Chapter 2

Theological Anthropology: Freedom, Sin, and Grace

Introduction

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:
1. Explain the Christian theological understanding of the human person as imago Dei.
2. Define and understand how Catholic theology understands the concepts and characteristics of the human person.
3. Analyze the similarities and differences of the Christian understanding and popular culture’s understanding of the
human person.

Exposition

I - 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.

II - In the Image and Likeness of God: Scripture and Theological Anthropology

Genesis 1:26-31 In Christian theological anthropology, the most cited passage is from
Then God said, “Let us make Genesis 1, the first creation story. After having created the earth, the vegetation,
humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and the animals on the land and in the water, God creates human beings.
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
Human beings in this passage are described as being made in God’s “image
earth.” and likeness”—the shorthand term is the Latin phrase imago Dei. This idea of
So God created humankind in his
“image and likeness” are referenced in other scripture passages such as Ephesians
image, in the image of God he created them; male 4:23-24 and Colossians 3:10, and has become an important and much argued
and female he created them.
concept.
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 original word in Old Testament that was used was tzelem Elohim
the sea and over the birds of the air and over every
living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said,
(“image of God”); in Latin, this has been translated into imago Dei. This has been
“See, I have given you every plant yielding seed interpreted in many ways in the Christian Tradition in order to explain what divine
that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree
with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.
resemblance human beings have with God. These characteristics will be further
And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird explained below, but characteristics such as being embodied, having some form of
of the air, and to everything that creeps on the
earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have control over themselves and over the environment, or having some form of higher
given every green plant for food.” And it was so. purpose in this life are just some characteristics that have both shown how human
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed,
it was very good. 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.

III - Characteristics of Human Beings

To be imago Dei has often been understood in being: 1) both temporal and transcendent;
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.

A. 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.

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 turn 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

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.
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.
B. 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.”20

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.

C. 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 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.

D. 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.

19
It is important to note that person here is not person in the autonomous and modern 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.
 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

E. 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 with the chorus:

Huwag na huwag mong sasabihin, na hindi mo nadama itong

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.

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 in the Indigenous Categories: The Quest for Filipino Cultural Identity,” International
Journal of Social Science and Humanity 5, no. 8 (August 2015): 695.
 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 Modern 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

IV - 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.

A. 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 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.”24 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

23
Second Vatican Council, “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern Word: Gaudium et Spes,” Vatican.va, 1965,
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat- ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html.
Hereafter referred to as GS. GS 17.
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/hf_jp- ii_exh_02121984_reconciliatio-et-
paenitentia.html. Hereafter referred to as RP. RP 3, 17.
 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 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.

B. 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.

26
Francis, “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 Texts from the Catholic Tradition (Diliman, Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 2004),
57.
28
Keenan, 57.
29
Leonardo Boff, Liberating Grace, trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 1979), 4.
30
Boff, 15.
 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.”31

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.

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.

31
Boff, 8.
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?

Bibliography

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