Being human

Abstract

B human: how could that be an issue? Perhaps it wasn’t in the past, when what it is to be human was agreed by all and taken for granted. But if we look back to the past, we must try to ensure we look back to the real past, and not simply project back an idealized form of the present. Whatever “being human” is, whatever modes of being human there are, it is something fashioned by relationships: with our mother, the other members of the family, our peers, our friends, the opposite sex. Being human is less something given than something that develops, something we discover. Perhaps, as Father John Behr has suggested in various recent works, we should think rather of becoming human, rather than being human: being human is a goal, a telos, the fulfilment of our image-likeness to God.1