Redemptor hominis
| Redemptor hominis Latin : The Redeemer of Man Encyclical letter of Pope John Paul II |
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| Date | 2 March 1979 |
| Argument | At first the Pontifical Ministry |
| Encyclical number | 1 of 14 of the pontificate |
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Redemptor hominis (Latin: The Redeemer of Man) is the name of the first encyclical written by Pope John Paul II. It lays a blueprint for his pontificate in its exploration of contemporary human problems and especially their proposed solutions found in a deeper understanding of the human person. The encyclical was promulgated on 4 March 1979, less than five months after his installation as pope.
This first encyclical of Pope John Paul II examines major problems confronting the world at the time. John Paul II began his papacy during a crisis of self-doubt and internal criticism in the Catholic Church. He alludes to this in the encyclical's introduction, stating his confidence that the new movement of life in the Church "is much stronger than the symptoms of doubt, collapse, and crisis." He says that Jesus is real and living.
Redemptor hominis proposes that the solution to these problems may be found through a fuller understanding of the person: both of the human person, and that of Christ. As such, his first encyclical repeatedly stresses the pope's favored philosophical approach of personalism, an approach that he used repeatedly throughout the rest of his papacy.
The encyclical also works to prepare the Church for the upcoming third millennium, calling the remaining years of the 20th century "a season of a new Advent, a season of expectation" in preparation for the new millennium.
John Paul II points to the central doctrines of the Incarnation and the Redemption as, above all, evidence of God's love for humanity: "Man cannot live without love.... This ... is why Christ the Redeemer fully reveals man to himself." In response, anyone, no matter how weak, wishing to understand himself thoroughly, must "assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself."
Without naming it explicitly, Redemptor hominis confronts the system of atheist-based Communism, such as that found in his native Poland, an "atheism that is programmed, organized, and structured as a political system." John Paul confronts this on the philosophical level as inherently inhuman. Citing Augustine's famous quote of "You made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you," John Paul argues that the human person naturally strives for God (as understood through whatever religion) as the full dimension of humanity. Thus, he states, systems such as Communism that deny this essential aspect of human nature are fundamentally flawed and inherently unable to satisfy the deepest human longings for the fullest expression of human life. This lays a philosophical underpinning to the pope's own remarkably successful actions confronting Communism in the political field.
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