JPI 943
The Spousal Relation and the Nurturing Body: Theological/historical Perspectives
Arguing from Angelo Scola’s proposition that the nuptial mystery of love, sexual difference, and procreation is the analogia princeps of the divine mysteries, this course examines how distortions historically in living out human sexuality have impacted doctrine, ecclesiology/mariology, faith and worship, and vice versa. Our sexuality includes our masculine and feminine nature as bodily persons: both the unitive and procreative dimensions of sexual intercourse and, for women, maternal nursing. The course examines how, beginning in the late Middle Ages, these distortions have led logically to modern contraception and its attendant dualism. There will be two methodological approaches: (1) Scola’s nuptial mystery will be the overarching context. (2) Key figures and their thought in each period from Bernard of Clairvaux, women mystics and philosophers, Descartes and Calvin to Von Balthasar and John Paul II will be singled out as representative of the age’s distortion or restoration of the nuptial mystery. The course will stress particularly the interplay between the spousal relation and the nurturing body.
