The Nuptial Mystery, the Sacrament of Marriage and John Paul II’s Man and Woman He Created Them

Abstract

Antiphon 18.1 (2014) 69–105 The Nuptial Mystery, the Sacrament of Marriage and John Paul II’s Man and Woman He Created Them David H. Delaney Introduction The pre-papal manuscript Man and Woman He Created Them1 of Blessed John Paul II (to be canonized by Pope Francis on April 27, 2014) is a compelling theological anthropology that opens new pathways for investigating a broad range of theological topics and for showing their unity. One obvious topic is the sacrament of marriage, which, as a sacrament in the service of communion , is simultaneously a theme around which the unity of Catholic teaching can be expounded in an evangelical manner. John Paul II’s intellectual project is variously characterized as one of Lublin Thomism, Trinitarian personalism, Schelerian phenomenology, and Communio theology, among others. All of these capture aspects of his thinking, but I would argue that his intellectual foundation is first grounded in the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas. He situates every other philosophical and theological influence within Thomas’ metaphysical framework. In much the same way that St. Thomas integrated Aristotelian metaphysics into the 13th century Christian patrimony, John Paul II likewise incorporated many new lines of thought into the received tradition, and this is what we encounter in his catecheses on the embodied human person. With Thomist metaphysics as his foundation, he integrates new methods (foremost phenom1 Commonly called the “theology of the body” after he delivered it in the form of 129 Wednesday Audience catecheses from September 1979 to November 1984: John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006). 70 David H. Delaney enology as a tool of inquiry) and new insights (e.g., from the various schools of personalism) in order to explicate the truths of the Catholic faith to an age that has seemingly lost its ability to receive them through the classical manner of presenting them. Reading Man and Woman from the above hermeneutical perspective opens one to the profound insights John Paul II unearths. John Paul II wants to help man to rediscover himself, his greatness. He intends to provide an anthropology for a contemporary audience and so he goes to divine revelation to better understand who and what man is. Beginning with the insight that the doctrine of the Trinity reveals a Communio Personarum, a Communion of Three Persons, he considers anew the meaning of man created in the image of God. Returning to the Genesis creation narratives and using the analogia entis, he ponders the revelation that man is created in God’s image as male and female, and what this means for the human person. This becomes his personal approach to the theology of the nuptial mystery that has recently arisen from within the Communio school. But before continuing this line of thought, I should say a few words about the nuptial mystery.2 I. The Nuptial Mystery Tradition The Scottish Dominican Fergus Kerr of the English Dominican Province reluctantly points to nuptial mysticism as the theology that has become dominant in the new millennium, especially in Catholic ecclesiology and theological anthropology.3 The nuptial mystery marks much of John Paul II’s teaching, and we also see it present in his successor. Even if it is not a central theme in his theological work, as the prefect of the Congregation for the 2 It is not possible in this context to do more than provide a broad sketch of this theme. For a more detailed treatment of the nuptial mystery see Angelo Cardinal Scola, The Nuptial Mystery (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2005). For a systematic treatment of the Scriptural foundations of the nuptial mystery, see the forthcoming book by Brant Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom: Seeing Christ and the Cross through Ancient Jewish Eyes (New York: Image Books, 2014). 3 See Fergus Kerr, O.P., Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians: From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing , 2007) viii, 201. Kerr is clearly not happy about this, pointing out numerous concerns with this state of affairs. 71 The Nuptial Mystery, the Sacrament of Marriage and John Paul II’s Man and Woman He Created Them...