5 I he Human Person

Since Vatican II, a significantly broad consensus in moral theologi-

cal literature suggests that the human person is the most appropriate point of
departure for elaborating on the meaning of morality in general and for
providing the fundamental criteria which are necessary for dealing with spe-
cific moral questions. Of course, the human has always been taken seriously
in Roman Catholic moral theology because, for Catholics, to take the human
seriously is to take seriously the creator God who became incarnate in the
humanity of Jesus. However, the most striking feature about the renewal in
moral theology since the council is the noticeable shift from using the lan-
guage of "human nature" to that of the "human person. "
This shift affected profoundly the way the human person serves as the
criterion for determining proper moral behavior. For example, from its per-
spective on human nature which emphasized the natural tendencies of com-
mon bodily structures and functions, Catholic moral thinking derived abso-
lute, universal norms. Morally right actions were those which were done in
accord with the natural end of each faculty. The moral absolutes in Catholic
sexual ethics, for example, are determined on this basis.
The shift to the human person, however, has allowed a movement away
from basing moral conclusions on the finality of bodily structures and func-
tions taken independently of the totality of the person. A personalistic founda-
tion for morality was laid by the Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et Spes,
especiall y in Part I. The personalistic criterion was employed in Part II of that
document when dealing with issues pertaining to marriage and the family:

Therefore when there is a question of harmonizing conjugal love

with the responsible transmission of life, the moral aspect of any
procedure ... must be determined by objective standards. These,
based on the nature of the human person and his acts ... (n. 51).

63
64 Reason Informed By Faith

Louis Janssens, who has studied the official commentary of Gaudium et Spes,
finds that this expression applies to the entire domain of human activity, and
not just to sexual activity. Also, this principle is affirmed by the expression
that "human activity must be judged insofar as it refers to the human person
integrally and adequately considered."1 In other words, in personalistic mo-
rality the human person adeq ualel y considered is lhe crileriull fur Jiscuvering
whether an act is morally right.
This chapter considers the anthropological basis of personalistic moral-
ity. It begins with the theological foundations by presenting an understand-
ing of the human person as the image of God. Its second section briefly
describes the fundamental dimensions of "the human person adequately con-
sidered": a relational being, an embodied subject, an historical being, and a
being fundamentally equal to others but uniquely original. Finally, it will
briefly state the personalistic criterion which is to be applied in making a
moral judgment about human acts.

Image of God
To say that the person adequately considered is the norm of morality
does not dethrone God and raise the human person to the level of supreme
value. God remains supreme, the ultimate center of value. In fact, the biblical
witness to the mystery of creation provides the theological foundation for
understanding the ultimate place of God and human life as a reflection of
God. The story of creation tells us that at the summit of creation stands
woman and man, made in God's image (Gn 1:26-27). Through the motif of
the image of God (cf. Ps 8:5; Wis 2:23; 1 Cor 11:7; Jas 3:9), the Bible
vigorously affirms the sacredness or dignity of every person prior to any
human achievement. The Catholic tradition, as reflected for example in the
Vatican Declaration on Abortion (n. 5) and in the pastoral letter Economic Justice
for All (n. 32, 79), has based its claims for fundamental human dignity and
human rights on this theological foundation.
To say that the human person is the "image of God" is first a theological
statement before it is an anthropological one. This means that it says some-
thing about the relation between God and us which has implications for what
it means to be human. For example, one thing it says is that God has so
established a relationship with us that the human person cannot be properly
understood apart from God. God sustains this relationship by divine faithful-
ness and love. As long as God offers divine love (i.e., grace), humans will ever
remain God's image and enjoy a sacred dignity whether in sin or not,
whether acting humanly or not. The biblical truth about the human person is
that being the image of God is irreversible.
As an anthropological statement, "image of God" says that we all share
The Human Person 65

in a common human condition which has a common end, namely God. It also
says that human dignity does not depend ultimately on human achievements,
but on divine love. We have witnessed the moral implications of this in
arguments against abortion, in defense of care for handicapped newborns,
and in reflection on issues of economic and social justice for all regardless of
race or human attributes.
Further implications of the image of God motif for a personalistic moral-
ity can be drawn out of elaborations of the central symbols for God in the
Christian faith. For example, the root symbol of God is "God is love" (1 In
4:8 and 16), i.e., God is the one who is perfectly self-giving. This claim leads
to the Trinity which is the theological code word for the freedom and totality
of God's self-giving. It means that God is eternally the giver or lover (Father),
the receiver or beloved (Son), and the gift or love which binds them together
(Spirit). When God expresses divine love outside the Trinity, nature comes
into being, with the human person being the point at which nature reaches
self-consciousness.
As Michael and Kenneth Himes have shown, our understanding of the
triune nature of God (both the immanent and the economic Trinity) can shed
light on the true meaning of being human. For example, by putting this great
symbol of the Christian tradition into dialogue with the economic and ethical
themes of the pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All, they point out that

if God is triune, if God is the perfect relationship of the love and the
beloved and the love which unites them, then to maintain that the
human being is created in the image of God is to proclaim the
human being capable of self-gift. The human person is the point at
which creation is able to acknowledge gratefully the divine self-gift
and to respond by giving oneself in return. 2

Likewise, the trinitarian doctrine implies a communitarian understand-

ing of being human. The trinitarian vision sees that no one exists by oneself,
but only in relationship to others. To be is to be in relationship. The individ-
ual and the community co-exist. Humanity and relatedness are proportional
so that the deeper one's participation in relationships is, the more human one
becomes. Since community is necessary to grow in God's image, the funda-
mental responsibility of being the image of God and for living in community
is to give oneself away as completely as possible in imitation of God's self-
giving. The freedom which humans need for living morally is the freedom to
give themselves more completely. A deeper participation in the human com-
munity enhances the humanity of each person while the failure to establish
community diminishes the humanity of all. l
From this trinitarian vision of the human person as the image of God we
66 Reason Informed By Faith

can see that the fundamental dynamic of a personalistic morality is the dy-
namic of receiving and giving love. The Johannine version of the great com-
mandment captures it exactly: "As I have loved you, so you must love one
another" (jn 13:34). We first receive love and then are to love in imitation of
the love we have been given. It is like the basic rhythm of life-breathing in
and breathing out. When either part of this dynamic movement ceases, life
ends. The trinitarian vision of the person tells us that to be the image of God
is not only a gift but also a responsibility. The moral life lived out of the
image of God not only rejoices in what one has received as gift, but also
promises to use these gifts well in communion with others.
This theological vision of the person helps us to see that our fundamental
relationship to God gets expressed in and through the ways we use our gifts
and enhance the giftedness of others. To be the image of God is an imperative
calling us to live out of the fullness of the gifts we have received by moving
out of ourselves and into the world of our relationships. To withdraw into
ourselves, to hoard our gifts, and to cut off the dynamic of receiving and
giving love by refusing to gift another is to abort our gifts and to mock God.
It is sin, simply put. It denies the sort of self-giving which being the image of
God demands, and it blocks the movement toward living fully in communion
with God and others. The judgment parable which Jesus told of the talents
given to the three servants in Matthew 25:14-30 is a powerful indictment of
this kind of life.
A personalistic morality with theological foundations in the image of
God asks: Have we accepted our gifts, and how well do we use them to
contribute to positive, life-giving relationships and to the development of the
human environment? In other words, the moral implications of the trinitarian
vision of the human person as the image of God have to do with the quality of
our relationships and with how our actions build up or destroy the network of
relationships which make up human life.

The Person Adequately Considered

The human person "adequately considered" is the person as understood
by reason informed by faith. The biblical truth about humanity being the
image of God is the conviction of faith which informs reason's grasp of the
human person. If we are irreversibly the image of God, then we are so in the
totality of our personalities and not just in certain aspects, such as intellect
and will. So all the fundamental dimensions which constitute the person
"integrally and adequately considered" participate in the human person's
imaging God.
In this section, I am deeply indebted to the work which Louis Janssens
has done to elaborate the concept of the person adequately considered. He
The Human Person 67

based his analysis on the teaching r ViltiC.Ul il, e peeially Gatti/tum el Spc.r.4
He says, in brief, that the human person is l(dequately considel'e .1"vhen taken
as an historical subject in corporealilY who stands in relation to the \' odd, to
other persons, to social structures, and to God, and who is a unique original-
ity within the context of being fundamentally equal with all other persons.
To say that these dimensions constitute an "integral and adequate" consider-
ation of the person means that the human person is always, and at the same
time, everyone of these dimensions interacting to form a synthesis which is
the integral human person. My separating rhem here is purcl for purposes of
discussion. Since Janssens does not claim a hier:u'chy fOJ' these dimensions, 1
will present them in a manner slightly different from his own by organizing
them under four major groups: a relational being, an embodied subject, an
historical being, and a being fundamentally equal to others but uniquely
original.

A Relational Being
The trinitarian vision of God in its implications for humanity under-
scores very clearly the relational dimension of being human. Human exis-
tence does not precede relationship, but is born of relationship and nurtured
by it. To be a human person is to be essentially directed toward others. We are
communal at our core. The image of being human in the creation story is a
communal one: "And now we will make human beings; they will be like us
and resemble us .... Male and female, God created them" (Gn 1:26-27).
Personal existence, then, can never be seen as an "I" in isolation, but always
as "I" a.nd "you" in relad nship .
T he significance of being directed toward others has wide-rangi ng moral
implications. 111 medical moral matters, for it has implicatioos foT'
both judging th appropriatenes of using liCe-sustaining tJ'eatments and for
determining death. If someone's capacjty for relationships i.e., one's capac-
it to n :cei e 10 e and co give love, never develops (as in the case of the
anencephalic fetus) or is i1'l'eversibly lost (as in the C<1se f th lOe in II chron i '
vegerati e state) can we say that he or sh enjoys human Life ill such a
persona l wa (hadt ouglu to be su ·tained at all costs? An a\>V3.reness )f justice
also sbO\ s us that personaJ existence is a shared existence. Till' ugh il1\'er-
dependence 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 lip our relational selves. From the point of
vi w of justice, tben, we need to ask whether our moral choices and actions
letract from the value f true commun'i ty or promote the kind of self-giving
which sustains the well-being of life together.
As relational, social beings, human persons need to live in social groups
68 Reason Informed By Faith

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 living and
uphold the common good. But we must be careful not to absolutize anyone
cultural form. The need for social structures demands that structures be
renewed, and at times revised, according to changing circumstances and the
growing demands of human dignity. For example, slavery was once an ac-
cepted social institution in biblical times as well as in the formative years of
this country; however, it is no longer accepted because the sense of what
human dignity demands could not support it. Likewise, many today find the
laws favoring capital punishment to be suspect in light of new structures of
law enforcement as well as a heightened sense of the respect due the dignity
of human life. The moral significance of living with appropriate structures in
social groups is that in making moral choices, we need to ask whether our
actions will preserve or undermine the basic structures (such as marriage and
the family) which we need in order to safeguard and promote human well-
being.
The relational dimension of being human reaches its high point in our
relationship to God in faith, hope, and love. Each person has eternal signifi-
cance 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, and serving God in communion with others.

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 accord-
ing to his or her conscience, in freedom, and with knowledge. The Catholic
tradition has been clear that we cannot speak of morality in any true sense
apart from human persons who are able to act knowingly and willingly (cf.
ST. I-II, prologue).
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
other things of the world. Every right entails a duty, and the rights that
belong to the person as subject entail the duty of demanding respectfor 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
fvr one's own advantage is never allowed. We show respect for the human
person as a subject by guaranteeing that he or she can act on the basis of a
The Human Person 69

duly informed and free conscience. Since the importance which the Catholic
tradition has given to the person as moral subject requires more attention, the
subsequent chapters on freedom and knowledge, sin, and conscience will
explore this aspect at greater length.
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," the Greek ver-
sion of this aspect of being human. "Embodied subject" implies that our
bodies are not accessories. They are not merely something we have to house
our subjectivity, but are essential to our being integrated persons. 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 affects
every expression of ourselves in relationship. The affection of love, for exam-
ple, needs to be expressed in bodily ways, such as through a gift, or a kiss, or
an embrace, or sexual intercourse. God so loved us as to come to us in bodily
form so that we could know divine love in the only way humans can know
it-in an embodied form.
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 propor-
tionate to the nature of the commitment between persons. Also, bodily exis-
tence 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 to others we must take care of our bodily health and
respect bodily integrity. Bodily existence also means that we must accept our
genetic endowment which sets the baseline for certain possibilities and limita-
tions 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 environ-
ment, would not support.
As body persons we are a part of the material world. To be a part of the
material world holds both great potential and serious limitation. The poten-
tial 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 more livable place. The developments of science and technol-
ogy are certainly helping us to do that. But human creations are ambiguous.
Herein lies the serious limitation. The very products which help us to im-
prove communication, production, and prosperity can be detrimental to our
70 Reason Informed By Faith

corporeality and communality by entailing negative effects such as traffic

congestion, air, water, and noise pollution, land erosion, and the accumula-
tion of toxic waste. 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
produce disturbing results for the wholeness of society and the common
good. Being part of the material world requires moral agents to consider the
negative effects necessarily entailed in the positive discoveries of technology
and to weigh their moral importance.

An Subject
An embodied spirit 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 a progressive
movement toward our full human development. Much of spiritual theology
today has capitalized on this characteristic of the person by using the meta-
phors of life as a journey and of each person as a pilgrim made to rest only in
God. Narrative theology, too, reflects on the temporality of human existence
when it talks about the "narrative quality of experience,"5 i.e., every moment
of life is in tension with the past and the future. When we integrate our past
into the person we are becoming we move into the future not only with a
sense of integrity but also with a coherent sense of direction. '
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 capaci-
ties at each stage of development. We must be careful to regard moral culpa-
bility for behavior relative to each stage of development. Also, the actions of
historical subjects have their full moral meaning only when considered in
relationship to the total context which includes the future consequences.
Just as persons develop and change, so do cultures. Progress or regress is
always possible and the elaboration of new values is never ending. As new
possibilities open up to us through science and technology (such as artificial
means of reproduction) and as new values emerge (such as a new appreciation
for the relational meaning of sexuality), we must constantly discern and order
laws and values which will enrich human dignity. As historical subjects, our
moral reflection must be as dynamic as the human life which it intends to
guide. As we acquire new potential and elaborate new values, we need to
discover appropriate ways to integrate them into our uniquely individual but
commonly shared lives.
The Human Person 71

Fundamentally Equal but

Uniquely Original
The dimensions of being human considered thus far affirm a fundamental
equality among human 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 taken into account the originality and uniqueness of
each person. This means that while everyone shares common features
of humanity, each one does so differently and to different degrees.
James M. Gustafson has analyzed a person's unique moral character
according to the uncontrollable and the somewhat controllable features. 6 The
features of ourselves over which we have no control in establishing our
uniqueness are our genetic endowment, our unconscious motives, and the
social-cultural conditioning to which we have been subjected in the process of
growing up.
Beyond these uncontrollable features are those over which we do have
some control. One of these features is our beliefs, or stable convictions,
which give direction and meaning to our lives. The extent to which our
beliefs influence the originality of our lives depends not only on what beliefs
we hold but also on how intensely we hold them. The perspective, or point of
view, from which we look on the world also accounts for originality. What
we think is important and how we respond to it are influenced by the way we
see it. Also, dispositions, or a readiness to act in a certain way, mark our
unique character. Affections, or sensitivities, influence the depth and swift-
ness of our moral responses. Finally, our intention, or the basic direction of
our actions governed by our knowledge and freedom, puts the distinctive
mark of personal style on what we do.
In each of us, these features are all interrelated through the imagination.
Understood in its deepest sense, the imagination is not merely a capacity for
frivolity in an otherwise serious world; rather, the imagination is the capacity
to construct a world. By means of the imagination we bring together diverse
experiences into a meaningful whole. Influenced by the philosophy of Paul
Ricoeur, Philip Keane describes the imagination in his study, Christian Ethics
and the Imagination,

as the basic process by which we draw together the concrete and the
universal elements of our human experience. With imagination we
let go of any inadequately pre-conceived notions of how the abstract
and the concrete relate to one another. We suspend judgment about
how to unite the concrete and the abstract. We let the two sides of
our knowing play with one another. By allowing this interplay
72 Reason Informed By Faith

between the two aspects of our knowing, we get a much deeper

chance to look at what we know, to form a vision of it. 7

When we "get the picture" through the imaginative process we come to

an image which puts together diverse beliefs and experiences so that we can
understand what is going on and relate to it appropriately. When religious
beliefs, for example, are part of the imaginative process, they enter into the
content of what we experience and contribute toward connecting the many
dimensions of experience with the values entailed in those beliefs. This gives
us a distinctively religious "picture" of the world and a way of responding to
it such as we explored in the last chapter.
Since we are guided and formed by the images which give us a "picture"
of the world, the imagination sets the direction and limits of our moral
behavior. The imagination informs what we think, what we see, the way we
feel, our readiness to act, and the direction of our actions. It gives a definite-
ness to our characters in such a way that when our master images change, we
are significantly changed. Since this is so, we find a clue to ourselves through
the master images of the imagination. They help us to organize our lives and
influence our moral arguments, choices, and actions.
A person's unique identity within the fundamental equality of a commu-
nity of persons has profound moral implications, especially for giving pasto-
ral guidance. Because each person embodies the common features of human-
ity differently, we cannot expect two people to respond to the same situation
in the same way. They are simply not capable of it. One's moral character
sets the range of possibilities for action. Each person's capacity is limited both
by the uncontrollable givens and by the somewhat controllable givens inte-
grated by one's moral imagination. Even though we may all appeal to the
same objective norms in relation to the same issue, each of us will only be able
to live up to the norm and respond to the issue according to his or her
capacity. A person's subjective responsibility for moral behavior is relative to
the development of that person's moral capacity. No one can be held responsi-
ble for doing what is beyond his or her power to do.
In a pastoral setting, then, the advice of Bernard Haring reflecting the
wisdom of St. Alphonsus Liguori is sound, "One should never try to impose
what the other person cannot sincerely internalize, except the case of prevent-
ing grave injustice toward a third person."8 We can only hold a person
accountable for what is relative to that person's capacity. A person is only
morally culpable for failing to do what he or she is capable of doing. There-
fore, since each person's actions remain subject to justification in light of
objective moral norms, the demands of the situation, and one's capacity, we
can expect to find some differences between what a moral situation demands
of one person and what it demands of another.
The Human Person 73

The Personalistic Criterion

These then are dimensions of the human person adequately considered.
When taken together in an integrated way, they form the foundation of a
personalistic morality. Louis Janssens has used these essential dimensions of
the human person to form this criterion: an action is morally right if it is
beneficial to the person adequately considered in himself or herself (i.e., as an
unique, embodied spirit) and in his or her relations (i.e., to others, to social
structures, to the material world, and to God).9 For Janssens this is an
objective criterion since it is based on the constant dimensions of being
human. But since it is a criterion about the human person as an historical
being, it requires a regular review of the possibilities we have available to
promote the human person so that we can determine whether they truly do
so. Janssens recognizes that the application of this criterion is not easy. To
use it in a morally responsible way requires wisdom-the special gift of the
morally good person who has an affinity for what is right and whose judg-
ment is inspired by a morally good disposition, an attitude which is ready to
place our activity as much as possible at the service of the human person
adequately considered. \0

Conclusion
As we try to understand the human person adequately, we may better
appreciate the great advantage of the language of "human person" over "hu-
man nature" to express the anthropological foundations of morality. The
advantage to "human nature" is that it underscores what is common to all. Its
great disadvantage, however, is that it does not adequately express one's
fundamental originality. The language of "human person," by contrast, is
more adequate because it captures the uniqueness of the person without
abandoning those features of the common human condition and the moral
demands founded upon them.
A view of the human person such as the one presented here challenges
Roman Catholic theology to integrate empirical evidence into its moral assess-
ments. Moral theology from a personalistic perspective must take into ac-
count the experiences of people over time in order to determine what sorts of
activities best serve the person adequately considered. As a result, moral
theology must include not only deductive but also inductive methods in order
to take human experience seriously. An inductive approach will yield reliable
though tentative conclusions open to revision. New historical experience and
new evidence will emerge to reinforce a position already held or to call it into
question and ask that it be reformulated or rescinded if necessary.
Even though each of the features of the human person treated above can
be given much greater elaboration in order to develop the anthropological
74 Reason Informed By Faith

foundations of a personalistic morality of responsibility, I will focus in the

next chapter only on those which the Catholic tradition has made the indis-
pensable features of the moral subject: knowledge and freedom. For without
these we do not have true morality at all. The subsequent chapters on sin and
conscience will then consider the person even more adequately in the light of
faith and grace.

Notes

1. Louis Janssens, "Artificial Insemination: Ethical Considerations,"

Louvain Studies 8 (Spring 1980): 4.
2. Michael]. Himes and Kenneth R. Himes, "Rights, Economics, and
the Trinity," Commonweal 113 (March 14,1986): 139.
3. Ibid., pp. 139-140.
4. Louis Janssens explored these dimensions in a preliminary way in
his "Personalist Morals," Louvain Studies 3 (Spring 1970): 5-16. His most
worked out version is in the methodological introduction to his treatment of
artificial insemination, "Artificial Insemination: Ethical Considerations," Lou-
vain Studies 8 (Spring 1980): 5-13.
5. The expression is from Stephen Crites, "The Narrative Quality of
Experience," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 39 (1971): 291-311.
6. For this analysis of Gustafson's, see his Can Ethics Be Christian?
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 32-47.
7. Philip S. Keane, Christian Ethics and the Imagination (Ramsey: Paulist
Press, 1984), p. 81. Some of the influential material from Paul Ricoeur are
"The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling," Critical
Inquiry 5 (1978), pp. 143-159; also, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, ed.
and trans. by John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981).
8. Bernard Haring, Free and Faithful in Christ, Vol. 1: General Moral
Theology (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), p. 289.
9. Janssens, "Artificial Insemination: Ethical Considerations," Louvain
Studies 8 (Spring 1980): 13.
10. Ibid., pp. 14-15.