Sentences with phrase «significance of being human»

Not exact matches

Not so with Belloc, who was far from alone among historians of his generation who understood the significance of race and blood in the episodes of the human past and how important these factors were in the creation of societies and civilizations.

In human society this aspiration is expressed by a desire to find significances and uses for things which otherwise have none, assigning meaning to things by virtue of their affinity to other things or personalities available in the natural world.

There is in fact a side of Harry that can inspire and be inspired, that runs on a sense of history and human significance on the civilizational and cosmic scales.

These questions are, as you know, at the heart of many problems in our society today, and it is against the background of such questions that I want to reflect upon the significance of human cloning.

In Play it as it Lays and elsewhere, Las Vegas is an apt symbol of human life — a chancy venture with no external meaning or significance.

This conclusion can not be helped (and I will try to explain why), but at issue is the idea of «human exceptionalism» — i.e., whether human beings are exceptional, and if so in what ways, and with what environmental, moral, political, and cosmic significance.

A justified process - rooted philosophical appreciation of social canons can be taught through a pedagogical strategy that begins with their critique, that expunges them from the natural given furnishings of the immediately real in order to rediscover them as the inherited cultural accretions by which we transform the immediately real into a world of enduring meanings and human significance.

In a time in which the human body seemed to lose any iconic significance, in the weakness of his failing body, John Paul participated, as Cardinal Lustiger noted, in the suffering of his Redeemer, for the «mystery of salvation happens when Christ is on the cross and can not do or decide anything other than to accept the will of the Father.»

And in the process there was an erosion of Augustinianism that emphasized the soteriological significance either of human will in a form of synergism or of human cooperation with the divine and a growing attack on such classic Protestant doctrines as limited atonement and predestination.

The study of history is arid and incomplete unless it is understood as a work about (and by) individual human beings — and, moreover, a story whose substance and manner of telling are matters of moral significance.

The significance of the Incarnation, however, is not that the life of Jesus constitutes an example for all subsequent human beings to follow in detail.

Whatever its origin — and I myself agree with Wellhausen and others in attributing the identification to the primitive Christian community, as their least inadequate and only possible term for one who was thus both human and divine and yet not God (which would have been unthinkable in their realm of ideas)-- whatever its origin, this first great step in the advance of Christology was of endless significance for the later development of Christian doctrine, and it was of paramount importance for the Gospel of Mark.

For the first time in history, at the invitation of the United Nations, we gather as Heads of State and Government to recognize the significance of social development and human well - being for all to give to these goals the highest priority both now and into the twenty - first century.

The significance of this chapter (III) lies in its attempt to describe the human impression Jesus made upon people in a way clearly suggestive of the meaning Jesus has for faith, as if a human contact with Jesus were — at least potentially — an encounter with the kerygma.

It was suggested that relatively little of human significance can be discovered in these disciplines as long as they are restricted to the objective description of human beings.

We have here human actions and reactions that are of no significance.

It would be hard to find a more commonplace starting - point or one of less significance from the human standpoint.

Building on the Platonic understanding of hell as the place where unpunished violations of justice are requited, Schall argues it is the consequence of our free will («the other side of human dignity») and of the significance of human action, opening up trains of thought in the direction of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body - and finding this all pleasurable, «even amusing» (p. 121) in terms of logic and reason.

We are a long way from understanding how sex enters into the child's growth, and the significance of human differences.

In contrast, the body and its acts have a wholly new moral significance when we are considering human acts; it is not the opposing of bodily organs that is perse immoral but the opposing of the meaning of human acts that is immoral.

For as well as theoretical reflection on the moral significance of a decision, there are other ways and means by which a human being can either become clear about the rightness and conformity to God's will of a decision, or at least improve the conditions for its correct formation: the general cultivation of courage, unselfishness, self - denial, the practice of the art of making vital particular decisions which can not be deduced by purely theoretical consideration as this art is taught by the masters of the spiritual life.

Even those who don't understand a culture's language are sometimes able to grasp the emotional significance of human interactions by careful attention to nonverbal cues.

In Part 2, this book attempts, tentatively, to take stock of just where we humans are in the evolution of human culture on this planet, to explore the significance of entering a new era that is both global and post-Christian, and to look into the future.

Along with biblical ways of thinking it affirms a special significance of humankind within the context of creation, recognizing, as Conrad Bonifazi puts it in the context of explicating Teilhard de Chardin, that «in human beings evolution has revealed its profoundest energy and significance» (TNE 311).

Pius's vision may have been too insular and diplomatic; he was insufficiently concerned about protecting the human rights of non-Catholics; he seriously misjudged the significance of the concordat in legitimizing the Third Reich; and his treatment of the Catholic Center Party in Germany is deeply disturbing.

That insight had such significance for John Paul that he would return to it fourteen years later in Fides et Ratio, writing that the chief purpose of theology «is seen to be the understanding of God's kenosis, a grand and mysterious truth for the human mind, which finds it inconceivable that suffering and death can express a love which gives itself and seeks nothing in return.»

They are: i) revelatory experiences are common to all religions, ii) revelation is received under finite human condition, iii) the three types of criticisms, mystical, prophetic and secular help to address the distortions that crept into revealed religions, iv) History of Religions makes «a concrete theology that has universal significance» possible and v) an acknowledgement that «the sacred is the creative ground and at the same time a critical judgement of the secular».

When the believer confesses his faith in God and affirms that he belongs to God, he affirms that this mysterious God is also the one who gives final significance to nature and to history, the one who gives meaning to the human search for meanings, the one who is the explanation of the fact that there are explanations.

He who thinks that the world, without any such unity of significance as constitutes an experience, would still have been or might be a real world, and who deduces this from the fact — which spiritualism accepts — that the world without a particular human personality, Mr. X is perfectly possible, must also be one who thinks that if from «himself» those qualities which make him Mr. X were to be subtracted, nothing of the nature of mind would remain — in short, he is one who does not believe that other minds are members of himself.

That's what the Greeks and later Michelangelo and the sculptors he most deeply influenced were about: elevating the human figure above the realm of optical phenomena and thereby endowing it with a more visceral presence, a deeper aesthetic resonance, and a greater emotional significance.

It is simply that, given our different views of human nature, human freedom, ecclesiastical authority, and the significance of historical events, we simply differ on what makes religious sense.

Our belief in the equal significance of every human person, from the beginning, owed something to our Puritans and something to our Lockeans, and one part of that mixture can't truthfully be subordinated to the other in our national self - understanding at its best.

For after all, in any faith which is genuinely theocentric or focused upon God, it is essential to make sure that it is God, not human desires or wishes or aspirations as they now stand, who is to be «given the glory»; and it is in God, and in God alone, that we may speak meaningfully of the significance of our own existence.

What is most significant about Marsh's project is that he demonstrates quite persuasively that these two themes are in fact one, that the philosophical significance of Bonhoeffer's theology lies in its redefinition of human identity within wholly communal and relational terms.

Unless the discussion in the preceding pages has entirely failed to make its point, it will be plain that what is being proposed in this book is (as I have said) a «de-mythologizing» of the inherited notions of «life after death», with their (to many of us) impossible assertions; and also the «re-mythologizing» — or better, the re-conceiving — of their implicit intention so that we may have a valid way of affirming the value and worth of human existence, its significance and importance for God, and its preservation in God as a reality which has affected the divine life and in God has acquired an enduring quality which nothing can take away.

He explained the significance of Psalm 23, saying, «It's a picture of human humility in the face of our helplessness, the very opposite of the arrogance.»

If I can never adequately state the significance of my relationships with those whom I love in this world, or give a neat description of how I can overcome the alienation and estrangement of myself from another, or describe with any fullness what it means to be accepted by another and loved in spite of my deficiencies and my self - centeredness, I can never state in other than symbolic idiom the opening of further human possibilities with the overcoming of human deficiencies in my relationship with God — a relationship that has been broken by my willfulness and sin.

There are four affirmations about Jesus Christ that historically have been stressed in Christian faith: (1) Jesus is truly human, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, living a human life under the same human conditions any one of us faces — thus Christology, statement of the significance of Jesus, must start «from below,» as many contemporary theologians are insisting; (2) Jesus is that one in whom God energizes in a supreme degree, with a decisive intensity; in traditional language he has been styled «the Incarnate Word of God»; (3) for our sake, to secure human wholeness of life as it moves onward toward fulfillment, Jesus not only lived among us but also was crucified for us — this is the point of talk about atonement wrought in and by him; (4) death was not the end for him, so it is not as if he never existed at all; in some way he triumphed over death, or was given victory over it, so that now and forever he is a reality in the life of God and effective among humankind.

If the Bible is nothing more than a true and accurate record of human ideas, then it doesn't help us much at all in knowing anything for sure about God, ourselves, our condition, or anything of eternal significance.

This eternal significance, this meaning which transcends all human meanings, is the sovereign act of creation through which God speaks to us and brings us into being, an act which is completely «over our heads» — beyond our powers of rational understanding.

In the cyclical view the historical process can have no significance, and human beings may properly seek to extricate themselves from it; in the Jewish view history is getting somewhere and the happiness of humankind is in their aligning themselves with the purpose that runs through it and hence sharing in the accomplishment of that purpose in the «end.»

In other words, one of the primary purposes of John is to impregnate the terms «Christ» and «Son of God» with new meaning and significance that can not be used of any other human throughout history.

The order of the world has been profoundly disturbed by the wrongdoing of human beings, starting with the first human beings and going down throughout history (although the significance of the Fall could be more developed in an account of God and suffering.)

The great contribution of biology to the understanding of human nature is the light it throws on the significance of time.

As Bultmann uses them, the former refers to an event so far as it is significant for human existence (e.g., the cross as the salvation - occurrence through which I understand myself as judged and forgiven by God), while the latter refers to an event considered in abstraction from such significance (e.g., the cross as an incident in the annals of ancient history).»

It is an attempt to indicate the minimal implications of granting paradigmatic significance to given phenomena in human experience.

Just as physics reveals little of significance about man until one reflects on the enterprises of science and technology, so scientific psychology, aiming to out - do physics in objective rigor, can yield little insight about man until the distinctive human quality of self - awareness is acknowledged as an essential factor in psychological inquiry.

That is, the decline of the power of religion (Or even the significance of the God question) is not a sign of the rise of the human agenda.

Each one of us understands the world and interprets events from a particular perspective — and that perspective is profoundly shaped by our nonhuman and human environments, culture, socio - politico - economic location, and the myths and symbols that organize and give meaning and significance to our lives.

If the constitutive assertion of this witness, however expressed or implied, is specifically christological, in that it is the assertion, in some terms or other, of the decisive significance of Jesus for human existence, the metaphysical implications of this assertion are specifically theological in that they all either are or clearly imply assertions about the strictly ultimate reality that in theistic religious traditions is termed «God.»