At the General Audience on Wednesday, 18 November, in the Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father continued has catechetical series on the theology of tile body, delivering the following address.

 1. "You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God" (Mt 22:29), Christ said to the Sadducees, who - rejecting faith in the future resurrection of the body - had proposed to him the following case: "Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married, and died, and having no children left his wife to his brother" (according to the Mosaic law of the "levirate"). "So too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, to which of the seven will she be wife?" (Mt 22:25-28).

 Christ answers the Sadducecs by stating, at the beginning and at the end of his reply, that they are greatly mistaken, not knowing either the Scriptures or the power of God (cf. Mk 12:24; Mt 22:29). Since the conversation with the Sadducees is reported by all three synoptic Gospels, let us briefly compare the texts in question.

 2. Matthew's version (22:24-30), although it does not refer to the burning bush, agrees almost completely with that of Mark (12:18-25). Both versions contain two essential elements: 1). the enunciation about the future resurrection of the body; 2) the emmciation about the state of the body of risen man. These two elements are also found in Luke (20:27-36). The first element, concerning the future resurrection of the body, is combined, especially in Matthew and Mark, with the words addressed to the Sadducees, according to which they "know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God". This statement deserves particular attention, because precisely in it Christ defines the very foundations of faith in the resurrection, to which he had referred in answering the question posed by the Sadducees with the concrete example of the Mosaic law of levirate.
Admitting the reality of life after death

 3. Unquestionably, the Sadducees treat the question of resurrection as a type of theory or hypothesis which can be disproved. Jesus first shows them an error of method: they do not know the Scriptures; and then an error of substance: they do not accept what is revealed by the Scriptures - they do not know the power of God - they do not believe in him who revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush. It is a very significant and very precise answer. Here Christ encounters men who consider themselves experts and competent interpreters of the Scriptures. To these men - that is, to the Sadducees - Jesus replies that mere literal knowledge of Scripture is not sufficient. The Scriptures, in fact, are above all a means to know the power of the living God who reveals himself in them, just as he revealed himself to Moses in the bush. In this revelation he called himself 'the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob", of those, therefore, who had been Moses' ancestors in the faith that springs from the revelation of the living God. They had all been dead for a long time. Christ, however, completes the reference to them with the statement that God " is not God of the dead, but of the living". This statement, in which Christ interprets the words addressed to Moses from the burning bush, can be understood only if one admits the reality of a life which death does not end. Moses' fathers in faith, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, are living persons for God (cf. Lk 20:38) "for all live for himself although according to human criteria, they must be numbered among the dead. To reread the Scripture correctly, and in particular the aforementioned words of God, means to know and accept with faith the power of the Giver of life, who is not bound by the law of death, which rules man's earthly history.
Christ's answer

 4. It seems that Christ's answer about the possibility of resurrection given to the Sadducees, according to the version of all three synoptics, is to be interpreted in this way. The moment will come in which Christ will give the answer, in this matter, with his own resurrection. For now, however, he refers to the testimony of the Old Testament, showing how to discover there the truth about immortality and resurrection. It is necessary to do so not by dwelling only on the sound of the words, but by going back also to the power of God which is revealed by those words. The reference to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in that theophany granted to Moses, of which we read in the Book of Exodus (3:2-6), constitutes a testimony that the living God gives to those who live "for him": to those who, thanks to his power, have life, even if, according to the dimensions of history, it would be necessary to include them among those who have been dead for a long time.

 5. The full significance of this testimony, to which Jesus refers in his conversation with the Sadducees, could be grasped (still only in the light of the Old Testament) in the following way: He who is - he who lives and is Life - is the inexhaustible source of existence and of life, as was revealed at the "beginning", in Genesis (cf. Gen 1:3). Although, due to sin, physical death has become man's lot (cf. Gen 3:19), and although he has been forbidden (cf. Gen 3:22) access to the tree of Life (the great symbol of the Book of Genesis), yet the living God, making his covenant with man (Abraham - the patriarchs, Moses, Israel), continually renews, in this covenant, the very reality of life, reveals its perspective again and in a certain sense opens access again to the tree of Life. Along with the covenant, this life, whose source is God himself, is communicated to those very men who, as a result of the breaking of the first covenant, had lost access to the tree of Life, and, in the dimensions of their earthly history, had been subject to death.
Power and testimony of the living God

 6. Christ is God's ultimate word on this subject; in fact the covenant, which with him and for him is established between God and mankind, opens an infinite perspective of Life: and access to the tree of Life - according to the original plan of the God of the Covenant - is revealed to every man in its definitive fullness. This will be the meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ; this will be the testimony of the paschal mystery. However, t he conversation with the Sadducees takes place in the pre-paschal phase of Christ's messianic mission. The phase of the conversation according to Matthew (22:24-30), Mark (12: 18-27), and Luke (20:27-36) manifests that Christ - who had spoken several times, particularly in talks with his disciples, of the future resurrection of the Son of Man (cf., e.g., Mt 17:9, 23; 20:19 and paral.) - does not refer to this matter in the conversation with the Sadducees. The reasons are obvious and clear. The discussion is with the Sadducees, "who say that there is no resurrection" (as the evangelist stresses), that is, they question its very possibility, and at the same time they consider themselves experts on the Old Testament Scriptures, and qualified interpreters of them. And that is why Jesus refers to the Old Testament and shows, on its basis, that they "do not know the power of God".

 7. Regarding the possibility of resurrection, Christ refers precisely to that power which goes hand in hand with the testimony of the living God, who is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob - and the God of Moses. God, whom the Sadducees "deprive" of this power, is no longer the true God of their Fathers, but the God of their hypotheses and interpretations. Christ, on the contrary, has come to bear witness to the God of Life in the whole truth of his power which is unfolded upon man's life.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 2 DECEMBER, 1981
The resurrection and theological anthropology

 In the course of the general audience of 2 December the Holy Father stood up again the theme of the resurrection of the body in the context of his catechesis on theological anthropology.

 "When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage" (Mk 12:25). Christ utters these words, which have a key-meaning for the theology of the body, after having affirmed, in the conversation with the Sadducees, that the resurrection is in conformity with the power of the living God. All three Synoptic Gospels report the same statement, except that Luke's version is different in some details from that of Matthew and Mark. Essential for them all is the fact that, in the future resurrection, human beings, after having reacquired their bodies in the fullness of the perfection characteristic of the image and likeness of God - after having reacquired them in their masculinity and femininity - "neither marry nor are given in marriage". Luke expresses the same idea in chapter 20:34-35, in the following words: "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage".
Definitive fulfillment of mankind

 2. As can be seen from these words, marriage, that union in which, according to the Book of Genesis, "a man cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (2:25) the union characteristic of man right from the "beginning" - belongs exclusively to "this age". Marriage and procreation do not constitute, on the other hand, the eschatological future of man. In the resurrection they lose, so to speak, their raison d'etre. "That age", of which Luke speaks (20:35), means the definitive fulfillment of mankind, the quantitative closing of that circle of beings, who were created in the image and likeness of God, in order that, multiplying through the conjugal "unity in the body" of men and women, they might subdue the earth. "That age" is not the world of the earth, but the world of God, who as we know from the first Letter; of Paul to the Corinthians, will fill it entirely, becoming "everything to everyone" (1 Cor 15:28).

 3. At the same time "that age", which according to revelation is "the kingdom of God", is also the definitive and eternal "home]and" of man (cf. Phil 3:20), it is the "Father's house" (Jn 14:2). "That age", as man's new homeland, emerges definitively from the present world, which is temporal - subjected to death, that is, to the destruction of the body (cf. Gen 3:19: "to dust you shall return") - through the resurrection. The resurrection, according to Christ's words reported by the ;Synoptic Gospels, means not only the recovery of corporeity and the reestablishment of human life in its integrity, by means of the union of the body with the soul, but also a completely new state of human life itself.

 We find the confirmation of this new state of the body in the resurrection of Christ (cf. Rom 6:5-11). The words reported by the Synoptic Gospels (Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25; Lk 20:34-35) will ring out then (that is, after Christ's resurrection) to those who had heard them, I would say almost with a new probative force, and at the same time they will acquire the character of a convincing promise. For the present, however, we will dwell on these words in their "pre-paschal" phase, referring only to the situation in which they were spoken. . There is no doubt that already in the answer given to the Sadducees, Christ reveals the new condition of the human body in the resurrection, and he does so precisely by proposing a reference and a comparison with the condition in which man had participated since the "beginning".
Renewed in resurrection

 4. The words: "they neither marry nor are given in marriage" seem to affirm at the same time that human bodies, recovered and at the same time renewed in the resurrection, will keep their masculine or feminine peculiarity and that the sense of being a male or a female in the body will be constituted and understood in "that age" in a different way from what it had been "from the beginning" and then in the whole dimension of earthly existence. The words of Genesis: "A man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (2:24), constituted right from the beginning that condition and relationship of masculinity and femininity, extended also to the body, which must rightly be defined "conjugal" and at the same time " procreative " and "generative". It is connected, in fact, with the blessing of fertility, pronounced by God (Elohim) when he created man "male and female" (Gen 1:27). The words spoken by Christ about the resurrection enable us to deduce that the dimension of masculinity and femininity - that is, being male and female in the body - will again be constituted together with the resurrection of the body in "that age".
Like the angels

 5. Is it possible to say something more detailed on this subject? Beyond all doubt, Christ's words reported by the Synoptic Gospels (especially in the version of Luke 20: 27-40) authorize us to do so. We read there, in fact, that "those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead . . . cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God" (Matthew and Mark report only that "they are like angels in heaven"). This statement makes it possible above all to deduce a spiritualization of man according to a different dimension from that of earthly life (and even different from that of the "beginning" itself). It is obvious that it is not a question here of transforming man's nature into that of the angels, that is, a purely spiritual one. The context indicates clearly that man will keep in "that age" his own human psychosomatic nature. If it were otherwise, it would be meaningless to speak of the resurrection.

 The resurrection means the restoring to the real life of human corporeity, which was subjected to death in its temporal phase. In the expression of Luke (20:36) just quoted (and in that of Matthew 22: 30 and Mark 12:25), it is certainly a question of human, that is, psychosomatic nature. The comparison with heavenly beings, used in the context, is no novelty in the Bible. Among others, already in a psalm, exalting man as the work of the Creator, it is said: "thou hast made him little less than the angels" (Ps 8:5). It must be supposed that in the resurrection this similarity will become greater: not through a disincarnation of man, but by means of another kind (we could also say another degree) of spiritualization of his somatic nature - that is, by means of another "system of forces" within man. The resurrection means a new submission of the body to the spirit.
Plato and St. Thomas

 6. Before beginning to develop this subject, it should be recalled that the truth about the resurrection had a key-meaning for the formation of the whole of theological anthropology, which could be considered simply as "anthropology of the resurrection". As a result of reflection on the resurrection, Thomas Aquinas neglected in his metaphysical (and at the same time theological) anthropology Plato's philosophical conception on the relationship between the soul and the body and drew closer to the conception of Aristotle. The resurrection, in fact, bears witness, at least indirectly, that the body, in the composite being of man as a whole, is not only connected temporarily with the soul (as its earthly "prison", as Plato believed), but that together with the soul it constitutes the unity and integrity of the human being. Aristotle taught precisely that, unlike Plato. If St. Thomas accepted Aristotle's conception in his anthropology, he did so taking into consideration the truth about the resurrection. The truth about the resurrection clearly affirms, in fact, that the eschatological perfection and happiness of man cannot be understood as a state of the soul alone, separated (according to Plato: liberated) from the body, but it must be understood as the state of man definitively and perfectly "integrated " through such a union of the soul and the body, which qualities and definitively ensures this perfect integrity.

 Let us interrupt at this point our reflection on the words spoken by Christ about the resurrection. The great wealth of contents enclosed in these words induces us to take them up again in further considerations.
Special greetings

 Finally I address the young, the newly-weds and the sick.

 This time I wish to greet them together to emphasize the necessity of that brotherly love which must reign in the Church among the various members and the various groups.

 Expectation of the Lord sustains our prayer in this period of Advent. The Christian is a man who is waiting for Christ, but this attitude of his is not passive nor disinterested with regard to the world. Let us walk, therefore, towards the Lord with joyful hearts, without sparing ourselves! You, young people, entrust your hopes to him with confidence; you, spouses, your Christian love and the commitment of faithful, mutual donation; you, beloved sick, offer him the fine, glittering gold of your suffering which, in union with his, is grace, salvation. and joy for the whole community of the faithful.

 I willingly bless you all.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 9 DECEMBER, 1981
The resurrection perfects the person

 In the course of the general audience on Wednesday, 9 December, the Holy Father delivered the following address to the faithful gathered in the Paul VI Hall.

 1. "At the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mt 22:30, similarly Mk 12:25). "They are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection" (Lk 20:36).

 Let us try to understand these words of Christ about the Future resurrection in order to draw a conclusion with regard to the "spiritualization" of man, different from that of earthly life. We could spear; here also of a perfect system of forces in mutual relations between what is spiritual in man and what is physical. "Historical" man, as a result of original sin, experiences a multiple imperfection in this system of forces, which is expressed in St. Paul's well-known words: "I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind (Rom 7:23).

 "Eschatological" man will be free from that "opposition". In the resurrection the body will return to perfect unity and harmony with the spirit: man will no longer experience the opposition between what is spiritual and what is physical in him. "Spiritualization" means not only that the spirit will dominate the body, but, I would say, that it will fully permeate the body, and that the forces of the spirit will permeate the energies of the body.
Perfect realization in life to come

 2. In earthly life, the dominion of the spirit over the body-and the simultaneous subordination of the body to the spirit-can, as the result of persevering work on themselves, express a personality that is spiritually mature. However, the fact that the energies of the spirit succeed in dominating the forces of the body does not remove the very possibility of their mutual opposition. The "spiritualization", to which the synoptic Gospels refer (Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25; Lk 20:34-35) in the texts analyzed here, already lies beyond this possibility. It is therefore a perfect spiritualization, in which the possibility that "another law is at war with the law of ...the mind" (cf. Rom 7:23) is completely eliminated. This state which-as is evident-is differentiated essentially (and not only with regard to degree) from what we experience in earthly life, does not, however, signify any "disincarnation" of the body nor, consequently, a "dehumanization" of man. On the contrary, in fact, it signifies his perfect "realization". In fact, in the composite, psychosomatic being, which man is, perfection cannot consist in a mutual opposition of spirit and body, but in a deep harmony between them, in safeguarding the primacy of the spirit. In the "other world", this primacy will be realized and will be manifested in a perfect spontaneity, without any opposition on the part of the body. However, that must not be understood as a definitive "victory" of the spirit over the body. The resurrection will consist in the perfect participation of all that is physical in man in what is spiritual in him. At the same time it will consist in the perfect realization of w hat is personal in man.
A new spiritualization

 3. The words of the synoptic Gospels testify that the state of man in the "other world" will not only be a state of perfect spiritualization, but also of fundamental "divinization" of his humanity. The "sons of the resurrection"-as we read in Luke 20:3-are not only "equal to angels", but also "sons of God". The conclusion can be drawn that the degree of spiritualization characteristic of "eschatological" man will have its source in the degree of his "divinization", incomparably superior to the one that can be attained in earthly life. It must be added that here it is a question not only of a different degree, but, in a way, of another kind of "divinization". Participation in divine nature, participation in the interior life of God himself, penetration and permeation of what is essentially human by what is essentially divine, will then reach its peak, so that the life of the human spirit will arrive at such fullness which previously had been absolutely inaccessible to it. This new spiritualization will therefore be the fruit of grace, that is, of the communication of God, in his very divinity, not only to man's soul, but to his whole psychosomatic subjectivity. We speak here of " subjectivity " (and not only of "nature"), because that divinization is to be understood not only as an " interior state" of man (that is: of the subject), capable of seeing God "face to face", but also as a new formation of the whole personal subjectivity of man in accordance with union with God in his trinitarian mystery and of intimacy with him in the perfect communion of persons. This intimacy -with all its subjective intensity- will not absorb man's personal subjectivity, but rather will make it stand out to an incomparably greater and fuller extent.
United with the vision of God

 4. "Divinization" in the "other world', as indicated by Christ's words, will bring the human spirit such a "range of experience" of truth and love such as man would never have been able to attain in earthly life. When Christ speaks of the resurrection, he proves at the same time that the human body will also take part, in its way, in this eschatological experience of truth and love, united with the vision of God "face to face". When Christ says that those who take part in the future resurrection "neither marry nor arc given in marriage" (Mk 12:25), his words-as has already been pointed out-affirm not only the end of earthly history, bound up with marriage and procreation, but also seem to reveal the new meaning of the body. Is it possible, in this case, to think-at the level of biblical eschatology-of the discovery of the "nuptial" meaning of the body, above all as the "virginal" meaning of being male and female, as regards the body? To answer this question, which emerges from the words reported by the synoptic Gospels, we should penetrate more deeply into the very essence of what will be the beatific vision of the Divine Being, a vision of God "face to face" in the future life. It is also necessary to let oneself be guided by that "range of experience" of truth and love which goes beyond the limits of the cognitive and spiritual possibilities of man in temporality, and in which he will become a participant in the "other world".
In the dimension of the "other world"

 5. This "eschatological experience" of the living God will concentrate in itself not only all man's spiritual energies, but, at the same time, it will reveal to him, in a deep and experiential way, the "self-communication" of God to the whole o£ creation and, in particular, to man; which is the most personal "self-giving" by God, in his very divinity, to man: to that being who, from the beginning, bears within himself the image and likeness of God. In this way, therefore, in the "other world" the object of the "vision" will be that mystery hidden in the Father from eternity, a mystery which in time was revealed in Christ, in order to be accomplished incessantly through the Holy Spirit. That mystery will become, if we may use the expression, the content of the eschatological experience and the "form" of the entire human existence in the dimension of the "other world". Eternal life must be understood in the eschatological sense, that is, as the full and perfect experience of that grace (charis) of God, in which man becomes a participant through faith during earthly life, and which, on the contrary, will not only have to reveal itself in all its penetrating depth to those who take part in the "other world", but also will have to be experienced in its beatifying reality.

 We suspend here our reflection centered on Christ's words about the future resurrection of the body. In this " spiritualization " and " divinization" in which man will participate in the resurrection, we discover in an eschatological dimension-the same characteristics that qualified the "nuptial" meaning of the body; we discover them in the meeting with the mystery of the living God, which is revealed through the vision of him "face to face".
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 16 DECEMBER, 1981
Christ's Words on the Resurrection Complete the Revelation of the Body

 At the general audience on Wednesday, 16 December, held in the Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father continued his series of talks on the theology of the body.

 1. "In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels heaven "(Mt 22:30, similarly Mk 12:25). . . They are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection (Lk 20:36).

 The eschatcological communion (communio) of man with God, constituted thanks to the love of a perfect union, will be nourished by the vision, "face to face", of contemplation of that more perfect communion, because it is purely divine, which is the trinitarian communion of the divine Persons in the unity of the same divinity.
Perfect Subjectivity

 2. Christ's words, reported by the synoptic Gospels, enable us to deduce that participants in the "other world" - in this union with the living God which springs from the beatific vision of his unity and trinitarian communion - will not only keep their authentic subjectivity, but will acquire it to a far more perfect extent than in earthly life. In this there will furthermore be confirmed the law of the integral order of the person, according to which the perfection of communion is not only conditioned by the perfection or spiritual maturity of the subject, but also in turn determines it. Those who participate in the "future world", that is, in perfect communion with the living God, will enjoy a perfectly mature subjectivity. If in this perfect subjectivity, while keeping masculinity and femininity in their risen, that is, glorious, body, "they neither marry nor are given in marriage", this is explained not only with the end of history, but also - and above all - with the "eschatological authenticity" of the response to that "self-communication" of the Divine Subject, which will constitute the beatifying experience of the gift of himself on God's part, which is absolutely superior to any experience proper to earthly life.

 3. The reciprocal gift of oneself to God - a gift in which man will concentrate and express all the energies of his own personal and at the same time psychosomatic subjectivity - will be the response to God's gift of himself to man (1). In this mutual gift of himself by man, a gift which will become, completely and definitively, beautifying as a response worthy of a personal subject to God's gift of himself, "virginity", or rather the virginal state of the body, will be totally manifested as the eschatological fulfillment of the "nuptial" meaning of the body, as the specific sign and the authentic expression of all personal subjectivity. In this way, therefore, that eschatological situation in which "they neither marry nor are given in marriage" has its solid foundation in the future state of the personal subject, when, as a result of the vision of God "face to face", there will be born in him a love of such dept and power of concentration on God himself, as to completely absorb his whole psychosomatic subjectivity.
Union of Communion

 4. This concentration of knowledge ("vision") and love on God himself - a concentration that cannot be, other than full participation in the interior life of God, that is, in the very Trinitarian Reality - will be at the same time the discovery in God, of the whole "world" of relations, constitutive of his perennial order (cosmos). This concentration will be above all man's rediscovery of himself, not only in the depth of his own person, but also in that union which is proper to the world of persons in their psychosomatic constitution. This is certainly a union of communion. The concentration of knowledge and love on God himself in the trinitarian communion of Persons can find a beatifying response in those who become participants in the "other world", only through realizing mutual communion adapted to created persons. And for this reason we profess faith in the "Communion of Saints" (communio sanctorum) and we profess it in organic connection with faith in the "resurrection of the dead". The words with which Christ affirms that in the other world "they neither marry nor are given in marriage" are at the basis of these contents of our faith, and at the same time they require an adequate interpretation in its light. We must think of the reality of the "other world" in the categories of the rediscovery of a new, perfect subjectivity of everyone and at the same time of the rediscovery of a new, perfect inter-subjectivity of all. In this way, this reality signifies the real and definitive fulfillment of human subjectivity, and, on this basis, the definitive fulfillment of the "nuptial" meaning of the body. The complete concentration of created subjectivity, redeemed and glorified, on God himself will not take man away from this fulfillment, in fact - on the contrary - it will introduce him into it and consolidate him in it. One can say, finally, that in this way eschatological reality will become the source of the perfect realization of the "trinitarian order" in the created world of persons.
Revelation of the Body

 5. The words with which Christ refers to the future resurrection - words confirmed in a singular way by his, own resurrection - complete what in the present reflections we are accustomed to call the "revelation of the body". This revelation penetrates in a way into the very heart of the reality which we are experiencing, and this reality is above all man, his body, the body of "historical" man. At the same time, this revelation enables us to go beyond the sphere of this experience in two directions. In the first place, in the direction of that "beginning" to which Christ refers in his conversation with the Pharisees regarding the indissolubility of marriage (cf. Mt 19:3-9); in the second place, in the direction of the "other world", to which the Master draws the attention of his listeners in the presence of the Sadducees, who "say that there is no resurrection" (Mt 22:23). These two "extensions of the sphere" of the experience of the body (if we may say so) are not completely beyond the reach of our understanding (obviously theological) of the body. What the human body is in the sphere of man's historical experience is not completely cut off from those two dimensions of his existence, which are revealed through Christ's words.
Spiritual and Physical

 6. It is clear that here it is a question not so much of the "body", in abstract, but of man who is at once spiritual and physical. Continuing in the two directions, indicated by Christ's words, and linking up again with the experience of the body in the dimension of our earthly existence (therefore in the historical dimension), we can make a certain theological reconstruction of what might have been the experience of the body on the basis of man's revealed "beginning", and also of what it will be in the dimension of the "other world". The possibility of this reconstruction, which extends our experience of man-body, indicates, at least indirectly, the consistency of man's theological image in these three dimensions, which together contribute to the constitution of the theology of the body. Interrupting, for today, reflections on this subject, I invite you to turn your thoughts to the holy days of Advent which we are living.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 13 JANUARY, 1982
New threshold of complete truth about man

 During the general audience in the Paul VI Hall on 13 January, the Holy Father continued his catechesis on marriage in the following address.

 "When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mk 12:25; similarly Mt 22:30). ". . . They are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection" (Lk 20:36).

 The words in which Christ refers to the future resurrection - words confirmed in an extraordinary way by his own resurrection - complete what we are accustomed to call in these reflections the " revelation of the body". This revelation penetrates, so to speak, into the very heart of the reality that we experience, and this reality is above all man, his body: the body of "historical" man. At the same time, this revelation permits us to go beyond the sphere of this experience in two directions. First, in the direction of that "beginning" to which Christ refers in his conversation with the Pharisees concerning the indissolubility of marriage (cf. Mt 19:3-8); then, in the direction of the "future world", to which the Master addresses the hearts of his listeners in the presence of the Sadducees, who " say that there is no resurrection" (Mt 22:23).

 2. Neither the truth about that "beginning" of which Christ speaks, nor the eschatological truth can be reached by man with empirical and rationalistic methods alone. However, is it not possible to affirm that man bears, in a way, these two dimensions in the depth of the experience of his own being, or rather that he is somehow on his way to them as to dimensions that fully justify the very meaning of his being a body, that is, of his being a "cardinal" man? As regards the eschatological dimension, is it not true that death itself and the destruction of the body can confer on man an eloquent significance about the experience. in which the personal meaning of existence is realized? When Christ speaks of the future resurrection, his words do not fall in a void. The experience of mankind, and especially the experience of the body, enable the listener to unite with those words the image of his new existence in the "future world", for which earthly experience supplies the substratum and the base. An adequate theological reconstruction is possible.
Truth about man

 3. To the construction of this image - which, as regards content, corresponds to the article of our profession of faith: "I believe in the resurrection of the dead" - there greatly contributes the awareness that there exists a connection between earthly experience and the whole dimension of the biblical "beginning" of man in the world. If at the beginning God "created them male and female" (cf. Gen 1:27); if in this duality concerning the body he envisaged also such a unity that "they become one flesh" (Gen 2:24), if he linked this unity with the blessing of fertility, that is, of procreation (cf. Gen 1:29); and if now, speaking before the Sadducees about the future resurrection, Christ explains that " in the resurrection" " they neither marry nor are given in marriage" - then it is clear that it is a question here of a development of the truth about man himself. Christ indicates his identity, although this identity is realized in eschatological experience in a different way from the experience of the " beginning" itself and of the whole of history. And yet man will always be the same, such as he came from the hands of his Creator and Father. Christ says: "They neither marry nor are given in marriage", but he does not state that this man of the "future world" will no longer be male and female as he was "from the beginning". It is clear therefore that, as regards the body, the meaning of being made or female in the "future world" must be sought outside marriage and procreation, but there is no reason to seek it outside that which (independently of the blessing of procreation) derives from the very mystery of creation and which subsequently forms also the deepest structure of man's history on earth, since this history has been deeply penetrated by the mystery of redemption.
Unity of the two

 4. In his original situation man, therefore, is alone and at the same time he becomes male and female: unity of the two. In his solitude "he is revealed" to himself as a person, in order to "reveal", at the same time, the communion of persons in the unity of the two. In both states the human being is constituted as an image and likeness of God. From the beginning man is also a body among bodies, and in the unity of the couple he becomes male and female, discovering the "nuptial" meaning of his body as a personal subject.. Subsequently, the meaning of being-a-body and, in particular, being male and female in the body, is connected with marriage and procreation (that is, with fatherhood and motherhood). However, the original and fundamental significance of being a body, as well as being, by reason of the body, male and female - that is precisely that "nuptial" significance - is united with the fact that man is created as a person and called to a life in communione personarum. Marriage and procreation in itself do not determine definitively the original and fundamental meaning of being a body or of being, as a body, male and female. Marriage and procreation merely give a concrete reality to that meaning in the dimensions of history.

 The resurrection indicates the end of the historical dimension. The words "when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage" (Mk 12:25) express univocally not only the meaning which the human body will not have in the "future world", but enable us also to deduce that that "nuptial" meaning of the body in the resurrection to the future life will correspond perfectly both to the fact that man, as a male-female, is a person created in the " image and likeness of God", and to the fact that this -image is realized in the communion of persons. That "nuptial" meaning of being a body will be realized, therefore, as a meaning that is perfectly personal and communitarian at the same time.
Face to face vision

 5. Speaking of the body glorified through the resurrection to the future life, we have in mind man, male-female, in all the truth of his humanity: man who, together with the eschatological experience of the living God (the "face to face" vision), will experience precisely this meaning of his own body. This will be a completely new experience, and at the same time it will not be alienated in any way from what man took part in "from the beginning" nor from what, in the historical dimension of his existence, constituted in him the source of the tension between spirit and body, concerning mainly the procreative meaning of the body and sex. The man of the "future world" will find again in this new experience of his own body precisely the completion of what he bore within himself perennially and historically, in a certain sense, as a heritage and even more as a duty and objective, as the content of the ethical norm.
Mutual communication

 6. The glorification of the body, as the eschatological fruit of its divinizing spiritualization, will reveal the definitive value of what was to be from the beginning a distinctive sign of the created person in the visible world, as well as a means of mutual communication between persons and a genuine expression of truth and love, for which the communio personarum is constituted. That perennial meaning of the human body, to which the existence of every man, weighed down by the heritage of concupiscence, has necessarily brought a series of limitations, struggles and sufferings, will then be revealed again, and will be revealed in such simplicity and splendor when every participant in the "other world" will find again in his glorified body the source of the freedom of the gift. The perfect " freedom of the sons of God" (cf. Rom 8:14) will nourish also with that gift each of the communions which will make up the great community of the communion of saints.
Difficult to envisage

 7. It is all too clear - on the basis of man's experiences and knowledge in his temporal life, that is, in "this world" - that it is difficult to construct a fully adequate image of the "future world". However, at the same time there is no doubt that with the help of Christ's words, at least a certain approximation to this image is possible and attainable. We use this theological approximation, professing our faith in the "resurrection of the dead" and in "eternal life", as well as faith in the "communion of saints", which belongs to the reality of the "future world".
A new threshold

 5. Concluding this part of our reflections, it is opportune to state once more that Christ's words reported by the synoptic Gospels (Mt 22:30, Mk 12:25, Lk 20:34-35) have a decisive meaning not only as regards the words of the book of Genesis (to which Christ refers on another occasion), but also in what concerns the entire Bible. These words enable us, in a certain sense, to read again - that is, in depth - the whole revealed meaning of the body, the meaning of being a man, that is, a person " incarnated", of being male or female as regards the body. These words permit us to understand the meaning, in the eschatological dimension of the "other world", of that unity in humanity, which was constituted "in the beginning" and which the words of Genesis 2:24("A man cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh") - uttered in the act of man's creation as male and female - seemed to direct, if not completely, at least, in any case, especially towards "this world". Since the words of the Book of Genesis were almost the threshold of the whole theology of the body - the threshold which Christ took as his foundation in his teaching on marriage and its indissolubility - then it must be admitted that the words reported by the Synoptics are, as it were, a new threshold of this complete truth about man, which we find in God's revealed Word. It is indispensable to dwell upon this threshold, if we wish our theology of the body - and also our Christian "spirituality of the body'' - to be able to use it as a complete image.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 27 JANUARY, 1982
Doctrine of the resurrection according to St. Paul

 The following is the text of the Holy Father's address during the general audience on 27 January.

 1. During the preceding audiences we reflected on Christ's words about "the other world",: which will emerge together with the resurrection of bodies.

 Those words had an extraordinary intense resonance in the teaching of St. Paul. Between the answer given to the Sadducees, transmitted by the synoptic Gospels (cf. Mt 22:30: Mk 12:25; Lk20:35-36), and Paul's apostolate there took place first of all the fact of the resurrection of Christ himself and a series of meetings with the Risen Christ, among which there must be included, as the last link, the event that occurred in the neighborhood of Damascus. Saul or Paul of Tarsus who, on his conversion, became the "Apostle of the Gentiles", had also his own post-paschal experience, similar to that of the other Apostles. At the basis of his faith in the resurrection, which he expresses above all in the First Letter to the Corinthians (chapter 15), there is certainly that meeting with the Risen Christ, which became the beginning and foundation of his apostolate.
God is not dead

 2. It is difficult to sum tip here and comment adequately on the stupendous and ample argumentation of the fifteenth chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians in all its details. It is significant that, while Christ replied to the Sadducees, who " say that there is no resurrection " (Lk 20:27), with the words reported by the synoptic Gospels, Paul, on his part, replies or rather engages in polemics (in conformity with his temperament) with those who con test it. Christ, in his (pre paschal) answer, did not refer to his own resurrection, but appealed to the fundamental reality of the Old Testament Covenant, to the reality of the living God, on which the conviction of the possibility of the resurrection is based: the living God "is not God of the dead, but of the living" (Mk 12:27). Paul in his post-paschal argumentation on the future resurrection, refers above all to the reality and the truth of the resurrection of Christ. In fact, he defends this truth even as the foundation of the faith in its integrity: ". . . If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. . . But, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead" (1 Cor 15:14, 20).
God of the living

 5. Here we are on the same line as revelation: the resurrection of Christ is the last and the fullest word of the self-revelation of the living God as "not God of the dead, hut of the living"" (Mk 12:27). It is the last and fullest confirmation of the truth about God which is expressed right from the beginning through this revelation. The resurrection, furthermore, is the reply of the God of life to the historical inevitability of death, to which man was subjected from the moment of the breaking of the first Covenant and which, together with sin, entered his history. This answer about the victory won over death is illustrated by the First Letter to the Corinthians (chapter 15) with extraordinary perspicacity, presenting the resurrection of Christ as the beginning of that eschatological fulfillment, in which, through him and in him, everything will return to the Father, everything will be subjected to him, that is, handed back definitively, "that God may be everything to everyone" (1 Cor 15:28). And then - in this definitive victory over sin, over what opposed tile creature to the creator - also death will be vanquished: "The last enemy to be destroyed is death ( 1 Col 15:26).
Imperishable soul

 4. The words that can be considered the synthesis of Pauline anthropology concerning the resurrection take their place in this context. And it is on these words that it will be opportune to dwell longer here. We read, in fact, in the First Letter to the Corinthians 15:42-46, about the resurrection of the dead: "What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being", the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual".
Historical experience

 5. Between this Pauline anthropology of the resurrection and the one that emerges from the text of the synoptic Gospels (Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25; Lk 20:35-36), there exists an essential consistency, only the text of the First Letter to the Corinthians is more developed. Paul studies in depth what Christ had proclaimed, penetrating, at the same time, into the various aspects of that truth which had been expressed concisely and substantially in the words written by the synoptic Gospels. It is also significant for the Pauline text that man's eschatological perspective, based on faith "in the resurrection of the dead", is united with reference to the "beginning" as well as with deep awareness of man's "historical" situation. The man whom Paul addresses in the First Letter to the: Corinthians and who (like the Sadducees) is contrary to the possibility of the resurrection, has also his ("historical") experience of the body, and from this experience it emerges quite clearly that the body ;s " perishable", "weak", " physical "in dishonor".
Mystery of creation

 6. Paul confronts such a man, to whom his words are addressed - either in the community of Corinth or also, I would say, in all times - with the Risen Christ, "the last Adam". Doing so, he invites him, in a way, to follow in the footsteps of his own post-paschal experience. At the same time he recalls to him the first Adam", that is, he induces him to turn to the "beginning", to that first truth about man and the world, which is at the basis of the revelation of the mystery of the living God. In this way, therefore, Paul reproduces in his synthesis all that Christ had announced, when he had referred, at three different moments, to the "beginning" in the conversation with the Pharisees (cf. Mt 19:3-8, Mk 10:2-9); to the human "heart", as the place of struggle with lusts within man, during the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Mt 5:27); and to the resurrection as the reality of the "other world", in the conversation with the Sadducees (cf. Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25; Lk 20:35-36)
Enlivening of matter

 7. It belongs, therefore, to the style of Paul's synthesis that it plunges its roots into the revealed mystery of creation and redemption as a whole, from which it is developed and in the light of which alone ;t can be explained. The creation of man, according to the biblical narrative, is an enlivening of matter by means of the spirit, thanks to which "the first man Adam became a living being" (1 Cor 15:45). The Pauline text repeats here the words of the book of Genesis 2:7, that is, of the second narrative of. the creation of man the so-called Yahwist narrative. From the same source it is known that this original "animation of the body" underwent corruption because of sin.

 Although at this point of the First Letter to the Corinthians the author does not speak directly of original sin, yet the series of definitions which he attributes to the body of historical man, writing that it is "perishable. . . weak. . . physical. . . in dishonor. . . ", indicates sufficiently what, according to revelation, is the consequence of sin, that which Paul himself will call elsewhere "bondage to decay" (Rom 8:21). The whole of creation is subjected indirectly to this "bondage of decay" owing to the sin of man, who was placed by the Creator in the midst of the visible world in order to " subdue" it (cf. Gen 1:28). So man's sin has a dimension that is not only interior, but also "cosmic". And according to this dimension, the body which Paul (in conformity with his experience) characterizes as "perishable. . . weak. . . physical . . . in dishonor . . . "expresses in itself the state of creation after sin. This creation, in fact, "has been groaning in travail together until now" (Rom 8:22).

 However, just as the pains of labor are united with the desire for birth, with the hope of a new man, so, too, the whole of creation "waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. . . " and cherishes the hope to "be set free from its bondage to decay, and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom 5:19-21).
Try to understand

 8. Through this "cosmic" context of the affirmation contained in the Letter to the Romans - in a way, through the "body of all creatures" - let us try to understand completely the Pauline interpretation of the resurrection. If this image of the body of historical man, so deeply realistic and adapted to the universal experience of men, conceals within itself according to Paul, not only the "bondage of decay", but also hop like the hope that accompanies "the pains of labor", that happens because the Apostle grasps in this image also the presence of the mystery of redemption. Awareness of that mystery comes precisely from all man's experiences which can be defined as the "bondage of decay"; and it comes because redemption operates in man's soul by means of the gifts of the Spirit: ". . . we our selves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Rom 8:23). Redemption is the way to the resurrection. The resurrection constitutes the definitive accomplishment of the redemption of the body.

 We will come back to the analysis of the Pauline text in the First Letter to the Corinthians in our further reflections.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 3 FEBRUARY, 1982
The risen body will be incorruptible glorious, full of dynamism, spiritual

 At the general audience on Wednesday, 3 February, held in the Paul Vl Hall, Pope John Paul continued his explanation of Pauline theology of the body with regard to the resurrection of the dead.

 1. From the words of Christ on the future resurrection of the body. reported by all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), we have passed to the Pauline anthropology of the resurrection. We are analyzing the First Letter to the Corinthians chapter 15, verses 42 to 49.

 In the resurrection the human body, according to the words of the Apostle, is seen "incorruptible, glorious, full of dynamism, spiritual". The resurrection is not, therefore. only a manifestation of the life that conquers death - almost a final re. turn to the tree of Life, from which man had been separated at the moment of original sin - but is also a revelation of the ultimate destiny of man in all the fullness of his psychosomatic nature and his personal subjectivity. Paul of Tarsus - who, following in the footsteps of the other Apostles, experienced in his meeting with the Risen Christ the state of his glorified body-basing himself on this experience, announces in his Letter to the Romans "the redemption of the body" (Rom 8:23) and in his Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15:42-49) the completion of this redemption in the future resurrection.
In the perspective of an eternal destiny

 2. The literary method applied here by Paul perfectly corresponds to his style, which uses antitheses that simultaneously bring together those things which they contrast. n this way they are useful in having us understand Pauline thought about the resurrection: both in its "cosmic" dimension and also insofar as it concerns the characteristic of the internal structure itself of the "earthly."

 And the " heavenly" man. The Apostle, in fact, in contrasting Adam and Christ (risen) - that is, the first Adam with the second Adam - in a certain way shows two poles between which, in the mystery of creation and redemption, man has been placed in the cosmos. One could say that man has been "put in tension" between these two poles in the perspective of his eternal destiny regarding, from beginning to end, his human nature itself. When Paul writes: "the first man was from the earth, a man of dust, the second man is from heaven,, (1 Cor 15:47), he has in mind both Adam - man and also Christ as: man. Between these two poles - between the first and the second Adam - there takes place the process that he expresses in the following words: "As we have borne the image of the man of earth, so we will bear the image of the man of heaven" (1 Cor 15:49).
Man completed

 3. This "man of heaven" - the man of the resurrection whose prototype is the Risen Christ - is not so much an antithesis and negation of the "man of earth" (whose prototype is the "first Adam"), but is above all his completion and confirmation. It is the completion and confirmation of what corresponds to the psychosomatic make-up of humanity, in the sphere of his eternal destiny, that is, in the thought and in the plan of him who from the beginning created man in his own image and likeness. The humanity of the "first Adam", the "man of earth bears in itself, I would say. a particular potential (which is capacity and readiness) to receive all that became the "second Adam", the Man of heaven, namely, Christ: what he became in his resurrection. That humanity which all men, children of the first Adam, share, and which, along with the heritage of sin- being carnal - at the same time is "corruptible", and bears in itself the potentiality of " incorruptibility".

 That humanity which in all its psychosomatic make-up appears "ignoble" and yet bears within itself the interior desire for glory, that is, the tendency and the capacity to become "glorious", in the image of the Risen Christ. Finally, the same humanity about which the Apostle in conformity with the experience of all men says that it is "weak" and has an "animal body", bears in itself the aspiration to become "full of dynamism" and 'spiritual".
Potential to rise again

 4. We are speaking here of human nature in its integrity, that is, of human nature in its psychosomatic make-up. Paul, however, speaks of the "body". Nevertheless we can admit, on the basis of the immediate context and the remote one, that for him it is not a question only of the body, but of the entire man in his corporeity, therefore also of his ontological complexity. In fact, there is no doubt here that if precisely in the whole visible world (cosmos) that one body which is the human body bears in itself the "potentiality for resurrection", that is, the aspiration and capacity to become definitively "incorruptible, glorious, full of dynamism, spiritual", this happens because, persisting from the beginning in the psychosomatic unity of the personal being. he can receive and reproduce in this "earthly" image and likeness of God also the "heavenly" image of the second Adam, Christ.

 The Pauline anthropology of the resurrection is cosmic and universal at the same time: every man bears in himself the image of Adam and every man is also called to bear in himself the image of Christ, the image of the Risen One. This image is the reality of the "other world", the eschatological reality (St. Paul writes: "we will bear"). But in the meantime it is already in a certain way a reality of this world since it was revealed in this world through the resurrection of Christ. It is a reality ingrafted in the man of "this world", a reality that is developing in him toward final completion.
The vision of God

 5. All the antitheses that are suggested in Paul's text help to construct a valid sketch of the anthropology of the resurrection. This sketch is at the same time more detailed than the one which comes from the text of the synoptic Gospels (Mt 22:30; Mk:12:25; Lk 20:34-35), but on the other hand it is in a certain sense more unilateral. The words of Christ reported by the synoptics open before us the perspective of the eschatological perfection of the body, fully subject to the divinizing profundity of the vision of God "face to face", in which it will find its inexhaustible source of perpetual "virginity" (united to the nuptial meaning of the body), and of the perpetual "intersubjectivity" of all men, who will become (as males and females) sharers in the resurrection. The Pauline sketch of the eschatological perfection of the glorified body seems to remain rather in the sphere of the very interior structure of the man-person. His interpretation of the future resurrection would seem to link up again with body-spirit "dualism" which constitutes the source of the interior "system of forces" in man.

 6. This " system of forces " will undergo a radical change in the resurrection. Paul's words, which explicitly suggest this, can not however be understood or interpreted in the spirit of dualistic anthropology , which we will try to show in the continuation of our analysis. In fact, it will be suitable to dedicate yet another reflection to the anthropology of the resurrection in the light of the First Letter to the Corinthians.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: 10 FEBRUARY, 1982
Body's Spiritualization Will be Source of Its Power and Incorruptibility

 During the general audience of Wednesday, 10 February, John Paul If continued his catechesis on the resurrection of the body.

 1. From Christ's words on the future resurrection of the body, recorded by all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), our reflections have brought us to what St Paul wrote on the subject in the First Letter to the Corinthians (ch. 15). Our analysis is centered above all on what might be called the "anthropology of the resurrection" according to St Paul. The author of the letter contrasts the state of the "earthly" man (i.e. historical) with the state of the risen man, characterizing in a lapidary and at the same time a penetrating manner, the interior "system of forces" specific to each of these states.
Radical Transformation

 2. That this interior system of forces should undergo a radical transformation would seem to be indicated, first of all, by the contrast between the "weak" body and the body "full of power". Paul writes: "What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power" (1 Cor 15:42-43). "Weak", therefore, is the description of the body which - in metaphysical terms - rises from the temporal soil of humanity. The Pauline metaphor corresponds likewise to the scientific terminology, which. defines man's beginning as a body by the use of the same term (semen, seed).

 If, in the Apostle's view, the human body which arises from earthly seed is "weak", this means not only, that it is "perishable", subject to death, and to all that leads to it, but also that it is an "animal body" (1). The body "full of power", however, which man will inherit from the second Adam, Christ, in virtue of the future resurrection, will be a "spiritual" body. It will be imperishable, no longer subject to the threat of death. Thus the antinomy, "weak-full of power", refers explicitly not only to the body considered separately, but also to the whole constitution of man considered in his corporeal nature. Only within the framework of such a constitution can the body become "spiritual"; and this spiritualization of the body will be the source of its power and incorruptibility (or immortality).

 3. This theme has its origin already in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. It can be said that St Paul sees the reality of the future resurrection as a certain restitutio in integrum, that is, as the reintegration and at the same time as the attaining of the fullness of humanity. It is not truly a restitution, because in that case the resurrection would be, in a certain sense, a return to the state which the soul enjoyed before sin, apart from the knowledge of good and evil (cf. Gen 1-2). But such a return does not correspond to the internal logic of the whole economy of salvation, to the most profound meaning of the mystery of the redemption. Restitutio in integrum, linked with the resurrection and the reality of the "other world", can only be an introduction to a new fullness. This will be a fullness that presupposes the whole of human history, formed by the drama of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (cf. Gen 3) and at the same time permeated by the text of the First Letter to the Corinthians.
Perfect Harmonization

 4. According to the text of the First Letter to the Corinthians, man in whom concupiscence prevails over the spiritual, that is, the "animal body" (I Cor 15:44), is condemned to death. He should rise, however, as a "spiritual body", man in whom the Spirit will achieve a just supremacy over the body, spirituality over sensuality. It is easy to understand that Paul is here thinking of sensuality as the sum total of the factors limiting human spirituality, that is, as a force that "ties down" the spirit (not necessarily in the Platonic sense) by restricting its own faculty of knowing (seeing) the truth and also the faculty to will freely and to love in truth. Here, however, cannot be a question of that fundamental function of the senses which serves to liberate spirituality, that is to say, of the simple faculty of knowing and willing proper to the psychosomatic compositum of the human Subject.

 Just as one speaks of the resurrection of the body, that is, of man in his true corporeal nature, consequently the "spiritual body" should mean precisely the perfect sensitivity of the senses, their perfect harmonization with the activity of the human spirit in truth and liberty. The "animal body" which is the earthly antithesis of the "spiritual body", indicates sensuality as a force prejudicial to man, precisely because while living "in the knowledge of good and evil" - he is often attracted and, as it were, impelled towards evil.
Influence of the Holy Spirit on Man

 5. It cannot be forgotten that here it is not so much a question of anthropological dualism, but of a basic antimony. Constituting it is not only the body (as the Aristotelian hyle), but also the soul: or man as a "living being" (cf. Gen 2:7). Its constituents are: - on the one hand, the whole man, the sum total of his psychosomatic subjectivity, inasmuch as he remains under the influence of the vivifying Spirit of Christ, - on the other hand, the same man inasmuch as he resists and opposes this Spirit. In the second case man is an "animal body" (and his works are "works of the flesh"). If, however, he remains under the influence of the Holy Spirit, man is "spiritual" (and produces the "fruit of the Spirit" (Gal 5:22).

 6. Consequently, it can be said that not only in 1 Cor 15 are we dealing with the anthropology of the resurrection, but that the whole of St Paul's anthropology (and ethics) are permeated with the mystery of the resurrection through which we have definitively received the Holy Spirit. Chapter fifteen of the First Letter to the Corinthians constitutes the Pauline interpretation of the "other world" and of man's state in that world, in which each one, together with the resurrection of the body, will fully participate in the gift of the vivifying Spirit, that is, in the fruit of Christ's resurrection.
Christ's Reply

 7. Concluding the analysis of the "anthropology of the resurrection" according to Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, it is fitting to turn our minds again to Christ's words on the resurrection and on the "other world" which are quoted by the evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke. We recall that Christ, in his reply to the Sadducees, linked faith in the resurrection with the entire revelation of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob and of Moses (Mt 22:32). At the same time, while rejecting the objection proposed by those who questioned him, he uttered these significant words: "When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage" (Mk 12:25). To these very words, in their immediate context, we devoted our previous reflections, passing on then to the analysis of St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15).

 These reflections have a fundamental significance for the whole theology of the body: for an understanding both of marriage and of celibacy "for the kingdom of heaven". Our further analyses will be devoted to this latter subject. 

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