Theology of the Body by John Paul II WT-SSTA-TJP

This lecture introduces students to Karol Wojtyła’s / John Paul II Theology of the Body as a distinctive vision of the human person, love, embodiment, sexuality, and vocation. Drawing on Wojtyła’s philosophical writings and the catecheses delivered after his election as Pope John Paul II, the course explores the human body not simply as a biological reality, but as a dimension of the person through which freedom, relationship, self-gift, and the call to communion become visible.
At the heart of the course lies a fundamental question: what does it mean to be a human person who exists through and as a body? Wojtyła’s response will be examined in conversation with biblical anthropology, Christian theology, phenomenology, personalism, and contemporary questions concerning sexuality, identity, marriage, desire, and human dignity, also versus the ideas of transhumanism / posthumanism.

Particular attention will be given to Wojtyła’s concepts of the person, the “spousal meaning of the body,” original solitude, original unity, original nakedness, concupiscence, purity of heart, self-gift, and the communion of persons. Students will consider how these concepts form an integrated anthropology in which the body has theological significance: the visible human body can express the invisible reality of the person and the person’s vocation to love.
Rather than approaching Theology of the Body only as a set of moral teachings concerning sexuality, the lecture will invite to investigate its deeper anthropological claim: that the human person discovers himself or herself through sincere self-gift, and that embodied human love can become a sign pointing beyond itself toward divine communion.