Elements of Western Christian Anthropology: Current Theological Significance of Human Communication
By José M. Galván, Pontificia Università della Santa Croce (Roma)
1. Theology & Communications” or “Theology of Communications”?
The purpose of these reflections is the interdisciplinary dialogue between theologians and communicators: Theology & Communications. Certainly, the dialogue between these two sciences is nowadays of paramount importance, and it must take account of the specificities of each methodology; in fact, the deductive and synthetic methodology of theology does not match the inductive and analytical method of communication sciences. Because of this difference the dialogue is absolutely needed.
I believe however, the specific contribution of a theologian could also be to establish the basis for a “theology of communication”, understood as the theological reflection on the nature and significance of human communication. The theological dimension of communication is a task for the theologian; the communicational dimension of theology is a task for the communicator. It is evident the biblical Revelation provides abundant inspiration for such a consideration, given that its fundamental elements are basically related to the communicative character of the human person.
The biblical account starts from the consideration of the creative Word which communicates to the human being truth and salvation (cfr. Wis 9:1; Sir 24:3; Prv 8:22.31; Col 1:15.16...). The creative action of the divine Word, which result in the creation of man and woman as the image and likeness of God, gives theological consistency to the human word: the communicative condition of the human person is a manifestation of his/her dignity as God's image. In contrast, the loss of this condition, when the Spirit of Truth is replaced with the spirit of the "father of lies" (Jo 8:44), results in the damage and death of the human being. The Redemption accomplished by the Incarnate Word, includes, as an essential element, the recovery of the dialogical dimension of the human being: “Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, for we are members one of another” (Eph 4,25). This means the human word, redeemed by Christ, is entrusted to human freedom in history, waiting for the eschatological fulfillment.
In this sense I believe a Theology of Communication is possible; Revelation offers plenty of material to illuminate this central aspect of the essence of humanity. The purpose of this paper is simply to provide some useful elements from the classical theological anthropology to illuminate a theology of communication today.
2. Today’s Convenience for a Theology of Communication.
Since the human word is a task entrusted to freedom, its theological consideration is always present. But it is evident that in our days the significance of the word is incremented. The fundamental reason lies in the added symbolic capacity due to the extraordinary development of ICTs.
Linked to technological development is the increasingly pervasive presence of the means of social communications. It is almost impossible today to imagine the life of the human family without them. For better or for worse, they are so integral a part of life today it seems quite absurd to maintain that they are neutral — and hence unaffected by any moral considerations concerning people. Often such views, stressing the strictly technical nature of the media, effectively support their subordination to economic interests, intent on dominating the market and, not least, to attempts to impose cultural models that serve ideological and political agendas.
Given the media's fundamental importance in engineering changes in attitude towards reality and the human person, we must reflect carefully on their influence, especially in regard to the ethical-cultural dimension of globalization and the development of peoples in solidarity. Mirroring what is required for an ethical approach to globalization and development, so too the meaning and purpose of the media must be sought within an anthropological perspective.
This means that they can have a civilizing effect not only when, thanks to technological development, they increase the possibilities of communicating information, but above all when they are geared towards a vision of the person and the common good that reflects truly universal values. Just because social communications increase the possibilities of interconnection and the dissemination of ideas, it does not follow that they promote freedom or internationalize development and democracy for all. To achieve goals of this kind, they need to focus on promoting the dignity of persons and peoples, they need to be clearly inspired by charity and placed at the service of truth, of the good, and of natural and supernatural fraternity. In fact, human freedom is intrinsically linked with these higher values. The media can make an important contribution towards the growth in communion of the human family and the ethos of society when they are used to promote universal participation in the common search for what is just.” (Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate, 73).
Obviously, the first ethical task is to use these new forms of communications in the service of truth: this is their intrinsic ethical request. But the ICTs, having a high capacity of reproducing the human symbolic functions, increase the expressive capacity of freedom in a very important way, and this increment is very good from the ethical point of view. Every symbol must be transparent, but the profusion of symbols can easily carry to a diminution of the symbolic capacity; this implies a very hard extrinsic ethical request, for the symbolic possibilities of humanity are really very big.
3. Phenomenological Clarification of Concepts
To highlight some of the classical theological anthropology guidelines which may be useful for a Theology of Communication, it is important to clarify some basic concepts.
a. The human symbolic capacity
I assume as “human communication” the sharing, in time and space, of the intentional ends of intellect and will. This obviously presupposes a consideration of the human being as "an incarnate spirit", substantial unity of body and soul. In this sense, the vocation to the communion of the human being is seen as "mediated" through matter: communication is the material dimension of communion. The dialogue, therefore, is the word communicated through our material condition, which must become "transparent" to the word.
This requires a symbolic dimension of the human being that is intrinsically united to the body (the body, in fact, is the first symbolic tool), and produces a variety of "words" that constitute the different languages: body language, oral language, written language... In any case if a language is properly human it is always characterized by the significant pluri-finality. The “animal word” is also symbolic and plenty of semantic significance (hunger, fear, sexual attraction...) but always in a limited and univocal sense, because the sign is linked to a meaning in a way defined by the natural adaptive process of the species; the human word, instead, has a total conventionality (not arbitrariness!), in which the link between the sign and the signified reality is added to the nature: the human word is non-natural, but cultural!
b. Moral dimension of the symbolic capability
The indetermination of the symbolic ability in humans finds a gap between being and language, between “internal word” and “external word”, between all that the person reveals through his/her symbolic manifestations and all that is the true perfection of his/her being. This semantic indetermination does not mean it is possibly such a discontinuity; the ethical dimension of the language consists precisely in this required continuity, acted by the personal freedom. It is possible to say that the symbolic ability and the ethical dimension coincide.
This ethical gap does not exist in animals, because the animal always “speaks” according to the perfection of its nature, which is independent of the animal itself; in humans the language is a form of value, and a mean for the development of the existence and the historical dimension. The unity between being and language could be named in the ethical field “sincerity”, that is one of the fundamental conditions for the finalistic completion of mankind.
Now it has been said above that the virtue of truth---and consequently the opposite vices---regards a manifestation made by certain signs: and this manifestation or statement is an act of reason comparing sign with the thing signified; because every representation consists in comparison, which is the proper act of the reason. Wherefore though dumb animals manifest something, yet they do not intend to manifest anything: but they do something by natural instinct, and a manifestation is the result. But when this manifestation or statement is a moral act, it must needs be voluntary, and dependent on the intention of the will. (Aquinas, ST 2-2, 110, 1)
c. The symbolic transfer
As the human ability in giving a finality to acts can integrate the objective dimension of the technical act in the free finalization of human acts, the symbolic ability of humans includes the possibility of transferring to an artifact the symbolic capacity, so that the symbolic artifact is able to communicate "objectively" what the person wants to communicate "subjectively":
A person who says what is true, utters certain signs which are in conformity with things; and such signs are either words, or external actions, or any external thing. (Aquinas, ST 2-2, 109, 1, ad3)
And this “symbolic transfer” has always a moral value:
Now such kinds of things are the subject-matter of the moral virtues alone, for the latter are concerned with the use of the external members, in so far as this use is put into effect at the command of the will. Wherefore truth is neither a theological, nor an intellectual, but a moral virtue. (ibid.)
The human free will transfers the symbolic ability to the artifact through the intrinsic technical capability of human beings. This is the essence of the so called “media”: the transmission of an “objectified word”, the written word or a word in any way disconnected with the whole person, that can have many advantages at the level of historical, social, artistic meaningfulness, but is always under the symbolic ability of the “pronounced word”. In spite of this, as it has been said, in our days the anthropological significance of the “technically objectified word” grew massively (ICTs).
4. The corresponding dogmatic basis
a. Intratrinitarian “communio” & Creation “ad imaginem Dei”
The communication within the Trinity is characterized by its immediacy because the dynamic of the divine processions is eternal: nothing, neither time nor space, separates the three distinct Persons. So, it can be stated that the intra-trinitarian communication is not a model for the human mediated communication. Nevertheless, the doctrine of creation as imago Dei allows us to state that a certain similarity of the intra-trinitarian communication is inscribed within the human creature.
Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, "that all may be one... as we are one" (John 17:21-22) He opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God's sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself. (II Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, 24c).
For Christian Anthropology, the idea of Creation is not only, nor primarily, the explanation of the existence of beings; it is first and foremost the manifestation of God's Love. The sense of Genesis 1 is that of a creation which is the result of a free, not-conditional divine action. There are no previous premises to the Word of God, that takes origin only in the free divine Will and
becomes efficient: “then God said … and so it happened”; this personal action has, as a result, the transmission of Goodness (“God saw how good it was”). Thus, we can say that the reason of creation is the free will of goodness for creatures, and that is the definition of true love (freely willing the good of the beloved). This implies a vision of creation as the starting point of an interpersonal relation, since the otherness is a condition for love.
From the theological Christian point of view, understanding this “communional” structure of creation is only possible in reference to the Trinitarian faith: the beloved creature is originated from the eternal fullness of the intra-Trinitarian Life, in which God is Love himself; (it is not possible to understand the Creation as the only divine activity aimed to fulfill the loving capacity of God). Through Creation God participates his Love to the creatures, but this participation has sense only if the beloved creature is able to experience this Love; this is possible only in the human person, in which all the creatures are recapitulated:
Though made of body and soul, man is one. Through his bodily composition he gathers to himself the elements of the material world; thus they reach their crown through him, and through him raise their voice in free praise of the Creator” (II Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, n. 14).
b. Trinitarian “missiones”
The New Testament Revelation teaches us that the gift of the Word of God at creation is the specific form in which the human mediated communication is assumed within the divine Immediacy. This requires the use of a conceptual tool developed by the great medieval theology, that is the concept of "Trinitarian mission", i.e., the temporal effect of the eternal procession of the Persons proceeding. First, it asserts that all created beings are related to the dynamics of knowledge and love of the Trinity.
For God, by understanding himself, conceives his word which is the type of all things understood by him, inasmuch as he understands all things by understanding himself, and from this word he proceeds to love of all things and of himself. Thus, someone has said that a ‘monad engendered an atom and reflected its own beat upon itself.’ And the circle being closed nothing more can be added, so that a third procession within the divine nature is impossible, although there follows a procession towards external nature. (Aquinas, De potentia 9, 9).
Then, in the case of the human person, the divine grace produces the sharing of the divine knowledge and love, because it is not enough "to be known” or “to be loved" for a real intentional union between God and the creature.
For God is in all things by His essence, power, and presence, according to His one common mode, as the cause existing in the effects which participate in His goodness. Above and beyond this common mode, however, there is one special mode belonging to the rational nature wherein God is said to be present, as the object known, is in the knower, and the beloved in the lover. And since the rational creature by its operation of knowledge and love attains to God Himself, according to this special mode God is said not only to exist in the rational creature but also to dwell therein as in His own temple.
So, no other effect can be put down as the reason why the divine person is in the rational creature in a new mode, except sanctifying grace. Hence, the divine person is sent, and proceeds temporally only according to sanctifying grace. Again, we are said to possess only what we can freely use or enjoy: and to have the power of enjoying the divine person can only be according to sanctifying grace. And yet the Holy Ghost is possessed by man, and dwells within him, in the very gift itself of sanctifying grace. Hence the Holy Ghost Himself is given and sent. (Aquinas, ST 1, 43, 3).
c. Original condition of the Creation: transparency of matter
The Revelation speaks of an initial condition in which all creation was fully integrated in dialogue between God and mankind. In fact, the creature is loved "inside" the Love that God is, and this means that his material condition is not of limitation: in the original order of creation, the matter is transparent (praeternatural gifts). Only within the Trinity, by the “visible mission” of the Son, the atter is transparent. In fact, the idea of creation as image if God is improved in the New Testament with the idea of “creation in Christ”. “For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him.” (Col 1:16; cfr also 1Cor 8:6; Jo 1:3.10). As the Christ is the incarnated eternal Beloved Son, by Him the whole creation is taken into the trinitarian dialogue, including in this process the material dimension of creation, ontologically linked to mankind.
The Incarnation of God the Son signifies the taking up into unity with God not only of human nature, but in this human nature, in a sense, of everything that is "flesh": the whole of humanity, the entire visible and material world.
The Incarnation, then, also has a cosmic significance, a cosmic dimension. The "first-born of all creation, becoming incarnate in the individual humanity of Christ, unites himself in some way with the entire reality of man, which is also "flesh" -and in this reality with all "flesh," with the whole of creation. (John Paul II, Dominum et vivificantem, 50).
d. Original Sin & Redemption
There is a great difference between the biblical story and the myth of Prometheus. Prometheus must repair a defective original condition with the gift of the technical capacity, while the biblical account speaks of an original condition in which the technique is given to humanity not to repair but to the fullness of the Creation. Only after the rupture of communion with God, which is not an original condition in the biblical revelation, the situation was reversed. The original condition is lost by the original sin: when human freedom leaves the Trinitarian dialogue, the matter loses its transparency and becomes a condition of separation; the Spirit of Truth is substituted by the spirit of the “liar and the father of lies” (John 8,44).
The tower of Babel is the manifestation of the isolation that produces the claim to occupy the place of God. The confusion of the languages is the consequence of this claim, which has its counterpart in the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost. The tower of Babel (Gen 11,1-9) was the symbol of a humanity that would reach its fullness only through technical means; we can see it also as the symbol of the temptation to rely on ICTs the ultimate reason for human communication (“Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth”: Gen 11,4).
Through the new gift of the Spirit, fruit of the Redemption, Christ re-enters humanity in the Trinitarian dialogue. In this way, Christ returns the matter to its original transparent condition.
5. Moral consequences
a. The human person and the task of Christ in history
The Christian, identified with Christ by grace, has the obligation to cooperate actively so that the triumph of Christ is manifested in history. The application of Redemption to the matter, of which we spoke earlier, is possible only by the free participation of the human person, real link between God and the material creation:
For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in the hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is growing in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” (Rom 8:19-23)
b. “Homo technicus”: the awareness of creation
This cooperation is possible because, as previously said, only the human person is able to “understand” the divine creative action as interpersonal dialogue and thus, able to be aware of the dialogical structure of the material cosmos as creation. This awareness of creation has two points of view: first, the human person can see its nature as a received resource in order to improve the human condition:
When man develops the earth by the work of his hands or with the aid of technology, in order that it might bear fruit and become a dwelling worthy of the whole human family and when he consciously takes part in the life of social groups, he carries out the design of God manifested at the beginning of time, that he should subdue the earth, perfect creation and develop himself. At the same time, he obeys the commandment of Christ that he places himself at the service of his brethren.” (II Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, 57).
In the second point of view, the nature is seen not only as “given” resource, but also as a “gifted” present. The idea of “gift” adds to the awareness of creation the concepts of gratitude, sharing, reciprocity. It is not possible to use the material creation as mere resource.
It is not possible, thus, for the human person, to answer to his/her original vocation in Christ not involving in this answer the whole of creation. The material state of mankind is fully integrated in the condition of image of God (“homo technicus”). In fact, this condition includes the appropriate use of natural resources and the solemn commitment of bettering nature itself, first of all, the human symbolic ability, in which consist the inherent technical capacities of human beings.
c. The Truth as moral virtue in the economy of Grace.
In summary, the image of God, which was created "able to speak," continues to have this ability even after original sin. Without this moral obligation the free symbolic capacity of man (from the spoken word to ICTs) would be destined to meaninglessness.
For I ask, if what is not known must not be believed, in what way may children do service to their parents, and love with mutual affection those whom they believe not to be their parents? For it cannot, by any means, be known by reason. But the authority of the mother comes in, that it be believed of the father; but of the mother it is usually not the mother that is believed, but midwives, nurses, servants. For she, from whom a son may be stolen and another put in his place, may she not being deceived deceive?
Yet we believe, and believe without any doubt, what we confess we cannot know. For who but must see, that unless it be so, filial affection, the most sacred bond of the human race, is violated by extreme pride of wickedness? For what madman even would think him to be blamed who discharged the duties that were due to those whom he believed to be his parents, although they were not so?
Who, on the other hand, would not judge him to deserve banishment, who failed to love those who were perhaps his true parents, through fear lest he should love pretended. Many things may be alleged, whereby to show that nothing at all of human society remains safe, if we shall determine to believe nothing, which we cannot grasp by full apprehension. (St. Augustin, De utilitate credendi, 26).
Therefore, it would be natural to the human being to tell the truth: “cum enim voces sint signa naturaliter intellectuum, innaturalite est et indebitum quod aliquis voce significet id quod non habet in mente” (ST 2-2, 110, 3). But now the moral dimension of this ability requires the “sanatio” of the human free will, acted by the Grace, through the work of Redemption. In fact, the vulnera naturae caused by the original sin have resulted in the tendency to lie, that human person alone cannot overcome.
6. Conclusion
In this sense, the classical concepts of creatio ad imaginem Dei and Incarnatio (missio visibile), founding the possibility of inclusion, and re-inclusion, of the matter in the intra-trinitarian dialogue, are the first basis for a theological understanding of human mediated communication. The former inclusion of matter must be related to the revelation of divine Love in Creation, so that the material dimension cannot be seen as a limitation; and this is the essence of the classical theological concept of dones praeternaturales (the real mystery of mankind is, therefore, the material condition, whose explanation requires the reference to the theological concept of “forgivability”, in the sense that the possibility of “being forgiven” requires a certain “successivility”). The idea of peccatum originale is needed to understand the opaque condition of matter and the necessity of the re-inclusion. Finally, the idea of redempio as concrete economy of the incarnatio allows us to state that the use of the human technical skills to increment the dialogical capacity must be seen as a Christic task, insofar as this manifests Christ's victory over sin and the triumph of the Spirit of Truth.