‘Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body’

Based on the idea of evangelical thought, Pope John Paul II proposes a different and essential society and raises “the body to a greater category,” while stressing the importance of life, hence the need to prepare and care for the body as the Temple of the Soul. By pointing out concepts on the reality of the body within the area of marriage, the content is seen as a biblical exegesis aimed to reveal the mystery of the body, and in that context, sexuality and marriage. As a theological text it assumes the reality of the body in three critical levels of human experience: “as man experienced in the beginning before sin (Original Man); as man experienced after sin, but redeemed in Christ (Historical Man), and as man experienced in the resurrection of the body (Eschatological man).

It is an interesting view for the nonbeliever that progresses towards a “suitable anthropology.”

One could also point out that this reflection on these three levels of “experience” discover the same deep reality of human identity, in order to find “our place in the cosmos” in light of what God wants to say to man; the meaning of life and his reason for having created it.

• Title: “Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body”
• Author: His Holiness Pope John Paul II
• Link: http://www.mercaba.org/JUANPABLOII/teologia_del_cuerpo.htm