Pope Benedict XVI and the Politics of Modernity by Marc D. Guerra

Author:Marc D. Guerra [Guerra, Marc D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780415637145
Google: aXpFLgEACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 17842080
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-01-15T00:29:52+00:00

III. A theological anthropology

There are three main points for consideration of Benedict’s anthropology: (1) the Biblical foundation of his understanding of the human person, (2) the primacy of conscience, and (3) the necessity of relationship and communion among persons. Following Thomas Rourke’s analysis of Benedict’s anthropology, I would like to begin this section of my study with a reflection on a very profound (and somewhat technical) article from 1990 published by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion of the Person in Theology.”16 Benedict begins this essay with a somewhat shocking thesis that only Christian theology can give an adequate account of the person; Greek philosophy could not have conceived the depths of the meaning of the human person. The concept of the person arose because of man’s reflection on the question of God’s nature and Christ’s nature, and thus for Benedict, it is an essentially and uniquely Christian concept. As Rourke points out in his commentary, “Aristotle classified it [that is, person] as on of the ‘accidents’ of being, purely contingent, existing only under circumstances as a changing component of a substance.”17 Philosophy unaided by faith was unable to render the fullest account of human nature according to Benedict. His account of the human person is decidedly technical and theological, so I will attempt to summarize the essential insights that shape what I believe is a theological and not merely a philosophical anthropology. This elucidation is essential for understanding Benedict’s approach to politics.

Benedict follows Augustine in his argument that the Trinitarian nature of God as revealed in the Christian Scriptures is essential to understand human nature: “God is a being in three persons. In this context, theologians argue, person must be understood as relation…. Relation, being related, is not something superadded to the person, but it is the person itself. In its nature, the person exists only as relation.”18 This existence as relation refers to the three persons of the Trinity according to Christian revelation: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But the question arises: Does this understanding of the Divine persons in Christianity as “pure relatedness” apply to human beings?19 Benedict argues in the affirmative and it is in his reflections on Christology that he affirms his understanding of the human person as “pure relatedness.” According to Benedict XVI, the concept of personhood had to be worked out in the early centuries of Christianity to understand who Christ is as one person with two natures, human and divine. The Church rejected various heresies that denied the humanity or divinity of Christ, and in the working out of these heresies, Christianity was forced to reflect on the meaning of person. For Benedict, the person of Christ stands as “the true fulfillment of the idea of the human person.”20 Christ’s words in Matthew 10:36, “Only the one who loses himself can find himself” captures the essence of the human spirit, “the nature of the spirit…comes to itself and actualizes its own fullness only by going away from itself, by going to what is other than itself.

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