What does it mean to be a person?

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atassina

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How can I explain in a simple and clear way what it means to be a person?
**-How does this relate to the persons of the holy Trinity? How does this relate to us human persons?
-What is a person in terms of a pregnant woman and her child within? What is a person in the mystical union of a husband and wife? Both are persons, yet they are one in marriage. What does it mean for them to be persons yet mystically united in the bond of holy matrimony?

I can’t ask St. Ambrose, St. Thomas, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Sienna, Saints Macrina, Marcella, Paula or Eustochium. Perhaps one of the learned men or women of the online community could give me a little help-- Please.**
 
atassina said:
How can I explain in a simple and clear way what it means to be a person?
**-How does this relate to the persons of the holy Trinity? How does this relate to us human persons?
-What is a person in terms of a pregnant woman and her child within? What is a person in the mystical union of a husband and wife? Both are persons, yet they are one in marriage. What does it mean for them to be persons yet mystically united in the bond of holy matrimony?

I can’t ask St. Ambrose, St. Thomas, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Sienna, Saints Macrina, Marcella, Paula or Eustochium. Perhaps one of the learned men or women of the online community could give me a little help-- Please.**
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Bearing in mind, I am not a priest or philosopher but just a sinner:

A person, AIUI, is a being who does their “be-ing” in relation to other persons. A human being is not simply a body with a mind within his/her head; he/she is a child of parents, possibly a sibling, possibly a spouse or parent to children; a citizen in a civil society; etc.

Individuality arises from bodily life and perceiving life from a human head; personhood arises in relation to others. The “personality” is not the person, but it is the expressed surface of one’s mind or psyche that one shows to others.

Although we cannot understand the Holy Trinity, we do know that although there are NOT three “beings” per se as we understand the term, there are three persons who have an eternal and loving relationship to each other.

ICXC NIKA
 
atassina said:
How can I explain in a simple and clear way what it means to be a person?
**-How does this relate to the persons of the holy Trinity? How does this relate to us human persons?
-What is a person in terms of a pregnant woman and her child within? What is a person in the mystical union of a husband and wife? Both are persons, yet they are one in marriage. What does it mean for them to be persons yet mystically united in the bond of holy matrimony?

I can’t ask St. Ambrose, St. Thomas, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Sienna, Saints Macrina, Marcella, Paula or Eustochium. Perhaps one of the learned men or women of the online community could give me a little help-- Please.**
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Hi Atassina. I’m thinking the questions you ask are not simple to answer but worthy of asking and seeking the answers.

Perhaps we might begin to discover the answers by wondering what these words mean:

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

(Genesis 1:27)

I’m thinking this means persons are those created by God in God’s own image. What I wonder is what “in the image of God” means. What are your thoughts?
 
Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, states that the meaning and purpose of human existence is to have something precious to offer Him (i.e., our very lives), which we can then return to Him as a gift.
 
The definition from the glossary of the 2nd ed Catechism:
PERSON, HUMAN: The human individual, made in the image of God; not some thing but some one, a unity of spirit and matter, soul and body, capable of knowledge, self-posession, and freedom, who can enter into communion with other persons–and with God (357, 362; cf. 1700). The human person needs to live in society, which is a group of persons bound together organically by a principle of unity that goes beyond each one of them (1879).
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Search Catechism references here: kofc.org/en/catechism/index.html
 
spockrates said:
“If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains—however improbable—must be the truth.”
—Spock
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Sorry if this disillusions you but Spock was quoting Sherlock Holmes:

“You will not apply my precept,” he said, shaking his head. “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” - The Sign of the Four, chapter 6, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

And the only reason for mentioning that is when I realized that Conan Doyle the real person put words in the mouth of Sherlock Holmes the fictional person who was quoted by Spock the fictional person who was quoted by spockrates the real person who is quoted by me, it made my head spin even more than trying to answer the OP. 🙂
 
atassina said:
How can I explain in a simple and clear way what it means to be a person?
**-How does this relate to the persons of the holy Trinity? How does this relate to us human persons?
-What is a person in terms of a pregnant woman and her child within? What is a person in the mystical union of a husband and wife? Both are persons, yet they are one in marriage. What does it mean for them to be persons yet mystically united in the bond of holy matrimony?

I can’t ask St. Ambrose, St. Thomas, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Sienna, Saints Macrina, Marcella, Paula or Eustochium. Perhaps one of the learned men or women of the online community could give me a little help-- Please.**
Click to expand...
II. “BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE”

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. the biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "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."229 Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.

363 In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person.230 But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him,231 that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man.

364 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, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:232

Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. 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 233

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body:234 i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not “produced” by the parents - and also 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.235

What I have given is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Simply, we become a Person at the moment of conception, when the soul is united with the body. So a person is a being composed of body and a spiritual soul with the faculties of intelligence and free will, wherein the soul is the form of the body.

A woman with child is a situation in which the female person is carrying the person of the child. There are two persons.

The mystical union of a husband and wife refers to the complementary aspects of the two in physical, psychological, and spiritual terms. The two are mystically one, more or less perfectly, dependent on how perfectly the three complementary aspects are fulfilled.
They are two persons, they never become one person, but they seem as one in a psychological, spiritual, intellectual sense as their attitudes in all three senses become more and more united. You can read more on this in the Catechism where it deals with the sacrament of Marriage.

Linus2nd
 
inocente said:
Sorry if this disillusions you but Spock was quoting Sherlock Holmes:

“You will not apply my precept,” he said, shaking his head. “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” - The Sign of the Four, chapter 6, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

And the only reason for mentioning that is when I realized that Conan Doyle the real person put words in the mouth of Sherlock Holmes the fictional person who was quoted by Spock the fictional person who was quoted by spockrates the real person who is quoted by me, it made my head spin even more than trying to answer the OP. 🙂
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“An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains – however improbable – must be the truth.”
–Spock (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)

Since Spock’s ancestor likely stated this many centuries before the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born, I’d say the Vulcan race has a more legitimate claim to that bit of wisdom!
 
spockrates said:
“An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains – however improbable – must be the truth.”
–Spock (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)

Since Spock’s ancestor likely stated this many centuries before the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born, I’d say the Vulcan race has a more legitimate claim to that bit of wisdom!
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😃
 
atassina said:
How can I explain in a simple and clear way what it means to be a person?
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The best definition I’ve come across is that a person is something that possesses any sort of consciousness. If something has subjective awareness, it is a person.
-How does this relate to the persons of the holy Trinity?
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As I understand it, the trinity can be said to have three different persons because there are three different subjective experiences within it.
How does this relate to us human persons?
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Every organism endowed with an immortal soul has a subjective experience, and therefore is also a person. Additionally, if animals are considered to be conscious, then they would be persons as well under this definition.
-What is a person in terms of a pregnant woman and her child within?
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As the church teaches that fetuses have immortal souls, then they also must be conscious, at least at some rudimentary level.
What is a person in the mystical union of a husband and wife? Both are persons, yet they are one in marriage. What does it mean for them to be persons yet mystically united in the bond of holy matrimony?
Click to expand...
Both are individual persons who share an unbreakable bond to the other. If my understanding is correct, Marriage creates a sort of imperfect “binity”, where two persons make up one new nature.
 
Linusthe2nd said:
II. “BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE”

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. the biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "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."229 Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.

363 In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person.230 But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him,231 that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man.

364 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, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:232

Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. 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 233

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body:234 i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not “produced” by the parents - and also 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.235

What I have given is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Simply, we become a Person at the moment of conception, when the soul is united with the body. So a person is a being composed of body and a spiritual soul with the faculties of intelligence and free will, wherein the soul is the form of the body.

A woman with child is a situation in which the female person is carrying the person of the child. There are two persons.

The mystical union of a husband and wife refers to the complementary aspects of the two in physical, psychological, and spiritual terms. The two are mystically one, more or less perfectly, dependent on how perfectly the three complementary aspects are fulfilled.
They are two persons, they never become one person, but they seem as one in a psychological, spiritual, intellectual sense as their attitudes in all three senses become more and more united. You can read more on this in the Catechism where it deals with the sacrament of Marriage.

Linus2nd
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👍 The wisdom of the Catechism is often neglected…
 
The soul is the substantial form of a person, which is a rational animal, so it is that which at least has the potentiality in itself (if not actuality) to become rational.
 
tonyrey

**It’s a long time since I read Maritain’s work but this essay refreshes my admiration for his originality and profundity. **

I am reading now Maritain’s Christianity and Democracy, first written in the 1940s. He insisted that the Gospels were the only reliable foundation for a viable democracy. Now we see the Gospels being trashed, and our democracy being trashed along with them.
 
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