Fr. Francesco Giordano: The Nature of Freedom: Human Formation, Misdiscernment, and Vocation

A priest friend recently expressed his concern about the increasing fluidity of human identity and values over the past twenty years. His observation prompted me to reflect on insights drawn from Medieval philosophy—particularly from St. Thomas Aquinas—regarding the notion of tabula rasa, the idea that the human person is born as a “blank slate.”

While modern thinkers such as John Locke emphasized this concept in a radical sense, Aquinas and the classical tradition understood that it must always be held together with a robust account of nature. We are not born fully formed, but neither are we indeterminate. Formation presupposes something already given. ….