personhood & human nature

where we’re starting from

our inherited assumptions, cultural defaults, and personal biases

what’s truly worth wanting

a deeper, more critical look at desires and ultimate values

cultural default: the walgreens vision

“a long happy, healthy life”

• modern western culture often assumes this is the good life

• it shows up in advertising, wellness, industries, and popular psychology

problems with the “walgreens vision”

• reduces life to feeling good & living long

• avoids deeper questions of virtue, justice, or sacrifice

• historical and religious traditions - from Socrates to Jesus - challenge this assumption

• ex. of contradicting models: Abraham Lincoln, MLK Jr., Lady Constance Lytton

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

• assassinated at age 39, yet his legacy transformed civil rights in America

• in his final speech (i’ve been to the mountaintop) he said: “i would like to live a long life - longevity has its place. but i’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will”

Abraham Lincoln

• known for deep, persistent melancholy (today, clinical depression)

• carried immense burdens during the Civil War, confronting suffering, violence, and division

• his sadness, far form disqualifying him, may have given him gravity, compassion and endurance

Lady Constance Lytton

• aristocratic British suffragette with a weak heart and fragile health

• initially spared harsh treatment in prison because of her social status, she disguised herself as a working-class woman (“Jane Warton”) to expose injustice

• she was brutally force-fed during hunger strikes, permanently damaging her health

• she died young and frail but her courage contributed to women’s suffrage reforms in Britain

walgreens vision under pressure

• each life shows that length, health, and happiness are not sufficient measures of meaning

• show that flourishing may require sacrifice, suffering and risk, not just health or happiness

• MLK Jr.

  • chose justice over safety, knowing it might cost his life

  • his commitment shows that a “life worth living” is not measured by safety or length but by faithfulness to God’s call

autopilot

habits, routines, unexamined assumptions

self-awareness

asking “what do i want?”

self-transcendence

asking “what is worth wanting?”

truth

testing answers against broader wisdom and reality

the problem of desire

• many people achieve what they want (success, wealth, status) only to find it lacking

• the self-awareness question “what do i want?” is important but insufficient

• without probing worth, we risk climbing the wrong ladder (success but meaningless)

• self-transcendence asks us to question whether our desires align with truth, justice or flourishing

shared humanity and truth

• claims about what is worth wanting aren’t private → they affect others

• to say justice is worth pursuing” is a claim about shared humanity

• traditions across time - Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Confucius, Socrates - have wrestled with these truths

• we join a long conversation about meaning, value, and flourishing

where we start matters

cultural visions shape us, but they might be inadequate

not all desires are equal

wanting something is not the same as it being worth wanting

tradition and truth matter

the question of a good life is communal, historical, and universal

the challenge for us

to live reflectively, test our visions, and pursue what is truly worth wanting

“recognition is the first human quest”

• infants instinctively look for human faces

• someone else seeing you

“modern people and societies have suddenly become acutely aware that we are relationally bankrupt” - Crouch

• loneliness

• technology removes possibility of connection

a chriswtian anthropology

1. God as creator

2. creation as good

3. humans as Imago Dei

4. God as Trinitarian

God as Creator

benevolant → most Christians believe that God is a benevolent creator who created the orld “ex nihilo” or “from nothing” - God is the “uncreated creator” and therefor exists uniqeuely outside of it, yet creation is the result of the overflowing love of God

creation as good

incarnational

• creation as good

• “matter” and “creatureliness” are not to be despised, but are fundamentally good in their origin and intention

• corruption has come into the world but the substance of existence is not the issue; it is the destructive power of evil

• the secular/sacred divide is false

humans as imago dei

dignified

• humans are the “apex” of God’s creative activity, and as such they are made in God’s “image”

• all humans are inherently digified and bestowed an identity and vocation that reflect God’s character of love, nurture, creativity

• the ultimate identity is grounded in the creator God

God as Trinitarian

communal

• the nature of the Godhead, as witnessed by Scripture and articulated by the orthodox Christain faith tradition, is such that God is “One” in “Three Persons,” the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - a perfect community of relational love intrinsic to God

“ex nihilo”

“from nothing”

humans to reflect God

humans are meant to be in relationship

theology as practical

who we are informs what we do

fundamental Christian theological assertions

• God as benevolent creator

• creation as “good”

• humankind as Imago Dei

• God as Trinitarian

imago Dei

image of God

the Christian creation stories (Gen 1-2:3) give an account of

why things exist at all and what their existence is for (their significance and meaning)

humans as imago dei: “image” implies important distinctions

• humans are not God, they are creatures

• humans are intrinsically dignified and valuable. to be a human is to be an “image-bearer”

perichoresis

• the technical word used to describe the relationship of communion and relationality within the Trinity

  • “peri” = around

  • “choreio” = dance

• “being-in-one-another”, permeation without confusion

andy crouch definition of what it means to be human

heart-mind-soul complex designed for love

spirit

originally an image or picture rather than a concept

the image of “spirit” was that of

“the stiring of the air” - the breath of the breeze

the full significance of spirit always breaks out beyond

the grasp of our concepts

the biblical language is __________ rather than precisely descriptive

evoctive

the biblical imagery of spirit is essentially dynamic

language about ‘indwelling’ is inadequate if it suggests merely a passive inhabiting

spirit as dynamic

• a capacity for going out of oneself (transcending oneself)

• there belong essentially freedom and creativity, whereby they are able to shape (within limits) both themselves and their world

• the more a person goes out / beyond themselves, the more the spiritual dimension of their life is deepend, the more they grow in likeness to God, who is Spirit

the main tendency in the NT is to see the work of the Spirit and thus a truly spiritual life for man as manifested in

the less sensational but ethically more important ‘gifts’ or ‘fruits’ of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control

christianity’s answer: what is the core problem for humanity?

• sin

  • a matter of living according to the world instead of the love of God

  • sinfulness renders us beholden to the power of Sin and Death

st. augustine’s account of sin

• sin is a matter of orientation

• sin and rectitude alike are determined by the end we set for ourselves and the consequent ordering of our desires

• persons who want to orient their life to God must learn how to do so correctly

martin luther’s account of sin

• sin is a matter of putting our faith in or trusting anything other than God

• our god is whatever either keeps us from worrying provides us with reassurance when we do

• God alone should play this role; we are sinful insofar as anything else does

james cone’s account of sin

• sinfulness is a matter of taking our hearing from something other than God

• sinful distortion is a matter of seeing people (including ourselves) in such a way that it makes it hard to see God’s image in them

in all cases of sin,

sinfulness is fundamentally a matter of being oriented by and to the world, where we ought instead to be oriented by and to God

• NOT anti-worldly or other-wordly

• our relationship tot he world ought to be included in and oriented by our devotion to God

smith & the human as lover

• what if you are defined bot ny what you know but by what you desire? what if the center and seat of te human person is found not in the heady regions of the intellect but in the gut-level regions of the heart

• you are what you love because you live toward what you want

• “telos” = greek for goal/end

• such a telos works on us, not by convincing the intellect, but by allure

pedegogies of desire - smith

• it is crucial for us to recognize that our ultimate loves, longings, desires, and cravings are learned

• because love is a habit, our hearts are calibrated through imitating exemplars and being immersed in practices that, over time, index our hearts to a certain end

• we learn to love not primarily by acquiring information about what we should love but rather through practices that form the habits of how we love

• “your deepest desire is the one manifested by your daily life and habits" - smith

• “your love or desire - aimed at a vision of the good life that hsapres how you see the world while also moving and motivating - is operative at a largely nonconscious level” - smith

our desires are shaped by forces that aren’t necessarily intellectual

smith: apocalypse

• end-times predictions(?)

• an impending doom?

• an “unveiling”

apocalypse = “unveiling” → seeing through the veil (what is actually happening in reality)

smith: liturgy

“a shorthand term those rituals that are loaded with an ultimate Story about who we are and what we’re for. they carry within them a kind of ultimate orientation”

smith: cultural liturgies

• ex = the mall

• forms & shapes a person to the consumeristic good life

• we need to read the practices that surround us (the rituals we’re immersed in)