On Human Essence
I realize that the subject of human nature deserves so much more than this brief post, but I wanted to quickly offer the idea that perhaps the reason why human nature is so hard to pin down, so dynamic and seemingly non-essential, is that the essence of human nature is not a substantial quality within human beings, but rather a reality located in the relationship between God and humankind. Humanity is a being whose essence is located in communion with God, and this communion requires that humanity be an open-ended, dynamic entity, since they are constituted to relate to a being who is infinite relationship.
Wrote the following comment on December 17th, 2010 at 10:51 am #
I offer this brief post partly in response to the challenges of postmodern thinkers regarding the socially constructed nature of things like race, identity, nature, etc., and I offer this idea in response to the idea that there is no essential human nature, but rather a set of behaviors that societies at any given time identify as nature.