Page 24 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 9

Elena Strigo (Russia)
The Moral Word in

Reconstruction of Person
in Сhristian Psychotherapy

“Evil is the state in which one finds the nature
of those personal beings who have turned from
God”.
Vladimir Lossky
Elena Strigo (Russia), psychologist, psy-
The aim of Christian therapy is associated with chotherapist, European Certificate in Psy-
a basic anthropological point: the nature of a chotherapy (EAP). Full member of the
human being as a person, which leads us to re- Professional Psychotherapeutic League of
storation and recreation of the anthropological Russia. Head of the Psychological Counse-
image of a man. The therapeutic reconstruction ling Centre ABIGAIL, Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
of person in Christian therapy becomes equal to President of the Krasnoyarsk Regional So-
the exploration of patient‘s personality, with the ciety of Christian Psychologists and Psy-
goal of uncovering and fulfilment of the image chotherapists.
and likeness of God in the patient’s person.
estrigo1@hotmail.com
I . Human person.
A human being is a person, and his person is Article by Elena Strigo you can see here:
not reducible to his individual human nature. http://emcapp.ignis.de/3/#/102
The nature of a man is a complex compound:
body, soul and spirit. Theology emphasizes the
irreducibility of person to soul; the natural basis cludes the nature in itself”. The theologians use
of the soul and the spiritual basis of the person. the special term ‚enhypostasized‘ for the nature
The person is the image and likeness of God. which is included in a person or hypostasis.
The living and personal God created man „in “A person becomes the perfect image of God by
His image and likeness“. The reality and the hu- acquiring that likeness, which is the perfection
man character of the soul’s life finds its unique of the nature common to all men” (V. Lossky).
expression in the reality of the person as a divine “The distinction between persons and nature re-
personal being. The reality of the personal being produces the order of the divine life, expressed
in a human being is established as the hyposta- by the doctrine of the Trinity, in mankind. It is
tic manifestation of the universal human soul. the foundation of all Christian anthropology,
The person is not reducible to the soul; their of all evangelical living”, as “Christianity is an
relation is synonymity, but not equality. This is imitation of the nature of God” (V. Lossky). A
the mutual fulfillment of two different realities. person is a sign of Godly image and likeness of
The irreducibility of the person to human na- God.
ture (soul) does not mean contrasting them as Person is not a general concept, not a set of qua-
two different realities. The living human nature lities or personal attributes, but a sign introdu-
manifests itself in the nature of the spiritual life. cing us in the domain of incommunicabilis, (V.
The personality has all the qualities of a living Lossky), in which there is nothing marked as ‘a
soul, but at the same time, it is not reducible to person’.
the soul. According to V. Lossky “It is not, then, The person manifests, through the hypostatic
a part of our nature which corresponds to the word, the being of a soul; the word which acts to
image of God in us, but the person which in- mold, to shape, to create a unique way of being

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