A query for the classicists

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A query for the classical scholars on the list.

What is the truth value of the assertions of the good Dr. Hahn in regard to "person" in the excerpt below, plucked from an
apologetics list I lurk on:

"Heard a great lecture tonight from Dr. Scott Hahn, who pointed out that there would be no concept of human rights at all without
the Church, because it all emanates from the concept of person, which was developed in the Church's struggle to define who Christ
was in the face of heresies like the Arians, Docetists, Nestorians, etc.  The word person did not exist in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek.
It was part of the vocabulary the Church developed to fight heretics who challenged the humanity or divinity of Christ.  A Soviet
delegate at the first session of the UN in SAn Francisco in 1945 objected to the use of the term "person" on the grounds that it was
a Christian word and suggested the word "citizen" be used instead.  The difference is profound!  A citizen receives what he has from
the state, but a person receives the unique dignity he has from God!  A person is created in God's image, becomes a temple of the
Holy Spirit (the third person of God) at Baptism and has Christ abiding in him (especially seen in John 6).  A person becomes a
divine son.  Thus a person has a dignity (as you know!) that comes from God and especially from the  work of the second person of
the Trinity.  Thus persons have human rights.  This makes no sense to Marxists, Muslims, or aetheists who do not recognize this kind
of personhood.  Would that feminists, who destroy persons in the womb and fight for the right to do so, would only realize that
human rights would not exist in the form they do now were it not for the Church and its struggle to define Christ against the
heretics."


Ciao!!


Michael Fisher, aka Elfish Chimera, San Diego, California

"If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, without allowing anything else to distract
you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you were bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing,
but satisfied to live now according to nature, speaking heroic truth in every word which you utter, you will live happy. And there
is no man able to prevent this."
		                        --Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and Stoic, from his MEDITATIONS, III, 12.---

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