Original Research - Special Collection: James Alfred Loader Dedication

The search for oneself: Introductory notes on ethics and anthropology

J.P. (Kobus) Labuschagne
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies | Vol 69, No 1 | a1986 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v69i1.1986 | © 2013 J.P. (Kobus) Labuschagne | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 12 April 2013 | Published: 07 August 2013

About the author(s)

J.P. (Kobus) Labuschagne, Department of Church History and Polity, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Abstract

Human beings make choices, and get caught up by their choices. One cannot escape the choices one has made. Your choices draw the picture of who you really are. Sometimes you are haunted by the dire consequences of the choices you have made. Where does the necessity of taking responsibility for yourself, and the choices you have made, take you? Ethics and moral conduct make sense only in conjunction with the moral agent – humankind. This article is an introductory reflection on ethics and anthropology. The argument develops mainly from the view of a human being as a relational being. People are inescapably relational beings – always being in relation with other human beings, and never able to sever the lifesaving ties to God as the human being’s Maker. Human beings become themselves in relation to other human beings, and ultimately in relation to the One Other, God their Creator and Re-creator.

Keywords

Ethics; theo-anthropology; being human as relational being in becoming oneself; moral agent; dynamic anthropology; Trinitarian anthropology; human distinctiveness; creatio continua; new beginning; Messianic ethics

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