Social Doctrine Session 1
(CSDC 1-59)
At creation God forms a human being in his image and likeness, as we read in the book of Genesis. What, then, does it mean to be created in God’s image and likeness? First, it means a vocation to hold dominion or stewardship over the gifts of God’s creation, as the creation story links our creation as image and likeness of God to our vocation to oversee the creation of the world. Second, to be an image and likeness of God is to have a personal nature, one that is rational, relational, and ordered to love. The story of Genesis shows forth this nature of man in the fact that God gives instructions and commands to our first parents. The giving of instructions and commands implies rationality, relationality, and an orientation to love in our nature. Thus, the human person has a dignity that comes from our very nature given in creation.
Another aspect of being created in the image and likeness of God is a sharing in the Trinitarian nature of God. Just as God is a Trinity of three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – so the human person is constituted in a Trinitarian way. St. Paul exhorts us in 1 Thessalonians 5: 23, “May the God of peace himself make you perfectly holy and may you entirely – spirit, soul, and body – be preserved for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The human person, then, has a three fold dimension to him – spirit, soul, and body – that is a reflection of the Trinitarian nature of God and so orders us to the one true God.
However, the original goodness in which the human person was created has become distorted through original sin. The relationship of love that human beings shared with God was severed through the primal sin of our first parents. Our rational powers became weakened, and the Trinitarian nature of the person that was unified became disjointed. Without the help of God, human beings would be unable to achieve the end for which they were created.
In the fullness of time, God sent his Son, Jesus the Christ, to redeem humankind and to restore all of creation to its original fullness. The incarnation – God becoming a man – represents the crowning achievement of humanity. The life and teachings of Jesus reveal God to humanity, but also they reveal man to himself, in the words of Pope John Paul II. Human beings cannot know their full identity, nature, and vocation apart from knowing Christ. Jesus’ death and resurrection opened a path for us to achieve our original vocation from God at creation. While our faculties still feel the effects of original sin, grace abounds all the more and human beings through Christ are able to achieve their ultimate destiny.
Our ultimate destiny is not merely an individual striving for salvation, for human beings are fundamentally social and relational beings. Thus, Christ has redeemed not only our individual selves, but also our social relations between each other. The cross stands as a profound symbol of redemption: on the vertical plane our relationship with God is restored, while on the horizontal plane our relationship with one another is redeemed as well. We are, then, re-created by Christ – restored to our original identity and vocation that we received from God at creation.
© Office of Human Rights, and Bishop Helmsing Institute, Diocese of Kansas City~St. Joseph, 2009
