This twelfth volume of Adrienne von Speyr’s Posthumous Works (which was first published in 1969) anticipates in many ways John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. In its pages, Adrienne contemplates the sexual relation between man and woman, with all its realism, as a natural symbol of the love between Creator and creature, Christ and the Church. As Hans Urs von Balthasar writes in his foreword to the work, she “simultaneously emphasizes the highest unity and union (which presupposes the equal dignity of man and woman) and stresses as sharply as possible the difference of the sexes that is needed for their deeper unity (which implies an emphasis on the diversity of the sexual functions).”

Further Reading

• Hans Urs von Balthasar. “General Introduction to the Posthumous Works.” The Book of All Saints: Part One, Ignatius Press, 2008, pp. 1–24
• Hans Urs von Balthasar. First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr.