Human Nature from a Catholic Perspective

• Published date: 01 October 2012
• Date: 01 October 2012
• Author: JOSEPH KOTERSKI
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.2012.00840.x

Human Nature from a Catholic Perspective

By JOSEPH KOTERSKI, S.J.*

ABSTRACT. Catholic views on personhood and human nature include

emphasis on the dignity of each person, from womb to tomb. The

claims made for this inviolable dignity invariably stem from the

recognition that all human beings, regardless of their state of depen-

dency, are made in the image of God and are thus the bearers of

certain moral rights. But in our fallen state that image is wounded and

needs to be repaired. Hence, Christians need to learn to recapitulate

the life of Christ in their own lives by growing through the stages of

human life according to the model that He presents to us. There are

not only individual but corporate aspects to this growth. Catholic

Social Teaching offers insights on the corporate and social condition

in which we find ourselves. It has a healthy respect for the economic

laws of the market and for the technical intricacies of efficient

decision-making processes in local, national, and world economies,

but out of respect for human nature there are moral norms that need

to be respected and that may never be violated. On the topic of

property and private ownership, considerable attention is given to the

very purpose of private property (namely, to provide individuals with

a kind of independence that enhances their ability to do their duties

to their dependence and that extends their freedom). But always

correlated with this defense of private property is a sense of the social

demands on private property that come from the common good and

the communal purpose of all earthly goods.

Introduction

Catholic views on personhood and human nature take shape from

revelation and reason. When I speak of revelation, I mean not only the

record of revelation that is to be found in the sacred scriptures that

constitute the Bible, but the entire tradition of God’s self-disclosure

that began with creation and that culminates in the person of Jesus

*Rev. Joseph Koterski is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 71, No. 4 (October, 2012).

© 2012 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

Christ and the on-going mission of the Holy Spirit. When I speak of

reason, I refer not only to the record of theological and philosophical

reflection that the Church has long embraced, but also to the creative

uses to which the human mind has been put in art and poetry, in

history and the social sciences, and the manifold uses of human

reason that the Church has long promoted in the course of her history.

For such a vast subject, it will be necessary to choose a small

number of points for greater elaboration, while sketching out the rest

of the subject in only a very general way. For this reason, I will try to

lay out what I take to be the general lines of Christian anthropology

as that subject tends to be understood within the Catholic Church, by

making generous use of philosophical insights in the first section and

then turning in the second section toward more specifically theologi-

cal perspectives, first, the notion of recapitulation in Christ and,

second, the Church’s body of social teachings. Needless to say, the

literature is vast. My immediate source for many of the claims here will

be the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1994).

A General Sketch

The human being is a creature of God. Like everything else in the

entire universe, human beings owe their existence and nature to the

divine plan for creation, a plan now recognized to have been oper-

ating for millions of years before human beings came upon the scene.

By virtue of its commitment to reason and revelation as reliable

sources of knowledge, Catholicism can readily acknowledge the work

of contemporary science to have traced the emergence of the cosmos

back at least as far as the “Big Bang” and at the same time can hold

that the entire universe is God’s creation. The Catholic understanding

here is not some Deist picture of a God who designed the natural laws

of the universe and then stepped back to watch it all unfold, but rather

the picture of a creator who actively sustains the universe at every

moment of its being, who not only designed the laws of nature but is

present to every part of the universe at once and is exercising

providential care for what he loves.

The human being is not only a creature of God, but that particularly

important kind of creature that was made in God’s image and likeness,

810 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology