From the viewpoint
of the world, molded as it is by the scientific developments which have
followed Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, and Richard Dawkins, a
viewpoint which guides the “science” of economics, the human person is a result
of chance. From the moment of the Big
Bang some fourteen billion years ago there has been a sequence of random,
chance events which the present field of cosmology is trying desperately to
trace, a sequence that has brought us to where we are today. Events in the first few seconds following the
Big Bank determined much of the physical structure of “space”, of the universe
we know today. The coming into
existence, one cannot say creation in this sense for nothing was created, all
simply came into existence, of the four fundamental forces (gravity,
electro-magnetic, strong, weak) and of hydrogen (the building block of the
universe) was in a strong sense deterministic, owing to the nature of the Big
Bang. After the first few minutes
following the Event, randomness began to set in and following the first billion
years of so random events began to congeal into the embryonic stages which have
resulted in stars, planets, and galaxies.
The formation of
all this is thought to be truly random.
In the developing theories of astrophysics and cosmology there are
indications of a multi-verse rather
than a uni-verse and in the universes
other than the one we inhabit there are quite possibly different rules of
physics that determine the composition of each universe. The universe in which we live is the result
of random events that followed the Big Bang.
From the random
sequence of events leading to galaxies, stars, and planets comes the random set
of events that ultimately led to the rise of homo sapiens on the third planet
out from a medium sized star. The
randomness that has resulted in our existence has been calculated and projected
outward in an effort to see if we are alone in this particular universe.
From the viewpoint
of the world as it is today, the rise of the human person is the result of
chance, of a sequence of random events.
Human beings were not created; they came into existence after nearly
fifteen billion years of random events.
In terms of a biological equilibrium, we may or may not be stuck in a
stable equilibrium; the time frames are too long to know until well past its
conclusion. We came into existence to
exist.
From the viewpoint
of the Magisterium, the human person was the result of a deliberate choice by
God to create. This is not to deny
evolutionary theory or give way to creationism.
Consider what Pope Francis recently said:
When we read in
Genesis the account of Creation, we risk imagining that God was a magician,
with such a magic wand as to be able to do everything. However, it was not like
that. He created beings and left them to develop according to the internal laws
that He gave each one, so that they would develop, and reach their fullness. He
gave autonomy to the beings of the universe at the same time that He assured
them of his continual presence, giving being to every reality. And thus
creation went forward for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia
until it became what we know today, in fact because God is not a demiurge or a
magician, but the Creator who gives being to all entities. The beginning of the
world was not the work of chaos, which owes its origin to another, but it
derives directly from a Supreme Principle who creates out of love. The
Big-Bang, that is placed today at the origin of the world, does not contradict
the divine intervention but exacts it. The evolution in nature is not opposed
to the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings
that evolve.[1]
So it is that God
created us, we did not come into existence as a result of random chance. We were created with a specific design
especially suited to bring us to an ultimate end, eternal beatitude with God. Further, the human person is created in the image
of God, in the imago dei:
Being in the image of God the human
individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but
someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely
giving himself and entering into communion with other persons and 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. (Catechism, 357)
There is a glimpse of the design of
our nature – “to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature
can give in his stead” – and one of the first indications of the dignity of
each person. Every human being has been
created in the imago dei and is free
to offer back to God a response of faith and love that will lead to eternal
beatitude. “The human being is a
personal being created by God to be in relationship with him. . .” (CSDC,
109)
There is more to
being created in the imago dei: the
human person is created as a social being, reflective of the Trinity. We are made to be with and to support others
even as they are with and support us. Thus,
a part of the dignity of each person is reflective of the fact that to act
according to our design is to reach out to others in a “response of faith and
love” because they, too, were created in the imago dei. Another part of
the imago dei is seen in that we are
able to work, to create. Just as God
created, so we are also able to impact the world around us by what we create,
by the work we undertake. This contributes
to the recognition of each person’s dignity by going back to the recognition
that every person is likewise call to share in the imago dei by creative acts which we can support or thwart.
We are all in this
together and the design of each of our being, that we are social creatures, is
such that I am can only be better off if you are one, no worse off (a necessary
condition), and more importantly, two, only if you are also better off (the
sufficient condition). Therefore, each
of us has a dignity which we cannot deny in any other. It is only the recognition of this human
dignity that can make possible the common and person growth of everyone. (CSDC
145) The root of all human rights is
found in the dignity that belongs to each human being;
The ultimate source of
human rights is not found in the mere will of human beings, in the reality of
the State, in public powers, but in man himself and in God his creator. (CSDC 153)
The dignity of the human person is
the first permanent principle of Catholic Social Doctrine and the foundation of
all the other principles and of all the content of the Church’s social
doctrine.
CSDC refers to the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church and the numbers refer to the paragraph in which the quote was found.
[1] October 27,
2014; address by Pope Francis on the occasion of the inauguration of a Bronze
Bust of Pope Benedict XVI at Pius IV Casina in the Vatican Gardens.
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