The Paradox of the Person as a Natural Sign of God

The human person is both contingent and necessary: contingent as conditioned by various historical, ontogenetic, and phylogenetic factors, and necessary as a normative point of view on the whole, a necessity disclosed through love. When we posit the cosmos as the ultimate horizon of being, such contingency and necessity are mutually exclusive, and hence one or the other must be an illusion. However, if the cosmos or world is not the ultimate horizon, then cosmic contingency can be compatible with extra-cosmic necessity. The way to preserve the paradox and affirm the compatibility of both attributes is to distinguish God from the cosmos: relative to the cosmos, the person is contingent; relative to God, the person is necessary. The paradox of the person is therefore a natural sign of God’s distinction from the world.