Renata Milán Morales
Photo: Ravi Pinisetti Man occupies a unique place in creation: he is ‘in the image of God’; in his own nature he unites the spiritual and material worlds; he is created ‘male and female’; God established him in his friendship.
Of all visible creatures only, man is “able to know and love his creator”. He is “the only creature on Earth that God has willed for himself”, and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity.
The dignity
Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. He is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead.
God created everything for man, but man in turn was created to serve and love God and to offer all creation back to him. St Paul tells us that humans take its origin from two men: Adam and Christ… the first man, Adam, he says, became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit.
Because of its common origin the human race forms a unity, for “from one ancestor (God) made all nations to inhabit the whole Earth”. “This law of human solidarity and charity”, without excluding the rich variety of persons, cultures and peoples, assures us that all men are truly brethren.
The breath of life
The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual: “then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7-9). Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.
In Sacred Scripture the term ‘soul’ often refers to human life or the entire human person. But ‘soul’ also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God’s image.
The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul.
Body and Soul
Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. For this reason, man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honour since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day
The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God – it is not “produced” by the parents – and that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.
The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasises the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one’s being, where the person decides for or against God.