The Christian Invention of the Human Person
by Cameron Hilditch https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/the-christian-invention-of-the-human-person/ We shouldn't forget where the idea that we are all equal, unique personalities, each possessed of unfathomable dignity and inviolable rights, came from. The most important lesson that the study of history teaches us is contingency. Things did not have to turn out the way they did. Take, for instance, the answer that our civilization has historically given to the most important question of all: “What does it mean to be a human being?” Ever since the Enlightenment, many people in the West have had the impression that answering this question is easy, that it’s just a matter of observing human behavior empirically across time and space and then abstracting a few universal maxims from the data. This is…