Human Person

According to Christianity, the human person is the handwork of God and God created the human person in his own image and likeness. God created the human person after He had created almost everything but He put the human person in charge of almost all the things He had created.

The human person is composed of the mind, the body and the soul. All three components coexist to form the human person. Both the mind and the soul exist outside the body. The mind is part of the soul and the soul can form part of an eternal soul and so the mind can exist as an eternal mind. The body is material (from matter) and hence bounded by space and time. The body comes into existence and goes out of existence. The soul comes into existence and can remain in existence .

Therefore the complete human person (body, mind and soul) is not completely free but has the ability to enjoy complete freedom. When the soul forms part of an eternal soul, the soul of the human person becomes an eternal soul and hence efficient. When the mind becomes an eternal mind, the mind of the human person becomes efficient because it becomes part of eternity. The complete human person however cannot be hundred percent efficient because the body is not efficient. Death therefore is not the complete disassembling of the human person but maybe a way to perfection. In other words, death can be a way to an increase in efficiency of the human person. There is life after death. However, the body has no life after death. The mind and the soul on the other hand can enjoy life after death because they can become one with eternity.

Freedom & Responsibility

Freedom, from an existential perspective, cannot be separated from responsibility. With freedom comes responsibility. Yet, it is common for many people to seek freedom while trying to avoid responsibility. While, at times, it appears that people may be able to succeed at this, there remains a psychological consequence. This consequence is often not very noticeable, but may find expression through guilt, anxiety, depression, or even anger.

Existential freedom is not the same things as freedom in the political sense.

A person can be existentially free despite not being politically free, and a person can avoid embracing their existential freedom despite being offered great political freedoms.

The Ability to Choose Freedom

The degree to which a person is unaware of those forces which influence us, they are controlled by them.

Stated differently, the degree which we are unaware of how our drives, instincts, unconscious, and environment are influencing us, they control us. However, if a person chooses not to be aware of these influences, even if done so passively or unconsciously, a choice has still been made, therefore freedom has been exercised.

Self-awareness, is a commitment people make which can enhance their freedom. Yet, most people choose to live a life of being unaware. It can be frightening to deeply know who we are and the realities of our existence. Yet, it can be even more rewarding. While many choose to avoid living in the realities of life, a few choose to live more fully in awareness.

The will and agency are common words used to describe aspects of freedom in existential thought. 'Will' is a word that most people recognize, but have difficulty defining. One way of defining the will is to state that it is that aspect of the self which chooses or is free. In stating that people have a free will does not necessitate that they are entirely free. Rather, it is affirming that people are at least partially free. Few, if any, existential thinkers will deny that our biology, culture, and environment influence our actions and our will. However, none of these can take away the reality of some degree of personal freedom.

Freedom and responsibility are discussed first because they are foundational inunderstanding the human experience. If we are not free, then the other existential questions take on a very different purpose. However, if people are free, then issues of meaning, relationship, and human limitation take on a very different meaning.

ConscienceConscience is a term that describes an aspect of a human

being's self-awareness. Conscience is a critical inner awareness that bears witness

to the norms and values we recognize and apply. The complex of values with which conscience deals includes not only those we own, but the entire range of values to which we are exposed during life's journey. Consequently, there is always a sense of struggle in our reflective process. The witness of conscience makes its presence known by inducing mental anguish and feelings of guilt when we violate the values we recognize and apply. Conscience also provides a sense of pleasure when we reflect on conformity to our value system.

Conscience is an aspect of self-awareness that produces the pain and/or pleasure we "feel" as we reflect on the norms and values we recognize and apply. Conscience is not an outside voice. It is a inward capacity humans possess to critique themselves because the Creator provided this process as a means of moral restraint for his creation. The critique conscience exercises related to the value system which a person develops. Romans 12:1-2 makes the point that God desires that his creation conform to divine values by a process of rational renewal. The Scriptures provide the content for this renewal.

Social Co0nscience

Social conscience is an attitude of sensitivity toward and sense of responsibility regarding injustice and social problems. It could also be a knowledge or understanding of what is morally right in a society. While our conscience is related to our moral conduct in our day to day lives with respect to individuals, social conscience is concerned with the broader institutions of society and the gap that we may perceive between the sort of society that should exist and the real society that does exist.

Moral Law" Moral norms/laws are the criteria of judgment about the

sorts of persons that we ought to be and the sorts of actions that we ought to perform. As such, moral norms/laws provide us with some consistency and stability in the moral life by bringing about some depth and breadth to our moral judgments. They provide us with patterns for human conduct—"common denominators,“ which allow us to adequately address the moral dilemmas and conflict situations that we daily face about what is the right thing or the wrong thing to do. They deal both with the human person (sometimes referred to as "human character"—the sorts of persons that we ought to be) and with human action (the sorts of action that we ought to perform).

Functions of Moral Law

Because every law springs from a system of values and beliefs, every law is an instance of legislating Morality. Further, because a nation’s laws always exercise a pedagogical or teaching influence, law inescapably exerts a shaping effect over the beliefs, character, and actions of the nation’s citizens, whether for good or ill. Those who seek to separate morality from law, therefore, are in pursuit both of the impossible and the destructive. The question before us is never whether or not to legislate morality, but which moral system ought to be made legally binding.

• All laws, whether prescriptive or prohibitive, legislate morality. All laws, regardless of their content or their intent, arise from a system of values, from a belief that some things are right and others wrong, that some things are good and others bad. For better or worse, every piece of legislation touches directly or indirectly on moral issues, or is based on moral judgments and evaluations concerning what it is we want or believe ought to be, what it is we want or believe we ought to produce and preserve.

Natural Law

Natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature — both social and personal — and deduce binding rules of moral b

Natural moral law is concerned with both exterior and interior acts, also known as action and motive. Simply doing the right thing is not enough; to be truly moral one's motive must be right as well. For example, helping an old lady across the road (good exterior act) to impress someone (bad interior act) is wrong. However, good intentions don't always lead to good actions.