Catholic Anthropology - Part 2
The following series of articles serves as a very brief primer in some important aspects of Catholic anthropology, or the Catholic understanding of the human person, especially as a preface to understanding the moral life.
A wise person who reflects on the human experience can understand that, in comparison with lower animals, there is something unique about the human race and our place in the world. They could understand that this means human beings do, and ought to continue, living their lives in a manner that is different from animals. When it comes to the kinds of activities that we share with animals —nourishing, sheltering, and defending ourselves or procreating and organizing ourselves into groups— we ought to continue to do these in a manner that is qualitatively different from the way animals undertake these activities. Where animals do these things by instinct, we ought to do these things by reason. But there are also activities that animals do not share in and that human beings undertake alone. Here you can think of things like art, religion, education, law, music, and scientific inquiry. The wise person could also understand that these things are worth doing, and doing well, as a part of the picture of what it means to be human.
But is this a complete picture of how the human being was created and what we were created for? The answer is no, and for two reasons. The first reason is that, even though it is clear that we have a unique place in the world when compared to other animals, the human race often fails to live up to its own best aspirations. This is a curious reality: why does man fail to live according to what is highest in him? The answer to that question is inaccessible to the ordinary wise man (we will say more about this question in the next article in this series). The second reason is that all of our human activities, if they are truly worth doing, need a unifying and consummating goal. What is the final purpose of human life and what do all of these activities point toward? Here is another way to ask the same question: what will finally satisfy and fulfill all human desire and longing?
A second basic truth about human nature is that we are creatures who were made by God and made for God. The classic expression of this truth is to say that human beings are made in the Image of God. St. Augustine famously says it this way: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” To understand what makes a human being happy, good, or perfect we have to know that for which they were ultimately created. And the answer is that human beings were created by God and for God.
We come to learn this truth by faith in what God has revealed to us in Sacred Scripture and in Jesus Christ. In divine revelation we learn that God made human beings, from the very beginning, in a state of elevated friendship with himself. This is important because it means that he did not create us merely to populate the earth and undertake our day-to-day activities. He made us for something infinitely more noble and sublime: to share in the life, joy, and communion that belongs properly to God himself.
A helpful way to understand the elevated purpose for which human beings were created is to think of a stained glass window. Imagine that it is a perfectly dark night, in which there is no natural or artificial light, and you enter a church with magnificent stained glass windows. In this situation, the windows still exist and serve some kind of purpose insofar as they fill a structural opening and keep the cold and the elements outside. But they hardly are fulfilling the purpose for which they were made. Now imagine entering this same church during a clear summer morning. When the power and light of the sun is applied to the windows, and you enter the church, then you see why the windows were really created.
The same is true for human nature created in the Image of God. Only when we are connected to God and living in relationship with Him can we see our true purpose and find our true fulfillment. Because we are created in God’s image we strive to be like Him and nothing else will satisfy us. But to be like God we must be in union with Him. That is why we were created - to be in union with God.
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Liked the stained glass window analogy.
“Because we are created in God’s image we strive to be like Him and nothing else will satisfy us.” How simple - yet profound! Thank you!