Ch 1 What does it mean to be human?

Animals & Humans

Book of Genesis, animals and humans share many similarities. Both are living creatures & flesh.

talent

Each person is a gift from God & is a gift for others. Talents are given not only for the benefit of oneself, but also for the good of others.

Symbolic Mediation

Human beings need to express their beliefs, values and meanings by way of symbols and rituals.

God is Love

One of the most beautiful names given to God, a name given by the evangelist John, is "God is love". God is not solitary: God is Father, Son & Spirit: a communion of love.

Creation accounts

The bible has two Creation accounts ( Genesis 1. 1-2.4a & Genesis 2. 4b-24)

Community

The human person needs to live in society. Society is not an option for the individual. It is part of human nature. Through exchange with others, mutual service & communication with others, human beings develop their potential.

Secularization

is the experience of the emptying out of the credibility structures of religion in the public sphere.

Person

to call someone a 'person' is to ascribe to her or him one of the greatest human attributes. Someone who lives in a web of human relationships.

Love

Love is the bond that keeps people in relationships and communities. There can be no human growth without love.

Symbol

Symbols connect us with realities that are beyond our direct grasp and beyond our ability to speak.

Good

The recurrent phrase "And God saw that it was good" expresses God's great satisfaction over the generation of the heavens & the earth.

Image of God

This notion is played with in the Bible:in several passages, humans appear in the image of God; in others, the divine figure in all its goodness & glory appears as a human being.

Actions

What sets us apart from animals is not only our capacity to speak, but act. Human doing is different then animal doing. Humans can intend to do things & form a commitment. Humans are given the vocation to be stewards of creation.

Sign

are objects or gestures that express one specific message or meaning

Ritual

are the bodily actions surrounded by language that make symbols effective within a culture.

Freedom

freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that. It is the power to act deliberately on ones own responsibility.

Created by God

humans were generated by the sexual communion of a woman and a man and formed in the womb of a mother

Religion

is a system of symbols & rituals that forms powerful beliefs, values, meanings and practices in people about human existence in relationship with God.

Sin

is the breach of the relationship that God establishes with creation. It means to bring a fault or disorder into creation, maiming the work of God. We experience it as a power that entices or tempts us to act against good order. The Catechism defines it as "an utterance, a deed or a desire contrary to the eternal law." see Catechism, #1849-1851

Liturgy

official act of worship of the church. Jesus is evoked through symbols such as bread and wine, water, oil, laying of hands, light , rings, an embrace.

Language

one of our highest and most precious gifts is our ability to speak. Language develops through our desire to communicate with one another

Transcendence

religious experience has to do with our relationship with a God who we cannot see, hear , taste, smell, touch. That is God is beyond our usual physical experience.God makes himself known to us through 'creation', we must learn to see through creation to God, who is hte source of all.

Habit

rituals of daily living. When people do things, they tend to do them in the same way each time.

Adam

the Hebrew word adam means human being.It comes from adamah, the clay of the earth, into which the divine breath was blown. The human being is a mixture of what is beyond measurement.

The Earth & Humans

the second account of Creation, in Genesis 2, has the human being ( in Hebrew adam) shaped of the clay of the earth (adamah) and given the divine breath

Religious symbols

used in a religious context reveal a link between humans and the sacred.