Marron, I prefer the usage of "person" myself. For "person" seems better able to mediate seeming contradiction than "individual"; for "person" has cultural resources to help him that "individual" perhaps does not.
It seems to me a separation of individual apart from culture -- the separation of part from whole -- is unnecessay in principle. For man lives in the "in between" -- as Plato put it, in the "metaxy" -- of "two worlds," mediating time and the timeless, of correleating actual experience with timeless principle, in the modes of existence and being.
Man can neither be separated from the human community, nor from transcendent reality, and still be man. It seems the good order of the human person cannot be effected in isolation from such "competing" claims.
Man was created to express both modes in himself -- and yet be himself in the process, as the "site and sensorium" of the process/project. For the "process" cannot occur in the first place, absent the action of the human mind and spirit.
I cannot express how very much I admire your work.
Man can neither be separated from the human community, nor from transcendent reality, and still be man. It seems the good order of the human person cannot be effected in isolation from such "competing" claims. Man was created to express both modes in himself -- and yet be himself in the process, as the "site and sensorium" of the process/project. For the "process" cannot occur in the first place, absent the action of the human mind and spirit.
You said: Man can neither be separated from the human community, nor from transcendent reality, and still be man. It seems the good order of the human person cannot be effected in isolation from such "competing" claims.
The lectionary passage reads (from the ESV): And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the most important of all?" Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these." [snip]
The only change I would offer to your comment, in keeping with the hierarchy of the commandments, is that the transcendent is first; otherwise the community relationship loses its "rightness".
Odd, that ... you may very well end up in tomorrow's sermon... :)