Knowledge-Generation Cycle and Perspective of Death

by Pope John Paul II from this General Audience on 26 March 1980. Read text via EWTN.

Transcription:

And with these words Pope John Paul II concludes his 22nd catechesis Man and Woman He Created Them a Theology of the Body. There are many salient points that we should consider having heard this 22nd catechesis of our Holy Father.
Again he reminds us of Genesis, the conjugal union defined as “knowledge.” This is part of number 6 of chapter 1 part 1, “The Words of Christ” “Christ Appeals to the Beginning”, “Knowledge and Possession.” Conjugal union is defined as knowledge carrying on this aspect, “Adam knew his wife and she conceived.” The conjugal union the union of husband and wife, to make love, the marital nuptial embrace. Conjgalis – means ‘with the yoke.’ This is part of the teaching of Sacred Scripture.
The Holy Father Pope John Paul II has identified for us that there is in the Sacred Scripture a biblical cycle of knowledge generation. He has this phrase ‘knowledge-generation’ hyphenated to show that it is not just the generative act and not just the unitive act but both together even without saying as much this is what is behind it. So it reminds us back in 1968 Pope Paul VI, the venerable servant of God, he wrote Humane Vitae with assistance from his friend from Krakow, Karol Wojtyla, who became his successor twice removed as the Bishop of Rome.
The Sacred Scripture, the Bible, has a cycle knowledge-generation. This is important enough for Pope John Paul II to include in his catechesis on the Theology of the Body and as a part of the biblical cycle of the knowledge-generation, hybrid as it were.
There is a new being brought into existence, a new being similar to the parents reaching all the way back to “the beginning.” This new being is conceived, is generated. The new being begins to exist in conception at the moment of conception. A DNA that is distinct from the father, which is distinct from the mother. A third DNA. A third being. A third person. Not only is this new being similar, this new being is similar themselves via biblical knowledge. God made us and made us to his own image. God is all knowing. God who is love, God who has given a share, a participation, in creation, called procreation. So they cooperate with God in bringing a new being into existence similar to themselves. This is the biblical knowledge generation cycle. And our Holy Father reminds us that the whole sequence of human conceptions and generations from the beginning, from the very mystery of creation, there is this cycle, there is this sequence. When was I conceived? When was I born? When were my parents conceived? When were they born? And my grandparents and we go back to the beginning. The whole sequence of human conceptions and generations from the beginning, from the very mystery of creation.
So often we are caught up in only the here and now. The Holy Father is asking us to have a wider scope, to have a broader visions, and he does this based on the sacred text. The text of Holy Scripture found in the book of Genesis.
The Holy Father also asks us to expand our way of thinking by invoking a biblical and philosophical, specifically Platonic, vision. Pope John Paul II cites Plato in regards to eros. Eros has been reduced, truncated, so as to only refer to sexual matters. It may be good to mention here that Pope Benedict XVI, who has called Pope John Paul II his “beloved predecessor”, in his first encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est – God is Love, likewise addressed: eros, agape, and philia. Three different Greek words for love reminding us that God is love. When Pope John Paul II here invokes eros he reminds us that we have a thirst for a transcendental beauty; a beauty that is beyond us. Here we can well remember Saint Augustine of Hippo, Bishop and Doctor of the Church, who in the Confessions would write “Late have I loved you ever ancient ever new, late have I loved you.” Love and beauty are not unrelated for we love what is beautiful and our beloved God who is all good, all knowing, all beautiful, and all true has made us for Himself and in His own image.
Pope John Paul II makes it clear, however, that the biblical use of “knowledge” is not the Platonic eros and is not the possessive taking to oneself, which is compounded by original sin but the biblical knowledge is so linked to the reciprocal disinterested gift of self. God who gives Himself, Adam who gives himself to his wife Eve, Eve who gives herself to her husband, and in their reciprocal disinterested gift of self God gives new life, a new being, similar to themselves comes into existence.
And our Holy Father reminds us of the experience of all these things over the centuries. This is that biblical cycle of knowledge-generation again. And the Holy Father reminds us likewise of the “generative meaning of the body.” Meaning is so important to the Holy Father, that we can know things and know the meanings of things. We can know actions and their meanings. You pat someone on the back, you shake hands; signs of friendship. You slap someone on the face, you smack them in the nose; it has a different meaning and a different connotation.
The Holy Father speaks to us of masculinity and femininity which in a hidden way reveal a meaning, not only the spousal meaning of the body but fatherhood and motherhood. This is the Theology of the Body. Pope John Paul II insists that the Theology of the Body unpacks these ancient words, these revealed words, these sublime truths found in Sacred Scripture in the book of Genesis. And if we fail to look there we truncate our own understanding. We truncate our understanding of how God has made us.
Pope John Paul II in this 22nd catechesis on the Theology of the Body Man and Woman He Created Them speaks to us about three consciousness: consciousness of the meaning of the body – the body has meaning; consciousness of the generative meaning of the body, that one great aspect of the human body is the ability to procreate, to bring a new being into existence; and the third consciousness is death.

Death is one of the consequences of Original Sin and he mentions three of the four: suffering, death, ignorance, and the tendency to do evil. The tendency to do evil, concupiscence, is alluded to as are suffering and death.
One thing the Holy Father mentions in relation to the knowledge generative cycle found in Sacred Scripture and represented by him in his Theology of the Body is how it is so persistent in human history. In point of fact there would be no human history without its persistence. Adam knew his wife and she conceived. The conjugal union throughout the ages overcoming death with the new life brought into being, generation after generation. This shows the power of the knowledge generation cycle.
Pope John Paul II identifies five different things which the knowledge generations cycle overcomes. The knowledge generation cycle allows us to participate in God’s vision despite experiences of life. Not all of the experiences we have during life are great. There are rotten things that happen but in spite of them new hope and new life given, in spite of sufferings which come our way, in spite of the sufferings which we witness, the suffering which we know about if we study history. The knowledge generation cycle overcomes this, even the sufferings of child birth. The Holy Father cites the passage from Genesis where the pangs of birth are increased as part of the punishment of Original Sin. In spite of sufferings, in spite of the experience of life, the power of the knowledge generation cycle allows us to participate in God’s vision. In spite of disappointments how often we set our hopes, our sights, our expectations, and they are dashed, but in spite of that life goes on. New life begins. In spite of sinfulness, my own sinfulness, that of my neighbors, that which I have inherited from my first parents, in spite of sinfulness, the knowledge generation cycle allows me, allows you, allows us, to participate in God’s very vision. God’s vision is for our good and for our welfare, for our salvation, ultimately redemption. And even the inevitable prospect of death, in spite of that, death comes to us all, but we hope in the resurrection and life everlasting. That is part of the Theology of the Body for Christ died in His body, but on the third day He rose again glorious and triumphant and our faith is in Him who overcame the Cross, sin, death, the grave. His Cross is the true tree of knowledge. His Cross is the tree of good and evil. His Cross is the true tree of life and we receive knowingly the fruit of the tree of life which is the cross. Which brings to birth in us anew wherein we receive, building on the baptism, new life in Christ, adopted sons and daughters of God most high, brothers and sisters to Christ himself. In these early chapters of Genesis Pope John Paul II is showing us the whole divine economy. The plan of salvation. How good for us to hear it, to look at it anew. How good for us to believe it. How good for us to put it into practice in our lives. To have this supernatural vision not to be myopic, not to be other Mr. McGoos, but to have that 20/20 assisted by God’s revelation and by the sure and certain teaching of Mother Church; the magisterium.

So we see in this 22nd catechesis, this 22nd installment of the Theology of the Body Man and Woman He Created Them, importance of the affirmation of the truth of the book of Genesis. The pope is not fixating on a six, twenty-four hour period of creation and the seventh twenty-four hour period is the day of rest. What he is affirming is the truth of creation, the truth of the human being, male and female, made to the image of God, to the glory of God. What the Holy Father is affirming here as he affirms the truth of Genesis is also the truth of our Redemption. The Fall and the Redemption; two sides of the same coin. Render unto Caesar but render unto God what is God’s. And we all belong to Him in whose image we are made, born and unborn, male and female. God has seen everything he created and indeed it was good. And it is good. And by God’s grace we will be good for all eternity.
Pope John Paul II chose himself, in this 22nd installment of the catechesis Theology of the Body Male and Female He Created Them, not to be a gnostic. Pope John Paul II is not a Manichaean. So many have accused the Church of puritanism or discounting of the importance of the human body or the nuptial embrace, the marital embrace, to make love between husband and wife, but the Holy Father is anything but a gnostic. They would decry the body. They would discount the body. Like the Manichaean later but the Holy Father knows the body is apart of God’s good creation and that our right use of the body. The way we express our love for each other within holy marriage and even within the Church as brothers and sisters in Christ is so important and is a part of God’s plan for us.
I think that is what has motivated our Holy Father Pope John Paul II to prepare these 133 catechesis on Man and Woman He Created Them a Theology of the Body. In our next program we will conclude the 1st chapter of the 1st part of Man and Woman He Created Them a Theology of the Body. We have seen: the “Words of Christ,” Christ who appealed to the beginning and what is meant by the beginning; how there are two stories of creation in the book of Genesis; how man recognized that he was unlike all the other creatures: the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of the land, and he recognized in his wife another self. We have seen not only the original solitude of the creation but the original unity of the two and how before the Fall the man was naked without shame. And how it was through sin that shame entered the world. The Holy Father has taught us about the “dimension of the gift” and the “spousal meaning of the body”; how God has given us not only our being but the power to procreate. The Holy Father has taught us about the mystery of original innocence. So often we have fixated on Original Sin and it is something very important to treat but even before the Fall there was in the good creation of God the original innocence, in Heaven and Earth. How there was peace between God and us. And how we forfeited it by our sin in our first parents.
Now we live after the Resurrection and Ascension of the Lord, after His saving Passion. Christ, who is the new Adam, Mother Church His bride, in whom we are born again by grace and faith, in Baptism and in the other sacraments. This is how we have come to know God who has begotten us in those regenerative waters, Who has made us His own, Who has revealed Himself to us who are likewise the fruit of the knowledge of our own parents. So next time you are at a wedding or next time your anniversary comes around remember these things because it is all about Holy Marriage. It is all about the nuptial union, husband and wife, this man and this woman forever.
In our next presentation we will conclude with the Holy Father’s integral vision of this first chapter and then we will begin our directed reading of chapter 2 of Man and Woman He Created Them a Theology of the Body.