Human Person

According to Christianity, the human person is

the handwork of God and God created the
human person in his own image and likeness.
God created the human person after He had
created almost everything but He put the
human person in charge of almost all the things
He had created.
The human person is composed of the mind, the
body and the soul. All three components coexist to
form the human person. Both the mind and the
soul exist outside the body. The mind is part of the
soul and the soul can form part of an eternal soul
and so the mind can exist as an eternal mind. The
body is material (from matter) and hence bounded
by space and time. The body comes into existence
and goes out of existence. The soul comes into
existence and can remain in existence .
Therefore the complete human person (body, mind and
soul) is not completely free but has the ability to enjoy
complete freedom. When the soul forms part of an
eternal soul, the soul of the human person becomes an
eternal soul and hence efficient. When the mind becomes
an eternal mind, the mind of the human person becomes
efficient because it becomes part of eternity. The
complete human person however cannot be hundred
percent efficient because the body is not efficient. Death
therefore is not the complete disassembling of the
human person but maybe a way to perfection. In other
words, death can be a way to an increase in efficiency of
the human person. There is life after death. However, the
body has no life after death. The mind and the soul on
the other hand can enjoy life after death because they
can become one with eternity.
Freedom & Responsibility
Freedom, from an existential perspective,
cannot be separated from responsibility. With
freedom comes responsibility. Yet, it is common
for many people to seek freedom while trying to
avoid responsibility. While, at times, it appears
that people may be able to succeed at this,
there remains a psychological consequence. This
consequence is often not very noticeable, but
may find expression through guilt, anxiety,
depression, or even anger.
Existential freedom is not the same things
as freedom in the political sense.
A person can be existentially free despite
not being politically free, and a person can avoid
embracing their existential freedom despite
being offered great political freedoms.
The Ability to Choose Freedom
The degree to which a person is unaware of
those forces which influence us, they are controlled
by them.
Stated differently, the degree which we are
unaware of how our drives, instincts, unconscious,
and environment are influencing us, they control
us. However, if a person chooses not to be aware of
these influences, even if done so passively or
unconsciously, a choice has still been made,
therefore freedom has been exercised.
Self-awareness, is a commitment people
make which can enhance their freedom. Yet,
most people choose to live a life of being
unaware. It can be frightening to deeply know
who we are and the realities of our existence.
Yet, it can be even more rewarding. While many
choose to avoid living in the realities of life, a
few choose to live more fully in awareness.
The will and agency are common words used
to describe aspects of freedom in existential
thought. 'Will' is a word that most people
recognize, but have difficulty defining. One way of
defining the will is to state that it is that aspect of
the self which chooses or is free. In stating that
people have a free will does not necessitate that
they are entirely free. Rather, it is affirming that
people are at least partially free. Few, if any,
existential thinkers will deny that our biology,
culture, and environment influence our actions and
our will. However, none of these can take away the
reality of some degree of personal freedom.
Freedom and responsibility are discussed
first because they are foundational in
understanding the human experience. If we are
not free, then the other existential questions
take on a very different purpose. However, if
people are free, then issues of meaning,
relationship, and human limitation take on a
very different meaning.
Conscience
Conscience is a term that describes an aspect of a
human being's self-awareness.
Conscience is a critical inner awareness that bears
witness to the norms and values we recognize and apply.
The complex of values with which conscience deals
includes not only those we own, but the entire range of
values to which we are exposed during life's journey.
Consequently, there is always a sense of struggle in our
reflective process. The witness of conscience makes its
presence known by inducing mental anguish and feelings
of guilt when we violate the values we recognize and
apply. Conscience also provides a sense of pleasure when
we reflect on conformity to our value system.
Conscience is an aspect of self-awareness that
produces the pain and/or pleasure we "feel" as we reflect
on the norms and values we recognize and apply.
Conscience is not an outside voice. It is a inward capacity
humans possess to critique themselves because the
Creator provided this process as a means of moral
restraint for his creation. The critique conscience
exercises related to the value system which a person
develops. Romans 12:1-2 makes the point that God
desires that his creation conform to divine values by a
process of rational renewal. The Scriptures provide the
content for this renewal.
Social Co0nscience
Social conscience is an attitude of sensitivity toward
and sense of responsibility regarding injustice and
social problems. It could also be a knowledge or
understanding of what is morally right in a society.
While our conscience is related to our moral
conduct in our day to day lives with respect to
individuals, social conscience is concerned with the
broader institutions of society and the gap that we
may perceive between the sort of society that
should exist and the real society that does exist.
Moral Law
" Moral norms/laws are the criteria of judgment about
the sorts of persons that we ought to be and the sorts of
actions that we ought to perform. As such, moral norms/laws
provide us with some consistency and stability in the moral
life by bringing about some depth and breadth to our moral
judgments. They provide us with patterns for human
conduct"common denominators, which allow us to
adequately address the moral dilemmas and conflict
situations that we daily face about what is the right thing or
the wrong thing to do. They deal both with the human person
(sometimes referred to as "human character"the sorts of
persons that we ought to be) and with human action (the
sorts of action that we ought to perform).

Functions of Moral Law
Because every law springs from a system of values
and beliefs, every law is an instance of legislating
Morality. Further, because a nations laws always
exercise a pedagogical or teaching influence, law
inescapably exerts a shaping effect over the beliefs,
character, and actions of the nations citizens,
whether for good or ill. Those who seek to separate
morality from law, therefore, are in pursuit both of
the impossible and the destructive. The question
before us is never whether or not to legislate
morality, but which moral system ought to be made
legally binding.
All laws, whether prescriptive or prohibitive,
legislate morality. All laws, regardless of their
content or their intent, arise from a system of
values, from a belief that some things are right
and others wrong, that some things are good and
others bad. For better or worse, every piece of
legislation touches directly or indirectly on moral
issues, or is based on moral judgments and
evaluations concerning what it is we want or
believe ought to be, what it is we want or believe
we ought to produce and preserve.
Natural Law
Natural law refers to the use of reason to
analyze human nature both social and personal
and deduce binding rules of moral b
Natural moral law is concerned with both
exterior and interior acts, also known as action and
motive. Simply doing the right thing is not enough;
to be truly moral one's motive must be right as
well. For example, helping an old lady across the
road (good exterior act) to impress someone (bad
interior act) is wrong. However, good intentions
don't always lead to good actions.