Book contents
- What is a Person?
- What is a Person?
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Constructing the ‘Mainline Tradition’
- 1 The First Foundations: Plato and Aristotle
- 2 From Stoic Individuals and Personae to Christian Persons
- 3 Mixtures: Plotinus, Porphyry, Nemesius
- 4 Augustine’s Personae: Theology, Metaphysics, History
- 5 The Definition: Boethius and Richard of Saint Victor
- 6 Toward a Synthesis: Thomas Aquinas
- 7 Between Two Worlds: Duns Scotus
- Part II No God, no Soul: What Person?
- Part III Toward Disabling the Person
- Part IV Persons Restored or Final Solution?
- Epilogue or Epitaph?
- Appendix The World of Rights Transformed Again
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - From Stoic Individuals and Personae to Christian Persons
from Part I - Constructing the ‘Mainline Tradition’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2019
- What is a Person?
- What is a Person?
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Constructing the ‘Mainline Tradition’
- 1 The First Foundations: Plato and Aristotle
- 2 From Stoic Individuals and Personae to Christian Persons
- 3 Mixtures: Plotinus, Porphyry, Nemesius
- 4 Augustine’s Personae: Theology, Metaphysics, History
- 5 The Definition: Boethius and Richard of Saint Victor
- 6 Toward a Synthesis: Thomas Aquinas
- 7 Between Two Worlds: Duns Scotus
- Part II No God, no Soul: What Person?
- Part III Toward Disabling the Person
- Part IV Persons Restored or Final Solution?
- Epilogue or Epitaph?
- Appendix The World of Rights Transformed Again
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
God, according to Paul echoing the Old Testament, is no respecter of persons, but regards all human beings, whatever their status in human society, as of equal and unique worth since created in his own image and likeness. That hardly sounds culturally Greek. And although the concept of the person is implicit rather than explicit in the New Testament, the influence of the New Testament on Christianity constantly reasserted itself over subsequent centuries; indeed is still doing so; nevertheless, it took many hundreds of years before enough Christians took seriously the implicitly mandated Christian attitude to a variety of ancient institutions, such as slavery and the subordination of women. The ancients generally tended to assume that institutions (even ‘structures of sin’) are more or less unchanging, indeed unchangeable; what mattered was the moral reform of the individual. Hence, on the wider and more fundamental question of the nature of the ‘person’, there were features of New Testament Christianity noted rather inadequately at first, but which more recent centuries have recognized cannot be ignored if anything like an adequately Christian account of the person is to be developed and defended.
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- What is a Person?Realities, Constructs, Illusions, pp. 22 - 34Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019