Theology of the Body

Theology of the Body part X - Marriage and consecrated life

Kairos: Volume 22, Issue 6 In the previous Kairos Catholic Journal article on Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body (volume 22, No 4) the special ecclesial vocation to consecrated virginity and celibate priestly life was explored in the light of the mission to build up God’s kingdom on earth and in the promise of the resurrection of the body to come.

Theology of the Body part IX - Life and love for the sake of the kingdom

Kairos: Volume 22, Issue 4, 20 March 2011 By Anna Krohn

The last article (Kairos Catholic Journal Volume 22, No 2) introduced Pope John Paul II’s renewal of the doctrine of the ‘Last Things’ (Greek = the eschaton) and the resurrection of the body. The Pope reminds us that through Jesus Christ’s Resurrection we are adopted as “sons and daughters of the resurrection”.

Theology of the Body Part VII - Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit

Kairos: Volume 22, Issue 2 By Anna Krohn

During 2010, Kairos published seven parts of its ‘guided tour’ through the vast terrain of Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body addresses. The last article (Volume 21, No 23) outlined the Pope’s discussion of what marks out the authentic Christian approach to love and sexuality and what distinguishes it from attitudes and actions which disfigure and devalue the true preciousness of the human body and the human person.

Part VII - The ethos of the pure of heart

Kairos: Volume 21, Issue 23 By Anna Krohn

This Kairos series continues its brief overview of Pope John Paul II’s massive and potentially culture-transforming ‘theology of the body’. In the sixth part, we noticed a significant ‘gear change’ in the Pope’s discussion.

Part VI - The heart is a battlefield

Kairos: Volume 21, Issue 21

By Anna Krohn

The first five articles in this Kairos series on Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body cover his extensive commentary on the Book of Genesis (chapters 1-3). In these we see that the Pope is emphatic that the theology of the Scriptures and Catholic tradition regarding the human person in his and her entirety is beautiful and joy filled.

Theology of the Body Part V - in the beginning was the wedding gift

Kairos: Volume 21, Issue 19

By Anna Krohn

The previous four articles in this Kairos series have explored briefly some of the key ideas in Pope John Paul II’s first 22 talks of his profound Theology of the Body (TOB) teachings.

Pope John Paul II takes as his guide what Jesus himself suggests is the authority of ‘the beginning’ (Matt 19:3-8), when God’s original creative intention and plan for human life and love was revealed in the inspired narrative of the first chapters of Genesis.

Theology of the Body Part IV - two 'incarnations' of human personhood

Volume 21, Issue 17

Part III in this series, (Kairos Vol.21 Iss.15, 22 August – 4 September) devoted to Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body, unpacked the Pope’s notion of the three bedrock human experiences: ‘original experiences’.

Theology of the Body Part III – our shared experiences of being human

Kairos: Volume 21, Issue 15

In the second part of the Kairos series on Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body (Kairos 25 July-7 August) we were encouraged to re-read the familiar accounts of Creation revealed in chapters one and two of the Book of Genesis.

This present article will discuss the ‘theology of the body’ themes presented in five of Pope John Paul II’s talks (audiences) given between 19 September 1979 (Talk 3) and 31 October 1979 (Talk 7). In these the Pope highlights the biblical wisdom about the human person, about human responsibility and the mysterious fact that our bodies (and therefore we ourselves) are made of what Genesis 2 calls the ‘dust’ of the earth and the ‘breath of God’.