The starting point for establishing the integrality of the human person can be linked from different disciplines of social and human knowledge, including theology, philosophy, and anthropology, and even from the frontiers of such knowledge.
The first linkage can occur from the field of practical philosophy or human action, initiated in the perspective of the Stagirite and continued by the Aquinas, who relate, from different and complementary points of view, in the case of the Angelic Doctor, that the human rational capacity and the faith of man are distinctive signs of his being; A second link is presented by theology, from its moral sphere, which places special emphasis on the rational explanation of the faith manifested in the moral lessons of theological reflection and the Magisterium of the Church, in which man as a child of God is redeemed in and through the person of Christ and is called to the fullness of divine life as a participant; the third link arises from anthropology, which in its multiple divisions provides clear and specific referents for the definition of the human being.
The integrality of the person refers, in a first moment, to the humanism of the classical Greek era in the practice of its religious ideal derived from its mythical practices manifested in Orphism and in the medieval tradition of the Gospel as a source that illuminates human dignity. In a second moment this interpretation of the integrity of the human person can be contemplated today from phenomenology in the so-called Christian turn, in the contributions of the theandric conception that integrates the relationship of man as a person, without separating himself from the cosmos and God, in which the personal reality is conceived beyond the conception of the I-object, thus the purpose of the human being from these conceptions, are characterized by the search for what makes us essentially human without separating from the union with Christ and in the identification with Him and His will from the conscious, free and loving practice.
In this sense, for us Westerners, heirs of the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Latin traditions, these optics, derived from Greek and medieval humanism and even from modern humanism, are fundamental but need to be revised to explain the integral sense of the human being, because the notion of human integrality has been thought basically from the Aristotelian-Thomistic notions, so it is necessary to adapt this thought to the notions of contemporary life, a time when discussions are focused on the analysis of postmodernity, post-ontology, the deconstruction of Christianity.
I invite everyone to read Matias’ post with the theme of the day.
El Arbol de la Vida - Tercer Ciclo 