Some Ideas from Elizabeth Johnson about
Human Nature
Desire to Know
The human capacity to ask questions reveals our desire for the truth.
"Asking a question reveals that we are in touch with a known unknown."
Despite the many questions we ask in a lifetime, no one answer will satisfy us.
"The human spirit is revealed by this analysis as having an infinite thirst for truth and an infinite capacity for truth, and an infinite dynamism toward truth."
"Does this quest of ours for the truth ever reach a resting point? Obviously not in this world. The only reality that will quench this quest of ours is God's own being which is infinite truth, Truth itself."
Jean Paul Sartre "Life is absurd; we are structured toward the infinite, we are destined to eternal frustration." (see The Myth of Sisyphus)
Desire to Love
Use this same kind of analysis with love
"Interpersonal love does not shut down our capacity for loving but rather opens it up even further."
"Is this thirst for love ever satisfied in this life? No. Ultimately only infinite love can satisfy this thirst of ours. We call infinite love God. So once again thinking of people�s love experiences, we arrive at the same realization that human beings are dynamically structured toward the infinite."
Hoping against Hope
"In situations of desperate need, human beings nevertheless do not necessarily despair. We can always hope against the present for a better future."
Cf. Prison literature (Nazi Death Camps, South American detention cells, Latin American Political Prisons, etc.)
"This imaginative ability to hope against hope reveals that we have an infinite capacity for life, which ultimately can be filled only by the source of life, God, Life itself."
Conclusion
"We are dynamically structured toward the infinite and will only be satisfied by the infinite God. We are not a closed-off, limited reality, but open out into the depth that goes all the way down to the infinite itself."
Therefore human nature is a "Finite reality with a capacity for the infinite, a thirst for the infinite."
Some articles by and about Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J.