Theology in the Raw - Sex, Procreation, and How Our Bodies Tell God's Story: Dr. Christopher West

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Dr. Christopher West serves as President of the Theology of the Body Institute near Philadelphia and as Professor of Theological Anthropology in its jointly sponsored master’s program with Pontifex University. Christopher is one of the world’s most recognized teachers of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. He’s written many books including Our Bodies Tell God’s Story: Discovering the Divine Plan for Love, Sex, and Gender. To recieve 20% off of Christopher's book "Our Bodies Tell God's Story," go to https://shop.corproject.com/collections/books/products/our-bodies-tell-gods-story-discovering-the-divine-plan-for-love-sex-and-gender-paperback and enter the code "OURBODIES" at checkout. Join the Theology in the Raw community for as little as $5/month to get access to premium content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of theology. And around my guest today is Dr. Christopher West, who serves as president of the theology of the body Institute near Philadelphia. And as a professor of theological anthropology in its jointly sponsored master's program with Pontifex university, Christopher is, as you might know, what are the world's most recognized teachers and in many ways, translators of John Paul, the second theology of the body. We talk about that a little bit at the beginning of this episode. He's also, I mean, he's written many books. One of my favorites is this one here, which is our bodies tell God's story, discovering the divine plan for love, sex and gender. Okay. Yeah. This, this conversation is, is

a, yeah, I guess you'll just have to see, have to listen to it. Can married Christian couples engage in non procreative sex is sex always for procreation? What about people who are past the age of childbearing years? What about a married couple that doesn't want to have kids or doesn't want to have 17 kids? What does this mean for them? We explore a lot of those questions, especially towards the end of this episode. But we talk a lot about theology of the body. What, why did God create us male and female? So yeah, this is a fun conversation. Please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Christopher West.

Christopher, it's a joy to have you on the show. I have been following your work for a long time now, so it's a delight to see you through a screen at least. You know, Preston. It's a joy to be with you. You're most well known for disseminating or popularizing John Paul II's theology of the body, which is, I mean, to say it's a historic work is an understatement. I read it many years ago, and it was a lot to digest. You read the actual text of John Paul the second. I did. I was, I, well, I can't say I've read every single word. I was in a reading group where we spent a year going through it and was so blown us Protestants. We think Catholics don't like read the Bible. So, so some Catholics don't read the Bible, but the committed ones take it very seriously. Well, if we have our own, there's plenty of Protestants who are Bible-believing Christians who don't read the Bible very often. But I was so, this is almost bad, but I was like

so shocked and impressed with his, the level of his exegesis in that text. I mean, it was so in-depth and profound. I mean, it was incredible. Can you... So, well, I guess let me ask this question. How did you first get into his work? I mean, was this like a teenage fascination or what got you into him? Yeah, I discovered this theology of the body, which is, for those who don't know, it's basically a scriptural study of why did God make us male and female. And it takes us from Genesis to Revelation, because the whole biblical story is a story about marriage, right? It begins with the marriage in the earthly paradise of Eden.

Throughout the Old Testament, God speaks of His love for His people as the love of a husband for His bride. When Israel is unfaithful to Yahweh, she's committed adultery. That's the image the prophets use. And then in the New Testament, the love of the eternal bridegroom is literally embodied when the Word is made flesh. Skip to the end of the story, the book of Revelation describes heaven as a wedding. The Bible begins with a wedding in an earthly paradise. The Bible ends with

a wedding in a heavenly paradise. And this gives us the key for unlocking the whole biblical story, which I love to summarize the Bible with these five words, God wants to marry us. That's the biblical message. And he wanted that message to be so plain to us, so obvious to us, he chiseled an image of it right in our bodies by making us male and female and calling the two to become one flesh. As the apostle Paul says, the union of man and woman in one flesh is a profound mystery, and it refers to Christ and the Church.

So that's kind of an overview of what this theology of the body is. I discovered it in 1993. I was 24 years old, and I have to take you back into my childhood to explain how I got there. But here's the short version of the story. I was raised as a Catholic in the 70s and 80s in Catholic schools, born in the late 60s. And to me, or at least the way religion, Christianity seemed as it was presented to me,

I was this young kid who had all these yearnings, all of these passions, all of these desires. I'm sitting in my catechism class in Catholic schools in 1978 as a nine-year-old kid, and everything I'm learning about God and Jesus, I could summarize with one word, boring. And what I wanted to do was just run home, climb my favorite tree with my transistor radio and wait for my favorite song to come on. And there would be times when I sitting up in my favorite tree, 40 feet off the ground,

and my favorite song came on and the wind would blow in the tree. And I didn't know it till decades later that God was wooing me through his creation. He was wooing me through the beauty of creation. And he was wooing me through the desires of my own heart. Right around the same time, this is 1978, and I pick that year because it's the year

that John Paul II became pope. And it's kind of an end to my life. My own desires were getting awakened. I remember the nuns in the Catholic school. They finally rearranged the classroom so that Stacey Reed was sitting right next to me. And I had been waiting for this for years for her to sit next to me. Finally, she was and my heart was pounding in my chest. I couldn't believe it. You know, these desires, this attraction to Stacey Reed, this love of creation and nature and the wind and music,

all of these things were awakening these deep passions of my heart. But the basic message that I was getting from religion class was your desires are bad, they're only going to get you in trouble, you need to repress all that, but follow all these rules and you'll be a good upstanding Christian. And I came many years later to call that the starvation diet gospel, which is no gospel at all.

When you're hungry, if all you get is repress your hunger and follow the rules, that's not good news at all. So in my teenage years, now in the 80s, I became a quick convert to what I now call the fast food gospel, which is the secular culture's promise of immediate gratification for those hungers. And I don't want anybody to lie to me because those chicken nuggets taste really good going down, right? Especially when you're really hungry. But go along with that metaphor and eventually the grease and

the sodium is going to catch up with you if all you're eating is chicken nuggets. And that's a picture of me in my college years. So now we're into the late 1980s. 1988, I'm a freshman in college and I'm in a lot of pain, Preston. And I did a little experiment in a college dorm in 1988. I've always loved to observe people. And I just started observing what was going on on the campus. And I knew I was not the only one pretending

I was having a good time. And I started asking myself, why do we all have to get drunk to pretend we're having a good time? And the experiment I decided to do was, I was gonna stay sober for one weekend, just so I could observe what was really going on on campus without beer goggles. And the devastation that I saw that weekend awakened me

to my own devastation. Sexual devastation, alcohol devastation, there's no other word, it was devastating. And it put me on my knees in 1988, this wake up to my own devastation and the devastation all around me, it put me on my knees saying, God in heaven, if you exist, you better show me why you gave me all these desires because they're getting me and everybody I know into a hell of a lot of trouble. I know the starvation approach isn't going to cut it. I know the fast food approach isn't going to cut it. Is there some other approach?

Do you have a plan? If you exist, you must have some plan for giving me all these desires. What am I supposed to do with them? That set me on a journey. That set me on a pilgrimage, and I'm still on it. Almost 40 years later, I'm still on that pilgrimage because we can never say we've arrived until we get to the kingdom. But along the way of this journey in the early 90s, I started studying the scripture very intently. I came to a personal relationship with Christ when I was 20 years old in 1990. Yeah, and I owe, as I was saying before we came live here, I owe my conversion largely to

the influence of Protestant brothers and sisters who emphasize that personal relationship with Jesus. And Jesus was a historical figure to me up to this point, but I had an encounter with the risen Christ in my early 20s that made me know He was real. He cared about me. He wanted to have a relationship with me. I came to believe that the scripture was the inspired word of God,

and I started pouring myself into the Bible. And I wanted to understand from the Bible, from the horse's mouth, if this is God's word, he's gotta have something in here about why he made us male and female and what this whole passion and erotic longing is all about and what I'm supposed to do with it. And so between 1990 and 1993, just in my daily study of Scripture, growing in my personal

relationship with Christ, putting these questions out in my prayer, Lord, why am I a man? What does this mean? I came to see over the course of those three years what I would now call this spousal vision of the scripture. What I was outlining earlier, the Bible begins with a marriage, it ends with a marriage. Smack dab in the middle of the Bible is the Song of Songs, the great, sacred, erotic love poetry of the scripture. And the saints throughout the Christian centuries have written more commentaries on this erotic love poetry of the Song of Songs than any other book in the Bible.

And I'm thinking, what do the saints know about this erotic love poetry that I need to get in on? And so I came to think in these terms, okay, God wants to marry us, and it's stamped right in our bodies. For this reason, the two become one flesh. This is a profound mystery. It refers to Christ in the church. And I thought, how does it refer to Christ in the church? And then I thought of Christ's words.

This is my body given for you. Right, and I thought of those words of scripture, that Christ is the bridegroom, the church is the bride. And I came to understand holy communion is the consummation of this mystical marriage, this spiritual marriage between Christ and the church. And then I started understanding why Christ calls some to remain celibate for the sake of the kingdom, because they're choosing the ultimate marriage even now on earth because the kingdom of God is among us. And I started understanding why Christ says in the resurrection we're no longer given in

marriage. And it made sense to me because, okay, the Bible begins with the marriage of man and woman, but it ends with the marriage of Christ in the church. And the whole purpose of this marriage is to give us a little, little glimmer of foreshadowing of the ultimate marriage. But when we get to the ultimate marriage, we no longer need the foreshadowing because we're participating in the ultimate reality. And Preston, this was setting me on fire. I think I could use this term accurately. I had been something of a sexual addict in my teenage years. Like I needed to indulge in those passions on a regular basis. I thought I needed to eat three meals a day.

My passions were, I was enslaved by my passions. I was not in control of them. They were in control of me. And that's the definition of addiction. When I was discovering these biblical truths, my eyes started getting open just a little bit wider to see that the body communicates a divine message. It tells a divine story. God inscribed this call to Holy Communion with Him.

That's the ultimate destiny, eternal communion with God that the Bible describes as the marriage of the Lamb, he inscribed a sign of that in our bodies. And I started to see woman's body as an image of the church. I started to see woman's body as an image of the temple, the dwelling place of the Lord. And guess what? For Christians, this came literally true. I mean, if Christmas is real, bedrock, biblical truth, woman's body became heaven on earth, the dwelling place of the Most High God. This young woman named Mary from Nazareth opened her body, opened her sexuality, opened her sexuality,

opened her womb, opened her fertility, opened, properly understood, a holy eros, a yearning for union. She opened it not to an earthly husband and not to an earthly husband's seed. She opened it to the eternal seed of the living God, the invisible, immortal seed of God, and she literally conceived God's Son through this virginal union with God. It's virginal, yes, but it's not asexual.

It involved her entire being as a woman. She opened literally her womb, her fertility. Let's be more specific. She opened her ovaries. It was peak fertile day when the angel Gabriel showed up. She opens that to the living God and virginally conceives God's son. This started all to click for me. This is what Christianity

is. Christianity begins when a human being opened her sexuality to God. That's how it happens. And I started speaking like this to other Christians I was in fellowship with. And a lot of times they were looking at me like, what are you talking about? Probably freaking people out. Yeah. Yeah, I was freaking people out. I was freaking people out. I might be freaking out your listeners right now. Who knows? But then I'll never forget this. This is a long-winded answer to your question. Forgive me. I remember this so clearly because it was my sister's 20th birthday. It was September 26, 1993 and she had befriended one of her theology

teachers from her high school days. And this theology teacher came over to my parents' house for this birthday party. And I started testing out some of my theological ideas on her to see if she thought I was crazy, because a lot of people thought I was crazy talking this way. And I'll never forget what she said, Preston. She said, oh, you must have read John Paul II's Theology of the Body. What, what, excuse me? No, no, what is that?

She said, oh, you haven't read it? You're talking just like John Paul II. Oh, interesting. I said, are you kidding me? The Pope, the Polish Pope, the guy in Rome talks about human sexuality like this and sees it like I'm saying. She says, oh, you're going to love this. And she told me how I could order these four little books. It's now published in one volume, but at the time it was just collected in these four little books. And over the next several months, Preston, I devoured this. And it was confirmation after confirmation after confirmation of everything

I had been learning in my own Bible study. And of course, took me to a whole new level of understanding. I was only scratching the surface. And I remember reading this, holding this in my hands. I'm 24 years old, and I'm like, this is the answer to the crisis of our times. And nobody's talking about it. I went to Catholic schools my whole life, and nobody's talking about it. I've never heard it. I've been traveling the world for the last 30 whatever years sharing this message across

denominational lines as well, because this is not just for Catholics. This is for all believers, all people of goodwill who are asking the questions, how did we get to the place where the facts of life are entirely up for grabs? How did we get in this mess? And believers of all stripes are discovering John Paul II's Bible study on our creation as male and female called Theology of the Body, and they're finding in it, just as you had, this profound, deep exegesis that is not just looking for biblical proof text so we can make our theological points, but it's painting this entire biblical story from Genesis to Revelation, and it's giving us the key that unlocks what he calls the theology of our bodies.

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That's timeline.com forward slash theology gummies. Your sales will thank you. Can you open up a bit more this idea that, well, Your sales will thank you. Can you open up a bit more this idea that, well, the title of one of your latest books, our bodies tell a story. So obviously male and female, we have reproductive potential, but you go much further than that. How do our bodies tell a theological story? Yeah, well, it's right there in Genesis that we're made in the image and likeness of God as male

and female. As male and female, we image God. Now, this does not mean that God in Himself is sexual. God's not made in our image. We are made in His. God is not sexual in Himself. But we, in our sexuality, and here we need to be very careful to define our terms, because these terms have been so maligned in the culture. What do I mean by the terms sex or sexuality? First and foremost, I mean the difference of the sexes. I mean what Genesis means. Male and female, he created them and he blessed them. And he said, be fruitful, multiply. The first commandment God gives the human race

is to live in the image in which he created us. Because our ability to generate sons and daughters, our ability to generate sons and daughters, our ability to generate new life reveals who God is. Again, God is not sexual, but from all eternity, the Father in a purely divine and spiritual way is generating the Son. It's not a once and done way back when.

No, God is always fathering the Son in the life of the Trinity to share in the love of the Holy Spirit. And it's as if the Trinity is having a conversation amongst themselves when they say, let us make man in our image. let's make a creature who has the capacity to generate. And let's look at the Greek root there of generate, gen.

We see it in words like genesis, generation, gender, genitals, progeny, genealogy, genetics, right? That Greek root gen means to produce or give birth to, right? Before the modern world ruptured the word from the flesh. Let's talk about that for a minute. How do we recognize a Holy Spirit versus an unholy spirit? John tells us in his first letter, he says, the Holy Spirit is the one who recognizes the Word and the flesh united, Christ in the flesh.

The unholy spirit wants to rupture the Word from the flesh. The Holy Spirit wants to make visible in the flesh what is invisible. The unholy spirit wants to make visible in the flesh what is invisible. The unholy spirit wants to make invisible what God has made visible in the flesh. Beware, when words get ruptured from the flesh, you know exactly what spirit it is. And the modern world has ruptured the word gender from the flesh. Gender is now a construct of the mind that I can fill in the blank with whatever I want.

But let's get back to the root of what that word means. Gender, it means the manner in which you generate new life. And that is determined by another gen word, your genitals. The male genitals generate the next generation with sperm. The female genitals generate the next generation with ova. There are only two gametes, there are only two ways that life gets generated, sperm and egg, and we need genital intercourse

for generation to happen. If we can say anything about what Christ teaches about gender and the confusion of gender in the world today, I like to imagine Christ walking into the Facebook diversity team meeting when they came up with whatever it was, 80 genders some years ago, that they were going to list on the Facebook profile page. And I imagine Christ walking into that room with great love, with great understanding, with great mercy, with great compassion, but also with great clarity when they're listing 80 different gender options on the whiteboard.

And Jesus says, haven't you read that in the beginning God made the male and female? Gender means the manner in which you generate new life, and that's determined by your genitals. Your gender is determined by your genitals. Now, it's true in a fallen world that some people are born with ambiguous genitalia, but that does not make a third gender or some new gender. It is a birth defect like blindness or deafness or being born without limbs. We know what human nature is and we don't redefine human nature because some people are born blind. No, we have to

do what we can to restore human nature, but we're limited creatures. And we can think of that story in the gospel where, you know, why was this man born blind? Was it because of the sin of his parents? Was it his sin? Jesus' response is glorious. He says, this man was born blind to reveal the glory of God, because God's going to bring about a greater glory from whatever sin has done in the world, right? We believe as Christians that all deformities, all birth defects, all suffering comes from sin, not that necessarily the person who has the birth defect committed the sin as Jesus Himself demonstrates, but this fallen world

produces fallen realities and it affects even our biology. We profess belief in the resurrection of our bodies when there will be full restoration and redemption of our bodies. The world right now, because we're so pained from the lies of the sexual revolution, the world right now is holding out a redemption from the body and sexuality. But scripture and Jesus Christ himself holds out to the world redemption of the body and sexuality. We have to recognize that the world is in pain. We are in pain from the lies of the sexual revolution, which have ruptured us from our true humanity

and the true divine plan for our sexuality. And of course, there's an enemy behind this. I'll wrap it up here and then I'll toss it back to you, Preston. But if we want to know what is most sacred in this world, what is most important to God in this world, all you have to do is look to that which the enemy attacks most violently. And isn't it interesting that right after the apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 5 the meaning of our creation as male and female, it's a profound mystery that reveals the eternal

plan of God for Christ to be one with his church. That's what makes our bodies theological. Our bodies tell the story of the Trinitarian exchange of life-giving love, the generation of the Son by the Father. Our bodies tell that story. Our bodies tell the story of the incarnation that a woman would come one day, the ultimate purpose of gender is found right here, a woman would open her gender. What is gender? The manner in which you generate new life. A woman would open the manner in which she generates new life to God and through her

gender, her ability to generate new life, she would generate in the fullness of time the very same son that the father has been generating from eternity. She would generate it in the fullness of time. In the fullness of time, God sent his son born of a woman. Human sexuality reveals these mysteries. It also reveals it's a sign of our regeneration through baptism that enables us to enter the kingdom. You cannot enter the kingdom, Nicodemus, unless you are born anew. Nicodemus is confused. Can a man enter his mother's womb a second time? confused, can a man enter his mother's womb a second time? Jesus does not say no. He raises the conversation to another level. He says, Nicodemus, if you don't understand the earthly, the natural reality, you're never going to understand the heavenly, the supernatural reality. Right there we have the theology of the body, where Jesus is saying, Nicodemus,

you got to understand the earthly reality of generation and birth to understand the heavenly reality of entering the kingdom. And if you don't understand this, you're not gonna understand that. And that, Preston, is why the enemy attacks right here. He attacks the earthly reality of gender, of generation, of human sexuality, of marriage, of the family. Why? To obscure the kingdom, to obscure the reality of Christ's love for the church. And this is why Paul says right after he tells us the meaning of this in Ephesians 5, he says, you want to live what I was just telling you about? Get ready for a war.

Get ready for a war. Get ready for a spiritual battle. The spiritual battle is fought over the truth and meaning of our bodies. More specifically, the truth and meaning of our call to generate. And how can we conclude this? Well, what is the very first piece of armor And how can we conclude this? Well, what is the very first piece of armor? St. Paul says we have to put on to win this battle. Do you remember what it is? Preston? Is it the breast breastplate? And it's not the breastplate, not the helmet. Are you telling me a Catholic is about to top on quoting scripture? I don't think that's possible. Put on the helmet of salvation. It was, does he start with the helmet? All right, give up. I cry. I don't think that's possible. Put on the helmet of salvation. Does he start with the helmet? No, that's not the first thing.

All right, give up. I cry uncle. All right, the very first thing Paul says in Ephesians chapter six, the first thing we have to put on to win this war, we have to gird our loins with the truth. I hope you know what your loins are. Are our, and this is a question for all of us. Are our loins girded in the truth of the Trinity or are our loins girded in the lies of latex? Well, let that sit for a second. I would, can I come back to, I want to come back to that. So the, so you're using the, so the term gender and, and many in our audience know, and you for sure know has been defined differently as a result of the late sixties, early seventies

sexologist wonder term not as defined. It's been defiled. Well sure. But I mean, it's, it's been defined differently from like biological sex. It sounds like you're using gender as a, as a synonym for bi for sex. I'm using gender in its etymological route. And we have to understand what words really mean and where words really come from. We have to go back to their roots. And the root word of gender is gen. And the Greek root gen means to produce or give birth to. Until the modern world ruptured the word gender from our genitals, everyone around the world and every culture understood that gender meant the manner

in which you generate new life. And I am not going to surrender that very good, very important word to the, to the enemy, to the one who's ruptured it from the flesh. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to try to reclaim that word by rooting it as it always has been until the modern world, rooting it in the body. So yeah. So just so you know, um, I, I agree with your conclusions here. So I'm working backwards, but I like to mess around intellectually. Cause I'm working backwards. I know you do. I know you do. But I like to mess around intellectually because there is an etymological fallacy where just because the etymology of a word is one thing means the word must mean that, right? Words can change over time. Words evolve over time. That's certainly true.

So one could make a case that we need a term to describe the psychological, social, and cultural aspects of what it means to be male and female. And beginning with certain sexologists right in the 70s, they chose the term gender to describe that. We need a word to describe that social aspect of being male and female, whereas sex can be the biological term. So personally, I find that distinction unhelpful because in people's minds, and etymologically so,

people still, when they think gender and sex, they think of the same thing. So now when you're using a term that people think about sex and using it in a term to describe psychological and social aspects of being male and female, it just gets utterly confusing. So I don't think gender is the best term to describe that. But yeah, where am I going with this? So would you say that the term gender and sex are like synonyms or is there any difference between sex and gender? I think there are distinctions to be made.

Those two terms cannot and must not be separated. They are very closely related and intertwined. But I'm willing to grant that we could use the word gender for a social living out of one's sex. If sex is more of a biological term, gender could be the expression of the manner in which one lives one's sex socially, right? Almost like the distinction between male, female,

and man, woman. Some people make that. Man, woman, or, woman. Some people make that. And we could also throw in terms like masculinity and femininity are related to the biological reality of maleness and femaleness, but are broader. So, yes, there are nuances in all of these terms, but what I am wanting to safeguard against is the rupture of these terms from the flesh. Because that's the work of the unholy spirit. Yeah, yeah, that's good. So, you've touched on it a bit, but can you take us back to the purpose

of marriage? This is something I think a lot of Protestants in particular have not really paid attention to, especially in the debates around same-sex marriage, traditional marriage. Before we can even get to the question, can two people of the same-sex get married, we need to ask two questions. First of all, what is marriage? And what is marriage for? Yes. Yes. Before we even talk about who can or can't get married. So can you unpack that for us? Like what is marriage and what is marriage for? I I'm going to put it, I'm going to, I'm going to jump right into the arena here because we can't

skirt around the issues. So much is at stake here. And the reason we no longer understand what marriage is and the reason we no longer understand that it's impossible for two men or two women to get married, the reason that we are entertaining the idea and have even bought into the idea that two men can get married is because we're viewing the whole situation through what I've come to call condom colored glasses. And when you view gender, marriage, family, human sexuality through condom colored glasses, eventually the very meaning of gender, marriage and family evaporate. Let me demonstrate here just by making this point.

When we remove the condom colored glasses and we recognize that genitals are designed for generating, right? It's obvious that genitals are made to generate, right? Eyes are made for seeing, ears are made for hearing, lungs are made for breathing, genitals are made for generating. That's what their function is. That's why we have them. We have genitals to be able to generate, be fruitful and multiply. If we get that right, if we get that very first commandment right, everything else will fall into place. If we get that one wrong, if we willfully render

our genitals unable to generate, eventually all of society will degenerate. And that's what we're living in right now. So we remove those condom colored glasses and you see immediately that what a man and a woman can do with their genitals, what can they do? They can generate new life. It is absolutely impossible to raise what two men or two women are doing with their genitals to that level. It is impossible. Why is it impossible? Precisely because of the gender distinction, the gender difference, the sexual difference

itself makes raising what two men or two women are doing to that level biologically, ontologically, anthropologically, psychologically impossible. However, Preston, it is not impossible to lower what a man and a woman are doing with their genitals to the same level as what two men or two women are doing with theirs. In other words, it is not impossible to lower what a man and a woman are doing with their genitals to the level of pursuing sterile pleasure. And as soon as you're wearing those condom colored glasses, it takes, I said as soon as, I'll correct that, once you put those condom colored glasses on, it's gonna take a couple generations to forget

what it looked like without those glasses on, right? You talk about separating sex from its procreative design or potential. When we rupture genitals from their ability to generate, and by the way, that's the original attack on gender. The original war on gender is the war against our gender's ability to generate. When we render our genitals unable to generate, it's only a matter of time before the very meaning of gender, of marriage, of sexuality itself evaporates.

Let me, I'll just add this final point. When you remove procreation from the sexual equation, and I mean willfully remove it, right? There's a natural pattern to things. My wife and I are past childbearing years, right? That's the way God designed us. Some men and women are physically unable to have children because of no fault of their own. But what I'm talking about here, Preston, is the willful rendering of the genitals unable to generate. When you remove the fertility from the sexual equation willfully, what's left of our genitals is pleasure.

And who created sexual pleasure? God did. But what is that pleasure for? Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. The joy of the marriage bed is meant to be the joy of loving divinely, loving as God loves, right? Love one another as I have loved you. I tell you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete. That's the joy of the second person of the Trinity here. He's saying, I want you to know the joy of the eternal generating love of the

Trinity. That's what he's saying. And this is stamped right in our genitals. It's stamped right in our gender. It's stamped right in our creation as male and female. It's stamped right in our call to be fruitful and multiply. When we willfully render our genitals unable to generate, the goal of sex is no longer forming the next generation. The goal of sex is thrown back on itself and the goal is now pleasure. And when the goal of sex is pleasure, rather than pleasure being a fruit of loving as God loves, which we should absolutely open up to and receive when we're loving as God loves, receive the pleasure

as a gift from God. But when you zoom in on the pleasure and make the pleasure the goal, other people are only valuable to you in as much as they bring you pleasure. And as soon as they don't bring you pleasure anymore, well, I'll discard you and I'll look for my pleasure somewhere else.

We end up in a utilitarian society where people are valued for their sex appeal, for their ability to bring me pleasure, because that's the goal. The goal is my pleasure. That's a utilitarian culture. And the opposite of loving as God loves is not so much hating people, it's using people. It's using people as a means to an end.

And this is the culture we live in right now. The paradigm in which we understand sexuality because we we're wearing condom-colored glasses, is pleasure. Do you bring me pleasure? I've got several questions, which will be fun because I agree with what you're saying. As I told you offline, I've moved much more close to a more Catholic perspective on the unity between sex and procreation and that we shouldn't separate sex from its procreative potential. That does raise questions. You kind of hinted at, you know, infertility. If a couple is infertile, are they falling short of, are they not fulfilling their

marriage vows? I think that one's an easy one to answer, because like you said, like that is something that is part of the fallen world. It's not a choice. It's part of the fallen world. What about people suffer greatly? I mean, I've never encountered deeper suffering in a marriage than those couples who long to have children and are unable to. And that, that suffering united with Christ on the cross becomes incredibly fertile. What about, what about older couple getting married? Say they've been single their whole life

or maybe they were widowed or whatever. They're 60 years old and they get married. Is that a legitimate marriage when they know that? Okay, so how would you? Because they have not done anything willfully to alter the design for genital expression. They're accepting what God has made. But it is impossible to marry

if it is impossible to engage in genital intercourse. And two men cannot have their genitals experience intercourse. Two women cannot experience genital intercourse. It is biologically impossible for a man to unite his genital organ with another man's genital organ. It is biologically impossible for a woman to unite her genital organ with another woman's genital organ. It is impossible. And the expression of love that consummates marriage is genital intercourse because marital love is the kind of love that is designed by God in the normal course of events to generate

new life. And if we willfully, and that's the key word, if we willfully render our genitals unable to generate, we are not engaging in marital love. We're engaging in something else, but it's not worthy of the term marital love, because marital love is the kind of love that images God's generative love. What would you say to a couple that, and we talked offline about this, fertile couple, gonna get married, young, you know, but they say we feel called to marriage, but we actually don't feel called to have biological children. How would you respond to something that says that?

I would say they don't understand the call to marriage. So marriage includes a call to procreate in as much as it's possible. Marriage includes the call to engage in the marital act. And the marital act is only an authentic marital act if it remains open to the presence of the Lord and giver of life, right? The Holy Spirit is part of the marriage bed, right?

And I'll never forget, years ago, I was giving a presentation, and this was probably 30 years ago, and a woman raised her hand and she said, Christopher, I've never heard any of this. This is amazing. I had no idea that my husband and I were meant to be imaging the love of the Trinity and the love of Christ in the church, in our marriage bed. It makes beautiful sense.

I see that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and giver of life, and He's meant to be part of this act. But Christopher, what if I want to have sex with my husband and we don't want the Holy Spirit there? And I thought, oh my gosh, you just put your finger exactly on what's going on when we willfully render the sexual act sterile, whether we know it or not,

what we're saying is, I don't want the Holy Spirit to be part of this act. And guess who else the Holy Spirit is? He's not just the Lord and giver of life. He's the very love of the Trinity. When we are willfully blocking the love of the Trinity from the marriage bed, whatever's going on there, I don't know, but it's no longer an act of love because God is love. We can't be kicking God out of the marriage bed. If we want it to be an act of love, we can't kick God out of the marriage bid. If we want it to be an act of love, we can't kick

God out of the marriage bid. Here's the, here's the hardest one though. And I know everybody's thinking this. Okay. So does that mean you have a married couple? Uh, they're, they're, they're choosing to have kids. How many does that mean every sex act should be aimed at procreating? And does that mean we're supposed to have 21 kids? No. And why? Every sex act, every sex act should be aimed at loving as God loves. It is not required. Biblically speaking, that every sex act be, that the desire of every sex act

be that it result in a child, right? My wife and I have been married 30 years. Every time we've come together as husband and wife, we have prayed, Lord, if it is your will, let there be life. If it is your will, let there be life. It's only been His will five times. It's only been His will five times. And we know how God designed us. And there have been times in our lives where health issues, financial issues, three kids under the age of whatever that made us need a breather. But the question becomes, if you have a good reason, a sound reason,

a just reason not to bring a child into the world, and there are many occasions of that in married life, what could you do to avoid a child that would not violate the marital act that would not render the marital act sterile. Well, guess what? You and I are doing it right now, Preston. Can you explain that? We're abstaining from sex right now, both of us. Okay, so I feel like this is very consistent. So you're saying if you don't want to bring a child

another one into the world. Don't do that, bring another one into the world. Don't do that which brings children into the world. But if you're going to activate your generative power, don't activate it and thwart it, because you are thwarting the image of God in your humanity. But you are not obligated to activate your generative power. If you have a good reason not to activate your generative power, refrain from activating your generative power. But don't activate your generative power and thwart it at the same time. So no contraceptives within marriage, you're saying? No willfully rendering the sexual act sterile.

And I know this is probably new for people, and I know a lot of your listeners are thinking, oh, he's just a Catholic, and I get to dismiss that. Well, we don't get to dismiss just willy nilly 1,930 years of uninterrupted Christian teaching, because every Christian denomination for 1,930 years recognized that contraception is terribly damaging to marital love and to God's design for marriage. In 1930, the Anglican Church was the first denomination to say married couples in very limited circumstances, this

was the concession, married couples in very limited circumstances could use contraception. Look up the history there, and I think I share some of that history in the book of mine that you're reading, there was an outcry around the world, not just from Catholics, from Christian denominations, and not just from Christians, but from wise men and women around the world who understood that fertility is what orients human sexuality towards marriage and the family. And if we remove fertility from the sexual equation, it was predicted in 1930 that we will see an increase in divorce, we will see an increase in out of wedlock births,

we will see an increase in abortion, we will see an increase in sexually transmitted diseases, we will see an increase in homosexuality to the point of normalization, and eventually the very meaning of gender will evaporate. All that we're living through was predicted in 1930 by wise men and women who understood the power of fertility to orient civilization towards marriage and the family or to send us in the other direction. If embracing contraception in 1930, and by the way,

over the next 30 years, between 1930 and 1960, every Christian denomination except the Catholic Church came to embrace contraception and promote it. If the fruit of that were healthier marriages and a better society, I'd say, okay, that was a good decision in 1930, but judge the tree by its fruit. The absolute insanity that we have lived through over the last hundred years in the breakdown of marriage and the family, which of course leads to the breakdown of society itself, can be traced right back to the embrace of contraception because it's only a matter of

time. A society that renders its genitals unable to generate will degenerate. That's the world we're in right now. We must have the courage to judge the tree by its fruit, and the fruit has been rotten. It's a challenge, but it's a challenge. So much is at stake. If Christians don't come to terms with this, nobody's going to come to terms with this. So we have to hold this challenge out. You make a good case, and it is true, just in case my audience is wondering what I think, that for 1900 plus years, the church teaching on what you said about sex and procreation,

that is absolutely true from all the stuff that I've read. Luther, Calvin, all the reformers were very clear on this. It was only in 1930 that some denominations, eventually all of them, except the Catholic church started embracing contraception and the fruit has been horrific. Well, okay. Go back to very, very practical. So you say, um, in your marriage, God gave you five kids, other marriages. I mean, it, it really would, could be 12, 14, 16 kids. You have a serious reason to avoid a child. What about the health risks of the wife?

We only have four kids, but my wife's pregnancy has got progressively difficult. The fourth one was incredibly difficult, and the doctor was like, I mean, you probably should not be having any more kids. Your body just is not gonna, this is gonna take a massive toll. Yes, and you may, I would say based on what you're telling me, you had a serious reason to avoid a child,

but the end does not justify the means, right? What is the, I would say this, the only form of birth control that is in keeping with human dignity is self-control. Why do we spay and neuter our dogs and cats? Why don't we just ask them to abstain? They're animals. Because they're animals.

Well, guess what? You and I are not. We are not merely animals. But when we render ourselves sterile, when we spay and neuter ourselves, are we not reducing ourselves to the level of animals who can't control their sex drives? I want to say something here that's going to sound a little odd at first, but I'd like you to hear me out.

Contraception was not invented to prevent pregnancy. We already had a 100% safe, 100% reliable way of doing that. What's it called? Abstinence. Abstinence. Contraception was invented because we didn't want to abstain, because we couldn't control ourselves. What does that turn society into?

Contraception has not brought sexual liberation, it has brought sexual slavery. Men and women who are now enslaved to their sexual desires. Sexual freedom is not the liberty to indulge my compulsions. Sexual freedom, true sexual freedom, is liberation from the compulsion to indulge. Only such a person who is in control of his sexual desires and is not being controlled by them, only such a person can put those desires at the service of authentic love. Now you might be saying, and it's a very valid question, wait a minute, Christopher, does that mean I have to

abstain until my wife hits menopause? Well, let's ask that question and let's look at it. And interestingly enough, we know by looking at a couple past childbearing years, that if they were to come together, they know a child is not gonna result, but they're not doing anything to render the exteril. That's part of the natural biological process. It's a natural biological process authored by God, right? God designed it that way. Well, guess what? God also designed a woman during her fertile years so that she can only

conceive in a limited window during the month of her cycle. And with modern scientific understanding of how our biology works, and if you are properly trained to recognize the signs of fertility and infertility in a woman, you can know with 99.999 whatever percent effectiveness when you're fertile, when you're infertile. It's a fertile time of the month. You have a serious reason not to bring a new life into the world. I would argue the only form of birth control that's in keeping with human dignity is self-control. To be able to say to your wife, honey, I love the way God made you. I love the fact that if we had sex tonight, you could get pregnant. That's a beautiful,

glorious, great mystery, as Scripture says. But we have a good reason for you not to get pregnant tonight. So out of love for the way God made you, I am not going to activate our generative power. So, so, so, so there is a form of birth control. I don't know if it's family planning or whatever, but like just, so no contraceptives, no whatever, but like don't have sex. You can have sex. I mean, have sex outside the times outside the times when she's fertile, wait till the infertile time to come together. And then people will say, Oh, come on, Christopher. What is the big difference between sterilizing the act yourself and just waiting till you're naturally infertile both couples avoid children the end results the same thing

To which I respond. Oh Come on. What is the big difference between? Killing grandma and just waiting till she dies naturally Grandma's dead in both situations. What's the difference? Well, let me point out the difference. One is a serious sin called murder, and the other one, yes, grandma's dead, but her death is an act of God. If we can understand the difference between euthanasia and natural death, we can understand the difference between contraception and natural

family planning. Because in one, God remains God. Natural death, natural infertility, God remains God. But in euthanasia and in rendering the sexual act sterile ourselves, are we not taking the powers of life into our own hands and making ourselves like God? And was that not the original sin, that you will be like God? These are big questions. And is it possible that Christians themselves in the modern world have been duped by a Trojan

horse? Is it possible that Christians ourselves have been duped by a pill of goods? Judge the tree by its fruit and look at history. It becomes more and more difficult to conclude that we've not been duped. Have you read, I'm sure you, well, maybe you haven't, Louise Perry's book, The End of the Sexual. I haven't read her book.

I'm familiar with her and I've watched a bunch of interviews of her and I find her very compelling. Fascinating. This is a non-Christian, not a conservative person at all, but it's basically making a very similar case you are that the invention of the pill followed by the sexual revolution has dehumanized women and children in the sexual sphere. Yes. Wise men and women are waking up around the world. You know who else speaks about this very powerfully is Jordan Peterson. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very powerfully and very convincingly. Well, Christopher, I've taken you an hour and I cannot wait for the emails. I'm going to get so I, I, I, you

make a very compelling case and it's very consistent. And it's one day. All I ask is that people think about it. Yeah, absolutely. Take another look. Take another look. Yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. And again, I think at the very minimum, I would say, especially for us Protestants, we do

need to think much, much more theologically and not pragmatically or culturally about the relationship between sex and procreation. And again, I've told you, I've moved closer to a more Catholic position. There's still things I still might not be totally convinced, but I'm all about theological consistency rather than just thinking pragmatically. But our whole theology of marriage is so pragmatic. It's so driven by romance and falling in love and the chemicals that run through our body, when we see another, it's just, it's so secular. And so I do want to keep pushing people

to root this profound institution marriage, which you have done so beautifully, which you have rooted in the storyline so beautifully. Yeah. Let me, I put it this way. This is again, food for thought. Could you be said to love Michelangelo if you took a hammer to his PTA? I'm going to answer in the negative. No, that would not be an act of love. No. Yeah. That's his artistic masterpiece. That is his artistic masterpiece. You talked about David. I really don't like

the way you did Jesus's foot there. I'm going to take a chisel or a hammer to it. One could not be said to love the creator of that work of art. We are God's masterpiece, male and female. He created them. And are we not taking a hammer to his masterpiece? When we X out our fertility, are we not maligning the image of God in us? I agree with your point. Let me, Let me represent what some of our translators are going to say. They would say, well, actually, we do it all the time when certain parts of our body are causing distress. We will remove breasts if they're cancerous. We will remove limbs if they have gangrene. And for some people, our certain parts of our body

are causing profound distress. And therefore we are doing what non-trans people do all the time when parts of their body cause distress. That would be the argument. Here's my argument in response to that. And I don't agree with that argument, by the way. I'm just trying to represent it well. Yeah. Medicine and technology is put to good use when it is in keeping with the proper biological

functioning of the organism. We know eyes are meant for seeing. If someone is blind and we can give that person sight, that's a good use of medicine and technology, so long as we're not gouging somebody else's eyes out and causing them blindness, right? But so long as the means are also acceptable, if I can give somebody sight, I'm working in the right direction. If I can give somebody hearing who's deaf, I'm working in the right direction. But if I use medicine and technology to gouge someone's eyes out and intentionally render them blind,

I'm working in the wrong direction. Fertility is not a disease. If you were having sex and you got pregnant, it does not mean something went wrong. It means something went beautifully right. Did you know when the pill debuted in the 1960s, that doctors around the world who were correct to do so, refused to prescribe it because they rightly saw it as a violation of the Hippocratic oath, which says, I will never give pill or potion to cause harm. We're taking a pill to render a perfectly functioning part of your biology unable to function. It's like gouging out somebody's perfectly functioning eye.

Right? Fertility is not a disease. Infertility is the disease. Right? If you have a good reason not to have a child, then don't do that, which bring children into the world. Pretty simple. I mean, people now say the weirdest things

like I got pregnant by accident. Were you having sex? Well, yeah, but the condom broke. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Do not blame your pregnancy on failed contraception. Your pregnancy became because you engaged in the act that leads to pregnancy. And you should not be surprised that you're pregnant. Christopher, thank you so much for stirring a lots of pots this morning. It sounds like

I feel like you kind of enjoy this role. I could tell. I could tell. Hey, somebody's got to stir the pot. You know why I do this Preston? Because it's been absolutely life-changing for me to come to terms with this. And when the lights come on, you start to see the whole world anew. You start to see the whole world. We've been blinded by condom colored glasses. When those glasses come off, you start to see not just sex differently. You start to see a tree differently. You start to see a cup of coffee differently. You start to see all of creation differently because all of creation is telling the story of life-giving love. All of creation is telling this story. And it's so glorious, and it's so beautiful,

and you're filled with such awe and wonder at what God has created. You don't want ever to violate God's masterpiece. Male and female, he created them, and he called them to be fruitful and multiply. It's the image and likeness of God. Why would we ever only, only the enemy wants to violate that. And we must not, not fall for his lies. I

want to set people free brother, because it's set me free and people are in bondage. And until the day I die, I will be trying to set people free from this bondage. Christopher, where can people find your work? You have a website? Yes. Theology of the body.com. You can go to YouTube. We have plenty of videos on our theology, the body Institute channel. And my wife and I do a podcast called the ask Christopher West show. She's the star of the show. She's awesome. We get questions from around the world and we answer them. We have a good old time, but let me, let me get you this phone number. Yeah. Text the text, the letters T O B to the number four Oh four, six, four, seven, seven, six, eight, two. And we'll send you a free series of introductory videos to John Paul. The second theology of the body. I'll

put this in the search show notes, a text T O B theology of the body. Four Oh four, six, four, seven, seven, six, eight, two Christopher, man is a pleasure to get to know you. Thanks so much for being the guest on theology and raw. Thanks for putting up with me, Preston. You're good sport. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.