A query for the classicists
Brian Dean bridean@worldnet.att.net
Sat, 3 Oct 1998 17:57:47 -0400 (00907469867, 19981003215853.INSC7713@default)
A query for the classical scholars on the list.
What is the truth value of the assertions of the good Dr. Hahn in regard to
"person" in the excerpt below, plucked from an
apologetics list I lurk on:
"Heard a great lecture tonight from Dr. Scott Hahn, who pointed out that
there would be no concept of human rights at all without the Church,
because it all emanates from the concept of person, which was developed in
the Church's struggle to define who Christ was in the face of heresies like
the Arians, Docetists, Nestorians, etc. The word person did not exist in
Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. It was part of the vocabulary the Church
developed to fight heretics who challenged the humanity or divinity of
Christ. A Soviet delegate at the first session of the UN in SAn Francisco
in 1945 objected to the use of the term "person" on the grounds that it was
a Christian word and suggested the word "citizen" be used instead. The
difference is profound! A citizen receives what he has from the state, but
a person receives the unique dignity he has from God! A person is created
in God's image, becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit (the third person of
God) at Baptism and has Christ abiding in him (especially seen in John 6).
A person becomes a divine son. Thus a person has a dignity (as you know!)
that comes from God and especially from the work of the second person of
the Trinity. Thus persons have human rights. This makes no sense to
Marxists, Muslims, or aetheists who do not recognize this kind of
personhood. Would that feminists, who destroy persons in the womb and
fight for the right to do so, would only realize that human rights would
not exist in the form they do now were it not for the Church and its
struggle to define Christ against the heretics."
BRIDEAN
I just had a thought about this. It may be true that the Church developed
the idea of the "person". However, I would argue that Gautama Buddha
was right, that suffering results FROM this idea of a "person" that
the church developed. Basically, what ends up happening is that the
idea of the "person" is so wraped up in Church defined dogma that
you aren't a "person" unless you agree with the Church. This explains
why the Spanish thought that the American Indians were savages
and didn't respect their human rights. Likewise for many of the other
non-Christian civilizations.
Even the above statement so much as admits to this (gets as close
to it as you can without outright saying it) because it says that the
idea of the "person" was developed to seperate themselves from
heretics. So right there, you have the possibility of using this idea
of the "person" to persecute heretics.
Ciao!!
Michael Fisher, aka Elfish Chimera, San Diego, California
"If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously,
vigorously, without allowing anything else to distract
you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you were bound to give it
back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing,
but satisfied to live now according to nature, speaking heroic truth in
every word which you utter, you will live happy. And there
is no man able to prevent this."
--Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and Stoic, from
his MEDITATIONS, III, 12.---