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What is Theology of the Body? Part 1

What is Theology of the Body? Part 1 (with Katrina Zeno)

Source: Catholic Answers via catholic.com
Reprinted with permission

Katrina Zeno is a renowned speaker on the theology of the body and the author of Discovering the Feminine Genius: Every Woman’s Journey.

In this episode, Trent sits down with Katrina Zeno, coordinator of the John Paul II Resource Center, to discuss Pope St. John Paul II’s teaching on men, women, and the goodness of our God-given sexuality.

Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Trent: Well, I got some good news and some bad news, not really bad news. Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Well, the good news is that the audio for my conference presentation will be available relatively soon. The bad news is I wanted it to available for you guys this week. I wanted to air it as a two-part episode this week here on the Council of Trent because we just had our annual Catholic Answers conference. The theme changes every year. This year it was The Early Church was the Catholic Church. And I gave a talk on how Protestant apologists twists, distort, or ignore evidence among the fathers that provides proof for the historicity and the apostolic foundation of the Catholic faith. So I showed, “Hey, here’s what this Protestant apologist says. Here’s where they overlook the data, or they frankly sometimes take the church fathers completely out of context to make them say the opposite of what they actually meant.”

So that was the talk I gave at this year’s conference. I wanted available this week. That’s not possible. It will be available. The good news is it will be available for subscribers to trenthornpodcast.com. So if you are a subscriber at any level, once that audio is available, I’ll hopefully get it done, and it’ll get back to me from the studio next week. That’ll be available to you as part of our bonus content. So do wait for that. And if you want access to that and other great bonus content like our catechism study series, church history study series to get our new Trent tracks, in fact, I’m doing a new Trent tracks right now, I’m working on, it’s called Hell Be Damned. Hell, Be Damned, about defending the existence of hell and the church’s traditional teaching about it. You’re not going to want to miss that. And those, of course, are free to our subscribers at trenthornpodcast.com. So definitely go there, check it out.

And when you support us at trenthornpodcast.com, that keeps the podcast going. So I don’t have it available for general listening this week. So my talk at the conference will be available to premium subscribers. And then eventually, people will be able to purchase it at shop.catholic.com. Well, what I do have for you this week, I wanted to share an interview that I did with Katrina Zeno of the John Paul II Resource Center. She’s the author of Theology of the Body for Everyone. We did a great interview on Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, something everyone should understand and apply to their daily lives. So I hope that you benefit a lot from this interview.

Next week, I’m going to be interviewing Timothy Gordon. Timothy Gordon is the cohost with Taylor Marshall from the TnT show. We’re going to talk about the death penalty about feminism. We have some pretty big disagreements on these issues. But Tim and I were talking by email saying that we’ll show people how to disagree like gentlemen. So I’m really looking forward to that. So that will available probably in about two to three weeks. We’re going to record next week. Next week, they’ll have brand new episodes. I’m going to be talking about a hopeful universalism. I’ve gotten a lot of questions about Bishop Barron’s teachings in relation to the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Dare we hope that all people be saved. Can we reasonably hope that God will save every single human person? I’m going to talk about that next week along with a debrief of my recent dialogue with John Loftus.

So lots of great stuff coming to you here from the podcast. And once again, I want to give my big thanks and support to everyone who’s listening, who’s supporting, who’s praying for me, and who is financially supporting the podcasts at trendhornpodcast.com. But even if you’re not doing that, take a moment, even hit pause on your player right now, say a little prayer for us here at Catholic Answers for the podcast that we can continue to build up people’s faith to edify them and to equip and engage them not just to rebut arguments against the Catholic faith, but to share the love of Jesus Christ and the truth about who he is with a world that desperately needs it. And to help you do that is my interview that I just had with Katrina Zeno. I hope you enjoy it. Part one is in this episode. Stay tuned. I will release part two right after it and here you go.

Trent: Hello and welcome. My name is Trent Horn. I am a staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers. And today, we’re speaking with Katrina Zeno, who is the coordinator of the John Paul II Resource Center for Theology of the Body and Culture right here in the Diocese of Phoenix. So, Katrina, welcome on board.

Katrina: Thank you, Trent. It’s great to have you here and it’s great to be with you.

Trent: All right. Well, first, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became involved with the current work that you do with Theology of the Body?

Katrina: Wow, that’s a great question. My current involvement where my involvement in Theology of the Body actually started in the mid 1990s, I’m not going to give you the whole story because it’d take a long time. But I think it’s important just to know that I’ve been blessed to be speaking and writing on Theology of the Body for over 17 years. And so I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten in on the ground floor in the sense of before everybody knew what it was. And as a result of that, what it means is that I was introduced to Theology of the Body directly by reading the texts of Theology of the Body, not by reading another book or hearing another talk, but by actually encountering the words of now St. John Paul II himself. And like many people, when I first picked it up, and in those days it was published as four little small books, so I picked up the first little book. And even though I had a theology degree from Franciscan University of Steubenville, I picked it up and I started reading it, and I still remember reading the same paragraph three times. And it made no sense. So this was in about 1993 or ’94. And then I was introduced to John Paul II’s apostolic letter, On the Dignity and Vocation of Women. And I started reading that and rewrite it and rewrite it. And what I realized is it’s a beautifully synthesize version of Theology of the Body. So I always tell people, “Don’t start with Theology of the Body.” That’s like starting with calculus. It’s really difficult. Start with those other things that are in much more manageable bites. And On the Dignity and Vocation of Women presents many of the same concepts, but in a smaller package, much more manageable. And so I became familiar with his vocabulary and his concepts by reading that. And then that allowed me to go back to Theology of the Body and I started rereading. I was like, “Oh, now, I get it,” because I understood the vocabulary, because that’s what’s so difficult about Theology of the Body is it’s all this new way of speaking about the human person that didn’t exist in the same manner before John Paul II started creating this new language.

Trent: Right, and so I think it’s important to go back to that idea of vocabulary because many people have heard this term from popular speakers. Here it’s associated with chastity and just know it’s associated with St. John Paul II. And some of you will talk about it as if it were just one book or one concept. And I think it’s interesting you talked about how at one time for you it was really spread out over four books. So what exactly does Theology of the Body, that term, what does it refer to? When we are talking about this term, what does it mean? What are we talking about here?

Katrina: Well, I think like many terms, it has multiple meanings. And that’s partly what makes it difficult is that Theology of the Body refers to a collection of 133 Wednesday audiences that Pope John Paul II gave in Rome from September 1979 to November 1984. So we’re talking about it as a literary work, it refers to a rather thick book. And that can be very off putting for people simply by the size. For most people listening to this, think of the size of your Bible. That’s basically what the size of Theology of the Body is. So to just kind of think of you’re going to pick that up and read it on a Sunday afternoon is rather unrealistic. So in terms of a literary work, that’s what it refers to as 133 Wednesday audiences, which are short talks that John Paul II gave, but they’re packed, they’re dense.

Trent: And now, these are normally the Pope does give an audience on Wednesdays as part of a longstanding tradition. So this is just part of normally what the Pope would give. And so he decided to make this a very particular theme.

Katrina: Well, even beyond that, he decided to start using the Wednesday audiences for catechesis. That hadn’t really been the traditional usage of them. In the past, the Wednesday audiences had been used to greet the pilgrims who were in St. Peter Square often to reflect upon the theme of the day or whatever the liturgical year might be. And so John Paul II really changed because he was Pope for so long from 1978 to 2005. He really changed the way the Wednesday audiences were perceived and experienced by the faithful in general. So they became a means for the universal pastor, the shepherd of the universal church to shepherd his flock by developing various themes. And so this was actually the first theme that he began developing in a systematic way in his Wednesday audiences as I said in September 1979, so almost a year from the time that he was elected because he was elected in October 1978. So that’s one element when people say Theology of the Body II, it’s this collection. But John Paul II himself uses the word Theology of the Body in this collection. And actually, we should recognize that the formal title of the book is Man and Woman He Created Them. But John Paul II throughout the Wednesday audiences, refers to what he’s doing as developing a Theology of the Body or in the Theology of the Body. And actually, I think he uses the term over 100 times. So it’s really a valid term to use to refer to this body of work rather than… most people don’t call it, well, Man and Woman He Created. Have you read Man and Woman He Created Them? That’s not what people say.

Trent: Right, when I’ve told people to read Theology of the Body, I’ll give the full title and they’ll go to the bookstore and say, “Ah, I couldn’t find it.” Yeah, I thought the full title was, yeah, Man and Woman He created Them, A Theology of the Body or…

Katrina: Actually, it’s just Man and Woman He Created Them. And because it’s been generally known as a Theology of the Body, daughters of St. Paul when they published this current version, put that as a subtitle in order to clarify that this is what we all know as Theology of the Body.

Trent: Sure. And going back to that, I think this is so helpful to help people understand what Theology of the Body is about. I think a lot of people believe that it’s solely just about human sexuality. I know for example, a lot of people will ask me, “Trent, can you come give a talk on Theology of the Body?” And what they mean is can you just give a chastity talk or give a talk about why young people should believe in the church’s teachings on sexuality. And usually, I have to correct them and say, “Well, I’ll give a chastity talk. I’ll give a talk on sexuality, but you don’t really want me to talk about Man and Woman He Created Them.” So tell us, Theology of the Body is certainly does relate to our sexuality, but it covers so much more, doesn’t it? Why don’t you help us understand that a little bit?

Katrina: Again, Trent, it depends what one means by one’s terms. I mean, you begin to realize very rapidly it is a matter of language and how we understand language and when we use a term what we mean. So when we say human sexuality, the first thing to do is ask ourselves what do we mean by that? And when the church uses it, so, for instance, there’s a profound document entitled The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality by the Pontifical Council on the Family. And so I’m drawing from that when I think of what the church means when she says human sexuality. And so when the church uses the word human sexuality, she means who are we as male and female made in the image and likeness of a Trinitarian God. So it is true in a sense to say that Theology of the Body is about human sexuality, but that’s different than saying Theology of the Body is principally about chastity, or that it’s principally about sexual activity. Because the truth is, is what it’s really about is how is it in our embodied state as male or female? We image a Trinitarian God.

Trent: So I think this is really important that when… I think you’re right. When people say, “Oh, Theology of the Body is about sexuality,” a lot of times people think that our sexuality is really about what we do or what behaviors we engage in. I think when people bring me in to give talks for young people especially, it seems that the thing that they’re most concerned about is getting the young people to behave a certain way. But I think you and I could agree that you’re going to behave a certain way based on who you think you are, based on what you are, yourself concept. And so how does Theology of the Body help us understand who we are, who we are as ourselves in relation to God, which inevitably flows into what we do?

Katrina: Exactly. So first of all, you’ve articulated a really important and profound principle, which is that we have to understand first who we are before we can know how we should act. So in other words, I have to understand who I am in my being before I understand what my moral action should be. And very often as a church, we flip it. We talk first about what our moral action or behavior should be, and sometimes we forget to talk about the fact that that behavior flows from who we are. And so I like to say that Theology of the Body answers the big three, meaning the big three questions. And those big three questions for all of us, all of us is who am I? Why was I created? And how should I act? And notice that in that sequence, how should I act comes last. Now, life is not that neat and tidy. Sometimes we do need to ask first, how should I act? And that does sometimes come first. But if we only remain at that level, we remain at the level essentially of legalism. This is what Jesus accused the Pharisees of, is that they were whitewashed tombs. So it was only the exterior actions that they were concerned about and not concerned about the heart. And that’s when John Paul II talks about the heart and when Christ talks about the heart, he’s talking about the interior part of us. So in other words, who do we understand ourselves to be? So we have to know who we are, why was I created, and then how should I act? But the challenge with that is answering that first question, who am I? We can’t just answer it on our own as if we’re the only reference, or as if science is the only reference that we’re just biology. So I have something I call the chastity cascade. If I could explain it for a moment, may I do that?

Trent: I Would be happy to hear that. So give us the chastity cascade. It sounds kind of like a waterfall you might see going on a hike at Yosemite, the cascade or something. So, yeah, tell us a bit about the chastity cascade.

Katrina: That’s exactly the image I am drawing on. So if you think of a waterfall, how it cascades down, but there’s a top cascade that then leads into the next that flows into the next. So the chastity cascade, because ultimately, we want to know how should I act? But it begins with who is God? So the beginning of the chastity cascade is we have to ask who God is. Because based on who God is, then that’s how we answer who am I? And then based on who am I, that’s how we answer how should I act? And so Theology of the Body, as I mentioned before, is really a profound reflection on how it is that we’re made in the image and likeness of a Trinitarian God as male and female. So in Theology of the Body, John Paul II is starting with that fundamental question of who is God? And only when we know who God is, here’s the way I like to say it, is who you understand God to be determines everything you understand the human person to be. So, for instance, I like to say when I speak, “Okay, so close your eyes and picture in your mind God.” I’ll say that to the audience. And I bet you can imagine what’s the most common picture that pops in people’s minds.

Trent: I would imagine it’s probably an old man with a long beard kind of on a cloud or something like that.

Katrina: It’s exactly right. The old man with a long, white beard somewhere up in the sky somewhere. And I always say, I don’t know about you, but as a woman made in the image and likeness of God, it doesn’t thrill me to think I made in the image and likeness of an old man with a long, white beard. It doesn’t help me understand who I am. So it really underscores the fact that we have to really spend time in examining in our own hearts, in our own lives, in our own thoughts, in our own experience what are the conclusions we’ve come to as to who God is? What John Paul II is doing in Theology of the Body is putting the emphasis on a Trinitarian God. So we think, again, sometimes we kind of separate. We think of God, the Father, kind of as the old man with the beard, maybe not so long and not so white, but the old man. And then we think of Jesus Christ is this younger man. And we can imagine him because we have all these artistic images.

Trent: He’s a six foot tall, dreamy, Jewish carpenter basically.

Katrina: Exactly. It’s exactly right. And then the Holy Spirit, okay, we image him as a dove, as a bird, which we won’t go into that one. But somehow we have to image it’s idea that he comes and he goes like the wind. You can’t see the wind. So somehow we have to have some image that indicates.

Trent: Or maybe like a burning fire or something.

Katrina: Burning fire is great. So we have these three images and sometimes we don’t connect them as an actual Trinitarian God. So in the tradition, we speak of God as a triune God or as a tripersonal God. Those are not really terms familiar to us. But they’re trying to underscore what John Paul II really brings out in Theology of the Body, which is that God is a communion of persons. And so then we have to ask ourselves, what does that mean that God is a communion of persons? I think that there’s some words that are really, really key in order to understand who God is. Perfection, the perfection of love is as a communion of persons. And one way of saying it very simply is that God is total life-giving, self-giving, love-giving love. So God is a total life-giving, self-giving love. That’s kind of it in a nutshell. I preferred a little bit longer definition. The difficulty now is we have to talk in tweets as well as in longer sentences. So the tweet of who God is has got his total self-giving love. That would be the tweet. But maybe if I was writing a Facebook description of God, I would say, who is God is a Trinity. Trinity means the Father pours himself out in a total gift of love to the Son. The Son pours himself out in a total gift of love to the Father, and the Holy Spirit burst forth as the fruit of their total self-giving love. Now, you can see that’s a little longer than a tweet.

Trent: But we can’t live our lives with just tweets. We have to get into these deeper concepts. Just a little digression, but I want to stay on this. I think this is so valuable to help women especially come to understand God. I think it was a good point you brought up how and a lot of us think of God. We think of these male anthropomorphic terms because God is represented as a male personage in Revelation. But sometimes you’ll take that too far. The catechism is clear that God is neither male nor female, but that’s how he’s revealed himself to us. So I think for a lot of women, you’re right to come to know God, oh, well, if he’s this man, the counter swing to that are these radicals who talk about God as her or she. But really, when you say that God is this self-giving love, I think for a lot of, especially men, when you ask a man, “Well, who’s God?” As a man, I might say, “Well God is the maximally perfect being. He’s the all-powerful center of reality.” Men I think like to think of God in terms of his power or his necessity. But when you look at God in terms of his love, do you see that as a way to help women better understand God and their relationship to him? What do you think of that?

Katrina: I’m going to go for the both hands. I’m going to say that it helps actually both women and men understand more profoundly who God is, because as I listen to the words that you say that a man would think or describe of God are very action words. And really, we still even have to get beyond action to who God is in his being. And so what you’re saying is that for women, if we talk about being, that helps a woman because she can connect with this idea of total self-giving love, because in and of itself, we haven’t yet said that that total self-giving love is gendered is masculine or feminine. We understand that total self-giving love exists as a reality. And that reality has a name, it’s called Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It’s called Trinitarian Love. And so for me, you’ve pointed out something critical, which is that why our understanding of who God is is so critical to understanding who we are because it helps us first understand what it means to be a human person. So to be a person, because we talk about God as being tripersonal or as three persons in the Trinity, so to be person means to be in a relationship of self-giving love. And the perfection of love is the perfection of total self-giving that is not self-contained but is fruitful, which is why this description I use of the Trinity is very carefully crafted because the last part is that the Holy Spirit burst forth, or in the tradition, we usually just say the Holy Spirit is the fruit of love between the father and son. So it’s very, very important to realize that God is not just a duality. Because if God was just father and son, that would imply that perfect love is self-contained. It doesn’t transcend itself or move out beyond itself. And the truth of a Trinity is that it’s not adequate for love to remain essentially trapped as a couple, we could say, or as just a partnership. But that love by its very nature is fruitful. Love by its very nature always desires more, always desires to go beyond itself. So what we can see in that then is that the human person as male and female, okay, so this is a little bit abstract, but let’s try to make it concrete because it’s really important that the human person as male female is the concrete image of the Trinity. In other words, we’ll never see the Trinity in this created order directly. We can’t see the Trinity directly. But God wants to reveal himself as Trinity, not just as one. It’s true God’s one. The Jews knew that. He revealed himself as a monotheistic God. Every Sunday, we say I believe in one God, but then we go on to describe the three persons of the Trinity. So God wanted to reveal himself, his inner being, his inner dynamism of this total self-giving Trinitarian Love. In order to do that in the created order, he made male and female because we see that the male by himself is not adequate. This is why Adam was alone. So the whole first part of Theology of the Body, Theology of the Body has five panels to it, five sections, and some of those panels are divided in half. But the very first panel is on John Paul II’s, reflections on Genesis. And a lot of it has to do with why Adam experienced himself as alone in Genesis 2. And the truth is, is because there was no one he could be in relationship with. There was no one he could give a total gift of self too that was of his same nature. And so the creation of Eve…

Trent: So he couldn’t be like Tarzan and hang out with his pet monkey and go around. You could have some domestication and pets can provide companionship, but it’s not enough.

Katrina: You are hysterical, Trent. That’s absolutely right that the animals, they provide companionship, but they can never provide total self-giving love. And I think that’s an important distinction because people do love their pet.

Trent: It’s hard. I hear some pet lovers say, “Oh, I love pets. They’re so much better than people.” And I would say, “Well, they’re better than bad people. They’re better than people you may have been hurt by, but they’re not better than,” Because people are the only being that can transcend instinct to make those sacrificial gifts of self, I would imagine.

Katrina: Well, I think what people experience with their pets, and particularly with dogs, is an unconditional loyalty. And again, let’s look at that and say, “Wow, what’s good that’s there that really calls to the human heart?” And what calls to the human heart is that we desire this unfailing fidelity. And unfortunately, because people, human persons have free will, they can choose not to be faithful. They can choose not to love us conditionally, whereas with pets, and again, particularly with dogs, we experience this unconditional acceptance. And we all desire that. And so what that does for me is it tells me, “Okay, let’s ask what is it that the human heart yearns for.” And the human heart yearns to be loved. But what does that mean? I think one way we could describe it is that the human heart yearns to be fully received and to know that I’m fully received. This is the beauty of the Trinity, is that the son knows that he has been fully received. The son is fully received by the father, and the father’s fully received by the sun. And they know that they’re fully received, why? Because there’s a fruitfulness between them, the Holy Spirit. And so when we look at our relationship with our pets, it can actually lead us, again, to a deeper understanding of who am I in the sense that I am made for a reciprocal love in which I am fully received and I know that I’m fully received. So the relationship between man and woman between male and female is a profound concrete experience of that. But also, a concrete image in terms of just the physical structure of the male and the female body. It’s made for one to receive the other and for both of them… it’s made for a reciprocal gift of self, even physiologically. And the beauty is, is that they know that they’ve been received by the other. And the height of that expression of knowing they’ve been fully received is a child. And so we see in the very relationship between a husband and wife and their total gift of self to each other because if I’m not giving my fertility, I’m not making a total gift of self. So that includes the gift of my fertility. So in giving that total gift of self to each other, knowing that they’ve been received, God has made it possible to even visibly see that knowledge in a child. And so that in some way, we can’t say it exactly replicates the Trinity. In some way, images it.

Trent: Right, because when we have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, for example, because they’re all divine persons, they’d all be eternal, And so their love has existed for eternity. And so the Holy Spirit has burst forth or proceeds, as we say in the creed, from both for all eternity, whereas the man and woman obviously would come together and exist before the child does. So you’re right. I guess, yeah, there’s not…

Katrina: It’s not a sequence because we live in time…

Trent: We live in time.

Katrina: … time is sequential. So, for instance, you have to wait till I finish talking to talk.

Trent: If I was a good host.

Katrina: If you were a good host? Right, and so we understand. Again, for people who are listening, after they finish listening to this CD, they’ll go on and do something else. So we can only live sequentially. And as we know, the Trinity lives in eternity. And it used to be that I would say the Trinity lives outside of time. I had a very profound professor at the John Paul II Institute in Washington DC for a mini course, Father José Granados. And he said that, “Eternity is not outside of time, eternity is the fullness of time.” It’s really a beautiful, beautiful description. And then he would ask, “So what does time exist for?” And his answer is time exists for love. So, again, who is God? God is total self-giving, life-giving love. And that’s from all eternity always. It just is. Therefore, who am I created in time? I am also created in time for a total life-giving, self-giving love through a gift of self. But I can’t live that total life-giving, self-giving gift of love all the time with the same intensity. So I like to say we live intermittently, or like when you’re on a cell phone and it cuts in and out, that’s kind of our experience of our total self-giving. We can’t leave it with the same intensity. This is the promise of eternity. The promise of eternity is not so much that I’m going to leave everything in this life and my experience behind, it’s that it’s all going to be brought to its fullness in its fulfillment, which is why it’s so important. And this is what Theology of the Body teaches us at ground level. It’s so important to realize that we are created as a gift to be a gift. And so what Theology of the Body teaches us is how important it is that we answer the question, who am I? I am a gift. What am I made for? To make a gift. How should I make that gift is what morality and what chastity teach us. How do I make the gift of self as a woman made in the image and likeness of a Trinitarian God so that my gift of self always respects my dignity and the dignity of others, that it’s moving toward a total gift of self, that is always life-giving and love-giving?

Trent: So I think this is good. I wanted to transition these three questions. We understand who we are, that we are gifts of self were created, and then yeah, so that flows naturally into why was I created? Because I think a lot of people to understand God as this perfect love and essentially in the Trinity, because I think many people, if they don’t understand God as a Trinity, might think of him as this solitary being, and then before creation, he’s just this infinite loneliness. He’s just around and he made us his human pets to keep him company, which is completely not true at all. Rather, God created us not out of any need of his own, but just because of this super abundance of his love.

Katrina: Well, it’s his nature. Actually, again, that’s why the Holy Spirit is so important because the Holy Spirit indicates that who God is in his being, we could say again, to use a human image is overflowing love. And so it’s of his very nature to not self-contain his life and his love. We say God is love and we say God is life. And so your point is really important that creation is an expression of his love. But we always have to remember it’s an expression of his love that expresses something that is created, whereas God is uncreated. And so it’s always a reflection. If I look at myself in a mirror, I’m seeing myself, but it’s not identical to me. It’s a reflection of me. And so I think it’s helpful to think of creation in the same way, that creation is a reflection of God, but that doesn’t mean it’s identical to God. So, for instance, I cannot say I am divine, does not work. But I can say that I am a reflection that my body reveals God. And that’s what Theology of the Body, again, in a tweet says. Theology is the study of God, but we can’t study God directly. We can only study guide by how he reveals himself through the created order because that’s what we can see and hear and taste and feel and smell, and body means the human body. So, again, back to what is Theology of the Body means. So we’ve seen two definitions so far that it’s a collection of 133 Wednesday audiences, that it is John Paul II’s term in which he reflects on what it means that we’re made in the image and likeness of a Trinitarian God. And then the very, very shorthand definition is the body reveals God. So Theology of the Body means how does my body, again, as masculine or feminine reveal or reflect God without being God in its very nature?

Trent: I liked that analogy with the mirror. It’s the idea or a photograph to show someone. If I have a photograph of my wife, I hold up, someone say, “Oh, this is my wife.” They’d say, “Oh, it must get pretty lonely at night. She can’t talk back to you.” Saying, “Well, obviously this picture is not her, but it does its best to represent to you who she is.” And thank you so much for listening to part one of my interview with Katrina Zeno on what is Theology of the Body. Be sure to stay tuned. Coming up next is part two here on the Council of Trent Podcast. You guys have been great, and I hope you have a very blessed day.

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