INTRODUCTION
In the face of the various national/international crises, wars, instability, and uneasiness, what definition would best suit human beings other than “well-dressed beasts”? This description sounds very dehumanizing, but realistically speaking, it is nothing compared to the massacre of both the innocent and the guilty within the last 200 years. It will be heartbreaking to stretch the date to the last 2,000 years. An important question that we are faced with is; what is the intrinsic nature of human beings? Or we should probably be asking; is MAN ontologically good or evil? An answer to these questions is what we shall address in this discourse. To carefully achieve our aim, we shall address the questions from a philosophical and theological point of view.
Basic Concepts
Anthropology: From two Greek words (Anthropos = Man) and (Logy= Study,) both resulting to The Study of Man.
Optimism: From the Latin word Optimum which means Best. Optimism is a general disposition to expect the best in all things.
The Concept of anthropological Optimism.
As mentioned in the introduction, we shall address this topic in three lights, namely; in the philosophical, psychological, and religious sense.
Philosophical approach: It is quite necessary to trace the history of our discussion in the circular sense to its origin because that will help us to understand how importance of the topic.
Although some ancient philosophers had mentioned it in passing, however, the first philosophical argument stating that man is intrinsically good by nature is traced to a Chinese philosopher who lived around 371-289 BC, by the name Mencius. Mencius simply found his theory of man’s intrinsic goodness on the belief that every human being is born with four inherent predispositions, namely; compassion, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom. Mencius however mentioned that the nature/nurture relationship is very important to maintain these intrinsic values.
Subsequent authors, the likes of Rousseau and Kant also argued that Man is naturally good, and each emphasized the role of society and individual effort in sustaining this intrinsic nature of humans.
The question we might ask is; are these philosophical arguments sufficient to prove that Man is naturally good? The answer is NO. This is so because many other philosophical theories with convincing arguments have been proposed to say Man is naturally selfish, bad, or at least neither good nor bad at birth. On these grounds, we shall recourse to a higher authority that cannot be faulted. This authority is both a historical figure and a divine being, the God-Man Jesus Christ.
It is first and foremost important to state this fact, that the Notion of Anthropological optimism has existed from the time the book of Genesis was documented. The book of Genesis is not the oldest biblical book, but is it the most authoritative in matters of the beginnings, and in fact offers the strongest backup for anthropological optimism.
The statement; “Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves...” (Genesis 1:26) contained in Genesis 1:26, brings our topic into the sphere of theology. Aquinas would state in his Summa Theologea that God participates in all his creatures by virtue of the fact that they are products of his wisdom. But when discussing the human being he highlights two folds of man’s participation in God. The first is in the order of creator vs creature, but the higher participation is in God’s immortality shared with man, which is present in Man’s soul, endowed with the capacity of knowing and loving God. In other words, the passage that Jesus Christ quoted in John 10: 34 that says “Is it not written in your law that you are gods?”, was not figurative but a fact that he sets before us. If it wasn’t so, Jesus would not have commanded us to be perfect, just as our heavenly father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48). Perfection is practically an attribute proper to God, and if God himself commands us to be perfect, it is because he knows without doubt that our forms as human beings are capable of attaining the height of all good (perfection).
What Jesus calls us to in the injunction to perfection is to our original form. Genesis 1:31 says when God saw all he had made, he saw that it was very good. Note that the expression “Very Good” was only used once in the creation narrative, and that was after God made man. We can as well say, humanity is the crown of everything good in our world. Little wonder, when man fell to sin, the world lost its perfection and needed a redeemer to rescue it. But precisely that is where the question lies, can we say we are born good even with the presence of original sin? The answer is Yes because, with original sin, man is wounded, by which we mean that the human will is weakened but not destroyed. Our restoration to the initial plan comes at baptism.
The fact is that from the time of the fall of Adam till now, man has willfully drifted from the original plan. Yes, even after Jesus’ death which has bought us redemption and access to what we were before the fall, at different degrees we still fall away from the grace that Paul records to be sufficient for us. This is not to bring about despair or discouragement, but it is to ignite in us that awareness that results in the conscious effort toward goodness and ultimately perfection. The conscious effort here spoken about is that practical, in the most realistic sense, effort to face our weaknesses and prayerfully fight them. Also, it is that attitude of avoiding occasions that will lead to sin. It also necessarily implies a close relationship with the maker, who purifies us whenever we avail ourselves
for cleansing.
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