What does it mean to be a human? It is an important question, assuming, as I do, that I am one. I take an older view of personhood; one in which essence proceeds being, and I take this truth to be axiomatic. While different humans might be unique due to accidental differences, what it means to be human, in this view, predates particular humans. It is Plato’s form, Aristotle’s universal, God’s “let us make man in our image.” Because of this, I cannot create my own reality, it has been handed to me, and it is my nature, a nature shared with you and everyone else. If this is so, then I can best understand myself in community with other creatures that share my nature. This community is two-fold; there is a living community, who are in the flesh surrounding me, and a community of ghosts, those dead or out of physical reach; I watch the living and invite the ghosts to visit with me by reading the great literature, philosophy, history, and theology. I do this to know myself because I am their theme. In reading the histories of saints and sinners I better understand me, in reading the hopes of mankind in poetic meter, my own hopes and fears are laid open. Philosophy is a gateway to how my kind view the universe, and theology reveals to me the relation of the transcendent to humanity. I am on a quest to know who I am, and to do that I must know what men are. It is an age old question of the relation of the one to the many. I am one, and I am a many. I am one unique being, and yet by my essence, that which defines me as a species, I am shared with many. I am human, and you are human. In this is seen a faint reflection of the greatest of all theological mysteries, that of the Trinity. God is one essence, and yet possesses three separate beings. There is, then, a sacramental wonderment to being human, for in us the common object of flesh, which is shared with the beasts, is raised to spiritual dimensions, just as the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper.
The psychological cult of radical individuation opposes this view of humanity. To them, being proceeds essence, or, in other words, who you are (being) comes first and what your nature is (essence) is invented by you, hence transgenderism. You don’t come to a pre-made role to fill, one created by natural law
and reinforced by culture and custom, rather you have the freedom to invent your own role. “No right, no wrong, no rules for me, I’m free,” is the national anthem. Indeed, rules are not seen as eternally binding from God or nature, but as subjective feelings of like or dislike and thus can be changed at whim. The LGBT+ movement is the high watermark of this way of thinking. The natural end of sexuality is twisted, but that’s okay, since there is no external meaning to sex anyways.
That this worldview destroys the traditional family is obvious, but it also destroys art. Because art is an attempt at freezing the universal clothed in an image. The humanities point out the essential themes of being a person, or at least they attempt to. All great artists color in the lines. They might use brighter colors than real life to make a point, if water runs golden that stands out to us for its novelty, but even carvings of mythical centaurs combine two things, horses and men, to create an a new thing out of things already known. Modern art and architecture is either disturbing or bland because of the death of the transcendent meaning in things and the lack of connection from the seen to the unseen realities. Time to go back to Plato who taught that the things on earth were reflections of a greater heavenly reality.
I cannot know myself by myself, no man is an island as Donne wrote. I need to know my nature, and I meet my nature each time I bump into another person. Sin twists and degrades the original nature of man, but even in this less than ideal state, the virtues of what we ought to be shine through. Even the ability to do wrong proves our creation to do right. If adultery was our created nature, then it would not be wrong to commit adultery, it would be good. Men know adultery is wrong. Even in stories where it is idealized the adulterer is usually motivated by a desire for their idea of true love. Imagine if Hester of the Scarlet Letter “cheated” on Arthur Dimmesdale after their affair. A good knife cuts well, a good soup spoon feeds people soup well, and a good human does human things well. Humans pursue happiness in all they do; disassociate happiness from temporary pleasure and think about it, why do I do what I do? At the bottom there is a desire for a state of blessed happiness. Some people think that by lying, cheating, or stealing happiness is obtained, but does that ever work? Nope, even the best of the pagans can tell you that (go read Plato’s Gorgias). Virtue ethics is what will lead you to happiness. But to know what these ethics are, one must know what happiness is. All people aim for it, but many aim wildly amiss. Happiness is found in the right aliment of the soul to its source — back to God.
Aristotle said all things have four causes: its material cause (what is is made out of), its formal cause (what is its essence), its efficient cause (how its created), and its final cause (what is is made for). Man is made of atoms, his essence is found in his soul and his being made in God’s image, his efficiency cause is God, and his final cause is found in the Beatific Vision. If we know what people are for, then we can determine what people should do.
Viewing humanity and the rest of creation with this lense lifts us from the realm of the merely physical to the spiritual. This makes stories and art, love and friendship, time and eternity pregnant with meaning as it reaches to the transcendent truth in all things. Life is, at its core, a sacramental affair.
Reflective Wanderer 