A Christian Anthropological Creed
Archbishop Julian Porteous, Catholic Archbishop of Tasmania
NOTE: This paper was written in 2021 and argues very presciently for a new, big-picture Christian anthropological creed. Archbishop Julian Porteous kindly helped guide and support the drafting process of the Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity. The new creed covers a lot of the content he proposed in 2021, though the Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity addresses a narrower set of topics, and, like the Nicene Creed, corrects the most egregious heresies of the day.
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Christians are very familiar with the idea of a creed which encapsulates the essential elements of our belief. At Mass every Sunday we say the Nicaean Creed. We recite the Apostles Creed when we say the Rosary. As we say the words of the creed we punctuate the statements with ‘I believe’, or Credo in Latin.
A creed is a formularised confession of the Christian faith. It distils the faith in summary form. Creeds have proved helpful touchstones for orthodoxy.
Changes in Understanding the Human Person
Social changes are sweeping our culture and significantly altering the way people view the nature of the human person, especially in the areas of the understanding of marriage, of gender, of sexuality. It is true that now the bulk of Australians have an understanding of human nature which conflicts with the Christian understanding, which itself has guided Western civilisation for around the last 1,500 years. This Christian understanding is being systematically challenged and removed as the guiding understanding for our culture.
Indeed, many in our society are openly antagonistic towards the Christian understanding of the human person. They find the Christian teaching on certain matters like sexual identity, marriage and respect for life out of date or out of touch with contemporary values and are considered no longer acceptable. Indeed, it is not unusual these days for some people to be unable to understand how a reasonable person could possibly hold such views.
In the face of the dramatic change in our society’s understanding of what it means to be human, there is a need to clearly articulate the Christian understanding. We could construct what could be called a Christian ‘anthropological creed’.
Importance in Education
In terms of the role of education, particularly Christian education, such a creed could become a very useful pedagogical tool both for parents and teachers alike. We cannot seek to educate the human person until we first understand and are able to clearly articulate who we are as human beings. Our approach to educational issues should be grounded in an authentically Christian anthropology. Such a clear formulation will assist in clarifying the distinctiveness of the Christian belief about the nature of the human person and so provide a sound foundation to our teaching. The goal of Christian formation is the human flourishing of the students we teach.
Loss of Belief in God
The key influence in this changed understanding of the human person has been the loss of faith in God. In Western civilisation the human person has traditionally been understood in relation to the existence of God who created the universe and made human beings in his image and likeness, who calls human beings to relationship with Him on earth and offers eternal union with Him in heaven. Once God is removed from the equation, then each person is left to fashion their own self-understanding, often making their own self the centre of things. The loss of worship of God inevitably leads to a worship of self.
I will now explore some of the key elements of the Christian understanding of the human person. While many of these points may seem self-evident to us as Christians, we should be aware that for those outside a practicing Christian community they will seem quite foreign.
Indeed, as these Christian beliefs are expressed we could quietly consider someone we know — a friend or perhaps a family member — who is not a Christian and imagine their response to what is proposed.
The Dignity of the Human Person
The Book of Genesis tells us that: ‘God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them’.
Christians believe having been made in the image and likeness of God, each and every human being has an essential dignity and an intrinsic worth and value. Each human being matters.
The human being actually unites the spiritual and material worlds because each human being is a unity of a spiritual, immortal soul and a material body. The Second Vatican Council teaches that among all the creatures in the material world, only the human being is able to know and love God the Creator. The human being, it says, is ‘the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake. Simply put, human beings are called to share in God’s own life.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains the reason that the human being is a ‘person’ in these words:
Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead.
The nature of the human person cannot be understood apart from a relationship with God.
A Moral Being
A critical part of being made in the image and likeness of God is that human beings have been endowed by God with the capacity to reason and are able to exercise free will. It is through the exercise of reason and free will that the human person freely seeks and loves what is true and good. In his conscience, which is a judgment of his reason, the human person is able to recognise the voice of God urging him to do good and avoid evil.
God, in creating human beings with reason, allowed them through this reason to recognise and participate in the Divine Plan. This capacity, referred to as the Natural Law, gives human beings through the use of reason the capacity for true human flourishing.
The human person can find the law of God through the use of his reason and can live according to this law through the use of a properly formed conscience. This law is fulfilled in the love of God and of neighbour. It is through having free will that the human person is morally responsibility for his own actions, and because of this he has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions. The human person has the obligation to inform his conscience according to God’s law with regard to moral action, and to form a right conscience.
Designed for Marriage
The book of Genesis declares an important truth — that it is not good for man to be alone. God created woman, the Book of Genesis says, as ‘a helper fit for him’. Man and woman are helpmates to each other and complement each other. Man and woman are equal in that they share in the same human nature, but do so in a complementary manner. They were designed to fulfil God’s plan for creation: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it’, the Book of Genesis declares.
Marriage is revealed as the union of one man and one woman, who ‘become one flesh’ in a nuptial union so they can become procreators of life. This is the natural foundation for family life in which children, as a gift of God, are born and then nurtured in the loving and stable environment of the family.
All human beings are created as one of two possible sexes and therefore endowed with the gifts of either masculinity or femininity. Our sex as a man or woman is a constitutive element of being a human being. When human genetics is operating as it should our sex is established in and by our sex chromosomes. Our 23rd pair of chromosomes should either be XX, for a female or XY for a male. In a healthy properly functioning human body someone who has been created male cannot become a female, and vice versa, no matter what medical intervention they undertake to change their physical appearance.
The human body is a gift with a rich meaning. The call to communion is expressed in the physical difference and complementarity of man and woman. The Catholic Catechism teaches that ‘physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out’.
The Fall and Redemption
At the heart of the Christian understanding of the human condition is the account given in the Book of Genesis of the sin of Adam and Eve.
The first man and woman were created for divine intimacy. This intimate communion with God established harmony among our first parents and the rest of creation. But once this intimate communion with God was ruptured by sin, the grace of original holiness, as well as the harmony among our first parents and with all creation, was lost.
Sin is less an exercise of human freedom and more an abuse of that freedom. It is disobedience towards God and a lack of trust in his goodness. Sin is a pathology which is now part of the human condition. Human sin has both personal and social dimensions. Every sin is personal but is social in that it also has social repercussions.
The Sacred Scriptures then recount the intention of God to redeem humanity now under the sway of sin. The supreme act of God to effect the redemption is found in the Incarnation and sacrificial death of Christ on Calvary.
God chose to redeem humanity because, as St Paul taught, ‘the wages of sin is death’. The state of the human condition is such that we cannot save ourselves from sin and death. God’s way of redemption was to send his own Son to become a human being.
In Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, the true reality of being human is revealed. The Second Vatican Council states, ‘In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear’.
In suffering and dying to ransom us from sin and death, Jesus Christ revealed the depths of his love for us and the extent to which he would go to reconcile us to himself. In rising from the dead, Jesus Christ revealed the resurrected glory of body and soul to which we are called to share with God in heaven.
The Christian understands that he or she has been saved by Christ’s death on the cross, and in an act of faith, embraces this saving grace. A Christian lives under the grace of the Holy Spirit poured out upon humanity which enables the Christian to live a life of virtue. As St Paul says, ‘All I want is to be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith’. As St Paul often says, we are saved through faith, and not through works.
However, we are also taught that we will be judged on our works. In the parable of the judgment of the nations, Jesus connects good works done in this life to the reward of heavenly joy. Conversely, the omission of these same works is connected to eternal punishment.
The human person does not live as an isolated individual, but in a communion of persons with interconnected relationships. The love of God is always connected to love of one’s neighbour. Consequently, the human person has responsibility for the wellbeing of others, and should therefore seek the common good of society.
Destined for Communion With God
The human person has a natural desire for happiness. Ultimately, this happiness is found in God alone. The desire for God is written in the human heart. As St Augustine famously wrote, ‘You have made us for yourself [O Lord], and our heart is restless until it rests in you’. The human person is called to union with God. The perfection of human nature is found in sharing God’s own beatitude in heaven, in communion with all the angels and saints.
Although God calls each human person to share in his own divine life, which in turn resonates with the desire written in our hearts, each human person must respond freely to God’s invitation. It is possible for individual human persons to reject or neglect God’s call to share everlasting life with him.
Christians believe that the great promise of salvation will be fulfilled in the resurrection of the body on the last day. Immediately upon death, the immortal soul will receive Christ’s particular judgment, and will await the time when it will be reunited with its body in the general resurrection of the dead. The immortal soul will be reunited with its body when Christ returns in glory on the day of the resurrection of the dead. The righteous human person, body and soul, will share in heavenly beatitude in Christ’s kingdom; while the unrighteous human person, body and soul, will receive eternal punishment.
Human Rights and Responsibilities
One final point needs to be made in relation to the fundamental rights and responsibilities of every human person that flow from their human dignity and God’s Law. The Catholic faith, based on divine revelation and human reason illuminated by faith, has consequences for human rights and responsibilities.
Gaudium et Spes teaches that ‘there is a growing awareness of the exalted dignity proper to the human person, since he stands above all things, and his rights and duties are universal and inviolable’. These rights and duties have been articulated in a number of the social encyclicals.
The Church has consistently spoken of the fundamental right to life. Every new human life is precious in the eyes of the Lord. The Catholic Catechism teaches: ‘From its conception, the child has the right to life’. The Church has also consistently defended the rights of the sick, the handicapped, the suffering and the aged. Because of the intrinsic dignity of the human person, every human life must be protected from conception to natural death. In the light of the passion of Christ, suffering is redemptive if accepted in union with Christ’s passion and death.
There is a mutual complementarity in the Church’s understanding of rights and responsibilities among men and women as both flow from the moral law and ultimately the Law of God. Both rights and responsibilities are ways of expressing the moral law, which itself is the expression of what is required for human flourishing. Of course, we find the most fundamental list of our duties in the Ten Commandments.
It is because we have a duty to seek and know the truth that the Church maintains that each human person has the right to pursue the truth in freedom, hence it recognises importance of freedom of a properly formed conscience and freedom of religion. The Church, however, has the responsibility to help the human person form his or her conscience rightly according to the moral law and present the truth to each person so that they might know it.
Governments have the critical and difficult role of both promoting the truth of the human person and their flourishing but also ensuring citizens have the freedom to pursue the truth, particularly what they believe to be the truth in the light of their own conscientiously held beliefs.
Human freedom is not absolute, as though the human person were able to determine the moral law according to their own lights. Rather, human freedom arises from our dignity in being created in God’s image.
Creedal Statements
Thus, at this point, can we assemble a Christian Anthropological Creed? That is, in the light of our reflection on the nature of the human person given to us from both human reason and divine revelation, can we express a set of beliefs which provide the principles upon which we as individual Christians can base our lives? These principles are then the inspiration for our life in human society. They are also the source of our promotion of the good of the human person within society.
A Christian Anthropological Creed
I propose the following as a possible Christian anthropological creed:
We believe the human person is made in the image of God, has been redeemed by the passion and death of Jesus Christ, and is called to share eternal life with God in heaven. As a consequence, the human person has inherent dignity which cannot be understood apart from our relationship with God.
We believe all people form the unity of the human race by reason of the common origin which they have from God.
We believe man and woman have been created by God in equal dignity insofar as they are human persons. At the same time, they have been created in a reciprocal complementarity insofar as they are masculine and feminine.
We believe that masculinity and femininity are gifts from God which are embraced and not altered or changed.
We believe men and women are called to subdue the earth as good “stewards” of what God has created.
We believe the human person, created by God, is a union of a body and a spiritual, immortal soul. This soul does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and will be reunited with its body at the final Resurrection.
We believe the human person has reason and free will, capable of understanding the order of creation and of making moral decisions. The human person is responsible for his or her own free actions.
We believe the human person has freedom to act according to the laws determined by God as the way to attain happiness. This freedom is not absolute but relative insofar as it is related to, and dependent upon, God himself.
We believe the human person has the right to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. Within the society, the Church has the responsibility to help the human person form his or her conscience rightly according to the natural moral law and the Gospel.
We believe the human person has the right to life, which is to be protected from conception to natural death.
We believe the human person inherits the effects of original sin, and that human nature, without being totally corrupted, is wounded in its natural powers.
We believe that in his Incarnation, Jesus Christ came to redeem humanity from sin and death.
We believe that the marriage covenant, by which one man and one woman form with each other an intimate communion of life and love, has been founded and endowed with its own special laws by the Creator.
We believe that by its very nature, marriage is ordered to the good of the couple, as well as to the generation and education of children. We believe Christ the Lord raised marriage between the baptised to the dignity of a sacrament.
We believe the child has the right to be conceived in a conjugal union of their own natural mother and father, and to be raised by them.
We believe that every human person is to be accorded the respect due to their dignity of being made in the image of God, redeemed by Christ, and called to intimate communion with God.
Conclusion
A creed provides a set of beliefs. Just as the Christian tradition produced creeds to outline its belief about the nature of God, so, in our time, there is a need to develop a set of beliefs which provide an understanding of what Christians believe about the nature of the human person.
We could call this a ‘Christian Manifesto’ or a ‘Statement of Beliefs’, but the use of creeds in Christian history offers us a way of describing what we believe as Christians about the nature of the human person.
For a young people to be able to grow to healthy human maturity they need to be formed and educated on the basis of the Christian understanding of the nature of the human person.
