Human Nature

This article from The Catholic Thing is an interesting look at a conference where human nature was discussed, and a large part of understanding the social teaching of the Church is understanding—as much as our human mind can understand the mystery of God’s work—the essential attributes of our human nature and our connection to the divine.

An excerpt.

“The occasion was a seminar on the question “Is There a Human Nature?,” sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute, an independent Catholic organization at the University of Chicago. Lumen Christi is doing some of the best work in the world in bringing the Catholic intellectual tradition into dialogue with the very highest secular scholarship. Cardinal Francis George, the brainy Chicago archbishop, is a strong supporter and participant in this work. Jean-Luc Marion, a French Catholic philosopher who recently became one of the “immortals” of the Academie Française spends one semester a year in Chicago and lectures for the institute. During any given academic year, figures like Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Leon Kass, along with equally eminent thinkers from Germany, Britain, or Poland, turn up on programs. Lumen Christi pursues both faith and reason as vigorously as any institution, Catholic or not, in the world.

“Last week’s discussion on human nature was something to witness. It not only addressed complex scientific matters, while remaining faithful to classical Christian teaching. If it were better known, it would help get us past the simple-minded polemics that continue to poison the relationship between religion and science. For instance, John O’Callahan, the gifted young director of the Jacques Maritain Center at Notre Dame (successor to The Catholic Thing’s Ralph McInerny) laid out an interesting philosophical understanding of Creation. God creates ex nihilo (from nothing), which means he does not act on pre-existing matter or even inject matter into a void. Creation, for us, unfolds in time, but God is outside of time and his creative act is continuous and enables secondary causes at every moment, including human free will. From that standpoint, it’s easier to see how the human soul might be directly created by God at the moment each of us is conceived. God did not let evolution go on and then “miraculously” intervene. His creative act started (in our perspective) some 15 billion years ago, but is actual at every moment and active in a particular way in the creation of each soul in its unity with a body, the traditional definition of human nature.”