Dwyer, Human Dignity and the Consistent Ethic of Life

Scriptures approach to human dignity was unique in its day and remains unique today. 1.1 The OT recognized that human dignity is inalienable, and does not depend on the good will or power of others 1.1.1 This is the meaning of the emphasis on the widow and the orphan: they had no one to defend their rights and they were handy victims. Deut 24:3 extends its protection to them. 1.1.2 Leviticus 19:34 extends the protection of the Law to non-Israelites who live among the chosen people, on the grounds that you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 1.2 The Synoptic tradition, and especially Mark, approaches the question of human dignity in a very practical way: Jesus invites into his company those very people who were thought to be devoid of human dignity the public sinners, and the collaborators with the brutal occupying power, who were universally despised. He accepted them, and that constituted and revealed their dignity; they received their dignity as a gift from him. 1.2.1 This is the import of Mark 2:13-17. The modern, secularized notion of the human person and human dignity is very different. (This is the view which we find everywhere from the talk show to the editorial page of the NY Times.) 2.1 The human person is an independent, autonomous subject: that is, one who thinks and acts for him/herself, and whose only norm is respect for what promotes the independence of the self. Any decision that does this is good. (The Lamech story in Genesis 4:23 again.) 2.1.1 This is the basis for the do what you feel is right morality, and could be called the Auschwitz principle of morality. 2.2 According to this view, the persons independence must be protected from all incursions of society or community, at least in cases where similar rights of others to independence are not violated.

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2.3

2.4

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This latter proviso is easily dealt with by denying personhood to those who might seem to infringe on our independence. This is the case in the abortion and euthanasia debates. This distinctively modern understanding of the person is individualistic, and is based on the persons independence of God (and of everything and everyone else). (This is the Prodigal Sons intent: I will dispose of my inheritance as I want, independently of you.) 2.3.1 But the prodigal son comes to himself when he realizes he is not independent; it is then that he regains his sense of dignity and of the meaning of life. The discovery (more accurately: the manufacturing) of the autonomous person coincided with the banishing of God to a place above and beyond the world, where he was, at best, a benign, if distant observer of the human scene, who might be allowed to remain for a generation or two, out of nostalgia, but who could be disposed of without regret when the time came. 2.4.1 This is very different from the anthropomorphic God of Genesis, who is not a supreme being, but who walks and talks with human beings, calls, reproves, judges, forgives. 2.4.2 The distant God was in competition with human beings a view which did not reveal its destructive character until human beings began to escape from their subordination to nature, to fate, to destiny, and to the powers that be. This god, is the famous God of the gaps, who is needed to do all those things which human beings cannot (at least at a given stage of their development), and who becomes dispensable when human beings mature. 2.5.1 Laplace and Grotius. The definition of human being which corresponds to this picture of God is an independent agent for whom God can only appear as one who meddles, interferes. This is dia-

2.2.1

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metrically opposed to the biblical view, where we become our true selves in hearkening to God. 2.7 The God implied by such a view of the world was threatened by the growing competence of human beings, but he never existed anyway, except in their minds. (The one God and the many gods.) 2.8 Note how different this God is from the real God, of whom John Paul II could say, in his encyclical Laborem Exercens (1981), 25: Christians are convinced that the triumphs of the human race are signs of Gods greatness. 2.8.1 And note again the picture in Genesis: the real God acts through human initiative, shrewdness, crookedness, guile, deceit (Jacob/Esau; Abraham and Pharaoh, make friends of the Mammon of iniquity.) 2.9 The person, in this modern sense, is ostensibly free, but this word has come to mean having the power to act arbitrarily, without any need to be responsible that is, to respond to the needs of others. 2.10 In summary, this modern view is anthropocentric, but it leaves the human being supreme on earth, without a transcendent destiny and without a transcendent partner in dialogue, who makes that destiny desirable and attainable. The supremacy is hollow indeed. 2.10.1 It is impossible to discover any value in such freedom. 2.10.2 Its emptiness is manifest in the fact that it leads inevitably to paranoia. Actons dictum; Hitler; Stalin; Boris Gudonov (who slaughtered his way to the top). The Bible is not unaware of the autonomous subject: Cain, who is not his brothers keeper (in Genesis 4:8) and Lamech, who kills the man who struck him (Genesis 4:23). The Prodigal Son is another example. However, the biblical view of the person, and of the dignity which is consequent on being a person, differs in every respect. 3.1 For both the OT and NT, the person is not an independent agent, who makes decisions without relation to others. Just

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3.2

3.3

the opposite: the person is dependent on God and neighbor. 3.1.1 The story of Abraham and Lot. (Genesis 13) 3.1.2 This fact (our personhood does not mean we are independent) has important implications for our decisions about death and dying. This is what both OT and NT man by faith: the true person is the wo/man of faith that is, the one who relies on God, and who rejoices in being dependent on God. 3.2.1 God calls Abraham, makes promises, and asks Abraham to rely on those promises. Abraham responds faithfully to Gods call, and he is given the right relationship with God. Genesis 15:6 and Romans 4:3 3.2.2 Faith is not the act of believing strange things for which there is no evidence. It is the act of letting God be the one he wants to be - the creator who calls into being the things that are not and raises the dead to life. (Romans 4:17) 3.2.3 The story of Sarah, who will have a child long after her child-bearing years have passed. In both OT and NT, the dignity of the person is not based on the autonomy of the person, the persons being a law unto him/herself, but on being one who is unconditionally affirmed by God. This is particularly clear in Pauls writings. 3.3.1 For him, to be human is to be accepted, affirmed, sustained, supported by God, and to know this, to let it be. Dikaiosne is Gods acceptance of us, no strings attached. 3.3.2 Human dignity has a transcendent foundation; our nobility is real but received. For Paul, our dignity does not consist in what we can do on our own (the answer here is nothing). 3.3.3 Paul offers a blunt critique of the human being on his/her own. But this is just an index of the greatness of the gift God has given. 3.3.4 To sum it up, our dignity is based on the fact that we

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3.4

3.5

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are claimed by God, that we belong to him. 3.3.5 This is the root of our freedom, which Paul understands as the power to accept the gift of a new kind of life, to accept our lives as gift, to hearken to a call which comes from beyond this world. (Romans 6:1523) We have been freed by God and given the power to be true to ourselves by serving him. The biblical view relates the person to God, and grounds the value of personhood in the fact that the human being is made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:27), and is called to mirror God in dialogue with the other. (Our dignity is grounded in the fact that we are made in Gods image and likeness.) 3.4.1 For the Bible, we are truly ourselves only when we stand consciously in the presence of the living God. But there is nothing passive about this relationship. For both OT and NT, the person is one created by God, addressed by God, called by God to be responsible. For both OT and NT, the person is Gods partner in dialogue; the person is one who can and does pray. 3.5.1 Adam is called to follow Gods will, but he refuses the call and then hides, because he no longer wants to speak with God. He refuses this dialog, and this is a sign that his relationship with God has been sundered, and he is no longer his real self. 3.5.2 In Romans, the person who denies God, rejects his call, ends up as unloving and unpitying. The notion that the human being is capable of knowing and loving God and neighbor, and that doing both is what life is about, is found throughout the OT and NT. 3.6.1 In both testaments, the human being is one who responds to a call (Abraham, Moses, the Prophets) 3.6.2 But even more, the human person is one who is called to that knowledge which is love and that love which is knowledge. 2Chron 20:7 Abraham as the friend of God.

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3.7

3.8

In the OT and NT the person is one who is free which does not mean empowered to act arbitrarily, without recognizing the claim of any values not of our own making, but rather empowered to act responsibly, by recognizing the claims for care, concern, and love, which other persons make on us. The person is free because empowered to make good choices. 3.7.1 Pauls comments in Philemon about freedom and slavery, and the dialectical approach in Romans 6:15-23, offer a basis for a very deep understanding of human dignity. 3.7.2 Pauls concept of freedom in this text: freedom is the situation of being claimed by God and of acknowledging that claim. 3.7.3 When we do this we are rescued from the grip of anxiety and fear about what the future will bring, and the worlds norms and taboos no longer have any meaning. They are there, factually, but they no longer have any power to determine our existence. (These are the powers which Paul refers to in Romans 8:38; they include things such as the need for revenge, the need to create a pecking order in society, etc.) 3.7.4 In this section, Paul makes it clear that, as Christians, we are free because we have been freed from our own selfish strivings for autonomy and control, and from our despair when these fail. (The Prodigal Son achieved autonomy, experienced despair, and then found himself when he let his father love him without any conditions.) Jesus brought a profound liberation of mind and heart which empowers the engagement of the Christian on behalf of others in the real world. 3.8.1 But Christians have to do this, not on the false pretext that Jesus counseled specific forms of involvement.

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But because the liberation Jesus brings puts an end to insecurity (and to our destructive ways of coping with it), and makes it possible for us to use our heads to devise practical and effective ways of loving the neighbor. 3.8.3 Unlike Paul, Jesus never suggested that the world was not important because it was not destined to last for long; he was probably the only one who did not think the end was right around the corner (not know the day and the hour Mark 13:32). But his followers would not permit him to remain ignorant. Human dignity: summarizing scripture in modern language, so that we can adapt the biblical teaching to concrete modern problems). 4.1 Human dignity is not abstract, not distinct from concrete, existing human beings. The question of human dignity is simply the question of what constitutes the human person, of what makes us persons. 4.2 This means it cannot be separated from the human person, cannot be taken away. 4.3 Human dignity does not depend on its being acknowledged by others (either individuals or the state); rather, it demands such recognition. We have it before we are born; we have it when we are very old and totally dependent; we have it even when we are criminals. 4.3.1 Luke 7:37 the story of the prostitute who who anointed Jesus feet with her tears. 4.3.2 John 2: the story of the Samaritan woman with the five husbands, to whom Jesus makes the offer of eternal life. 4.3.3 1 Cor 6:19 you dont belong to yourselves, because you were bought at great price. 4.4 Human dignity is simply the existence of the individual man or woman, viewed as a task or challenge for the existing person, and as imposing certain obligations on other individuals and communities. 4.4.1 The word challenge implies that full personhood is

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something to be achieved. This is the point of Pauine ethics: become what you already are. The person is worthy of respect and protection of a unique kind 5.1 Traditionally, the concept of rights has been used to talk about this. 5.2 A right is a title or a claim to certain things or goods, material and spiritual, or the title to acquire them. These claims are rooted in the fact that there are some things we need in order to have a human life foremost among them is freedom from murderous assault. 5.3 To speak of them as titles or claims implies that they must be acknowledged and promoted by individuals and by the government. 5.4 Because there is something absolute and unconditional (they dont depend on conditions being fulfilled our worthiness, recognition by others, etc.) about human rights, they point to something in the human person which comes from God. 5.4.1 This is relevant to the death penalty and to the question of physician-assisted suicide. The biblical understanding of person differs from the modern secular notion most sharply in its view of freedom. 6.1 As in the discussion on the word person, this came about because the modern concept of freedom is derived mainly from two very inadequate sources. 6.1.1 The Greek, and later, scholastic, notion of freedom as indifference. 6.1.2 A notion going back to the Enlightenment: freedom understood as the autonomy of the individual that is, as the absence of external interference or coercion. 6.1.3 This is the notion usually thought of as the basis of freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech. 6.1.3.1 But even here the real basis is deeper Its real meaning is the power to choose the

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good as I see it, with the assumption that I have done my best to see it as it really is. In recent times the free decision has been defined as the one that I make without interference from others. This often appears in the euthanasia debate in the form This is my body; this is my life; who are you to tell me what I am to do with my own body and my own life? The Greek and scholastic notion defines freedom as the ability to choose between acting and not acting, and between acting in one way and acting in another. 6.3.1 This notion of freedom as indifference (that is, the absence of any motive which would strongly incline me in one direction rather than another) s given by Thomas Aquinas in his De Veritate q xxii, a 6, and unfortunately it is this definition that passed into the scholastic tradition. 6.3.2 This is doubly unfortunate, because in the same article he cites with approval Augustines statement that to choose evil is not identified with freedom, nor is it a part of freedom, although it is, in a certain sense, a sign of freedom (De Natura Boni, 3). 6.3.3 The problem with this definition is that it does not adequately distinguish freedom from the power to make arbitrary choices. It also makes it difficult to see freedom as a real value, to say nothing of an absolute and unconditioned value. 6.3.4 Is freedom the power to wreck my own life and the lives of others around me? Was the Prodigal Son really free when he took his money and used it to finance a dissolute life? 6.3.5 This would imply that doing evil is the misuse of freedom; but it is not; it is the refusal of freedom. The modern liberal notion of freedom defines it in terms of the absence of external coercive factors, but it shows little interest in the value of the choice itself (although proponents of this view have created a value which they call pri-

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vacy). Its defenders take this position on the grounds that no individual or group can safely be given the authority to determine which choices are valuable, which are not. 6.5.1 But making judgments about which ways of acting are worthy of being chosen and which are not is the essence of moral choice and of freedom. We are challenged and called to make such judgments about, for example, questions such as war, the just wage, aid to the Third World, the right to work, the obligation to join a union, and many others. 6.5.2 And presenting good answers persuasively in the public forum is a fundamental Christian task, as is listening attentively to the answers that others give. 6.5.3 There are fundamental truths about the human condition that we can discover only in dialogue. Without the conviction that there are ways of acting which in and of themselves are worthy/unworthy of bing chosen, practically speaking, the defenders of the modern liberal concept of freedom are left with the consensus of society as their only norm. But, of course, this raises the question which society? Modern Catholic social thought regards this liberal notion as, at best, inadequate (but, unfortunately, it does not do this in the name of a biblical notion of freedom). 6.7.1 And it is likely that at least some of the nineteenth century papacys opposition to what the popes of the time called liberalism stemmed from the insight that human dignity is a transcendent value, not created by human choice, and that liberal democracy, in the absence of any way of identifying objective values (which are there whether we recognize them or not) runs the risk of becoming the tyranny of the majority. More recent conciliar and papal documents (particularly those of John Paul II) are far less suspicious of freedom.

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They do not define it in negative and individualistic terms. 6.8.2 They see it as the power and act of exercising responsibility, by participating in the creation of a just society. The biblical concept of freedom and its role in human dignity: an introduction. 7.1 Western thought has drawn very little on scripture as a source of a truly human understanding of freedom. 7.2 We have already seen one reason: the role of Greek/scholastic categories. But there is another: the Enlightenments suspicion of and reaction to authoritarianism in the church. 7.3 The word which can be translated as freedom in our sense, appears almost exclusively in the NT, but the concept and the reality are omnipresent in both testaments. 7.3.1 Human beings are addressed by God, and they are called (but not forced) to respond. 7.3.1.1 The call of Abraham, of Moses, of all the people in Josh 24, of the prophets; qahal / ekklesia. 7.3.2 Both testaments assume that in our decisions we respond to Gods address and call, and that in these decisions we either move toward being the selves we are called to be, or lose our way. 7.3.2.1 The central point of Pauline ethics: become what you already are. 7.3.3 Both testaments know that our choices are not merely choices of how to act; they are choices of who to be. (2 Cor 5:17 if any are in Christ, they are new creatures.) 7.4 Human dignity is rooted in Gods call, and the first effect of this call is to make us free. 7.4.1 Freedom is the power to accept the challenge and to fulfill the task of becoming human, and a truly human existence is worthy of our best efforts. Freedom is

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the power to create the selves we are called to be. 7.4.2 Freedom is possible only if we face the truth about the way things are and the way they should be. Freedom attains its development only by accepting the truth. (Centesimus Annus, 46) 7.4.3 We are called to a truly human existence, and this is always the call to freedom, the call to advance beyond the fragmentary and partial achievement of personhood which we have attained at any given time. 7.4.4 Freedom is not the absence of limiting and constraining factors in our lives it is the power to make use of them. 7.4.4.1 In Philemon, Paul knows that the slave can be free. 7.4.5 The very factors which are commonly seen as limiting freedom are nothing other than the raw material which we are called to use in becoming free. 7.4.6 Our freedom is not the abstract power to do what we please; it is the power to deal creatively with the concrete limitations of life. 7.4.7 We usually cannot get rid of these limiting factors in life. But we can decide whether to let ourselves be determined by them or to incorporate them into our self-determining choices that is, to use them responsibly. Freedom as a gift. Central to the NT, and especially in Pauls writings, is the notion that freedom is not a natural power or propensity, but rather a gift of God, which is a consequence of Gods unconditional offer and claim, and of our saying yes to both. 7.5.1 This implies that our real task is not that of using freedom rightly rather than wrongly, but rather that of accepting freedom, rather than rejecting it. 7.5.1.1 The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. (CCC 1733)

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When freedom is defined positively (that is, neither as mere indifference nor as the absence of external coercive factors, but rather as something essential to the person), its character as an absolute value becomes clear. 7.5.3 This is important, because it shows that genuine freedom is not some kind of golden mean between two extremes: on the one hand, servile conformity to the will of another, and on the other hand, unchecked license to do whatever we please. 7.5.4 It is also important, because much of the Christian tradition has shown a very un-Christian suspicion of freedom, apparently fearing that too much freedom will degenerate into license. 7.5.5 But the problem is not with freedom, but with faulty definitions of freedom wich have been perpetuated within the Christian tradition. In sum, the biblical concept of freedom cannot be limited to indifference (as in the Greek and scholastic traditions), nor can it be limited to non-interference in the individuals selfdetermination, as in the modern liberal tradition. It is the power to respond to the call to be there for others. 7.6.1 This is of enormous importance in the euthanasia debate. 7.6.2 This helps explain an important shift in Catholic social thought since 2nd Vatican: since freedom is the power to create the selves we are called to be, and since we are called to a life in community with others; freedom is, by definition, the power to act in concert with others in order to achieve the common good. 7.6.2.1 We are free precisely to the degree that we are not selfish and self-centered. 7.6.3 In other words, freedom is the power to participate in shaping the political, social, and economic order in a way which is appropriate to those who are in the world but called to transcendence, and who are

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called to express this transcendence by transforming the world and creating a more human society. It is the power to work with and for others in creating this kind of world. The person is related to God through Gods call to a transcendent destiny. This is the ultimate basis of human dignity. 8.1 Because of this, there is a hunger in the human heart which can be stilled by nothing in the created world. (inquietum est cor nostrum . . .) 8.2 We transcend the world, but we live in the world and have the responsibility of sharing our call to transcendence with it. This should manifest itself in all areas of human endeavor: in art, political life, manual work, fashioning a just economic order. Flight from the world is not an option. 8.2.1 Leaving the world behind in the quest for Nirvana is not a possibility for Christians. 8.3 This is why Christianity is a historical faith. Abraham and Moses were called to act on the stage of history, to create history. In Jesus of Nazareth, God entered history. And the God of history is revolutionary, and does not stand for the stability of the social, political, and economic order, but for the transformation of that order in the name of human dignity. We are called to live, not in isolation, but in communion and community with others. We are called as individuals, but we are called to community. 9.1 We are called to find ourselves in being with and for others. 9.2 The breaking of this community is what we find in the scene from the narrative of the fall: Adam blames his wife; she blames the snake. 9.3 The church is the community of disciples, and not an accidental aggregate of those who cultivate a me-and-Jesus piety. (This does not call into question the fact that we are all called to have a personal relationship with Jesus; but this relationship has immediate implications for the way we deal with others, near and far.)

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To say that we exist fully only in community is not to say that the person exists only for the community or that the interests of the person must be subordinated to those of the collective. 9.4.1 Communities exist for the persons who are their members, and they exist in order to promote the dignity of their members We are called to participate in shaping society in such a way as to promote the well-being of its members. This is a constant theme of recent encyclicals. Society is not a playing field for rugged individualists. And it is in this participation that the dignity of the person is both achieved and revealed. This witness to human dignity is the most convincing form of evangelization, the most authentic proclamation of the Christian message.