The Kingdom of God, Not
the World, Is Man's Eternal Destiny
General Audience, July 14, 1982
1. During our previous
considerations in analyzing the seventh chapter of the First Letter
to the Corinthians, we have been striving to gather together and
understand the teachings and advice that St. Paul gives to the
recipients of his letter about the questions concerning marriage and
voluntary continence (or abstention from marriage). Declaring that
one who chooses marriage does well and one who chooses virginity
does better, the Apostle refers to the passing away of the
world—that is, of everything that is temporal.
It is easy to see that the argument from the perishable and
transient nature of what is temporal speaks with much greater force
in this case than reference to the reality of the other world. The
Apostle here expresses himself with some difficulty. Nevertheless,
we can agree that at the basis of the Pauline interpretation of the
subject of marriage-virginity, there is found not so much the very
metaphysics of accidental being (therefore fleeting), but rather the
theology of a great expectation, of which Paul was a fervent
champion. The world is not man's eternal destiny, but the kingdom of
God. Man cannot become too attached to the goods that are linked to
a perishable world.
2. Marriage also is tied in with the form of this world which is
passing away. In a certain sense, here we are very close to the
perspective Christ opened in his statement about the future
resurrection (cf. Mt 22:23-32; Mk 12:18-27; Lk 20:27-40). Therefore
according to Paul's teaching, the Christian must live marriage from
the point of view of his definitive vocation. Marriage is tied in
with the form of this world which is passing away and therefore in a
certain sense imposes the necessity of being locked in this
transiency. On the other hand, abstention from marriage could be
said to be free of this necessity. For this reason the Apostle
declares that one who chooses continence does better. Although his
argumentation follows this course, nevertheless he decidedly
stresses above all (as we have already seen) the question of
"pleasing the Lord" and "being anxious about the affairs of the
Lord."
3. It can be admitted that the same reasons speak in favor of what
the Apostle advises women who are widowed: "A wife is bound to her
husband as long as he lives. If the husband dies, she is free to be
married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. But in my judgment she
is happier if she remains as she is. And I think that I have the
Spirit of God" (1 Cor 7:39-40). Therefore, she should remain a widow
rather than contract a new marriage.
4. Through what we discover from a thoughtful reading of the Letter
to the Corinthians, especially chapter seven, the whole realism of
the Pauline theology of the body is revealed. In the letter the
Apostle proclaims: "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is
in you" (1 Cor 6:19). Yet at the same time he is fully aware of the
weakness and sinfulness to which man is subjected, precisely by
reason of the concupiscence of the flesh.
However, this awareness in no way obscures for him the reality of
God's gift. This is shared by those who abstain from marriage and
also by those who take a wife or husband. In the seventh chapter of
the First Letter to the Corinthians we find clear encouragement for
abstention from marriage, the conviction that whoever decides on
this abstention, does better. But we do not find any foundation for
considering those who live in marriage as carnal and those who
instead choose continence for religious motives as spiritual. In
both the one and the other way of living—today we would say in one
and the other vocation—the "gift" that each one receives from God is
operative, that is, the grace that makes the body a "temple of the
Holy Spirit." This gift remains, in virginity (in continence) as
well as in marriage, if the person remains faithful to his gift and,
according to his state, does not dishonor this temple of the Holy
Spirit, which is his body.
5. In Paul's teaching, contained above all in the seventh chapter of
the First Letter to the Corinthians, we find no introduction to what
will later be called Manichaeism. The Apostle is fully aware
that—insofar as continence for the sake of the kingdom of God is
always worthy of recommendation—at the same time grace, that is,
"one's own gift from God," also helps married couples. It helps them
in that common life in which (according to the words of Gn 2:24)
they are so closely united that they become one body. This carnal
common life is therefore subject to the power of their own gift from
God. The Apostle writes about it with the same realism that marks
his whole reasoning in the seventh chapter of this letter: "The
husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise
the wife to her husband. For the wife does not rule over her own
body, but the husband does; likewise, the husband does not rule over
his own body, but the wife does" (verses 3-4).
6. It can be said that these statements are a clear comment in the
New Testament on the words scarcely recorded in the Book of Genesis
(cf. Gn 2:24). Nevertheless, the words used here, especially the
expressions "rights" and "does not rule," cannot be explained apart
from the proper context of the marriage covenant, as we have tried
to clarify in analyzing the texts of the Book of Genesis. We will
attempt to do it even more fully when we speak about the
sacramentality of marriage, drawing on the Letter to the Ephesians
(cf. Eph 5:22-33). At the proper time it will be necessary to return
to these significant expressions, which have passed from Paul's
vocabulary into the whole theology of marriage.
7. For now we will continue to direct our attention to the other
sentences in the same passage of the seventh chapter of the First
Letter to the Corinthians, in which the Apostle addresses these
words to married couples: "Do not refuse one another except perhaps
by agreement for a season, that you may devote yourselves to prayer.
But then come together again, lest Satan tempt you through lack of
self-control. I say this by way of concession, not of command" (1
Cor 7:5-6). This is a very significant text, and it will perhaps be
necessary to refer to it again in the context of our meditations on
the other subjects.
In all of his argumentation about marriage and continence, the
Apostle makes a clear distinction, as Christ does, between the
commandment and the evangelical counsel. It is very significant that
St. Paul feels the need to refer also to a "concession," as to an
additional rule, above all precisely in reference to married couples
and their mutual common life. St. Paul clearly says that conjugal
common life and the voluntary and periodic abstinence by the couple
must be the fruit of this gift of God which is their own. He says
that the couple themselves, by knowingly cooperating with it, can
maintain and strengthen that mutual personal bond and also that
dignity conferred on the body by the fact that it is a "temple of
the Holy Spirit who is in them" (1 Cor 6:19).
8. It seems that the Pauline rule of "concession" indicates the need
to consider all that in some way corresponds to the very different
subjectivity of the man and the woman. Everything in this
subjectivity that is not only of a spiritual but also of a
psychosomatic nature, all the subjective richness of man which,
between his spiritual being and his corporeal, is expressed in the
sensitivity whether for the man or for the woman—all this must
remain under the influence of the gift that each one receives from
God, a gift that is one's own.
As is evident, in the seventh chapter of the First Letter to the
Corinthians, St. Paul interprets Christ's teaching about continence
for the sake of the kingdom of heaven in that very pastoral way that
is proper to him, not sparing on this occasion entirely personal
accents. He interprets the teaching on continence and virginity
along parallel lines with the doctrine on marriage. He keeps the
realism that is proper to a pastor, and at the same time the
proportions that we find in the Gospel, in the words of Christ
himself.
9. In Paul's statement we can find again that fundamental structure
containing the revealed doctrine about man, that even with his body
he is destined for future life. This supporting structure is at the
basis of all the Gospel teaching about continence for the sake of
the kingdom of God (cf. Mt 19:12). But at the same time there also
rests on it the definitive (eschatological) fulfillment of the
Gospel doctrine on marriage (cf. Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25; Lk 20:36).
These two dimensions of the human vocation are not opposed to each
other, but are complementary. Both furnish a full answer to one of
man's fundamental questions, the question about the significance of
"being a body," that is, about the significance of masculinity and
femininity, of being "in the body" a man or a woman.
10. What we usually define here as the theology of the body is shown
to be something truly fundamental and constitutive for all
anthropological hermeneutics. At the same time it is equally
fundamental for ethics and for the theology of the human ethos. In
each one of these fields we must listen attentively to the words of
Christ, in which he recalled the beginning (cf. Mt 19:4) or the
heart as the interior, and at the same time historical place of
meeting with the concupiscence of the flesh. But we must also listen
attentively to the words through which Christ recalled the
resurrection in order to implant in the same restless heart of man
the first seeds of the answer to the question about the significance
of being flesh in the perspective of the other world.
Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 19 July
1982, page 1
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