Chapter 2

Theological Anthropology: Freedom, Sin, and Grace

Introduction
This chapter introduces students to anthropology from a theological perspective. The Catholic
theological ethic is grounded in a particular understanding of reality and of the human being as
part of that reality. The human being is described as imago Dei, and this description has come to
mean various things, alongside the development of Catholic Tradition and concepts such as
freedom, conscience, and vocation, in dialogue with the sciences. Though the definition of the
human person has evolved over time, one thing has remained clear: God's love for the human
person as part of God's creation.

Learning Objectives
• Explain the Christian theological understanding of the human person as imago Dei
• Define and understand how Catholic theology understands the
concepts and characteristics of the human person
• Analyze the similarities and differences of the Christian understanding and
popular culture's understanding of the human person

Exposition
Theological Anthropology

Who or what- is the human person?

Various religions, philosophies, and cultures have come up with their own answers to this
question. This becomes the starting question because this understanding will have implications
on one's ethics and morality. How human beings are treated will be dependent on how human
beings are seen and understood, and so it is important to articulate who the human being is, and
how he or she relates to the world he or she lives in.

In this chapter we thus begin with that question. One branch of theology deals with this
exact question using the lens of Christian Scripture and Tradition. This branch is called
theological anthropology. Theological anthropology acknowledges that the reality of the human
being is difficult to describe, and that there will always something more to find when
understanding, studying, and describing the human being. Nevertheless, theological
anthropology still attempts to reflect on the human being, based on Christian Tradition, in order
to gain insight that can help people encounter God and understand their own lives better in
relation to God.
_In the Image and Likeness of God: Scripture and Theological Anthropology

In Christian theological anthropology, the most cited passage is from Genesis 1, the first
creation story. After having created the earth, the vegetation, and the animals on the land and in
the water, God creates human beings.

<Box: Genesis 1 :26-31>

<Then God said, ''Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over
all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.''

So God created humankind in his image,

in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, ''Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue
it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living
thing that moves upon the earth.'' God said, ''See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that
is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for
food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps
on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And
it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.>

Human beings in this passage are described as being made in God's ''image and likeness'' the
shorthand term is the Latin phrase imago Dei. This idea of "image and likeness'' are referenced
in other scripture passages such as Ephesians 4:23-24 and Colossians 3:10, and has become an
important and much argued concept.

The original word in Old Testament that was used was tzelem Elohim (''image of God'');
in Latin, this has been translated into imago Dei. This has been interpreted in many ways in the
Christian Tradition in order to explain what divine resemblance human beings have with God.
These characteristics will be further explained below, but characteristics such as being embodied,
having some form of control over themselves and over the environment, or having some form of
higher purpose in this life are just some characteristics that have both shown how human beings
are the ''image and likeness'' of God, but at the same time show that, at the end of the day,
human beings are still creatures of God, in the same way the rest of creation is. Each of the
characteristics is just one aspect of being human being, and together they give us a deeper
understanding of what it means to be human.

Another important thing to note is the description of human beings as ''filling the earth
and subduing it.'' Human beings are blessed by God to ''have dominion'' over the rest of creation.
Early interpretations of Scripture have used this as an excuse to exploit the environment and to
argue for what is called an anthropocentric worldview, where human beings are the only
creatures that matter, to the detriment of all other creatures of God. However, contemporary
interpretations show that the words ''subdue'' (kabash) and to have ''dominion'' (radah) have
very different connotations from how modern English understands the words ''subdue'' and
''dominion." These words connote stewardship rather than absolute use of creation: kabash
denotes a making the world as it should be for the good of all creatures, while radah connotes a
ruling over creation that is not tyrannical or forceful, but rather with God's authority and with the
same love and care that God has in ruling over all. 15 It is also important to remember that kabash
and radah are also accompanied by the words to ''till'' (abad) and to ''keep'' (shamar), which
connote service and radical care. 16 Thus, Scripture would emphasize concern for creation and a
responsibility on the part of the human person to care for this creation.

Lastly, and most importantly, God blesses human beings and sees them as good; human
beings as being imago Dei reflects the love God has for human beings and means that human
beings, too, can and do love others. A running theme in Scripture will be God's steadfast love for
human beings. This is not to say that other creatures are loved less; rather, part of what it means
to share in God's image and likeness is also to share in God's love and care. Love is part of
God's essence, and is what drives and animates God's self, alongside justice. Love is what
animates and drives people to work for a better future and to come together as one community
with other creatures of God.

Later on in the book of Genesis, sin will enter the picture through the fall of humankind,
and this will be Scripture's way of grappling with the imperfections of human nature and what
Christians call ''sinful'' behavior.

Characteristics of Human Beings

To be imago Dei has often been understood in being: 1) both temporal and transcendent;
2) being radically relational to other people, to God, and with the rest of creation; 3) having
capacity to reason and being rational beings; 4) being embodied in some form; 5) having free
will and ability to choose how to respond to internal and external events; and 6) being marked by
God's grace despite most people using their freedom to sin.

Temporal and Transcendent

Augustine was one of the first to develop a clear Christian theological anthropology and
it is from Augustine, alongside other church fathers, that the understanding of the human person
as a union of body and soul. This emphasized that human beings are not simply purely material
or temporal beings, but rather have a transcendent aspect to their nature. In sharing in God's
image and likeness, one thus shares in God's transcendence in being a mystery that cannot be
entirely grasped in the same way one would grasp the sciences or objective knowledge; at the
same time, human beings are still earthly creatures that have limitations.

15
Andrew Basden, ''On the Interpretation of Four Hebrew Words: Radah, Kabash, Abad, Shamar," October 18,
2015, http://kgsvr.net/xn/discussion/radah2.html.
16
Basden.
 Augustine emphasizes the immortality of the soul and the role of the soul as that which
animates the body and becomes a way to access knowledge of God. However, it is the whole
person both body and soul that needs to tum to God to understand the truth as well as be
transformed in God's grace. 17 ''There can be neither the soul without the body, nor the body
without a soul."18

Relational

An implication of being in the image and likeness of a trinitarian and loving God is the
understanding that human beings are radically relational and interdependent. The Christian
understanding of God as trinitarian poses that God exists in plurality: three persons in God. 19
Each person dwells in the other in an undivided communion of love. ''The reciprocity of the
actions of the persons within the Trinity is understood to be so complete that the three persons
are truly one God ... this perichoretic life of the tripersonal God is believed to be shared with
humanity, as far as they are able, so that instead of being solitude, humans may live as a union of
persons in communion (koinonia) with God and with one another."2º

Thus, human beings are not absolutely self-sufficient or autonomous, but live in a
network of relationships between and among different people, creatures, and God. There is no ''self-
made'' man or woman; rather, each person is affected by his or her family and community. This is
not to say that human beings are absolutely defined by their circumstances; however, we cannot
deny that a person's circumstances have a big effect on the development of the person. If a
person, for example, grew up in an affluent community, with ample opportunities and networks to
succeed, then the chances of his or her success are greater compared to someone who was born
in a poorer community without access to the same resources. People are thus dependent and affected
to some degree by his or her context, though these circumstances do not necessarily define the
person.

Reason

Rene Descartes' famous quote ''I think, therefore I am'' reflects an understanding of
rationality and the thinking self as an integral aspect of what it means to be human. Even up to
today, reason is often considered an important distinction between human beings and the rest of
creation: human beings have the faculty to argue and to conceptualize with their minds, using
knowledge, experience, and will, thus being able to participate in the divine intelligence. Though
contemporary culture might put reason and science in one corner in opposition to faith, Catholic

17
John Anthony Berry, ''What Makes Us Human? Augustine on Interiority, Exteriority and the Self," Scientia et
Fides 5, no. 2 (August 24, 2017): 88.
18
Berry, 96.
19
It is important to note that person here is not person in the autonomous and modem sense. Rather, person here is
not just a ''being-for-itself' but a ''being-for'' and '':from-another." This understanding of the person comes from the
Cappadocian tradition. For more on this please see Gun Jung, ''The Crises of the Autonomous Self and the
Relational Ontological Ground for Contemporary Understanding of Human Being," Korean Journal of Christian
Studies 72 (December 2010): 151-70.
20
Jung, 163.
theology underscores the important role reason plays in understanding human beings'
relationship and commitments to God.

Reason is part of how people can know God and know what he wants for this world.
Reason allows people to discern and make decisions based on this knowledge of God as well as
knowledge of the world, usually termed as natural law. While there are truths about God that
human beings can only know through revelation, there are certain things that human beings can
know through reason. Caution though is given against the pitfalls of rationalizing, as the very
same faculty that allows people to know God can be used to rationalize evil and sin.

Although human beings certainly are capable of objective moral reasoning, behavioral
studies have also shown how irrational people can also be, and that people do not necessarily just
use knowledge and apply it in the way described in the previous paragraph. Thus, it is not simply
the mind working but also emotions, gut feelings or what people would call instinct, motivations
and beliefs, and biases and prejudices. Thus, reason, while important, is not the only aspect of
the human being that is considered in moral reasoning.

_Embodied Beings

In response to the extreme position that reduces people to simply their brains or
rationality, contemporary theological anthropology has sought to reemphasize the importance
also of human beings being embodied that they are not just simply walking brains, but also
living, breathing, and complex beings with a particular context, with feelings, and whose bodies
are ways for them to know other people, know other creatures, and know God. Catholic theology
also stresses that God meets each person in his or her particular situation, and this situation
would include the physical and temporal.

It is through the body that people interact with the world, and through the body that
people worship God. The body that is raced, gendered, and ''whose physical attributes
matter ... whose place in time and space make a difference," is the context through which God
meets each person, and thus should be an important factor in considering how we understand
God and people. 21

While there are universal precepts that Catholicism follows, it nevertheless understands
that these precepts are applied and expressed in various ways depending on the embodied culture
of various groups of people, without necessarily being relativist. This process is called
enculturation, and this allows people to embrace God more closely and readily in a way that they
understand: through their culture and language. ''It is through the utilization of indigenous
categories that we could shape and develop the emerging Filipino consciousness and to express
the gospel within the context of the people's own culture to effectively bring [the gospel]
across. ''22

21
Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, ''Embodied Knowing, Embodied Theology: What Happened to the Body?," Pastoral
Psychol 62 (2013): 756.
22
Michael M. Ramos, ''Inculturating Theology inthe Indigenous Categories: The Quest for Filipino Cultural
Identity," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 5, no. 8 (August 2015): 695.
Freedom

An important aspect of what it means to be a human being is freedom. Freedom is often

understood as a capacity to choose to do something or withhold one's action or effort.
Contemporary culture would focus on freedom as being allowed to do whatever it is that one
wants, for so long as no one else is hurt. This understanding of freedom understands one aspect
of it; that is, freedom as freedom ''from'' particular constraints whether they be legal
constraints, moral constraints, or physical constraints. However, Catholic moral theology
understands that freedom is more than that. Freedom is also a ''freedom for'' a freedom to
orient ourselves towards either the good or the bad, towards love or apathy, towards care for the
other or inward selfishness. Thus, freedom is also question of what people commit themselves to,
knowing that they have some control over what it is they can do with their lives. The Catholic
faith commitment is not about being forced into servitude or obedience to a monarchical God,
but using one's freedom to respond to and commit to the relationship being offered by a
gracious, loving, and just God. In the same way that committing to a human relationship entails
certain actions (e.g. caring for the person and not hurting the person or his or her loved ones),
committing to God would also entail certain actions, such as loving God and loving one's
neighbor.

It is freedom that allows for good and for God's grace to come into one's life, but at the
same time, it is freedom that allows for sin to happen. One of the questions that is also asked:
why do we have freedom? Why give human beings the ability to choose? Why not create a world
where everyone just had to do good so that there will be no more suffering? While there is no
thoroughly adequate answer to this question, one answer is in line with the idea of an
understanding of the Christian God as a God of love.

Singer and songwriter Kitchie Nadal released a song titled ''Huwag na Huwag Mong
Sasabihin'' in 2004. The chorus of the song goes:

Huwag na huwag mong sasabihin, na hindi mo nadama itong

Pag-ibig kong handang ibigay kahit na ang kalayaan mo.

This short line is similar to how love is understood in Catholic theology. From human
experience, if the beloved were forced to love the lover, or had no choice in that matter, it would
not be an authentic love, because love is a mutual commitment and thus, something chosen by
both the lover and the beloved. God's love for human beings is a sincere and authentic love, one
that wishes the good for the beloved, one that wishes for it to be responded to, and one that
wishes for authentic love and goodwill to be spread. All of this can only be done if love and
goodness were a choice, and not simply programmed into human beings. Otherwise, it would not
be a truly morally good choice, since the person simply did something that is part of his or her
instinct or physiology in the same way that human beings or other animals eat or sleep or
breathe.
 Thus, this is perhaps why human beings have freedom: to be able to seek and respond to
this love freely and engage in a mutual loving relationship with God. In order for this to be a
choice, however, it means that the possibility of rejecting this love should be possible. Gaudium
et Spes, the Church's constitution on the Church in the Modem World, makes a similar point:

Only in freedom can man direct himself toward goodness. Our contemporaries make
much of this freedom and pursue it eagerly; and rightly to be sure. Often however
they foster it perversely as a license for doing whatever pleases them, even if it is
evil. For its part, authentic freedom is an exceptional sign of the divine image within
man. For God has willed that man remain "under the control of his own decisions,"
so that he can seek his Creator spontaneously and come freely to utter and blissful
perfection through loyalty to Him. Hence man's dignity demands that he act
according to a knowing and free choice that is personally motivated and prompted
from within, not under blind internal impulse nor by mere external pressure. Man
achieves such dignity when, emancipating himself from all captivity to passion, he
pursues his goal in a spontaneous choice of what is good, and procures for himself
through effective and skillful action, apt helps to that end. Since man's freedom has
been damaged by sin, only by the aid of God's grace can he bring such a relationship
with God into full flower. Before the judgement seat of God each man must render
an account of his own life, whether he has done good or evil. 23

Sin and Grace

The two concepts of sin and grace are two realities that mark the human person's
experience of this life. As mentioned earlier, human beings having freedom means that human
beings can choose to do either the good or reject that and do what is evil. In the passage above
from Gaudium et Spes, the Catholic Church emphasizes that by human freedom, people have
sinned, and while we can and should work towards mending our relationship with God, with
ourselves, with other people, and with the rest of creation, it is only through God's grace that
human beings can bring all of this to fruition.

Sin

An age-old question that people have posed to Christians is this: how could sin and evil
have entered into the world, when God is supposedly good? Augustine argued for a particular
way of understanding sin to answer this question, as well as respond to Manichaeism.
Manichaeism argued for a dualistic understanding of reality: a struggle and opposition between
the two equal powers of good and evil. Augustine disagreed with this cosmology; evil was not
an equal power to God, but rather evil was the absence of God and the good.

The Christian tradition contains many ways of trying to describe the reality of sin. In
Scripture, sin was understood as a turning away from God and rejecting the covenant in the Old

23Second Vatican Council, ''Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modem Word: Gaudium et Spes," Vatican.
va, 1965, http://www. vatican. va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/ documents/vat- ii_const_l
9651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. Hereafter referred to as GS. GS 17.
Testament, and ''missing the mark'' or unrighteousness in the New Testament. St. Augustine
describes sin as a ''free act of will whereby one turns from God, the highest and immutable good,
to some created thing, the goodness of which is deficient by comparison." The fall of human
beings outlined in Genesis is the original sin that has led to later generations of humankind
experiencing the consequences of this sin, as well as the guilt of being part of the ''sin of the
world'' that came through original sin. This understanding of sin emphasizes the human will and
reason in rejecting God.

Many other trajectories and definitions of sin will emphasize some form of action or
omission of action, as well as rooting it in particular vices, injustices, and inequality. Pope John
Paul II would root sin in an abuse of freedom and a rejection of grace that affects both God and
neighbor. 25 Such sin could also be understood as a breaking of or distortion of relationship
between human beings and themselves, human beings with other human beings, human beings
with other creation, and human beings with God Pope Francis would emphasize this
understanding of sin in his encyclicals, particularly in Laudato Si':

They suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely
intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbor and with the earth itself.
According to the Bible, these three vital relationships have been broken, both
outwardly and within us. This rupture is sin. The harmony between the Creator,
humanity and creation as a whole was disrupted by our presuming to take the
place of God and refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations. 26

James Keenan's understanding of sin is simple but at the same time powerful: he speaks
of sin as a ''failure to bother to love ... [capturing] the sin of Matthew's goats, Lazarus's rich man,
the wounded man's priest and the Levite, the publican's Pharisee, and so on.''27 Acknowledging
that there are sins out of weakness, he nevertheless argues that often, people sin out of their
strength in that they could have done more good, but failed to do so. ''Our sin is usually where
you and I are comfortable, where we do not feel the need to bother, where, like the Pharisee, or
even [Albert] Speer, [the minister of armaments and architect of Nuremberg during World War
II], we have found complacency, a complacency not where we rest in being loved but where rest
in our delusional self-understanding of how much better we are than others'' or that it is not our
responsibility to do any more than the bare minimum. 28

Today, it can be easy to acknowledge what is wrong and evil in the world and identify it
as sin, and perhaps even acknowledge one's role in it. However, what can be difficult is

24 Shawn D. Floyd, ''How to Cure Self-Deception: An Augustinian Remedy," Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought
and Culture 7, no. 3 (2004): 63.
25 John Paul II, ''Apostolic Exhortation on Reconciliation and Penance: Reconciliatio et Paenitentia," Vatican.va,

December 2, 1984, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hfjp-

ii exh_02121984_reconciliatio-et-paenitentia.html. Hereafter referred to as RP. RP 3, 17.
2öFrancis,
''On Care for Our Common Home: Laudato Si'," Vatican.va, May 24, 2015,
http://w2.vatican.va/ content/francesco/en/encyclicals/ documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-
si.html. Hereafter referred to as LS. LS 66.
27 James Keenan, Moral Wisdom: Lessons and Textsfrom the Catholic Tradition (Diliman, Quezon City: Claretian

Publications, 2004 ), 57.

28 Keenan, 57.
acknowledging one's role and responsibility to alleviate that sin and to move beyond one's
comfort zone to stop sinning. ''I would like to help, but I have to help my parents, pay my bills,
take care of my siblings '' the list can go on; what Keenan's and pope Francis' understanding of
sin brings is that working against sin is not mutually exclusive from living one's daily life.
Building up these relationships with each other once again, as well as moving beyond one's
comfort zone requires that we strive to do the good that we can, rather than thinking that it is
someone else's job to do so.

Grace

While sin is something rooted in human beings' decisions and will, grace, on the other
hand, is a gift; it is not something that human beings can will or get on their own. Grace is a gift
freely given from God that is most often seen understood as love and mercy that allows people to
break away from sin and be in communion with God. Grace is God's presence in the world,
dwelling in and with creation, allowing creation to encounter God openly and freely. On the
other hand, Leonardo Boff also acknowledges a state of dis-grace: a ''lack of encounter, refusal
to dialogue," and a turning inward to oneself rather than outwards towards others. 29

In discussing grace, it is important to strike a balance between God and human beings;
there can be a tendency to focus too much on God (i.e. there is no need for human beings to do
anything, because grace does all the work) or on human beings (i.e. human beings can know and
do all the divine mandates without grace). Thus, it is important to remember that ''it is God
communicating Godself and human beings opening themselves up'' and responding to this self-
communication. 30 Such an experience is both concretely part of the human being, in the way
human beings were made to experience grace and God through the finite world, but at the same
time transcendent.

Grace in Scripture occurs as God's loving kindness to Israel in the Old Testament and is
characterized as gratuitous (i.e. something that is unearned or unmerited; it is something God's
freely chooses to give without people having to work for it) and steadfast. Grace is thus always
experienced and live out in the concrete realities of the people in this case, ''political peace,
social well-being, liberation, security amid the pressure exerted by the great powers, an upright
life, and an openness to the future that God promised through the covenant.": 1

In the New Testament, it additionally became understood as salvation and forgiveness,

particularly through Jesus Christ who is grace in the flesh. It is grace also that can lead to
metanoia or conversion. Through the disruptive and oftentimes unasked for experience of God's
love, one can become a new human being, as seen in Paul's story of conversion and his
understanding of human beings being converted, through grace, to live freely as children of God
in Romans 8: 14-21. Grace took an eschatological aspect as well, in that the second coming of
Christ would bring God's promise and love to its fullness.

29
Leonardo Boff, Liberating Grace, trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 1979), 4.
30
Boff, 15.
31
Boff, 8.
 It is in grace that freedom is healed, according to Augustine, and transforms and elevates
human nature, according to Thomas Aquinas. Through such things as the sacraments, people can
continue to partake in and cooperate with this grace; human cooperation allows people to receive
this grace and be transformed by this grace. This gift is offered to all and all have access to it. It
can also become a source of hope for those working for justice and those who are pessimistic
after seeing the state of sin everywhere:

The human capacity for rejecting God and sinning is never equal of God's offering
of grace. Grace ever remains the greater, because even the refusal of grace is
grounded on the gift of being able to refuse it. The latter ability was given to human
beings by God, and [God] respects it. In such cases grace finds other ways to operate,
and meaning is achieved through other courses ... This realization gives rise to an
invincible hope ... Someday justice will overcome, and historical grace will bear its
full fruit in the midst of human beings. 32

Even those who are in poverty can find some measure of hope; Boff would argue that, as
we continue fight against sin and injustice in the world, ''even if those events [of sin] go
on, human beings can be greater than they are. Human can freely shoulder the burdens and
overcome them, revealing a grandeur amid humiliation that far exceeds the grandeur
created by humanity's will to power.''33

Lastly, it is through grace that one can discern properly and make morally sound
judgement. Grace allows one to expand their horizons and themselves to include others in their
worldview. It is through grace that one can become free to love and serve others and God and
choose to do the good that is needed in the world.

Conclusion

Understanding who the human being is sets the tone for the kind of moral theology
person has. If a person believes that a human person is worthy of respect and dignity not just
spiritually but also physically, then one's ethics and understanding of salvation links the
temporal and eternal aspects of life. Theology and God then become something more than a ''pie
in the sky when you die;'' God now becomes a real God who transcends both this life and the
next, and who wants the good for creation not just in the next life but also in the here and now.

It is also this understanding of the human being that underpins why ethics is important.
Because human beings are rational, embodied beings with the freedom to choose to do certain
things, we now become response-able (i.e. we can respond to our situations and are not totally
determined by our environment or instincts) and responsible for our actions. Human beings may
not have total control over everything that happens in the world or to the self, but human beings
still have some measure of choice on how to respond to the situation.

32
Boff, 83.
33
Boff, 83.
 In this case, a person in the Catholic faith Tradition commits to a particular way of life
and chooses to act in a particular way, guided by particular values in service, love, and justice.
In freedom, this is what Catholics choose to commit to. The question now is in terms of concrete
situations and specifics: what does choosing to act in service, love, and justice mean in our
everyday situations? This is where vocation and conscience come in, which we will tackle in the
next chapter.
Guide Questions

1. What characteristics of the human being make the person in God's ''image and likeness''?
Explain each characteristic.
2. What do you think does it mean to be in God's ''image and likeness''? How can we
embody this ''image and likeness'' to be better people of God?
3. Why is it important to understand what it means to be a human being?
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