THE HUMAN PERSON

TRINITARIAN=BEING
RELATIONAL

The Trinitarian vision of

God in its implications
for humanity
underscores very clearly
the relational dimension
of being human.
IMAGE OF GOD IS
COMMUNAL
The image of the human
being in the creation story is
a communal one: “And now
we will make human beings;
they will be like us and will
resemble us…male and
female, God created
them..(Gen. 1:26-27)
 I.TO BE HUMAN=TO BE
COMMUNAL

Human existence
does not precede
relationship, but is
born of relationship
and nurtured by it.
 
To be a human
person is to be
essentially directed
towards others.
We are communal
at core.
PERSONAL EXISTENCE IS AN I
AND YOU

Personal existence
then, can never be
seen as an “I” in
isolation, but
always as “I” and
“you” in
relationship.
IMPLICATIONS

An awareness of justice shows

us that personal existence is a
shared existence. Through
interdependence we discover
that we bear mutual
responsibilities.
 
Our pursuit of individual ends
can be justified only to the
extent that we respect the
patterns of inter-dependence
which make up our relational
selves.
TRUE COMMUNITY=PROMOTE
THE WELL-BEING OF LIFE

From the point of view of

justice, then, we need to
ask whether our moral
choices and actions
detract from the value of
true community or
promote the kind of self-
giving which sustains the
 TO BE
RELATIONAL=UPHOLDING THE

As relational, social
beings, human persons
need to “Live in social
groups with
appropriate structures
which sustain human
dignity and the common
good.”
 
The moral significance of
this aspect of being
human is that we must
respect the laws and
institutions of society
which promote communal
HIGHEST POINT OF BEING
RELATIONAL IS IN OUR
The relational aspect of being
human reaches its high point in
our relationship to God in faith,
hope and love. Each person has
eternal significance and worth.
 
The moral import of this aspect of
the person is that all relationships
must find their source and
fulfillment in God.
 
After all, the fundamental
conviction of our faith, is that
human life is fulfilled in knowing,
loving God in communion with
others.
II.MAN AS AN EMBODIED
SUBJECT

To speak of the human

person as a subject is to
say that the person is in
charge of his or her own
life. That is, the person is
a moral agent with a
certain degree of
autonomy and self-
determination
empowered to act
according to his or her
A.HUMANS ARE NOT
OBJECTS
The great
moral implication
of the person as
subject is that no
one may ever use
a human person
as an object or
as a means to an
end the way we
do of the other
things of the
C.RESPECT FOR HUMAN
Every right entails a duty
and the rights that belong to
the person as subject entail
the duty of demanding
respect for them. And so we
must respect the other as an
autonomous agent capable
of acting with the freedom of
an informed conscience.
 
Exploitation of human persons for one’s
advantage is never allowed.
D.WE ARE INTEGRATED
PERSONS

To speak of the human person as

an embodied subject is to use a
more unitive expression than the
familiar one of “body and soul”.
 
Embodied subject implies that our
bodies are not accessories. They
are not merely something that we
house our subjectivity, but are
essential to our being integrated
persons.
E.OUR BODIES ARE ESSENTIAL
IN BEING HUMAN
We express ourselves as the
image of God through our bodies.
What concerns the body
inevitably concerns the whole
person, for our bodies are
essential to being human and to
relating in human ways.
 
The fact that we have bodies and
cannot enter into relationships
apart from them entails a
number of moral demands.
Since our bodies are symbols of
interiority, bodily expressions of
love in a relationship ought to be
proportionate to the nature of
the commitment between
persons.
F.TO RELATE WELL WITH
Also bodily existence means
that we must take seriously the
limits and potential of the
biological order. Since the body is
subject to the laws of the material
world, we must take these laws
into account in the way we treat
our bodies.
 
We are not free to intervene in
the body in any way we want. For
example, to flood the blood system
with toxic drugs means to so
damage the body as to kill
ourselves.
 
To relate well with others, we
must take care of our bodily health
 Bodily existence also means that we must accept our genetic
endowment which sets the baseline for certain possibilities and
limitations to our physical, intellectual and psychological capacities.
 
We have the moral responsibility to live well within these limits
and not to push ourselves to become or to do what our genotypes,
taken together with our environment would not support.
 
As body persons we are a part of the material world. To be part
of the material world holds both great potential and serious
limitations. The potential is that, created in God’s image with the
mandate to bring the earth under human control, we can act as co-
agents with God to make the world a continuously livable space.
 
 The developments of science are certainly helping us to do
that. But human creations are sometimes ambiguous. Herein lies
the serious limitations.
 
The very products which help us to improve communications,
production and prosperity can be detrimental to our corporeality
and communality
 
Likewise, the very techniques which are being developed in the
life sciences to benefit the human community, such as
developments in reproductive technology and genetic engineering
can easily be extended to producing disturbing results for the
wholeness of society and common good.
 
Being part of the material world requires moral agents to
consider the negative effects necessary entailed in the positive
III.AN HISTORICAL SUBJECT
An embodied subject is
necessarily an historical subject.
While the spirit enables us to
become more than ourselves,
our bodies anchor us in the here
and now.
 
To be an historical subject, then,
means to be relentlessly
temporal, seizing each
opportunity of the present
moment as part of the
progressive movement toward
our full human development.

When we integrate our past into

the person we are becoming we
move into the future not only
A.AS HISTORICAL SUBJECTS,
WE MUST GROW

The moral imperative of being an

historical subject is to integrate the past
into the person we are becoming so as to
shape a future rather than to settle into a
static condition.

The moral significance of the personal

historical process is that one’s moral
responsibility is proportionate to his or her
capacities at each stage of development.
IV.FUNDAMENTALLY EQUAL BUT
UNIQUE
There is a fundamental equality
among human persons by virtue
of our common dignity as
persons.
 
Equality allows us to take an
interest in everything that is
human and to understand the
moral obligations which inform
our common humanity.
 
However, human persons are
sufficiently diverse so that we
must also take into account the
originality and uniqueness of
each person.

This means that while everyone

shares certain common features
of humanity, each one does so