The Human Person as Imago Dei

ONE OF THE FOUNDATIONAL CONCEPTS of the Church's social doctrine is the concept of personhood. The notion of personhood is a philosophical concept, but it finds its inspiration and deepening in the revealed doctrines that man is made in the image of God (imago Dei), and that man is called to a supernatural destiny, or, as the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church puts it, "is constitutively related to God in the most profound manner." (Compendium, No. 108)

The Medieval scholastics had wonderful aphorisms that encapsulated this latter notion, that man is "constitutively related to God in the most profound manner," that both heaven and God hound him. Homo est Dei capax. Man has a capacity for God. This capacity for God is what gave man a supernatural dignity. Homo non proprie humanum, sed superhumanum est. Man is not properly human, but superhuman. The Compendium quotes Ecclesiastes 3:11 in saying that God "has put eternity into man's mind," and also refers to St. Augustin's beautiful saying in his Confessions: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

Only persons are made in the image of God, have a capacity for God, and have supernatural destinies. Remove God from the picture and invariably the concept of person becomes unintelligible. The dignity of man, the concept of personhood, cannot be built upon agnostic, much less atheistic, foundations. It is philosophical, but it is also theological.

Man is Imago Dei, Capax Dei, that is to say, a Person

"All of social life," the Compendium states eliciting an image of the drama of human life, "is an expression of its unmistakable protagonist: the human person." The origin of social life, as well as its subject, foundation, and goal, is the human person. (Compendium, No. 106) The centrality of personhood in Catholic social doctrine cannot be underestimated. "The whole of the Church's social doctrine, in fact, develops from the principle that affirms the inviolable dignity of the human person." (Compendium, No. 107)

Being ordered to the good of the human person, the whole of social life can therefore be critiqued by reference to whether it promotes or instead redimensions or distorts the human person and the human dignity that follows in its train. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church therefore focuses on this concept.

It is essential to understand the concept of personhood as an ontological concept, and not a functional concept. Man is a person because of who he is, because of his being what he is, not because of what he is capable of doing or becoming, because of what functions, mental, psychological, biological, etc. he is capable of performing.

Insidiously, when many moderns use the word "person," they have a functional concept in mind, a notion that most have traced to John Locke's definition of self in his Essay on Human Understanding as "a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places."

Such a functional conception of personhood is convenient when you want to dispose of men who do not have all the functions you happen to think are important. Hence, fetuses, those in a persistent vegetative state, and the mentally infirm are not persons under a functional dimension, though under an ontological dimension they are. This is the sort of redimensioning of the concept of person against which the Compendium warns.

The concept of personhood, of course, transcends the distinction of sex, and so man and woman, being both persons, "have the same dignity and are of equal value." (Compendium, No. 111) They are complementary expressions of the human person, and this complementarity finds its apex or epitome in the reciprocal giving that is part of the I-Thou and Thou-I covenant of marriage, a relationship that "gives life to the 'we' in the human couple," which itself is an image of God and and image of God's love for the Church.

There is a certain tragedy in this creature that is imago Dei and capax Dei, and that is the notion of original sin, and man's fallen nature. Philosophy knows nothing of it, though, as G. K. Chesterton quipped in his book Orthodoxy, it is a fact "as practical as potatoes" that there is "indisputable dirt" on the countenance of man, and "is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved."

The Church will not allow man to divert himself, indeed to deceive himself by hiding himself, from the fact that he suffers from original sin. She will prevent him from trying to use foils to avoid having to confront his deep guilt, and his deep need for God the Redeemer:

This doctrine [of original sin] encourages men and women not to remain in guilt and not to take guilt lightly, continuously seeking scapegoats in other people and justification in the environment, in heredity, in institutions, in structures and in relationships. This is a teaching that unmasks such deceptions.

(Compendium, No. 120)

Original sin not only divided man from God, but also man from woman, and man from man. Though the doctrine of the fall of man and original sin are revealed doctrines, a cursory look at man's history, a quick assessment of the personal and social divisions which plague us, a brief introspection of oneself ought readily prove the existence of original sin and our fallen nature which predisposes us to personal sin, to wounding both self and others.

"The mystery of sin is composed of a twofold wound, which the sinner opens in his own side and in the relationship with his neighbor. That is why we can speak of personal and social sin." As the Compendium correctly notes, there simply is no such thing as a "victimless sin." All sins have both personal and social dimensions.

Every sin is personal under a certain aspect; under another, every sin is social, insofar as and because it also has social consequences. In its true sense, sin is always an act of the person, because it is the free act of an individual person and not properly speaking of a group or community. The character of social sin can unquestionably be ascribed to every sin, taking into account the fact that "by virtue of the human solidarity which is as mysterious and intangible as it is real and concrete, each individual's sin in some way affects others."

(Compendium, No. 117) (quoting JP II, Reconciliatio et paenitentia, No. 16)

Though all sins have a social component in addition to their foundational personal one, it is true that some sins particularly offend the social fabric in that they represent direct and intentional assaults on another person. Every act that intentionally takes the life of another, that attacks the physical integrity of another, that violates the human rights of another or offends the dignity or honor due another, that vitiates the common good are clearly social in nature.

One of the horrible consequences of personal sins and their invariable social nature is that they become institutionalized, consolidated in what are called "structures of sin." (Compendium, No. 119) These "structures of sin" give rise to a vicious social inertia which is difficult to overcome, since they result in certain self-interest in sin, they condition those who grow up or participate in such structures, and they tend to normalize behavior which is sinful. One might favorably cite to Pascal's Pensées (No. 458):

'All that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, or the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life; libido sentiendi, libido sciendi, libido dominandi." [1 John 2:16] Wretched is the cursed land which these three rivers of fire enflame rather than water!

The Compendium cites in particular to two categories of such structures prevalent in the modern world, structures built upon the "all-consuming desire for profit," and structures built upon the "thirst for power, with the intention of imposing one's will upon others."

The Church's understanding of original sin and of man's fallen state is therefore realistic. The Church is fully cognizant of the tragic flaw that is resident in the intimate parts of man which tends to bar him from his destiny. However, she is not, by any means pessimistic. She does not cry as it were with a leaden echo the words: "despair, despair, despair, despair." At her heart is an optimistic and positive conception of man because she has in her ken the mighty solution to man's problems. The Church yells as with a golden echo, "Spare!" and points us "Yonder, yes yonder, yonder, yonder."*

Christian realism sees the abysses of sin, but in the light of the hope, greater than any evil, given by Jesus Christ's act of redemption, in which sin and death are destroyed . . . . The new reality that Jesus Christ gives us is not grafted onto human nature nor is it added from outside: it is rather that reality of communion with the Trinitarian God to which men and women have always been oriented in the depths of their being thanks to their creaturely likeness to God. . . . The universality of this hope also includes, besides the men and women of all peoples, heaven and earth . . . . According to the New Testament, all creation, together indeed with all humanity, awaits the Redeemer: subjected to futility, creation reaches out full of hope, with groans and birth pangs, longing to be freed from decay.

(Compendium, No. 120-23)

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*Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Maiden's Song from St. Winefred's Well."

Et Creavit Deus Hominem ad Imaginem Suam

GOD CREATED MAN, BOTH MALE AND FEMALE, in his own image. These are some of the first words in the Scriptures, found in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. They are at the foundation of any Jewish or Christian anthropology. Man is b'tzelem elohim (בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹהִ֖ים) (Gen. 1:27), the image of God, imago Dei. It is a revealed truth, surely one that has its counterpart in reason. For man is able to perceive through the use of his reason that he shares in some dignity as a result of his creation, and as a result of his knowing that his end is the contemplation of God, the First Cause. This notion shows itself, in very corrupt form, in the anthropomorphic concepts of the gods that the pagans had. Man made the gods in his own image, which is a back-handed way of acknowledging the real truth: that man was made in God's image. No inkling or hunch that might be obtained by the use of reason of man's personhood and dignity, however, reaches the cardinal truth of human anthropology: man as imago Dei. The dignity of man seen as a fellow intellector of being and a fellow doer of good is different from the dignity of man as the very image of the Source of all reality, all reason, all love, in fact the Source who is Reality, Reason, and Love. To see only man and not the one in whose image he was made is like wearing blinders. "Trying to understand man without recognizing him as the imago Dei is like trying to understand a bas-relief without recognizing it as a carving." Budziszewski (2003), 70.

It is not that some semblance of man's dignity cannot be gleaned from reason; it can, but it is arduous and rarely something compelling. "Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk," said John Henry Cardinal Newman in his Idea of the University, "then you may hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man.” And so the history of man is replete with man abusing his own fellows, of man being a wolf to man; homo homini lupus, said Plautus. Reason alone seems an ineffective governor. It is too easily circumvented. There is too much static in hearing its insistence that man has a special dignity we call personhood.

Man is B'tzelem Elohim

In every man--it matters not his stage of development, the color of his skin, the tribe or people from whence he came, the language that he speaks, or the God he worships or fails to worship--is made in the image of God. Man is therefore impressed by the seal of God, as it were, and those who claim to love God will perceive the very image of God in their neighbor. This linkage between God and his image is what leads St. John to say succinctly: "If any man says I love God, and hateth his brother; he is a liar." (1 John 4:20). It is not that believing that man is made in the image of God infallibly assures we will treat our fellow man properly, but it constitutes a great bulwark, nevertheless. "For the most part," notes Budziszewski, "the ones who stay on the trail [and accord man his proper dignity] are the same ones who acknowledge the biblical revelation of the imago Dei." It was the imago Dei the abolitionist saw in the black slave that compelled him to institute the reforms to banish that "peculiar institution." It was the imago Dei that Hitler suppressed that compelled the Nazis to place the Jew in the concentration camp.

The notion of man as imago Dei is encapsulated in the philosophical notion of man as a person. Man is a person, not unlike God, who is three persons in one God. Unfortunately, the philosophical concept of a person has undergone corruption at the hands of secularists, who, beginning with John Locke, began to define human personhood as a matter of function, and not as a matter of being or nature.* But defining personhood in terms of function (memory, ability to communicate, concept of self, whatever it may be) is a contradiction in terms. It is a bizarre hijacking of a philosophical term. "In short, a person is by nature someone whom it is wrong to view merely functionally . . . . And so the functional definition of personhood does not even rise to the dignity of being wrong. It is incoherent." Budziszewski (2003), 72.

There is a certain ominous characteristic in the loss of the sense of man as imago Dei, something that hints at a future far worse than merely a new paganism with new gods and idols of man's own making. A dog who has vomited the toxic contents from its stomach is one thing. A dog who returns to it to eat it after having had the taste of a hale meal is quite another.

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*For a short description of the change of the meaning of person from one based upon intrinsic qualities to one based upon functionality, see Tribute to Moloch: Beethoven from Zygote to Death.

Karl Barth: Rubbing Out the Image of God in Man

Karl Barth

THE FALL OF MAN IN ADAM according to Karl Barth wholly destroyed the image of God, the imago Dei, in man, and shattered thereby any ability of man naturally to know God and naturally to know the good and the right. Added to this, Barth had tremendous difficulty seeing how a natural theology and a natural knowledge of morality did not detract from Christ's exclusivity as God's revelation. For this reason, though perhaps with good intentions but nevertheless in error, Barth rejected any role of natural theology in the knowledge of God and natural law in the knowlege of the good. This position is against de fide Catholic teaching, and it is clear heresy.

Jacob Jordaen's Fall of Man

According to Stephen J. Grabill, for Barth the natural knowledge of God, while perhaps theoretically possible, was, in practice, absolutely foreclosed to man. Grabill, 24. "Between what is possible in principle and what is possible in fact there inexorably lies the fall," wrote Barth. Grabill, 24 (quoting Natural Theology, 106). Indeed, so extreme was this post-lapsarian chasm, that any natural knowledge of God "was nothing more than idolatry and superstition." Grabill, 25. A duplex cognitio Dei, a two-fold knowledge of God, natural and supernatural, was impossible. For Barth, Christ was the "exclusive epistemological point of entry into the knowledge of God." Grabill, 24.

In the area of morality, Barth's doctrine was similarly narrow. For Barth, the only source for our knowledge of the good and the right was God's revelation in Christ. The effect of the Fall was cataclysmic to the point where it erased any of God's image in us. There is less of God in us remaining after Adam's sin than there was left of Carthage after its sack and destruction by the Romans in the Third Punic War.

Aquí donde el romano encendimiento,
dond´el fuego y la llama licenciosa
solo el nombre dexaron a Cartago . . .

wrote the 16th century Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega in his Sonnet, "A Boscán desde la Goleta" (Sonnet XXXIII). The fire and licentious flame of the Roman, the Spanish poet tells us, left but the name of Carthage. In like manner, the fire and flame of the fall, the Swiss theologian avers, left nothing but the name of man, an empty shell, a nature wholly rendered barren by the plowing of Satan's salt. The imago Dei was thus wholly rubbed out, leaving not the least smidgen of God's plan to be salvaged from the smoldering rubble. For Barth, there was "no Anknüpfungspunkt [German = point of contact], no relics of the imago Dei," remaining in us after the Fall." Grabill, 33. Our nature was natura deleta, natura corrupta, nature totally depraved.

[T]he image of God is not just, as it is said, destroyed apart from a few relics; it is totally annihilated. What remains of the image of God even in sinful man is recta natura, to which as such a rectitudo cannot be ascribed even potentialiter.

Grabill, 34-35 (quoting Barth's Church Dogmatics, I.1, p. 238-39).

There is no good to be found in human nature, even potentially. Any "direct discernment of the original relation of God to man, the discernment of the creation of man which is also the revelation of God, has . . . been taken from us by the fall . . ." Grabill, 33 (quoting Church Dogmatics, I.1.) It follows that any attempt independent of revelation to determine morality was doomed to failure because fallen man, man in status corruptionis, "sees and thinks and knows crookedly even in relation to his crookedness." Grabill, 30 (quoting Church Dogmatics, V.1, p. 361.) "Once we begin to toy with the lex naturae as the inner lex aeterna we are well on the way to [supplanting Christ with reason]. And once the reversal has taken place . . . there can be no stopping on this way." Grabill, 31 (quoting Church Dogmatics, IV.1, 373.) So for Barth, arguments based upon the natural law compromise Christ's message, are "Janus-headed," they lead to a "misty twilight in which all cats become gray," and simply result in a pagan opposition of Apollo to Dionysius, leaving Christ out of the equation.

Ultimately, the Barthian false opposition between Christ and Nature, Faith and Reason, leads to a horrible moral exclusivity, a tragic lack of solidarity between the Christian and his unbelieving brothers. There is a certain blindness in stubbornly maintaining that morality is either/or, when it is both/and. By the will and plan of God, morality is both Nature and Christ. There must be something good in the Nature of Man after the Fall, for what else did Christ assume? What else did Christ come to save? The Barthian pseudo-Christian--disdainful of the nature he shares with all men--shares nothing with his unbelieving brother except a lifeless, stinking corpse.

As to Barth's moral doctrine, I say we ought to sentire cum ecclesia: Anathema Sit!