Cartographies of the Body in Catholic Theological Anthropology: Issues Under Debate

Abstract

Body Studies has emerged over recent decades as a new interdisciplinary field dedicated to rethinking the notion of the subject beyond the legacy of modernity, which prioritised intelligence, autonomy, will, and reason as the defining features of what it means to be human. The body is understood as a biological–symbolic complex that goes beyond the flesh and its materiality. It possesses its own symbolic language, rooted in human cultures, and communicates in different ways depending on the context in which it is expressed and experienced. Traditional Catholic theological anthropology defined the human being in terms of body, mind, and spirit, drawing on Hebrew categories. It subsequently adopted a Hellenised interpretation of these categories, establishing a marked polarity between soul and body. This article analyses the main anthropological proposals within Catholic theology and the issues and debates they have generated. It does so from a feminist hermeneutical perspective in dialogue with contemporary Body Studies. Finally, it presents proposals from feminist theological anthropology that may help to broaden the concept of the human being in relation to God.

1. Introduction

From the mid-20th century onwards, interest in the body began to grow across various fields of academic research. These studies have shown that the body can be understood as a biological–symbolic complex that goes beyond the flesh and its materiality. It possesses its own symbolic language, rooted in human cultures, and communicates in different ways depending on the context in which it is expressed and experienced. For this reason, bodies have been subject to the cultural norms that have emerged throughout human history, contributing to the formation and organisation of cultural worldviews.

Cultures, particularly patriarchal ones, shaped bodies for the benefit of the community; consequently, the free expression of the body was regarded as dangerous because it threatened the group’s equilibrium. For this reason, the physicality of members of the social group was regulated through systems of control and a series of disciplines that formed part of everyday life. Control was exercised, in Foucauldian terms (Foucault 1976), in a way that favoured the domination of bodies through disciplines that either repressed or unleashed physicality and sexuality. In this way, a social order was established that ranked bodies of significance above those of no significance on the basis of dualities: the bodies of citizens over those of slaves; the bodies of men over those of women; the bodies of white people over those of black people; and the bodies of the ‘perfect’ over ‘abject’ bodies. This has given rise to a range of issues relating to the body (hypersexualisation, pornography, human trafficking, infanticide, prostitution, the cult of thinness and sculpted bodies, etc.), which 20th-century anthropological criticism has sought to highlight and analyse from the perspective of human rights and a new understanding of personal identity.

In this article, we examine how this disciplinary anthropology has influenced the Catholic Church’s understanding of the body and how these hierarchies and asymmetrical relationships between bodies are reflected in theological anthropology. Catholic theological anthropology faces the challenge of engaging with studies of the body and undertaking a thorough re-examination of its understanding of the human being from a global, postcolonial, and feminist perspective (Gebara 2020). This task is complex because the Catholic Church’s official doctrine on the body is grounded in the theory of complementarity and biologistic assumptions that establish distinctions in the nature, vision, and mission of men and women. We engage with this perspective from a feminist standpoint, bringing contemporary anthropological approaches and perspectives from feminist theology into dialogue with it. We highlight the internal points of conflict and the debates that open up new understandings of the human being from a more integrative perspective on the body within religious experience.

2. The Body as an Object of Study

Over the last 60 years, as a result of interdisciplinary collaboration between various fields (including anthropology, history, sociology, art, psychology, and education, amongst others), a broad and innovative field of study known as Body Studies has emerged. The origins of this field lie in the interest of certain researchers in rethinking the concept of the subject in a broader and more holistic way than that inherited from modernist anthropology. Modern anthropological models, emerging from 16th-century European humanism, emphasised intelligence as the primary category defining human beings (Descartes, Leibniz, 17th century). Intelligence was linked to autonomy and the exercise of freedom (Kant, 18th century), and to the will (Fichte, 19th century). In the early 20th century, some theorists argued that what distinguishes humans from the rest of creation is grounded in reason as an awareness of one’s own existence (Heidegger, 20th century) and of an overwhelming and incomprehensible reality (Sartre, 20th century). Other theorists emphasised the construction of the human being solely on the basis of an awareness of otherness and introduced the relational ontological category of being (Scheler, Buber, 20th century).

During this same period, some researchers highlighted the importance of a bodily materiality that was not merely biological in nature but encompassed a set of interactions and somatic phenomena that influence a person’s thought, will, praxis, relationships, and self-representation. This approach breaks with the idea that reason is linked to the mind and the body to the passions, and the body began to be studied as a comprehensive framework for interpreting the human being.

We can take the works of Marcel Mauss as a starting point, such as his text Techniques du corps (Body Techniques and Movements, 1934), in which the author identifies a threefold dimension of the body (socio-cultural, psychological, and biological) mediated by a strong symbolic and historical component. Mauss argues that bodily habits are social and historical in nature. The body is shaped by the individual behaviours of people and by the acts of imitation they carry out in the course of their daily lives. Above all, however, the body is shaped as a consequence of developments in educational practices, fashion, the pursuit of prestige, and so on (Mauss 1950). The social environment is therefore part of what shapes the body and its identity as a living human being. Building on these considerations, Body Studies drew upon other disciplines to support a perspective on the body understood not as a material object but as a subject through which human life trajectories and relationships with the environment and with other human beings can be studied.

A decade later, second-wave feminist criticism (Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, Audre Lorde, and Mary Daly, amongst others) emphasised the mediated nature of the body and, with it, the importance of the body (sex) in the construction of personal identity and the ways in which it is self-represented and represented in society (gender). In doing so, it developed the theory of sexual difference and highlighted the existence of a dualistic anthropology that segregated men and women and generated discriminatory hierarchies based on the body. For Simone de Beauvoir, the body is neither a biological destiny nor an immutable essence, but rather a ‘situated place’. From her existentialist perspective, the body is the concrete way of inhabiting and understanding the world, serving as the primary instrument of freedom, but also as the main arena of social oppression for women (Beauvoir [1949] 2017).

Thus, following this epistemological shift, ‘the body’ becomes synonymous with the person, insofar as the biological—which until recently was referred to as the body—gives shape to human activity; it is an embodied agent, expressed through various intelligent and sensory dimensions that are unique and singular to each person. In this sense, Merleau-Ponty, like Beauvoir, proposes the concept of the ‘lived body’ to refer to the self from which the world is perceived, a concept borrowed from his teacher, Husserl (1990). In Phénoménologie de la perception (1945), Merleau-Ponty approaches the study of the body from a phenomenological perspective. The body is an open structure that encompasses not only the material body, but also a broader space or body schema, within which the person positions themselves in space and time, and where encounters, agreements, and convergences between subjectivities arise (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 1975).

When human beings realise that they have a body and can even modify or ‘invent’ it, this almost inevitably leads them, in order to understand themselves, to distinguish between the ‘body’ and the ‘human person’. However, this distinction—which gives rise to the dual conception of the human being in modern Western culture—is symptomatic of our failure to understand ourselves as beings who transcend our own materiality. The invention of the body as an autonomous concept implies a transformation in the ontology of the human being. Already present in Renaissance humanism, rationalist anthropology took concrete form in the following centuries, emphasising the uniqueness of the human being, their solitude, their consciousness, and their autonomy of will. At the same time, it draws attention to what remains, namely the body. Consequently, for modernity, the body is a mechanism that responds automatically to external stimuli. It is therefore a passive, reactive machine.

Merleau-Ponty advocates a conception of corporeality that moves within the world and, with every movement, initiates an active dialogue with its surroundings. The body possesses the capacity to engage with the world: a corporeality embedded in an environment that now reveals itself as its other face. Therefore, subjectivity is found in the experience of the body, because one is conscious of the world through the body—not because the body is passive and receptive through the senses, but because it enables one to conceive of oneself from an ‘impersonal we’ (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 1975, p. 97). The body is in the world just as the heart is in the organism. The body is what sets us apart from the other, yet it is also always inhabited by the interweaving that unfolds with other bodies.

Corporeality, then, depends on the distance from the interweaving that links it to other subjectivities (Buffone 2023, pp. 80–82). In other words, it is through the body that we receive the other, identify with the other, or reject them. The body shapes us individually and collectively through our experiences, choices, behaviours, and relationships. Through it, we experience pain, joy, abuse, violence, hunger, and pleasure, and we can translate these experiences into universal ones. The relationship between the body and the world is organic, reciprocal, and interpenetrating; we can therefore conceive of corporeality and the surrounding world as participants in a unique, living, and ongoing dialogue in which it ultimately becomes unclear who is asking and who is answering. In short, the body cannot be regarded as a ‘thing’ to which ‘consciousness’ is added: ‘To say that I have a body is a way of saying that I can be seen as an object and that I seek to be seen as a subject’ (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 1975, pp. 215–16).

Thus, the lived body is a place of habitation in the world, the embodiment of the gift of life. It is a complex subjectivity: (1) a biological reality governed by specific laws of functioning, with unique characteristics that distinguish it from other bodies, such as rhythm, resilience, longevity, beauty, health, and energy; (2) an inevitably gendered reality; (3) a self-aware reality, endowed with creative capacity, as it resolves the complexities of interaction with the environment through will, persistence, desire, and learning; and (4) a symbolic reality, capable of transcending its own subjectivity to imagine the incorporeal and give it a name. We are bodies because others recognise us as bodies in a specific place and at a specific moment.

Subsequently, a second generation of researchers from the fields of philosophy and anthropology (Bryan Turner, Thomas Csordas, Michel Foucault, David Le Breton, Rubem Alves, and Judith Butler, amongst others) made a range of contributions that followed alternative, and at times opposing, paths. In their work, the corporeal is understood as an agent of interaction and a point of intersection between the individual and the social, thereby breaking down the dualities of subject/object, objective/subjective, active/passive, rational/emotional, and language/experience.

Michel Foucault focused on bodily practices during the 1970s and their socio-political implications (Foucault 1968, 1976, 1977). For Foucault, the understanding of the body evolved from a conception grounded in power—it was necessary to correct deviant bodies—to one of social control—bodies could not possess autonomy—and finally to one of surveillance in the productive and reproductive societies of the 19th and 20th centuries—bodies had to be subjected to constant visual surveillance. In his seminal work Remarques provisoires sur la perception sociale du corps, Bourdieu (1977) developed an interpretative framework that proved decisive for subsequent studies of the body. Although he did not intend to establish a distinct field of study, his concept of habitus and his analysis of the relationships between the body, social life, and class were crucial in shaping body studies. For Bourdieu, the body is the axis that articulates the encounter between subjectivity and the world. In the habitus, in narrated life, the body manifests itself; it becomes history through established or acquired behaviours and relationships shared within a social (and socialising) body through everyday practices. He therefore conceives of the body as a reality that transcends nature.

Thomas Csordas positions embodied experience as the foundation of perception, affect, and cognition, offering a methodological basis for interpreting gestures as living narratives (Csordas 1994). He thus aligns with David Le Breton, who proposes conceiving of the body as text and narrative, which implies recognising that understanding is manifested not only in verbal or written discourse but also in ways of inhabiting space, in spontaneous gestures, in postures that reveal certainty or doubt, and in the bodily dynamics that accompany cognitive processes (Le Breton 2002, 2010, 2018). In this sense, the body functions as a narrative in which ways of thinking and relating to knowledge are inscribed, and through which the diversity of learning is expressed.

Le Breton emphasises that bodily habits and markings inscribe norms, expectations, and affiliations. The expansion or contraction of posture, the choice of location, or proximity to other bodies convey the confidence, doubt, or agency of the individual. He also demonstrates the body’s capacity to act intentionally, make its own decisions, and transform circumstances (Le Breton 2018). The emphasis on the sensory in anthropology highlights that knowledge is produced through perceptual interweaving by asserting that bodies think with and through the senses and narrate their own history through interaction and lived experience. The body transcends us, and we transcend it. It thus constructs the narrative of its own history.

As we have seen in the work of these authors, the analysis of the corporeal is best understood today through the reformulation of various theories of identity, experience, and culture from two perspectives. First, it examines social phenomena rooted in human structures, such as the exercise of power through the control and domination of the body (for example, discrimination and unequal rights for men and women); second, it maps systems in which the body serves as the basis for the construction of individual meanings (for example, dressing girls in pink) or collective meanings (for example, the social segregation of men and women into the domestic and private spheres).

In this context, alongside Le Breton, we might place Judith Butler’s proposal, which is influenced by Foucault’s ideas and by feminist theory that critiques the view of the female body as a sexual and reproductive object—a ‘useful body’—for society. The philosopher proposes a re-examination of the notion of gender, which directly affects women’s bodies (Butler 1990). Butler does not set out to conduct an exhaustive analysis of the body, but in examining gender she inevitably encounters the dominated and controlled bodies of women. In relation to the body, two concepts stand out in her work: performativity and corporeality. Butler argues that corporeality supplants language as the site of awareness of one’s own identity and that this corporeality—interwoven with power relations and social conditioning—is what defines gender and sex. In this way, she distances herself from the Kantian framework, in which language is regarded as the defining feature of humanity (Marcelino Díaz 2025). For Butler, there is no such thing as a natural—or rather, a-cultural—body, because the body is always involved in the human quest to realise its possibilities: we are a choice, and, for us, to be is to choose ourselves (Butler 2008).

The body does not remain immutable, fixed, or sealed off, nor is it a finished product. On the contrary, the body is the physical medium through and upon which we carry out our existential project: a mode of intentionality, an embodiment of our relationship with a reality that physically transcends us. We exist through the body; we exist in a particular direction, with a specific disposition.

Therefore, the body’s boundaries are subject to constant negotiation, giving rise to connections with other bodies, even in situations of separation. This implies ensuring the ‘livability’ of the body through access to food, housing, employment, and similar conditions.

In short, today the body can no longer be understood as a mere mediator or vessel in the analysis of cultures, but rather

as an object of study, prioritised as a different and alternative way of approaching the analysis of human existence and the culture of the relationships between subject, body and society. Between nature and culture, between the organic and the cultural aspects of the constitution, but also of the fragmentation of the subject. It is a body, as Foucault says, imprisoned within a device of domination, yet at the same time free from it; a body that is identified but free from limiting identities, a body that is probably many bodies, many bodies in dialogue with one another. Yet it is a body that remains, epistemologically speaking, an orphan, one about which we are only just beginning to learn to think and write.

(Esteban 2013)

3. The Body in the Theological Tradition

The Christian theological perspective is rooted in the Jewish tradition and its conception of the body as part of God’s creation, and is profoundly influenced by the Hellenistic tradition, in which there is a tension between the material body and the spirit or the awareness of existence. The Gospel transcends the soul-body dualism of the Greek world and delves deeper into a corporeality sanctified by God through the very bodily nature of Jesus Christ, which breaks down the barriers of Jewish purity and the Greek negativity towards the body. However, the influence of the Judeo-Hellenistic cultural context in which the first Christian communities emerged will re-emerge in early Christianity and in early Christian theology.

In the Hebrew tradition, human life is understood essentially in concrete and unified terms. In other words, the human being is a unified life force through which they relate to God and to their environment. Although the biblical text refers to three dimensions—bāśār, nèfèš, and ruah—these are not conceived as three parts of a whole but as a unified life force that grounds the relationship with God and with the political and social world. For Israel, the body is the fundamental element that defines the human being and connects the divine with the everyday reality of the world. It was only from the 2nd century BC onwards that this understanding was nuanced by the influence of the Greek world, as we shall see.

The term bāśār refers to the corporeality of the human being, not in opposition to a spiritual soul, but as a unity of life that encompasses the whole of human biology and psychology, limitations and potential, vulnerability and strength. Corporeality denotes the earthly dimension of life and is, in a certain sense, contrasted with God. This is why human beings are created from clay, symbolising the fragility, dependence, and transience that are constitutive of human existence. With the advent of Hellenistic culture, the term bāśār came to be translated into Greek as sarx and into Latin as caro (‘flesh’), which in many instances reduced its semantic range to the material body alone.

The term nèfèš refers to the animated life of the human being. Its original meaning is ‘neck’ and refers to breathing and to the vitality that endows every human being with distinctive characteristics. In the Old Testament, it is God who grants life; hence the frequent occurrence of the term in the biblical texts—755 times. Human beings do not possess a nèfèš; rather, they are nèfèš—beings who live and direct all their activity towards unfolding the life bestowed by God. Nèfèš also has a social dimension, because life unfolds through social relationships, communication, and the building of communities (Duch and Mèlich 2005). The term can also convey the idea of social relationship—that aspect of the person which enables us to connect and communicate with others—and it is precisely this that unites us most closely with them. In this sense, we can also understand sexual difference—which is natural and willed by God—as another aspect of the fullness of life offered to God in the original union (‘becoming one flesh’, Gen 2:24), as a community bound by solidarity. Nèfèš came to be translated in the Greek Septuagint as psychē and, in Latin, as anima, thereby losing the unifying sense that brings together, within the body, the encounter with God and the encounter with the world (Duch and Mèlich 2005, p. 65).

Finally, ruah, which literally means ‘breath’ or ‘wind’, refers to the relationship between human beings and God (Gen 3:8; Ex 10:13). It is therefore not the vital breath of human beings, nèfèš, but the presence of God within human beings—the gift that God bestows and that manifests itself as a creative force (Job 33:4; Ps 33:6). God’s breath sustains human fragility and encourages them to continue their work of fulfilment in the world. It was translated into Greek as pneuma and into Latin as spiritus, drawing close to the Platonic understanding that the soul is trapped within the material body (‘ensômatosis’).

As we can see, these three dimensions are not opposed to one another; rather, it is in their integration that the essence of the human being and their relationship with God—which is revealed in everyday life—is found: ‘The Hebrew language uses the terms “soul” or “flesh” interchangeably to designate the living human being, both pointing to a single and identical reality: the human being living in the world’ (Tresmontant [1953] 1962, p. 96).

It is also important to note that in the Hebrew Bible, women’s physicality is secondary (Navarro 1996, pp. 138–39). Although the starting point is an understanding of the human body as an undifferentiated social reality, in which sexual difference is regarded as an integral part of the human condition and willed by God (‘this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh’, Gen 2:23), the fact remains that the writers of Scripture present the male body as the norm (Duch and Mèlich 2005, p. 77). Consequently, the legal practices they established subjected women to a regime of subordination similar to that of children and slaves. For example, under religious law women had the legal status of property: ‘You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife; you shall not covet his house, his field, his male or female slave, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to him’ (Deut 5:21). Despite extolling the virtues of chastity, motherhood, and the good management of the household (Prov 31:10–31), in practice women were regarded as ignorant and dependent. This distinction between the sexes was reinforced by the dualistic Greek understanding, which characterised women as intellectually and spiritually weak, since intellectual and spiritual strength was regarded as proper to men (Navarro 1996, pp. 142–43). The anthropology of the Old Testament is therefore androcentric, a characteristic it shares with the Greek world.

In this sense, the New Testament redefines the meaning of the body through the concept of the Incarnation. The belief that the Incarnation of God is fully revealed in the person of Jesus (‘The Word became flesh’, Jn 1:14) implies a positive view of the human body and of the material world. Furthermore, the redemption brought about through this encounter with the incarnate God is not merely that of a metaphysical reality or the soul, but of the whole person and the realities of human life. Finally, the experience of healing broken, violated, and despised bodies is not only a privileged place of encounter with God but also the hermeneutical locus of theological reflection (Raphael 1996).

However, the acceptance of the view of the human being as a unified whole was influenced by the Greek distinction between body (sarx or sôma) and spirit (psychē or pneuma). This was due both to the varying usage of these terms and their differing meanings within the Greek philosophical schools, and to the Greek world’s tendency to define the body as necessarily separate from the soul. The body was understood as a prison, and the soul’s redemption lay in leaving it behind and returning to the world of its pre-existence. Soul and body were regarded as two distinct yet united substances. As a consequence of these varying usages and this tendency towards separation, Scripture’s unitary understanding of the human being gradually developed into a body–soul dualism that separated the material reality of the human being from its transcendent dimension, giving rise to ambiguous hermeneutics and an imprecise theological vocabulary in early Christian literature.

Attitudes towards the body in early Christianity ranged from one extreme to the other, at times becoming diametrically opposed. Paul’s view, for example, placed a positive value on the body, understood as the temple of the Holy Spirit and the place where Christ’s resurrection is manifested (‘If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain’, 1 Cor 15:13–14). At the other extreme, Gnostic positions despised the body because the Incarnation was interpreted as an ‘anti-corporeal’—indeed, Manichaean—manifestation of Christ: the body and worldly desires were seen as manifestations of evil, in contrast to a heavenly spark (the soul), akin to the divine, which was capable of being saved. To counter this contempt for the body as corrupt matter, the Johannine tradition emphasised the Incarnation as the manifestation of God in the creature. In this context, when ‘flesh’ is contrasted with spirit, it refers not to the distinction between body and soul but to that between creature and Creator, and to the grace entailed by participation in the gift that God offers human beings. This is why Christ is the ‘firstfruits’ of humanity: the true human being is manifested in his body and spirit (‘Behold the man’, Jn 19:4–5). Through the Incarnation of the Son, new life is brought to fulfilment by the Spirit (Lorda 2009).

There is a lack of clarity in the distinction between ‘body’ and ‘flesh’ in the New Testament and in the works of the Apologists. This stems from a theological rather than a philological concern; that is to say, their assertions are based on the revealed word (Martínez Sierra 2002, p. 93). Whilst in the New Testament sôma usually refers to the living body—the body of Christ, the Church, reality as opposed to appearances—it is also used to denote a corpse. By contrast, sarx frequently denotes the flesh, the sinful nature of human beings, sexual immorality, and uncontrolled sexual desire. At the same time, however, it also denotes human nature, its earthly origin, and its impulses; that is to say, the contradictory nature of the human condition. Paul draws a parallel between en sôma and eis sárka (v. 16) and, in turn, contrasts these with en pneûma in the context of the problem of the abuse of the body or fornication (v. 17). God dwells in the body (v. 19), and it is in the body that we are glorified (v. 20). For Paul, the reference to the body is always Eucharistic and ecclesial, as it refers to the ‘body of Christ’ (sômatos toû Jristou, 1 Cor 10:16), linking the material with the symbolic and the personal with the communal. Consequently, the image of the ceaseless struggle between the flesh and the spirit is already present in Paul’s theology (‘Who will deliver me from this body of death?’ Rom 7:24).

The Apologists focused on the notion of the human being as the image of God in order to emphasise, in opposition to Gnosticism, the value of the human body and the importance of the resurrection of the flesh. For example, for Justin, life in God can exist only while the soul is united with the human body, because only in that state can it become aware of God’s presence and thus freely orient itself towards Him (Apology II, X; Dialogue with Trypho VI; Félix 2011, p. 42). It is in the body that the distinctive nature of the human being resides. The flesh is destined for the life of the Spirit (Martínez Sierra 2002, p. 91). For Tertullian, ‘the flesh came into being through the Word of God’ (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, V) and has been dignified by Christ (VI). Drawing on Paul, he asserts that the intimate union of body and soul is God’s principal work of benevolence:

Is it not through it [the body] that the soul is sustained in the whole apparatus of the senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch? Is it not through it that the soul possesses a measure of divine power, there being nothing that it does not accomplish through its faculty of speech, even when it is merely implied? […] Now, if all things are subject to the soul through the flesh, so too is their subjection due to the flesh. That which is the means and agent of your enjoyment must also be a sharer in and participant of your enjoyment. Thus the flesh, which is regarded as the minister and servant of the soul, turns out to be also its partner and co-heir.

(On the Resurrection of the Flesh, VII)

Tertullian distinguishes in some texts between the terms caro or sarx (flesh) and corpus or sôma (body): sarx is usually used to denote the flesh in its materiality, whilst sôma designates the body as it is perceived in reality, in its appearance and natural life—a body that breathes, eats, drinks, moves, tires and rests (Alexandre 2001, p. 200). Therefore, there is no experience of God without the body. But it is a sacrificial experience, for the flesh is weak. He acknowledges that the flesh must be sacrificed to exalt the soul: ‘Truly, the flesh is washed so that the soul may be cleansed; the flesh is anointed so that the soul may be consecrated; the flesh is marked (with the cross) so that the soul too may be strengthened…’ (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, VII).

Clement of Alexandria maintained that the soul possesses greater dignity than the body, for the human being is the image of God in the intellect. This perspective was later reinforced by Augustine of Hippo (Augustine 2002). Augustine describes human beings as trapped within a set of powers governed ‘according to the flesh’, which set them against God’s presence in the world. He therefore advises vigilance in matters relating to the body as a means of remaining close to God, for the true problem of the flesh is desire. In this sense, the Stoic ethic of self-restraint (apatheia) offered a possible solution for Christians: desire debases the soul and plunges it into an abyss that is destructive to human beings. Augustine adopts from Clement of Alexandria the idea that the Christian path is to welcome the Spirit of God into the flesh and to ‘train the instincts’ in order to profoundly transform the meaning of the body (Duch and Mèlich 2005, p. 108). These authors refer not only to the weakness of the flesh but also to the fragility of the human body, which is presented as weak and ambiguous in the face of God’s salvation. This negative stance on the fragile and subordinate nature of the flesh came to shape a dualistic and negative understanding after the era of the Apologists.

The Platonic conception of the separation between soul and body and the subordination of the body to the soul persisted among medieval scholastic authors, although it gave rise to a variety of interpretations. Hugh of Saint Victor argued that the soul is the true human being and that the union of soul and body is accidental. Gilbert of Poitiers maintained that the body and soul constitute an essential human unity, the dissolution of which after death signifies the disappearance of the person. Hildegard of Bingen, drawing on her interdisciplinary knowledge, argued that the soul preserves the flesh through the flow of blood that keeps it constantly moist, so that soul and flesh form an indivisible unity (Hildegard of Bingen and Pawlik 1997). Others, such as Peter Abelard and Peter Lombard, adopted a more conciliatory stance: the human person exists in both bodily and spiritual form and, in some way, persists in the soul after death (Martínez Sierra 2002, p. 94). Thus, medieval anthropology was structured around the body and the soul, two distinct yet interdependent dimensions. The carnal was identified with a bodily condition marked by disease, violence, and the plagues that afflicted much of Europe. The body, therefore, was regarded as incompatible with the spiritual (the soul), which comes from God. Christians were expected to flee from the carnal in order to attain purity of soul (Isherwood and Stuart 1998).

Medieval reflection on the body focused particularly on sexuality and on establishing a sexual morality capable of controlling it. Consequently, mistrust of the body—particularly of women’s bodies—grew, whilst emphasis was placed on the sacraments, the veneration of relics, devotion to Christ’s sufferings, and the idealisation of courtly love, with the aim of distancing oneself from the temptations of the flesh. This devotional model excluded women’s bodies from virtuous Christian life, leading to the emergence of alternative forms of spirituality that sought to reintegrate the body into religious experience.

As a result of these tensions, mystics and theologians undertook a systematic attempt to construct a unified anthropology. For example, some female mystics frequently drew on metaphors of the nuptial union between human beings and Christ, many of which were explicitly corporeal and erotic, in which spiritual and carnal union became one and the same. The Beguine Hadewijch of Antwerp understood this transformative love of God in bodily terms. In her description of union with God, sexuality is not excluded from the relationship but integrated into it. For Hadewijch of Antwerp (1999), corporeality is not something reprehensible, but rather a gift through which God awakens in human beings the desire to orient their lives towards the divine (Velasco Chaves 2025). For his part, Thomas Aquinas, drawing on an Aristotelian perspective, argued that the soul is the substantial form of the human body, that aspect of human nature which is eternal and which gives form to matter (Summa Theologiae, Suppl., q. 93, a. 1). Human beings are constituted as a single being, of which matter and spirit are the principles that make up its totality: an ‘incarnate’ soul and an ‘animated’ body in a ‘perfect union’.

This more unified theological interpretation of the late Middle Ages clashed with the modern understanding of the body as a machine, governed by a series of physical laws comprehensible to reason, in which medicine once again separated the physical body from the soul in order to treat bodily illness (Le Breton 2002). Theology focused on the moral dimension of bodily activity, whereas medical science focused on its material and physiological aspects. Consequently, modernity reinforced a markedly dualistic anthropology (soul/body) and tended to regard rationality as superior to corporeality and the male body as more perfect than the female body.

Ultimately, in the debate over the valuation and devaluation of the human body, there has been a prevailing tendency to reject the corporeal as a human dimension equal in value to the rational soul, as well as to establish hierarchical dualities that justified the hierarchical ordering of the members of the Church according to degrees of holiness (soul/body, intellect/animality, man/woman, etc.). Within this hierarchy, women’s bodies invariably occupied the lowest position. Prokes (1996) identifies eight factors that, in her view, were decisive in shaping the Christian anthropology inherited by the Church in the twentieth century: (1) taboos arising from the presence of the unknown; (2) ignorance regarding human procreation and the ‘mysteries of woman’; (3) various forms of dualism; (4) the impact of the barbarian invasions; (5) the acceptance in the Middle Ages of Aristotle’s erroneous doctrines concerning procreation, the female body, and sexual relations; (6) the abuse of the sacraments and sacramentals in the period prior to the Protestant Reformation, followed by a reaction against such abuses; (7) the new dualism introduced by the Enlightenment; and (8) the technological revolution of the twentieth century, in which the body has become one of its defining features.

Most of these issues, particularly those relating to women’s bodies, have not been resolved in post-Vatican II theology, despite the scientific and medical advances of the last two centuries concerning the human body and, more specifically, women’s bodies. At the theological level, the Church continued to affirm the distinction between matter and spirit while maintaining their essential unity. This position was reaffirmed by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and gave rise to subsequent debates concerning the precise relationship between soul and body, including whether the intellective dimension of the soul is perfectly united with the body. The Council of Vienne (1312) upheld Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of the ‘perfect union’ of body and soul,1 a position later reaffirmed by the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–1517). No significant changes to the doctrine of the body occurred until the twentieth century. The Second Vatican Council devoted the first chapter of the constitution Gaudium et Spes to reaffirming the dignity of the human person in this perfect union, using positive language that encourages human beings to honour God’s creation through their bodies, which are presented as the highest expression of the material universe (nos. 12–22).

4. A Post-Conciliar Theological Anthropology

Many theologians of the post-conciliar era maintain anthropological positions rooted in the dualisms of soul/body, intellect/nature, and man/woman.2 Although some acknowledge that theological anthropology has not adequately addressed the body and human sexuality, they are quick to emphasise the relationship between sin, the body, and sexuality within the theology of original sin (Fernández Castelao 2013). In an attempt to offer a positive view of the body, they define the sexualised body as the very space in which life is transmitted; in other words, sexuality is implicitly understood in procreative terms because it is the sphere in which new human life is created. On this basis, and with the best of intentions, they present marriage as a ‘dignified’ solution to the problem of sexuality and desire. The International Theological Commission itself supports this position: ‘Whilst it is true that union between human beings can take many forms, Catholic theology today affirms that marriage constitutes a sublime form of communion between human persons and one of the finest analogies of the life of the Trinity’ (International Theological Commission 2004, nos. 31, 39).

It is nonetheless paradoxical that erotic love should be presented as the model of love, above both affective love and agapic love, as a means of resolving the supposed ambiguity and inherent risks of the body and its sexuality, whilst at the same time emphasising the incarnate nature of God’s salvation and the importance of Christ’s corporeality as its mediator. The Incarnation has always been an uncomfortable aspect of Christianity, because the flesh is subject to excess, instability, and decay. For this very reason, it is not possible to resolve the ambiguity inherent in the body and its interpretation, a tension that has existed since the beginning of Christianity (Isherwood and Stuart 1998).

Given that gendered corporeality is part of a person’s identity, one might well ask why we should insist on reducing human sexuality to the erotic, when it is expressed through many forms of love and self-giving embodied in a lived body that exists in constant relationship with others. Without denying that marriage can be ‘an eminent path to holiness’ (International Theological Commission 2004, nos. 31, 39), the diversity of bodies and sexualities offers more than one ‘dignified’ avenue for the full expression of love. This question must be analysed and answered from a feminist perspective, in the sense that such a hermeneutic deconstructs the idea that sexuality is solely procreative through the sexual act and recognises other forms of expression related to the affective and agapic spheres that are equally full and worthy. Furthermore, it challenges the notion that procreation is limited to the creation of new life, when openness to love reminds us of the many forms of creativity through which love sustains life by means of care and tenderness (Soskice 2007)—a constitutive dimension of the human being and a human activity just as important as procreation in enabling life to be sustained and renewed. Feminist hermeneutics is wary of interpretations that ignore, on the one hand, the social dimension of the lived body and its sexuality—as a body that transcends me and that I transcend beyond mere biology—and, on the other hand, the unfolding of human creative capacity, which cannot resolve the complexities of interaction with the environment except through learning, desire, will, and persistence.

What can the concept of the ‘lived body’—as developed by contemporary anthropologists (Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Le Breton)—contribute to contemporary theological anthropology? Can we identify in current doctrine traces and narratives (Le Breton), relations of domination (Foucault), performativities (Butler), and forms of habitus (Bourdieu) arising from the dualities present in the tradition? To answer this question, we analyse the ‘theology of the body’ proposed by Pope John Paul II, perhaps the best-known contemporary approach to which many theologians refer.

Between 1979 and 1984, John Paul II wrote and personally delivered a series of addresses at the Wednesday general audiences, all of which centred on reflections on the body in the context of conjugal love. These homilies were inspired by earlier work he had carried out whilst the Pope was still a priest in Kraków: a series of meditations on marriage addressed to young couples in the parish of St Florian from the 1950s onwards. Later, as a professor of ethics at the University of Lublin, he published two works focusing on the meaning of conjugal love and grounded in personalist anthropology and Husserl’s phenomenology: Love and Responsibility (1964), and Person and Action (1969). The manuscript of the meditations on conjugal love, originally entitled ‘Male and Female He Created Them’ and which was not published at the time, formed the basis of these homilies when he became Pope in 1978. In 1996, the publisher Palabra compiled and published these addresses in Spanish, organising them into four major thematic sections: man and woman; the redemption of the heart; apostolic celibacy and marriage; and love and fruitfulness. In this way, the publisher gave the addresses a more coherent theological structure. The Pontiff begins by establishing a connection between the body, sexuality, love, and marriage, which he develops throughout these 129 addresses. It should be borne in mind that the Pope’s starting point is Pope Paul VI’s (1968) encyclical Humanae Vitae. In it, Paul VI addresses issues relating to bioethics from the perspective of moral theology within a social context in which women’s reproductive and social rights were being debated.

The anthropological perspective underlying this view of the human being follows the Augustinian tradition, in which the body, sexuality, and sex are identified as a single reality. For Augustine of Hippo, sexual pleasure is abhorrent and can be tolerated only when sexual activity is directed towards procreation and governed by continence. As for the body, he describes it philosophically, drawing on Platonic concepts, as the matter that gives form to the human being and makes the person visible: a useful instrument of the soul. It is the soul that gives the body its cohesion. The soul is the nobler part and the body the inferior one (The Immortality of the Soul, Book VII, Chapter XII). The body, with its passions (sensations and perceptions), disobeys the Creator (the shame of nakedness, Gen 3:7), and it is only through the Incarnation that this ‘earthly body’ can be freed from the ‘burden’ (corruption) of materiality. Sexual pleasure forms part of this ‘burden’ from which Christ frees us (Confessions, Book VII, Chapter XVIII). Thus, in Augustine’s thought (Augustine 2002), the body becomes associated with evil, because theology and morality are understood as inseparable. Augustine maintains that what God expects of human beings is the renunciation of the pleasures sought in the body (Confessions, Book X, Chapter XXII).

John Paul II’s homilies, inspired by earlier meditations on the spousal meaning of marriage, present a positive philosophical anthropology that navigates between two realities: on the one hand, the body is the channel of all reality, the source and goal of all interactions and of the life that surrounds human beings, and for that very reason is a source of pleasure and joy. On the other hand, the body is very fragile, tremendously precarious, and is perceived as a reality that can be controlled or preserved (Anderson and García 2012). It therefore aligns with Merleau-Ponty and Le Breton, as well as with classical Catholic philosophical anthropology (Ladaria 1983; Peña 1988), in that the body ceases to be an aspect extrinsic to human dignity, coming instead to be seen as the expression of personal singularity. However, like Merleau-Ponty and Le Breton, it takes the reflection of classical Catholic anthropology a step further and delves deeper into the mystery of the Incarnation in the body. From this perspective, the human condition of being sexed, present in corporeality, begins to be seen as an expression of human intimacy, becoming constitutive of the person and not merely an attribute or an addition to the human condition (Castilla Cortázar 2016). Thus, drawing on classical philosophical anthropology, it asserts that the profound meaning of the body lies in recognising the person and expressing the love that God has bestowed upon them as a gift (Anderson and García 2012; Granados García 2020). For John Paul II, the starting point is the mystery of the Incarnation:

“The fact that theology also encompasses the body should come as no surprise to anyone who is aware of the mystery and reality of the Incarnation. Because the Word of God became flesh, the body has, I would say, entered through the front door into theology, that is, into the science whose object is divinity”.

(John Paul II 1980c, n. 4)

Wojtyla adheres to the Christological approach of Karl Rahner and other contemporary theologians (Ladaria 1983; Peña 1988), who emphasise the Incarnation as the centre of God’s revelation, expressed in human flesh which harbours the mystery of the divinity:

“In the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word of God lies the centre of the reality in which we believe. For it is only here that the mystery of the divine Trinity is made manifest to us; it is only here that the mystery of our participation in the divine nature has been revealed to us; and the mystery of the Church is nothing other than the extension of the mystery of Christ”

(Rahner 1961, p. 57)

“Man is a mystery. Or rather, the mystery. For he is not merely a mystery in that he is the humble opening to the mystery of God’s incomprehensible fullness, but because God revealed this mystery as his own mystery (…) In this sense, the Incarnation of God is the absolute mystery—and yet an obvious, self-evident one—Jesus of Nazareth.”

(Rahner 1961, p. 59)

Taking as its starting point an in-depth examination of Christological anthropology as found in contemporary theology following the Second Vatican Council, the subsequent implications stem not so much from a Christological anthropology as from a moral theology geared towards socio-ecclesial practice and the sexual practices of men and women (Castilla Cortázar 2024). In John Paul II’s proposal, we find two difficulties: the ambiguity surrounding the definitions of the body and sexuality, and the ‘unequivocal’ link—according to the pontiff, following Augustine—between pleasure and sin. Firstly, Wojtyla makes no distinction between sex and gender, a contemporary category necessary for understanding the construction of human identities in society (Castilla Cortázar 2023). He starts from the conviction that ‘Sex, in a certain sense, is “constitutive of the person” (…) how profoundly man, with all his spiritual solitude, with the uniqueness and irreplaceability proper to the person, is constituted by the body as he or she’ (John Paul II 1979a, n.1) and therefore sex and sexual difference constitute the ontological reality that defines the human being: ‘It is necessary to reiterate the metaphysical root of sexual difference: in fact, man and woman are the two forms in which the ontological reality of the human person is expressed and realised’ (Congregación para la educación católica 2019, n. 34). Secondly, it equates sex with the body from a biological perspective, moving away from the philosophical reflections of Merleau-Ponty and Le Breton and returning to pre-Council positions, in which matters relating to the body are imbued with a moral character.

Rather than opening the dialogue to a broader understanding of the body and sexuality—as the anthropology of the second half of the twentieth century does—the identification of these three dimensions (body, sexuality, and sex) serves to maintain a single, univocal, and restrictive understanding of the relationship between the body and its orientation towards sexual activity. In fact, John Paul II’s reflections begin with sexual practice and only subsequently develop into a more elaborate and nuanced anthropology than that defended by Pope Pius XI (1930) in the encyclical Casti Connubii, in which sexual activity is still understood as a ‘venial’ sin, provided it is directed towards procreation (nos. 19–22). John Paul II avoids the negative view of the body and sexuality, which is deeply rooted in previous moral theology, by extolling the gift of the body and its relational purpose. This represents a shift from the previous perspective. However, he restricts this positive view solely to marital relationships, within a restrictive framework that once again reduces the body to mere biology.

This development can be observed in Familiaris Consortio (John Paul II 1981), which John Paul II issued to give greater substance to his reflections on the theology of the body. In the exhortation, the pontiff re-examines the morality of married life from a sexual—rather than a sexed—perspective on the body and makes only minor concessions. For example, he accepts a certain degree of sexual pleasure within the physical relationship between married couples, provided that periodic abstinence is practised as a method of birth control (no. 33). This ethical perspective precludes any critical re-examination of the underlying anthropological assumptions. Once again, the body is understood solely in terms of sexual activity (Ranke-Heinemann 2013).

The Pontiff concludes these years of reflection with the Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem (John Paul II 1988), in which he appears to explore more deeply the anthropological dimension of the person and where, at last, a tentative anthropology of the body emerges as a theological locus for encountering God, both in personal and social relationships. The main theme of the letter is the status of women within the doctrine of the Catholic Church. The document adopts first a biblical and then an anthropological approach in order to situate women’s role and, in so doing, provide the theological foundations for this theology of the body conceived in terms of procreation. We shall return to this letter later.

John Paul II’s understanding of the body in his discourses on the theology of the body is, as we have already noted, Augustinian, identifying the notion of the body with that of sexuality. Sexuality, in turn, is defined in relation to sexual practice, oriented towards sexual pleasure. This definition differs considerably from those commonly found in psychology and education, such as that of the World Health Organization (2006), which defines sexuality as the expression of subjectivity mediated by the interaction of biological, psychological, socio-economic, cultural, ethical, and religious or spiritual factors.

The approach to the body is not anthropological but ethical-theological; in other words, the definition and meanings of the body are linked to the redemption of humankind within the framework of Christ’s salvation. From this perspective, the argument proceeds from the morality of the body to the body itself. The method consists, first of all, in developing a discourse of sublimation, which expresses a very high regard for the body as the locus of human fulfilment: ‘it is on the basis of the body, and not simply of self-awareness and self-determination, that one is a “subject”’ (John Paul II 1979b, n. 4). This positive and sublimated valuation is grounded in the second account of Genesis and in the reciprocity of male and female bodies: ‘flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones’ (Gen 2:23). This approach understands the body in biological terms, following the Augustinian tradition, and the human being as both social and sexual. Consequently, it prioritises sexual difference, in contrast to the interpretation offered by the biblical author, for whom the narrative is intended precisely to affirm the equality of man and woman (Trible 1973). John Paul II’s discourses, however, prioritise the differentiated and reciprocal constitution manifested in the human body, thereby making the duality of man and woman more fundamental than their equality.

Thus, the discourses repeatedly assert that, ontologically, the body is constituted as a nuptial subject destined for union, for the mutual giving and receiving of persons as a gift, on the understanding that this self-giving is realised in the community formed by man and woman.

Is not perhaps that spousal love wherewith Christ ‘loved the Church’—his bride—‘and gave himself up for her,’ at the same time the fullest incarnation of the ideal of celibacy for the kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt 19:12)? Is not support found precisely in this by all those—men and women—who, choosing the same ideal, desire to link the spousal dimension of love with the redemptive dimension according to the model of Christ himself? They wish to confirm with their life that the spousal significance of the body—of its masculinity and femininity—profoundly inscribed in the essential structure of the human person, has been opened in a new way on the part of Christ and with the example of his life, to the hope united to the redemption of the body. Thus, the grace of the mystery of the redemption bears fruit also—rather bears fruit in a special way—with the vocation to celibacy for the kingdom of heaven.

(John Paul II 1982b, n. 6)

On the one hand, the question arises as to whether there are other forms of giving and receiving that are not biological or sexual. On the other hand, the concept of community as grounded in biological difference is called into question. The anthropological concept of nuptiality is itself grounded in biological difference, according to which reciprocity takes different forms depending on biological sex. Sexual biology is understood to point unambiguously to a biological and reproductive function, together with its extension into the social and communal order. For this reason, the idea of communion is grounded in sexual difference, and specifically in the woman, who is ‘a suitable helper for him’ (Gen 2:18).

In the biblical text, Adam, the human being, does not speak until the woman appears. In this way, the author suggests that Adam is not fully human in solitude. With the woman comes language, and Adam uses it not only to name her, but also to recognise himself, for the term ʼiššah (woman) encompasses ʼiš (man). Thus, man and woman—Adam and Eve—come into being (García Fernández 2025). The female helper emerges as man’s counterpart in her difference, enabling Adam to understand himself as male, both akin to the woman and distinct from the animal world.

Under no circumstances can we attribute to the biblical author—while acknowledging the centuries that separate us from the text—the assertion that the role of women is that of a subordinate assistant. When God says, ‘It is not good for the human being to be alone; I will make a suitable helper for him’, he is announcing the arrival of someone capable of standing before him, looking at him as an equal, engaging in dialogue on equal terms, sharing the same physical space, and accompanying him in the task he has just been given: to cultivate and care for the earth. However, within the anthropological tradition on which John Paul II’s discourses are based, the presence of women and their role as a ‘suitable helper’ are framed within a hermeneutic that offers a one-sided solution to man’s loneliness through women’s compulsory receptiveness, presenting them as a ‘suitable helper’ rather than as an equal partner in the shared task (García Fernández 2025).

The discourse on the sublimation of women’s receptive corporeality can be discerned in the anthropology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. The Swiss theologian understands the human being in terms of receptivity and activity, from an Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective, in relation to God’s communicative action (Balthasar 1993, pp. 278–94). For him, giving and receiving are constitutive of both the Trinity and humanity, insofar as humanity is the imago Dei. Up to this point, his position accords with a theological tradition that emphasises the relational nature of God (Gregory of Nazianzus, Richard of Saint Victor, etc.). However, in order to justify a differentiated anthropology and corresponding social roles, Balthasar draws from the tradition the image of the family as a Trinitarian model—a concept rejected by Augustine of Hippo and later by Aquinas (1947, Summa Theologiae I, q. 93, a. 6, ad 2)—and structures the Trinitarian relations by associating activity with the male and receptivity with the female. Through this ‘attributive’ relationality, he departs from the principle of reciprocal equality grounded in difference that is found in the Genesis narrative.

Although Balthasar tirelessly advocates equality between women and men, he nevertheless maintains that man is accorded priority, whilst the woman is naturally equipped to give back to the man what she receives from him: her fertility. Consequently, women’s activity is understood as responsive through fertility and dependent upon the action of men. It is this responsive role, rather than their creation in the image of God—‘this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh’ (Gen 2:23)—that, according to Balthasar, leads women to fulfilment (Balthasar 1993).

On this basis, John Paul II argues that human beings leave behind solitude to form a community, but one that is always nuptial:

The communion of persons could be formed only on the basis of a ‘double solitude’ of man and of woman, that is, as their meeting in their distinction from the world of living beings (animalia), which gave them both the possibility of being and existing in a special reciprocity. The concept of ‘help’ also expresses this reciprocity in existence.

(John Paul II 1979c, n. 2)

Once again, the ambiguity surrounding the central human experience of community emerges when this ‘particular reciprocity’—the man gives and the woman receives—is asserted, rather than the mutual reciprocity of Trinitarian communion, in which giving and receiving occur simultaneously. This marks a shift from an ethical to an anthropological focus that seeks to justify the supposedly natural sexual difference between men and women. The so-called theory of complementarity advocates ‘equality but difference’ between the sexes. This physical, psychological, and ontological difference is expressed in the distinct ways in which nuptial communion is realised through the body, sexuality, and the Christification of the person, culminating in fulfilment through the redemption offered by Jesus Christ: ‘Femininity and masculinity are complementary to one another not only from a physical and psychological point of view, but also from an ontological one. It is only through the duality of the “masculine” and the “feminine” that the “human” finds its full realisation’ (John Paul II 1995).

The ontology of complementary duality emphasises the ecstatic—that is, self-giving—nature of the human being, realised through personal self-surrender for the Kingdom. However, this self-surrender is explicitly located within the marital union, which is identified with sexuality and procreation, and is realised differently by women and men.

At the same time, we have seen that John Paul II’s theology of the body rejects desire, pleasure, and the gratification of the encounter. For the pontiff, the human body must never be objectified or used, and he therefore affirms the distinction between eros and the biblical concept of ‘knowing one another’:

It seems that in the original revelation the idea of man’s possession of the woman, or vice versa, as of an object, is not present. On the other hand, it is well known that as a result of the sinfulness contracted after original sin, man and woman must reconstruct, with great effort, the meaning of the disinterested mutual gift.

(John Paul II 1980b, n. 4)

The difference between eros and biblical ‘knowledge’ lies in the sinfulness attributed to eros and the broader meaning of ‘knowledge’.

Whereas the Platonic concept of ‘eros’ goes beyond the biblical scope of human ‘knowledge’, the modern concept seems too restricted. Biblical ‘knowledge’ is not limited to satisfying instinct or hedonistic pleasure, but it is a fully human act, directed consciously toward procreation, and it is also the expression of interpersonal love (cf. Gen 29:20; 1 Sam 8; 2 Sam 12:24).

(John Paul II 1980b, n. 4, note 1)

The Pope does not consider that procreation might itself constitute a restriction on human corporeality and sexuality, and refers to what amounts to a moral simplification of the human body as an ‘enrichment’. Once again, there is no distinction between the ontological and the moral, and an ethical framework is constructed around both the body and behaviour (chastity, contraception, homosexuality, etc.). Furthermore, behaviours oriented towards gratification or pleasure—such as sexual desire, sexual activity detached from procreation, and homosexuality, understood as a disorder of the body’s nuptial orientation—are regarded as distancing human beings from an encounter with God and from His will.

This means that, despite a positive approach to the body, there remains a constant suspicion of it and its expression. When the body fails to fulfil its reproductive function, this is regarded specifically as concupiscence (Isherwood and Stuart 1998). John Paul II refers to this as the ‘self-reproduction’ of humanity:

This opens the great creative perspective of human existence, which is always renewed by means of procreation, which is self-reproduction. This perspective is rooted in the consciousness of mankind and also in the particular understanding of the nuptial meaning of the body, with its masculinity and femininity. In the mystery of creation, man and woman are a mutual gift. Original innocence manifests and at the same time determines the perfect ethos of the gift.

(John Paul II 1980a, n. 1)

We observe that the objectification of the body is rejected whilst the body is simultaneously ‘functionalised’, its use being reserved for procreation. Once again, a contradiction emerges: that which, in the biblical text, distinguished human beings from the animal world now becomes both the means and the end of human fulfilment. From this perspective, the body is a sacred yet functional and mechanistic reality, oriented towards reproduction and survival.

John Paul II’s discourses do not differ substantially from earlier positions within Catholic theological anthropology. Although he downplays the differences between the female and male bodies, he nevertheless maintains a conception of natural sexual differentiation that determines personal vocation on the basis of biology. This entails continuing to defend an unequal reciprocity in which women’s bodies are characterised and objectified according to their biological capacity for childbearing. The difference from earlier, pre-conciliar periods is that, in order to support this shift in emphasis from the biological to the theological, a new strategy—already referred to as ‘sublimation’—is employed. John Paul II develops this idea further in other documents, adopting the expression ‘feminine genius’, which also appears in the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar. In the Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), he extols women’s capacity for childbearing, idealising motherhood. The Pope conceives of women’s bodies as a ‘mechanistic’ reality whose biological constitution determines their vocation through the ‘receptive’ reciprocity that lies at the heart of his nuptial anthropology. Women’s dignity as human beings is thus linked to their femininity and their capacity for childbearing (no. 30). This places great value on their unique role in procreation and child-rearing, while limiting their vocation to motherhood or virginity (no. 21)—that is, spiritual motherhood—on the basis of what he calls ‘a natural spousal predisposition of the female personality’ (no. 20).

Nothing that does not direct the body’s expression towards procreation forms part of the spousal self-giving towards which the human being is oriented. Thus, the Pope contrasts love, understood as a virtue, with desire, understood as a disorder of the passions (John Paul II 1982a, nos. 2–3), and interprets marriage in light of Paul’s teaching: ‘It is better to marry than to burn with passion’ (1 Cor 7:9). Marriage constitutes an ethical order that brings reciprocal relationships to fulfilment and mitigates the perceived negativity of the body: its desires, its lust, its self-gratification, and its pursuit of pleasure. The body, then, is regarded as matter in need of redemption from concupiscence. Even in its sublimated form, this position does not depart substantially from the Christian tradition of suspicion towards the body.

In conclusion, the positions set out in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body reveal an ambiguity in the interpretation of the body and its conflation with concepts that cannot be equated, such as the body, sexuality, and sex. The body is understood solely in terms of its procreative and reproductive function, despite being a dimension of human existence that ought to be analysed through the lens of culture, social relations, and lived experience. The supposed novelty championed by some authors in support of John Paul II’s theology of the body (Castilla Cortázar 2023, 2024; Granados García 2020) is, in our view, a reiteration of anthropological concepts present in the theological tradition prior to the Second Vatican Council and its subsequent dialogue with the anthropology of the body that emerged in the 20th century (Merleau-Ponty and Le Breton), not dissimilar to that of other contemporary theologians such as Ladaria (1983) or Peña (1988). Its uniqueness lies in the leap from anthropology to moral theology that it seeks to make through positive arguments concerning the body. Furthermore, this approach conflates morality, theology, and anthropology, associating sexuality exclusively with the biological function of the body. Finally, despite its glorification of the ‘feminine genius’, the theology of the body maintains a high degree of suspicion towards female corporeality. It tends to define women on the basis of their physiology, rendering them more imperfect and dependent, whilst closely linking the anthropological arguments of natural law and the theory of complementarity to theological justifications. The result is limitations on women’s vocational discernment and on their opportunities to serve the Church and the world through the development of the other gifts bestowed on them by God.

5. Dialogues on the Body Beyond Complementarity: A Feminist Theological Corpography

Feminist theology, which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, was the first to highlight the need for dialogue on the ambiguity evident in the official documents of the Catholic Church (Ross 1988). To this end, feminist theologians took into account the social and political contexts in which these transformations were taking place and the ways in which they were giving rise to a new, non-dual, and more diverse anthropological language. They pointed out that debates on the body focused too heavily on the need to redeem the body from concupiscence, rather than on celebrating the body as a place of encounter with God, with others, and with creation. In this regard, they problematised the patriarchal understanding of the body—as suspect materiality—and proposed its deconstruction in order to identify the structures of sin that label and hierarchise women’s bodies and those of other groups on the basis of a mechanistic and suffocating biology (Radford Ruether 1983).

Following this deconstruction, various reconstructive theological approaches have emerged. For example, Mary Daly articulated a theological anthropology grounded in women’s bodies: a ‘Gyn/ecology’ that sought to reclaim women’s energy for creation and for action in both spiritual and bodily life (Daly 2023). Rosemary Radford Ruether proposed rethinking the interpretation of the imago Dei through the notions of goodness and equality in sexual differentiation, thereby transforming relationships within the community (Radford Ruether 1983). Her exegetical work was instrumental in developing a more affirmative interpretation of the female body. Furthermore, it had a significant influence on biblical studies, to the extent that its impact can subsequently be discerned in the third part of Mulieris Dignitatem, which emphasises the goodness of corporeality and the absolute dignity of the female body (n. 6).

In this sense, there is a convergence between the official positions of the Catholic Church and those of feminist theologians regarding the dignity of women’s bodies. However, they diverge in their interpretation and practical application of interpersonal relationships. Marcella Althaus-Reid and Lisa Isherwood agree with John Paul II that women’s bodies are a place of divine revelation. They also regard the physical differences between men and women as positive and reject the idea that women’s liberation requires minimising those differences, instead recognising them as a gift.

However, they disagree on the nature of womanhood. Whereas the pontiff maintains that women’s liberation is realised through motherhood—understood as the expression of women’s ontological receptivity and the instinct inherent in their biological nature—the feminist theologians argue that the articulation of the relationship between nature and anthropology of women is deeply shaped by a masculine, Western, and celibate perspective (Isherwood and Stuart 1998; Althaus-Reid 2000). Viewed through this patriarchal lens, the relational dimension of anthropology becomes restrictive because it reduces liberation solely to the fulfilment of the divine gift through self-surrender to man and through motherhood as understood within the theory of complementarity. Furthermore, motherhood and, by extension, fatherhood are understood through a complementary nuptial relationship, whereas the capacity for care—expressed through self-giving and receptivity—is fundamentally human rather than sexually differentiated. Consequently, the association of self-giving with men and receptivity with women must be re-examined. For this reason, motherhood and fatherhood should be reconsidered from a synodal perspective that draws on women’s embodied experience (Martínez Cano 2023).

The Pope’s conception of motherhood, grounded primarily in women’s physiology, overlooks other dimensions of the relationships of care within which motherhood is situated: love, attachment, desire, pleasure, language, communication, and the broader cultural, social, political, and ecclesiastical contexts in which these relationships are negotiated. Once again, motherhood is reduced to a functional activity that ‘animalises’ (dehumanises) women. This reductionism also affects men: by associating corporeality with femininity, the male body becomes an object governed by rational will, just as women’s bodies are presumed to be governed by male authority, thereby ‘disembodying’ (dehumanising) men. This is precisely the opposite of the Christian faith, as demonstrated in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, which is expressed in the expansion of the biological family into the eschatological family: all who wish to care for others and be cared for around one common table (cf. Mk 3:31–35).

Some feminist theologians argue that the body—of both women and men—can be understood as a site of epistemological resistance (Gebara 2020). Rather than beginning with the biological differences between women and men, they start from capacities shared by all human beings (vulnerability, self-giving, gratuitousness, the capacity to take responsibility for reality, etc.), which transcend the physiological and contextual differences associated with masculinity and femininity. It is through the body that this shared humanity is expressed (Oduyoye 2001).

Recognising ourselves as embodied beings within the life of faith implies recognising our own place in history, culture, and the Church. From the particularity of our own perspective, we are therefore called to make God visible, that is, to bring the human being to the fullness of the imago Dei (Gebara 2020). This requires us to give greater theoretical and practical substance to the relationship between epistemology and hermeneutics in theological anthropology, demonstrating that inherited dualistic and complementary theological discourses, together with discriminatory ecclesial practices, continue to be underpinned by anthropologies that justify the existence of first- and second-class bodies. Contemporary anthropological research points to the diversity of bodies living in situations of suffering and calls for an egalitarian coexistence of differences, for this is God’s will. We therefore cannot ignore that the bodies of women and of other groups historically marginalised by the Church (gay and lesbian people, people with disabilities, the socially marginalised, etc.) embody human experiences that must be heard and incorporated into theological anthropology—not as ‘the other of the others’, but as bodies ‘equal in their difference’, enriching Christian life through their relationship with God.

The challenges facing theological anthropology today in relation to the body—questions of gender, desire, change and decay, ethnicity, technological development, and the ecological crisis—have made the debate increasingly complex and compel us to continue exploring how best to integrate the various dimensions of the person. Technological development, for example, has made clear that the temptation to separate mind and body once again, subjecting the body to the will of the mind—a dangerous form of Neoplatonism—through bodily modification (surgical alteration, posthumanist biotechnology, robotic transhumanism, cyborgs, etc.), is more prevalent today than ever before.

All of this forms an intersectional map that requires attention to social relations, economics, politics, and structural analysis in order to articulate women’s embodied experiences without reducing them to a single explanatory framework (Esteban 2013). The theologian Elizabeth A. Johnson describes this intersectional map as a ‘multipolar’ approach to anthropology; that is, an anthropological examination of the constitutive dimensions of human identity in the contemporary world, such as the relationship between ecological reality, corporeality, and social context, which are decisive for understanding who the human being is today in relation to God. For Johnson, there are seven intrinsic dimensions of human identity: corporeality, ecological relations, personal relationships, structural relationships, temporal and spatial context, culture, and future orientation (Johnson 1991). In doing so, this framework moves away from an exalted conception of human nature and shifts the focus to an interdependence of multiple differences. This approach integrates corporeality into the understanding of the human being by situating it within its relational and historical context, whilst avoiding a conception of sexuality as merely normative or functional.

In this regard, we believe there are two issues that require theological reconsideration: the concepts of otherness and relationality, and the integration of corporeality into the concept of the person. With regard to the first, the Levinasian notion of otherness can be rethought from the perspective of relationality or Trinitarian perichoresis (Johnson 2002; LaCugna 1992). This approach is grounded in an understanding of God’s self-giving and reciprocity, in which Trinitarian mutuality is manifested through care rooted in difference (Martínez Cano 2025). In this sense, the relationship of otherness consists not only in recognising and engaging intellectually with the other, but also in recognising and engaging with the materiality of the other’s body, the historicity of existence, and the systems of representation or imaginaries that shape our understanding of the world and of human beings.

The whole of human existence—the body, the psyche, feelings, and emotions—forms part of existential understanding. In this sense, sexual difference and the forms of discrimination arising from these imaginaries are essential to the deconstruction of patriarchal theological anthropology. Building on this deconstruction, we can move towards a multipolar/intersectional model that redefines the body and the ‘epiphany’ of encountering other bodies (otherness) in terms of materiality, ecological relations, personal relationships, structural relationships, temporal and spatial context, culture, and future orientation. In other words, it does so from the perspective of the ‘lived body’.

On the second point, we need to highlight the singularity of the human body as corporeality. The body, as the primary dimension through which we perceive and respond to the world, is always in relation to others. Understanding human beings as existing in constant relationship with other singular and diverse bodies prevents the normalisation of the masculine as the neutral norm and of the male-female binary as the normative model of human relationships. Maintaining this norm suppresses human diversity and, with it, life itself. The ecofeminist perspective highlights the need for such biodiversity if life is to flourish and continue (Wozna 2019).

Therefore, the corporeality of the other is a revelation that does not conform to a natural essence or to a system of socially constructed identity categories but is instead a complex and situated reality: a unique, unprecedented, and mysterious body (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 1975). Diversity is not a problem but a constitutive dimension of creation and a precious gift that brings us closer to the essence of the Triune God. It is a legitimate reality that affirms the individuality, originality, and uniqueness of every human being. To recognise diversity is to take responsibility for it and to become imago Trinitatis. Trinitarian reciprocity provides a framework for avoiding the tension between patriarchal, essentialist forms of reason—which divide humanity into men and ‘others’—and posthumanist forms of reason, which denaturalise the body by disregarding its historical and embodied context. Rather than promoting a dualistic and essentialist homogeneity (male/female), Trinitarian reciprocity seeks a balance between unity and diversity. From the necessarily gendered and situated condition of every human person, it fosters a respectful, caring, and nurturing reciprocity among diverse masculinities and femininities, including non-binary identities. At the same time, reciprocity is also unity, because the person—a body embodied in relationship—recognises both the other and themselves in the other within a shared space of struggle and encounter. Shared experience leads us to understand ourselves less as ‘I’ and ‘other’ than as ‘we’, recognising ourselves as a collective body, as a community.

6. Conclusions

This article has sought to highlight the theological and epistemological importance of the body. We recognise the need to continue exploring human identity through the lens of corporeality. The revival of the Trinitarian vision of Christian experience (LaCugna 1992; Johnson 2002) may provide the basis for an anthropology that takes the ‘lived body’ seriously, together with the concrete experiences of situated and diverse bodies (Csordas 1994, 2011). Building on these experiences, we can reimagine theological anthropology by recognising the body as both an epistemological resource and a source for interpreting the world, grounded in modes of attention, understanding, and relationship with others and the rest of creation. Verbal discourse, gestures, postures, rhythms, the use of space, and relational dynamics—conceived as texts and narratives open to description, codification, and interpretation (Le Breton 2018)—form the foundation of our experience of God, of our relationships with others, and of our relationship with the world. If the body is our primary way of being-in-the-world and, as such, anticipates and organises understanding before it is verbalised (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 1975), then our relationship with God embraces the body’s diverse modes of understanding and expression and finds communal expression in a harmonious chorus of corporealities.

To respond to this new multipolar/intersectional anthropological approach, theology needs to undertake a critical analysis of models that tend either to sublimate the body or to regard it as inherently suspect and lustful—or, as in the case of the model examined here, that embody the contradiction of simultaneously sublimating and suspecting the body. An analysis of these models reveals a patriarchal hierarchy of bodies that privileges some over others on the basis of the male/female binary. The devaluation and idealisation of the body are two sides of the same coin and form part of the ambiguity inherent in theological anthropology. To address this ambiguity, we have proposed incorporating categories such as vulnerability, historicity, and diversity from a Trinitarian perichoretic perspective.

Theologies of the body in the twenty-first century must also continue the work of exposing and deconstructing the biological essentialisms that are emerging today as a hostile reaction to plurality. We are living in an age of totalitarianism and polarisation, including in our understanding of the body—whether conceived as strictly heteronormative or as a singularity incompatible with other forms of corporeality. This also requires a critical analysis of the polarising tendencies that oscillate between conceiving of the body as infinitely malleable matter, subject to the will of the mind, and conceiving of it as a biological machine with unalterable characteristics and behaviours. The feminist theologians discussed here offer relational and non-deterministic models of the body that take into account both what unites us and what distinguishes us, expressing these insights through the historicity and contextuality of human experience.

Such polarisation may jeopardise the balance of the lived body and its Christian vision: the uniqueness of each body experienced through ‘difference within equality’. This is both a personal and a communal experience—a synodal project of inclusion and diversity that Christian life must continue to nurture.