A Brief Consideration of Pornography in light of “The Theology of the Body” February 2004 In a course examining John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body,” each student was to designate the following statement as being true or false: “Pornography is wrong because it shows too much of people.” The following essay is a brief consideration of my initial response to that statement, with further discussion regarding how the whole course affected that response and how some pertinent concepts in the Theology of the Body shed light on the question. The question, as posed, immediately elicited two responses when I first read the statement. The statement begins, “Pornography is wrong”, then continues “because it shows too much of people.” Responding initially to the beginning portion of the statement, I thought, “True, pornography is wrong.” After reading on, I figured this response was intentionally provoked by how the statement was framed rhetorically. I immediately had to revise my initial response in order to consider whether I agreed with the reason given for why pornography is wrong; that is, was showing “too much of people” the reason why pornography is wrong? My response changed due to obscurity of the phrase “it shows too much of people.” I could no longer consider the whole statement to be true. That phrase provoked further consideration. Having already considered the question of pornography prior to taking this course, I would immediately agree with the statement, “pornography is wrong.” Having been raised in a family for whom Scripture was the moral compass, I have an inbred aversion to anything condemned in Scripture. If one defines pornography as “the graphic representation of fornication,” then I am led to conclude that pornography is to be condemned because it involves one imaginatively in fornication, filling one’s mind with lustful thoughts. Rather than being “transformed by the renewal of [one’s] mind,” one becomes “conformed to the world” as it is portrayed pornographically (cf Romans 12:1-2;. Ephesians 5:1-5). But how was I to interpret the phrase “it shows too much of people”? Regarding pornography, I had to first ask what “it” is. And again, what does it mean to say “it” “shows” something? The statement presumes that pornography “shows” something “of people” and merely declares that what pornography “shows . . . of people” is “too much.” What is it that is being shown? Is one assumed to already know what pornography is? One recalls the man who, when asked to define pornography, said, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it!” My initial response, therefore, was to disagree with the whole statement as it was worded. Called upon to elaborate on that response, one could very well venture the following counter-statement, “Pornography is wrong because it shows too little of people.” In other words, pornography is deceptive because it conceals rather than reveals; pornography is a superficial showing of people, hiding what is deeper than the skin, disguising what is below the surface of sexual activity with a manipulative masquerade of explicit, and even illicit, bodily behavior. There is more to what is shown in pornography than what meets any of the senses being titillated. Pornography is wicked on account of its denial of there being more to one’s body than mere sensation. That denial perversely imitates the wickedness of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, wickedness that led, and continues to lead, to deadly shame (cf Genesis 3:1-8). Further study of the “Theology of the Body” reinforced my initial response. I discovered that the “Theology of the Body” presents a vision of the human person that integrates body, soul, and spirit. This integration is a much-needed corrective to the disintegrating influence of pornography, influence that has adversely affected me, as a person in community with others, and society, as a whole. During the course, class discussion and reading assignments provoked me to consider how I need to integrate my own thinking so that it is consistently conformed to the revelation of God’s creative order, especially in relation to Jesus Christ. God is love and expressed his love bodily in Christ Jesus (cf 1st John 4:7-11), being born of a woman, living as a man, suffering and dying, then rising again, showing himself alive to his followers. Showing himself, Christ showed God’s love. Such graphic expression of love is the essence of Christianity. Pornography intentionally confuses love with concupiscence. Christopher West discusses the source of this confusion in his Theology of the Body Explained: A Commentary on John Paul II’s “Gospel of the Body” (Boston: Pauline, 2003; pp 183-186, “The Grave Error of Manichaeism”): Manichaenism particularly devalues all things sexual. . . . Hence, [John Paul II] firmly and repeatedly stresses that “the Manichaen way of understanding and evaluating man’s body and sexuality is essentially alien to the Gospel.” . . . This assignment of the Manichaen “anti-value” to the body can be seen in the tendency to describe sex or certain body parts as “dirty.” . . . While it may be unconscious or unintentional on the part of [one scolding another viewing pornography for looking at “dirty pictures”], the assignment of evil is [put] on the body . . . instead of on the evil of lust behind the production and the viewing of pornography. As John Paul says, pornographic portrayals of the body “arouse objection . . . not because of their object, since the human body in itself always has its inalienable dignity – but because of the quality or way of its reproduction,” which is intended to incite lust. It is pornographic to present lust as love. Pornography is a concupiscent contradiction to the nakedness without shame that is expressly intended by God (cf Genesis 2:25) to be experienced uniquely by husband and wife: “the concupiscence of the flesh . . . distorts the truth of the ‘language of the body’ ” (quoted by West in Theology of the Body Explained, p 446). The word “pornography” was derived from the Greek, pornea, which is also the root of the English word “fornication.” One particularly pertinent text can be found in Ephesians 5:1-5 (New King James Version): Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ also has love us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. But fornication and all uncleaness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints: neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the
Jesus Christ “is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15, NAB); yet, embodied in flesh, God in Christ did not despise the body: “though he was in the form of God, . . . he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:6-7, NAB). He then lived just as humans must live, suffering the limitations of the body yet still able to please God. Those who follow Him are called to do likewise: “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do” (John 12:15, NAB). Having such a graphic role model, Christians must become “imitators of God” by living their lives as Christ did, as “an offering and a sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2, NKJV). Rather than walking in lust, as do those who “are alienated from God” (Ephesians 4:17-20, NAB), Christians are to “walk in love, as Christ also has loved us” (Ephesians 5:2, NAB).
What pornography shows is not merely too much or too little of people; pornography deceitfully shows an image of the human body that is indubitably false. It is this false showing that is wrong, making pornography have no place in the theater of Christianity: “we have become a spectacle [Greek theatron] to the world . . .” (1 Corinthians 4:9, New American Bible). The Christian show must not be pornographic, but philographic, or rather agapographic, showing in how we live with one another, not the lust of man or woman, but the love of God in Christ. Others, seeing our witness, can then come to know God’s love in which we share through Jesus Christ, because it shows: “For in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily” (Colossians 2:9-10, NAB, italics mine).
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