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An alienated and redeemed human being

Publication at Catholic Theological Faculty |
2021

Abstract

This chapter is based on the Christian interpretation of the fundamental utterances of the Scriptures that reflect the nobility and tragedy of human identity in the course of the history of salvation.God created man according to his image and to be like God (imago Dei), as a man and a woman, and entrusted him with the rule over the whole creation, so that it was a task of man to perform a priestly function in the creation. Man, though, refused to fulfil this task in his longing for self-deification, becoming god by his own power.

In this way he damaged the image of God in himself and in the creation. To renew the possibility of renovation of this image and of its perfection, God entered the human history in the human person of Jesus Christ, new Adam, equal to people as man and transcending them as God.

Jesus Christ fulfilled the original destination to be the image of God by his kenosis and revealed the true face of God to the world. Through his death and resurrection, he fulfilled the man's longing to become god, so that everyone believing in him and connecting his life with him may fulfil the original designation and reveal by his person and by his life the face of God, and also his sonship to God.

He may that do not only as an individual, but first of all as a community-the Church.