The Fallen and Redeemed Human Person of Christian Anthropology

The Fallen and Redeemed Human Person of Christian Anthropology Christian anthropology deals with the truth about the human person in the context of God’s revelation. It shows that the human person is the subject in the world who rises above the world through his transcendent destiny with God. Christian anthropology stresses the centrality of the paschal mystery and adds the eschatological dimension of the human person fulfilling his ultimate future by his self-identification with the risen Christ. Jean-Marie Hyacinthe Quenum, S.J. Introduction The central issue of greatest concern to Christian anthropology of our time is the religious understanding of the human person The human person, male and female, constructed by Christian anthropology is God-like. Both sexes are fully human and designed for a special relationship with their creator. .One way to address this issue is to explore the Hebrew biblical insights into the human person as a concrete image and reflection of God in the light of Christian theology. This paper examines some of the ways in which the human person was perceived by biblical writers and uses these perceptions for the definition of the contemporary human person. It is an attempt to build a bridge between present day anthropocentric humanism and the theocentric humanism inspired by Jesus of Nazareth, the new Adam. It relies heavily on the Christian revelation of the human person as a special creature of the sovereign Lord of creation. This spiritual creature was made to be one with God, sharing his eternity and filling and conquering the earth. The study is also attentive to the fall of the human person who yet becomes a forgiven and loved sinner. Saved by the grace of the merciful God, the Father of the Lord and Christ Jesus, the fallen human person is redeemed by the precious blood of the New Covenant. Adam Claus Westermann in The Genesis Accounts of Creation, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1964, gives a scholarly approach to Adam in the context of God’s work giving life to the created world. Adam was set apart from the rest of creation as God’s image. , the celebrated proto-human person and earliest created and named man Here, we are not dealing with the data of scientific prehistory. We are more interested in the doctrinal meaning of the biblical account of the creation of the human person. Our literal reading of the Adam and Eve story is not about who they were but what they represent in the consciousness of the biblical writers and Christian theologians. of the Hebrew Scripture, is widely regarded as the image of God Adam as God’s image has the ability to communicate with God and to hear his word.. Created with deliberation and special care Adam as a special creature of God is made out God’s love. He is intended for relationships with God, other person and the rest of God’s creation. He is programmed for stewardship: a loving service of the creation of God. , Adam as the crown of God’s work was meant to live in the presence of his creator as a covenant partner. As a multifaceted person, Adam was an incarnate spirit whose mind, heart, free will, self-consciousness, personality and conscience were made for a deeper relationship with God, other human persons and the rest of God’s creation Adam was created so that he might live in friendship with God and in communion with other people and the rest of God’s creation. . As a created spiritual person, Adam was a “knower” endowed with the power of logic and intellectual abstraction. His ability to make deliberate moral choices made him a very special creature, different from all others on earth. By creating Adam in this way, the good God of Hebrew creation stories intended to make him a uniquely significant care-taker of the rest of the earth. But Adam, as God’s representative and king of the created world, “missed the mark” by attempting to achieve his earthly good without reference to his sustaining maker Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Creation and Fall: A theological Interpretation of Genesis 1-3. Translated by John C. Fletcher. London: SCM, and New York: Macmillan, Paperback. 1965. . This tragic situation The broken life of Adam by sin put an end to the harmony lived before the fall. Sin in the Christian context is the human person’s abuse of his own God-given freedom. Sin introduces disorder in every human situation. Sin restricts human potentialities for good. Sin, ultimately destroys the human person. disturbed Adam’s relationship with God and the rest of God’s creation. As a sinner Adam turned away from God by failing to live in communion with him. , Adam was separated from God The sinner finds meaning in life without reference to God. Sin makes the human person the center of attention. The sinner is responsible for the lack of harmony and communion in the world. Sin rooted in negative habits, destructiveness and bad attitudes or inclinations and a distorted self image, is the cause of the most tragic events in the world. The diseased human heart is the source of sin (Mk. 7:21-22) and lost his intimacy and communion with his creator Sin alienates humanity from its creator. Enslaved by the destructive forces of evil, the sinner is blind to the love of God and moves in the direction of selfishness and self-worship, ignoring the well-being of God’s creation. . He became weak and perishable. Instead of ruling and subduing the rest of the earth as its steward, Adam built up an anthropocentric humanism characterized by conflict, anti-social behavior, injustice, perversion, and corruption, violence, wars and death. As an unfortunate consequence of his sin, Adam, humanity as a whole, lives in a cursed world dominated by sin and its accompanying guilt, pain, despair and death. Adam as the human family stands in need of salvation and reconciliation. Redeemed by the grace of the all-merciful God of revelation who fulfils his design of salvation throughout history, Adam’s reconciled self is transformed before God and may be defined in Christian terms as a new creature empowered to use his god-like reason, freedom and right conscience for the common and spiritual good. In search of a definition of the human person, we will read the Scriptures and the tradition concerning Adam as a fallen and redeemed human person from the perspective of salvation brought about by Jesus of Nazareth, the new Adam, and the perfect, true and real image of God, king of the new creation of God through his resurrection from the dead (Col.1:15-18; Heb.1:1-3). Who was the proto-human person of the Hebrew Scripture endowed with an extraordinary capacity to relate to God? Who is Jesus Christ, the perfect image of God and the complete human person, prince of peace and reconciler? How would we define today’s human person in the light of our contemporary Christian experience? Adam, The Proto-Human Person Of The Hebrew Scripture The position of the human person made in the image of God allows Adam and Eve to be God’s representatives on earth as long as they act in dependence of his will. Called by name to human existence out of a tremendous love by a good God, transcendent and personal creator of the universe I want to examine the religious meaning of the human person’s origin as created by a personal God. , Adam received the breath of life into his physical body from God and became a living creature. “Then the Lord God formed man of dust ,from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). As a living creature emerging from the barren ground, the human person was “put in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (Gen.2:15). From the beginning of his human existence, Adam was made to have a continual covenant relationship with his sustaining maker. Entirely dependent upon his creator, Adam was taken cared of by a loving God who shaped his humanness and personhood as his potential collaborator and steward of his creation. Adam was a representative on earth of God who is wholly other. He experienced the presence of God in a safe environment provided by his care. Adam named other creatures that surrounded him (Gen.2:19-20). He longed for human companionship and an appropriate mate and was graciously given a complete human person, Eve, a woman made from him as a helper suitable for him (Gen.2:18-22; Sir.36:24). Adam and Eve before the fall enjoyed the creating love of God as social creatures and experienced the love that God had for them. They lived as equal partners and in close fellowship with God. They communicated with God and heard his word. God was delighted to let them rule over his creation on earth as his delegates. Fully alive before God as creatures crowned with glory and honor, Adam and Eve were free persons growing and maturing in God’s love. Created to reflect the character of God, Adam and Eve, were innocent, good, blameless and holy. Then Adam and Eve, heedless of their own good, fell into disobedience and sin by eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge Von Rad, Gerhard, Genesis: A Commentary (“The Old Testament Library”). Translated by John H. Marks. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961. (Gen. 3, 6, 11). Enticed by a serpent, a malicious creature “You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and bad. From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die “(Gen.2: 16-17). The malicious creature however said: “You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad” (Gen.3:4-5). that led them to follow a spontaneous desire to go beyond their creatureliness, they transgressed the boundaries of the harmonious order of the created world and chose their own selves rather than God’s will. Instead of trusting their loving and good creator, they distorted his prohibition and gave into the temptation to eat the forbidden fruit. Their desire for omnipotence came face to face with the reality of their creatureliness. Their eyes were opened to their frailty and radical difference from God from whom they received everything. Created into the image and likeness of God, Adam and Eve shattered the harmony of the created world by misusing their God-given freedom through their originating sin. They brought sin and death into the world by breaking down their relationship with God and by turning their trust into fear. As guilty and frantically fearful persons, Adam and Eve were separated from God. Adam and Eve had heard the word of God prohibiting the harmful act of eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. The tempter undermined the word of God by twisting its meaning, inviting Adam and Eve to distrust their loving God. Adam and Eve tried to escape the responsibility of the choice they had made by shifting the blame onto someone else (Gen. 3:12). From their single transgression, Adam and Eve left their descendants the inability to conform their lives to God’s Word. The Catechism of the Catholic Church 401. “After that first sin, the world is virtually inundated by sin. There is Cain’s murder of his brother Abel and the universal corruption which follows in the wake of sin.”From that moment onward, the bible shows us human persons who are conditioned by the originating sin of the first couple. They reject God’s love and tend to create an anthropocentric humanism filled with harmful choices that make a good life in a just society impossible. They even refuse to live their unique relationship with their creator (Hos. 2:18-25; 11:1-11). Sin, the rejection of God’s love, entered into the world from the time of the first human persons. Human sinfulness disregards the law of God and his covenant by rejecting his continuous call to a new relationship of love. Sin demeans human dignity and leads the human person to live apart from God. As unhealthy self-love, sin is the greatest tragedy of the human person. Sin is personal destructive behavior, which is to be found everywhere. It is a harmful, intentional and deliberate act that affects other human persons, communities, the rest of creation and God, source of all that exists. Sin Xavier Thévénot, Sin: A Christian View for Today, Liguori Publications, St Louis, 1984. touches all human life: body, intellect, emotions, relationships, family life, society and the environment. Human persons as wretched people sin throughout the course of history. “All of us have sinned in the first man…hence Adam is in each one of us.” Ambrose, Apologia prophetae David, II, 12, 71, in PL., 14/915. Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and humanity (1Tim 2:5; Rom 5 :10; 2Cor 5: 18), as the head of a new humanity through his death and resurrection, redeemed all human persons through his virtuous and righteous life offered as a propitiatory sacrifice to take away the sin of Adam’s posterity. Through the Spirit of Christ, the Church, the body of Christ, as the sacrament of the risen Lord in the world, imparts the gift of the bath of regeneration that cleanses the guilt due to Adam’s sin. God who knew everything from the beginning loves unconditionally the sinful human person who has inherited from his common ancestor selfish needs of survival and self-perpetuation (Mk 7:21). “The lust of the flesh, and lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” got hold of human persons caught up in temptation, evil thoughts and immorality (1 Jn 2:16). All human persons are born in sinful societies from which they learn to sin. They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, and any who seek God. All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one (Ps.14:1-4). Human beings assert their independence toward God and use the creation of God to satisfy their cravings and innate self-centered tendencies. Human sins as problems behind the crises of the world bring devastation to God’s creation. God in his love for human persons has sent into the world a new Adam to take away the sin of Adam’s family. This divine person has assumed an individual human nature. In him coexist in perfect union, divinity and humanity. He is the perfect image of God who is all loving and all obedient. His name is Jesus of Nazareth, the second and last Adam, the God-man Christ, known through the prophecies of the Old Testament and the apostolic testimony of the New Testament. Jesus, the Christ, as the substantial Word of God in a loving human person, is the mediator and fullness of God’s revelation. “In Jesus, God’s communications to man in grace and at the same time its categorical self-interpretation in the corporeal, tangible and social dimension have reached their climax, and have become revelation in an absolute sense.” Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, ET London, 1978, p. 174-5. As the self-expression of God, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God is the divine Word made flesh in order to reveal who God is. As the visibility and human face of God in events of history, Jesus is the true reflection of God coming nearer to the sons and daughters of Adam. In this divine person, God calls everyone to be holy (Mt. 5:48; Lk 6:36). Through the incarnation of the Son of God a new intimate relationship with God is granted to Adam’s family. In Jesus, the Christ, human persons created in the image and likeness of God realized their most profound desire to be in communion with God through the call to conversion of the Son of God (Mk 1:17; Mt 4:15). Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of faith, a divine person without sin, a fully integrated person attuned with the will of God, is the Word of God made flesh and the Wisdom of God that restore in the human person the image of God. Through His Work on the cross, Jesus Restores In The Human Person The Image Of God The historical person known as Jesus of Nazareth is decisive for the understanding of the human person in a fallen world. The early Christians, believing in Jesus and interpreting his message to their contemporaries are the source of our knowledge of Jesus, God’s eternal Word made flesh. Born in the first century, in a place rich with messianic expectations, Jesus preached, lived and died for the reign of God. The living and true God of the Jewish people , the sovereign God of salvation history, has appointed and anointed Jesus as the one he raised up as the new and second Adam to bring his purpose in history to its climax. For the early Christians, Jesus as Christ and the Lord of creation is eternal with God. He is the eternal Word by which all things in the cosmos stand together in harmony (Jn.1:13, 14; Col.1:15-18; Heb.1:1-4; Rev.1:8, 11, 17, 18). According to Christian kerygma, human history is the space of revelation of the incarnate eternal Word of God whose death and resurrection have significance for the Church of the apostles (Acts. 2, 36). The living God of the Jewish tradition in his holy mystery has communicated his self to the world through the personhood of Jesus of Nazareth for the fulfillment of human persons. In his care for these human persons, the God of the everlasting covenant who is constantly present and active in human history through the deliverance of his people, the gift of the law, the prophets, is now near in Jesus, the kerygmatic Christ, bringing about the reconciliation of the broken world of the first Adam. Jesus is the eternal Word of God made flesh to reveal both God and the human person. In his unique role of bringing the reign of God on earth through his obedience, Jesus, the kerygmatic Christ, is the true Son of God and perfect image of God on earth. He is the bread of life, the light of the world, the good shepherd, the way, the truth and the life, the true vine and the Word of God. Involved in the material world and in human history, Jesus, the kerygmatic Christ, “of one substance” with the Father, is the representative of God and the eternal Word that unites all realities in God. In Jesus, the kerygmatic Christ, God, the wholly other, is totally involved in historical materiality as a loving God in a loving human person concerned with the well-being of human persons. As God’s self-revelation in humanness, Jesus fulfills God’s messianic prophecies through his redemptive work and resurrection (Acts 2:36). W. Künneth, The Theology of Resurrection, London, 1965. He is understood by Jewish Palestinian Christians in the categories of the Old Testament and by the apocalyptic and eschatological traditions of later Judaism full of messianic expectations. “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil.2:9-11). As the suffering and resurrected messiah, confessed and proclaimed by Holy Scripture and the living tradition of the Church, Jesus, the new Adam and the lamb, has universal stature and value for the human person graced and saved by God. As a mediator and reconciler between God and human persons, Jesus unites the lost humanity saved by God with God through his propitiatory sacrifice on the cross (Isa.53:1-12; 1Tim.2:5, 6; Mk 10:45; Heb. 214-18; Phil.2:5-11). Jesus’ work of atonement on the cross reconciled human persons with God, their maker and creator. It restored the fellowship of human persons, abolishing within the human family all walls of division, barriers, boundaries and frontiers erected by sinful humanity (Eph.2: 11-22). In Jesus Christ, the human person is recreated, anew, and is at peace in the messianic community called the Church. As the head of the Church, the risen Jesus calls each human person to interior, radical conversion and discipleship (Lk.9:23-25; Lk 14:26; 27). To be at peace with God and with other human persons in a restored creation is to experience divine salvation. The risen Jesus, living in human persons, transforms them into integrated persons open to God, to others and to the rest of God’s creation. The regeneration of the human person takes place in the Church as the body of Christ, the fundamental sacrament of the Christ in the world. Initiated into the Church as the community of faith, worship and witness, the human person who is baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity is incorporated into the body of Christ and becomes a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). Faith in Jesus Christ is the means by which a human person is transformed into an integrated person open to the values of the reign of God. An integrated person is a repentant and forgiven sinner who regains “once and for all” his ability to love through the finished redemptive work of the cross. Led by the Spirit of God, the redeemed human person is transformed by God’s power of love. The Spirit of God propels him to open himself to the world. He breathes and inspires the renewal of prophetic signs of hope. In a graced and saved world, Jesus proclaimed the reign of God and gave a new meaning to the human person as the one called to wholeness through healing, forgiveness and humble submission to God’s will. Called to human existence by the Lord of creation, the human person made of dust and conscious of self is a member of human family. He is shaped by a particular culture in which he finds the meaning and values of his existence. He may come to believe in his maker by acknowledging his worth, his sovereignty and his majesty through creation and history. The human person actualizes his self through a life-long initiation by which he learns his social roles and plays out the values by which he integrates his fulfilled existence into the series of events of the created order that shape his mysterious destiny from birth to death. The saved person lives in Christ, his Master and Lord (Gal. 2:20). Jesus of Nazareth is a particular human person in whom God has revealed his will for the human family through the Christ event. Having completed his redemptive work on the cross, Jesus, the Christ, has released the Spirit of both the Father and the Son to guide human persons through the inspired Word of God, illuminate their path for self-actualization in the world, integrate them into to the body of Christ and fulfillment into the will of God through the sacraments of the Church. The redeemed person is the repentant sinner who is liberated from the destructive influence of evil and shares the victory of the risen Lord over death. For him, Jesus as a guide for a new humanity has the words of eternal life (Jn. 6:68). He dispenses eternal life to human persons so that they may be participators in his life and share his glory. The redeemed person participates in the intimate life of God through faith in Jesus, the Christ and Lord of eternal life. He belongs to the saved and graced world of communion of persons. Connected to the resurrection of Christ, the saved and graced world brought about by the risen Christ presupposes an individual person made for God and for eternal life. Toward A Definition Of The Redeemed Human Person “You [God] made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet” (Ps. 8: 5-6). In the biblical perspective, the human person is created out of the dust of the earth and belongs to the material world (Gn. 2:7). Part of the material universe, the human person is nevertheless a unique and irreplaceable body by which the events of history are lived out. A human body assumes a personal existence through reason, conscience, memory, will power and the ability to love and respond to others, the world and God. The human person is a relational actor in his religious attitudes, beliefs and ritual practices. As a means of communication, a human body is what enables emotions, feelings, attitudes, desires, motivations, reactions, activities and commitments to be experienced. The human person is a particular self-giving subject who lives out his possibilities of knowing and creating new opportunities of fuller life as a spiritual creature. The self-transcendent human person is open to the mystery of the presence of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Emerging from the material world and shaped by the circumstances of history for personal fulfillment, the human person has a divine origin as the only creature in God’s image. D. Stanley, Christ’s Resurrection in Pauline Soteriology, Rome, 1961. The human person is sacred and his inherent dignity is beyond age, culture, ideology, faith, and ethnicity, color of skin, gender, sexual orientation, language, disability or social class. As a Spirit–filled person, the redeemed human person is a peacemaker who works for a world of friendship and solidarity free of hostility (violence and negative forces of destruction). Passionate for social justice, truth, freedom, human dignity, solidarity and dialogue, the redeemed, restored and recreated human person is the disciple of the new Adam, the Christ and Lord of life. Discoverer of knowledge, wisdom and technologies, the redeemed human person hopes for a better world improved by empirical research using reason and basic observation. The modern human person advocates an autonomous use of reason leading to technical progress and democracy. The redeemed human person is the free, conscious spiritual creature involved in the progressive transformation of his world, society and environment. As a historical subject, the human person is a spiritual body that longs for an intimate relationship with God through Christ, the center of God’s encounter with his creatures (1Cor. 15,28). The human person is best seen in Jesus Christ, the icon of God. As God in the flesh, Jesus Christ is the redeemer of the broken world of Adam’s family. Jesus Christ, the redeemer of the human person, has released in the world the power of healing addictive patterns of life and sinful behaviors. As God’s Word spoken by the Father, Jesus Christ is the Son and the revealer of the Father loved above everything. The human person in a Christian perspective is the one who leaves everything for the sake of the Son and fulfills the Father’s will in complete obedience under the inspiration of both Father and Son. By imitating Jesus Christ, the servant of God and human persons, the human person restores the image of God through the service of the world’s needs. The redeemed human person identifies himself with the incarnate Word of God, Jesus, the risen Christ who lives in him through the sacramental life of the Church. Connected with Jesus Christ, the head of the Church, anointed by the Spirit of God, the redeemed human person, linked to all other human persons in worship and liturgical action, performs in the world the royal priesthood through social responsibility and historical commitments. Concluding Remarks God’s purpose in creating the proto-human person, Adam, was that he should rule over the rest of creation on God’s behalf. Throughout salvation history, biblical figures embody the functional definition of the human person. Jesus of Nazareth, the redeemer of the fallen human person, worked for the reign of God on earth by linking faith and social responsibility. Through his ministry, he brought existential healing, restorative forgiveness, unitive reconciliation and peace. He inaugurated on earth a theocentric humanism for a fully human life (Jn. 10:10). The kingdom of God preached by Jesus of Nazareth points to the sacred reality of the human person loved by a God concerned with his well-being. PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 1