John Paul II argues from Genesis 1-2 that the human body is a “sacrament” of humanity’s status as image of God. It is the visible manifestation of the invisible truth, and it is a source of assurance How could Adam know he was image? It was his body, “the visible factor of transcendence, in virtue of which man, as person, surpasses the visible world of living beings.”
But in sin, this is precisely what man loses. He is estranged from love, from the gift of creation, because he begins to doubt the generosity of the Giver and the love of the Lover. The result is a loss of “the original certainty of the ‘image of God’ expressed in his body” and “the sense of his right to participate in the visibility of the world, which he enjoyed in the mystery of creation.”
Instead of “naked but not ashamed,” Adam says “I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself,” thus confirming “the collapse of the original acceptance of the body as a sign of the person in the visible world.”
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