CHRISTIANITY AND THE HUMAN PERSON: THE PATRISTIC SYNTHESIS

CHRISTIANITY AND THE HUMAN PERSON: THE PATRISTIC SYNTHESIS

The idea of the human person today seems often to be lost in the tug of war between secular humanism and biblical fundamentalism, each claiming to have the answer for the identity searching modern person.  While one side invokes human reason as the only vehicle to understanding, the other offers a narrow interpretation of the Judeo-Christian scriptures.  What is lost to both approaches is a balanced appeal to both faith and reason, the type of cooperation between these two elements, as suggested by Pope Saint John Paul II in his Encyclical,“Fides et Ratio”. 

 
If we look to the Patristic synthesis of faith and reason concerning the human person we discover a definition of the person that respects both the development of classical philosophy, and the biblical tradition; a synthesis which emerged from the existential, sacramental life of the church. 

 
THE PERSON IN SECULAR THOUGHT

 
In secular thought the person is defined in primarily three different ways: by the ability to make choices, as an autonomous moral being, and as one who receives rights and status from a state or government.

 
The perspective of choice is best expressed in the French existentialist Jean Paul Sartre.  He felt that one discovers that they are a human person, when they discover they have the ability to make choices.  Sartre also expressed the idea that this is when the person also realizes they are in hell, because when one discovers their freedom they simultaneously realize that all persons enjoy this same freedom of choice and therefore limitations must be placed upon all for the sake of survival and order.  

 
Immanuel Kant was concerned that the person be defined from the perspective of possessing rationality, for only a rational being could achieve the lofty moral standard of a “good will” according to him.  The person is therefore defined as an autonomous moral being for Kant, a being who is able to stand-alone and make for themselves moral norms to dutifully follow.

 
The third secular possibility is that of legal or political status through the obtaining of rights.  A person is that being unlike all others in a given region that is given the optimum amount of rights and privileges that the particular state can grant, therefore the person is defined by status, a status that legally separates them from animals and non-citizens, sometimes resulting in the worse forms of bigotry.

 
LIMITATIONS OF SECULAR PERSONHOOD

 
The limitations of the secular definition of the person are ontological limitations; another way of expressing this is to say they are post-Christian in nature.  They attempt to retain the freedom and dignity of the person, which is a result of the Judeo-Christian concept of the person, but lack the “spirit” of the monotheistic concept of being.  This unique concept of being was best expressed on the intellectual and spiritual labors of the Patristic thinkers, as will soon be elaborated.

 
The limitations of modern secular definitions of the person are similar to the limitations of the secular philosophical Greco-Roman world and its reflections on the person, that is to say they are non-personal in an ontological sense.  A look at Plato, Aristotle, Greek drama, and the Roman concept of the citizen reveal these limitations.  

 
For Plato the person is identified with only the soul, the body carries no meaning for him and is actually seen as a hindrance to the obtaining of truth.  Ultimately, for Plato even the uniqueness of the soul is lost in the eternal embrace of The Good where all individuality is lost.  With Aristotle there is a strong affirmation of the person as soul and body, but no belief in immortality – the individuality of the soul ceases with the death of the body.  In Greek drama the prosopon (person) is merely a prosopeon (mask), who attempts to affirm their freedom in uniqueness in the practice of hubris (tricking the gods), but is ultimately crushed by fate (cosmic order).  In the Roman Republic and succeeding Ecumenical Empire, the citizen was one who had the backing of Roman law from Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland to the banks of the Jordan River.  The non-citizen however, suffered crucifixion, torture, and humiliation.

 
THE HUMAN PERSON IN THE PATRISTIC SYNTHESIS

 
Drawing primarily from St Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, and the Cappadocian Fathers, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory Nazianzus, as interpreted and explained by the contemporary thinkers John Zizioulas and Christos Yannaras – the Patristic synthesis of the person unfolds.

 
The two gifts of the biblical tradition to Greco-Roman ontology are those of Creation ex-nihilo (out of nothing) and God as Trinity (the divine being is communal/relational).  Creation out of nothing establishes the world as the product of a “free act” by a “free being”.  Reality is not without a beginning, is not impersonal, and without purpose, rather the universe is created by a Person (God), is personal (relational) and has purpose (love).  Indeed, the biblical pronouncement of the Kingdom of God is the realization of divine purpose – the eternal intimacy of Person (God) to persons (human beings).  God as Holy Trinity means that the fundamental characteristic of being, what is constitutive of being is not individuality, isolation, substance, function, or choice, but relationship or communion.  God is God because the being of God realizes from all eternity the perfection of communion.  From all eternity the Person of the Father (as hypostasis) communicates his total self in the Person of the Son, and communicates his charismatic power in the Person of the Holy Spirit.  

 
The human being as created being suffers from ontological limitations (necessity) due to the fact of being a creature.  The result of this type of created nature means that the human is born with individuality rather communion when life begins.  The establishment of the true person as hypostasis (a free person ontologically) cannot be on the functional or moral level.  Soren Kierkegaard showed that Kant’s autonomous moral person is a moral failure – he or she can never perfect a “good will”, humans will always fail their moral norms.  The person as “choice” leads ultimately to nihilism; Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Camus repeat this theme.  Since the human being cannot even choose to be brought into this world, to push the notion of choice to its radical end as total free choice would mean suicide.  Suicide would be the most powerful choice of a person defined in this manner, and in doing so - annihilation of life rather than affirmation of life is the ultimate defining moment.  Dostoevsky in the fictional person of Kirilov expresses this point by saying that anyone who wished to become God must be willing to put an end to their life, to commit suicide.  Albert Camus reflecting on a world that he thought was without God, remarked that life has no meaning, so either kill yourself or like Sisyphus roll the rock up the hill.  Lastly, in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche we hear the sounding of the alarm of nihilism.  Although on the one-hand he celebrates the end of Judeo-Christian culture as the defining moral system of western society, he declares that without a replacement, a revaluation of values as he puts it, society will be destroyed in the embrace of nihilism.

 
Salvation and the gift of a true hypostasis, becoming a free person on the ontological level, in the Patristic synthesis involves God bestowing upon human beings a “new birth” – a baptism into a new “mode of existence”, where being is constituted by communion.

 
Possibly the most profound statement in sacred scripture is in the first letter of John, which states “God is love”.  This means God is a free being (hypostases), because of the eternal intimacy of the three free persons – God is ontological perfection, communion, love.  For God to grant his mode of existence to his creatures (human beings) their ontological limitations have to be destroyed and thus their nature transformed, what early Christians referred to as divinization or metanoia.  Death is the greatest limitation; death makes human beings “tragic figures”.  As humans strive to make loving relationships with others and overcome their individuality – the sentence of death hangs over their heads; death means ceasing to love and to be loved and the “person” is reduced to a “thing”, a corpse.

 
Salvation is therefore the destruction of death and the giving of “new life”, God’s way of life – being constituted by communion.  The Father reveals his love for human beings by giving his total self-communication (Logos/Word), the Son, to become human, and his charismatic power (Pneuma), the Holy Spirit – for the life of the world.  The God, who created space, time, and matter, enters space, time, and matter, thus making human history, salvation history.  Jesus the Christ is not a guru, prophet, or moral teacher; rather Jesus is the Christ because he and he alone is the “first-born”, the first to realize “in” human history the liberation of the human person from death.  The one who for three years preached the ultimate purpose of the Father, the Kingdom of God, who suffered and died like all humans, in Jesus death is not the final world, the “tragic figure” is now the “Resurrected Lord”.  The charismatic power of the Father, the Holy Spirit, raised Jesus from the dead; the Son who was loved by the Father from all eternity never ceased to be loved, the life giving love of the Father, the Holy Spirit, bestows life and destroys death.    

In speaking of this final stage of history sacred scripture proclaims, “I shall place your enemies beneath your feet”.  Humanity now lives in a time of dialogue with God, the greatest enemy of Jesus and therefore human beings, death, has been destroyed, but there are other enemies which keep humans from accepting full incorporation into this “new life” and the Kingdom which is “in our midst”.  This is therefore the time of the church, the ecclesia of free, transformed believers (hypostases).  By the realizing this “new life” in the sacraments, by preaching this “new life” to the world, the church becomes a foretaste of the Kingdom of God.

- Rev. David A. Fisher