what does it mean to be human being

"What does it mean to exist human?" Throughout our history people have offered many, sharply different answers.

But what does the Bible say about what it means to be human? What can the Bible and Christian doctrine show us about humanity'due south importance in context of God's full creation? To answer these questions we can turn to the task of theological anthropology, and a new book collecting essays from the January 2018 Los Angeles Theology Conference offers guidance for our task.

Representing the proceedings of the sixth annual conference, the volume The Christian Doctrine of Humanity (edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders) constructively and comprehensively engages the task of theological anthropology by offer a slate of voices. These voices requite shape to the important contours of theological anthropology. The book includes the post-obit twelve essays past renowned scholars across the ecclesial spectrum:

1. Nature, Grace, and the Christological Ground of Humanity (Marc Cortez)
2. Human Superiority, Divine Providence, and the Animal Good: A Thomistic Defense of Creaturely Bureaucracy (Faith Glavey Pawl)
3. The Relevance of Biblical Eschatology for Philosophical Anthropology (Richard J. Mouw)
4. From Sin to the Soul: A Dogmatic Statement for Dualism (Hans Madueme)
5. Human Cognition and the Epitome of God (Aku Visala)
6. "Vulnerable, Yet Divine": Retrieving Gregory Nazianzen's Account of the Imago Dei (Gabrielle R.Thomas)
7. Created and Constructed Identities in Theological Anthropology (Ryan S. Peterson)
8. Adam and Christ: Man Solidarity before God (Frances Thousand.Young)
9. Life in the Spirit: Christ'southward and Ours (Lucy Peppiatt)
10. Flourishing in the Spirit: Distinguishing Incarnation and Indwelling for Theological Anthropology (Joanna Leidenhag and R.T. Mullins)
11. Mapping Anthropological Metaphysics with a Descensus Primal: How Christ's Descent to the Dead Informs the Body-Listen Conversation (Matthew Y. Emerson)
12. "The Upward Call": The Category of Vocation and the Oddness of Human Nature (Ian A. McFarland)

Below is the complete introduction to The Christian Doctrine of Humanity. In it yous will find an overview of the essential issues involved in answering our questions about humanity; you volition learn about fundamental aspects of theological anthropology; you will also empathize the scope of the book, and how it will enable you lot to join the conversation about the Christian doctrine of humanity.

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What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you intendance for them?

Psalm 8:4

The question the psalmist asks God is primarily virtually the relative importance of humanity in the midst of the rest of God's creation, especially the vastness of the heavenly realms. Simply it is also phrased equally a straightforward question of definition: What are human beings? Precisely what is the thing that a human being is? The chore of theological anthropology is to answer that question.

In offering answers along the lines of "constructive dogmatics," as all the essays in this volume do, theologians can accept a direct or indirect approach. The direct approach is to consult the Bible for the terms, categories, and schemas establish in the layers of its manifold witness. The same sacred volume that asks, "What are homo beings?" also answers the question: human being beings are a single unified race of creatures, each i in the prototype of God, created male person and female, given life past the divine breath, so on. Any one of these categories offered past the biblical witness could be the subject of an expansive study in its own right; each has received such treatment in the history of doctrine, and each is taken upward by the authors of this book.

Oft these biblical accounts have been subsumed in theological categories for the divine epitome then that today at that place are at least iii broad approaches to which 1 can point. The first is the structural account of the divine epitome, represented in this volume by Aku Visala's affiliate and that of Faith Pawl, equally well as (to some extent) in the essays by Hans Madueme and Marc Cortez. On this way of thinking, the divine image found in Scripture is to be understood as something substantive in human beings that sets them apart from other creatures. Often this is identified with human reason or possession of a soul. Then there are those who think that the imago Dei is more of a function of homo beings, giving rise to functional accounts of the divine image. On this way of thinking man beings deport the divine image in virtue of acting in a item way—that is, as God's viceroys on world, imaging the deity in virtue of a benevolent caretaking function over creation. A third approach to the divine prototype thinks of it relationally, as something that human beings conduct together as a customs of creatures. In that location is something of this view in the contribution from Ryan Peterson, likewise as in the capacity by Frances Young and Ian McFarland. Another ancient arroyo to the divine image is to identify it with Christ as the archetypal image, and human beings equally ectypes. We image God as we paradigm Christ. This style of thinking about the affair is prominent in Cortez's piece of work. Christological considerations also make an appearance in the chapters by Lucy Peppiatt, Gabrielle Thomas, and Joanna Leidenhag and R. T. Mullins.

In improver to the more than direct approach to thinking about humanity dogmatically, in that location is an indirect approach to answering the question about human beings. This involves considering the implications of other doctrines and approaching theological anthropology through them. Each tract of systematic theology has implications for the Christian doctrine of humanity, and the indirect route takes its bearings from doctrines nearby (cosmos, sin, conservancy) and doctrines farther afield (Christology, pneumatology, eschatology). The indirect arroyo to theological anthropology has the reward of tracing the many connections that unite the doctrinal organization, ensuring that the resulting doctrine of humanity is explicitly Christian. In this regard, one interesting subtheme that runs through several capacity has to do with how attention to a detail attribute of traditional Christology may help us understand some aspect of divine activeness in human beings amend. For example, Peppiatt examines how Spirit Christology bears upon the work of the Holy Spirit indwelling human being beings, while Leidenhag and Mullins seek to demarcate the difference between the indwelling of the Spirit in human beings and the style in which God the Son is said to be incarnate in Christ. Past contrast, Ian McFarland's essay presses in a rather different and more apophatic management with a more skeptical account of what nosotros can say about the paradigm in homo beings in light of wider theological considerations. Another broader theological business concern on display in this volume is the current debate nigh the constitution of human beings. Do we accept souls singled-out from our bodies? If we do, how should we remember of such things? If we do non, what important implications follow from such a claim? The essays by Rich Mouw, Hans Madueme, and Matthew Emerson all touch on these matters in important means.

There is likewise an interesting interplay in these essays between the retrieval of ancient doctrine for contemporary dogmatics and the correlation betwixt contemporary philosophy, scientific discipline, and theological construction. This artistic tension is quite evident in, say, Young's desire to recapture Athanasius for moderns or in the ways Mouw, Madueme, and Visala worry about the human relationship of theology to wider intellectual concerns of a more than philosophical nature.

Ideally, a satisfying theological anthropology volition be engaged in all these things at once: direct and indirect accounts of human beings in relation to God, the careful plotting of a route through the various accounts of the divine image, and attention to the development of doctrine in this surface area equally well equally the pressing need for correlation with our current country of cognition virtually our relation to the wider created earth—including our place in a cosmos total of many other creatures that are also subject area to God'due south divine care. The chapters of this book delve into all these areas, providing the reader with a rich smorgasbord of dogmatic explorations on theological anthropology. Whilst not a systematic account of the doctrine of humanity, these are rich and rewarding studies that repay conscientious reading towards a more than systematic-theological understanding of humanity's identify in God's creation.

Overview of the Chapters

Marc Cortez has written much on christological anthropology, and his chapter opens this volume by pressing for clarity on Irenaeus's didactics that "the prototype of God is the Son, after whose prototype man was made." Cortez puts several questions to Irenaeus: Is it the embodied humanity of Christ that makes him the paradigm, or is information technology his eternal identity equally the Son? In what sense can one of Adam'due south descendants be the prototype of Adam'due south being? In a broad-ranging discussion that in many ways sets the telescopic of the whole volume programmatically, Cortez argues for an ontological and epistemological priority of Christ over Adam, as well as pneumatological considerations that go along nature and grace from existence just bifurcated.

In affiliate 2, Faith Glavey Pawl locates the man creature amidst the other animals with whom we share the earth and does and then by defending an admittedly unfashionable notion: bureaucracy. Cartoon on Thomas Aquinas, Pawl argues that we tin affirm that humans are superior to nonhuman animals and that in fact creation is ordered toward the good of humans. However nosotros tin do this without relegating nonhuman animals to the status of irrelevance for either humans or, more significantly, for God. Where conventional accounts of the good of animals tend to discard hierarchy as early on as possible, Pawl argues that hierarchy tin can serve as a valuable metaphysical tool for ecological theology.

In chapter 3, Richard J. Mouw considers the implications of Christian belief in the afterlife for a Christian account of man composition. Must Christians who believe in an afterlife believe that humans are composed of bodies and souls? It is non quite that simple, co-ordinate to Mouw. Cognizant of neuroscientific findings and warning to the reasons why moderns are skittish nearly any Platonist dualisms, Mouw even so insists that our affirmations about homo composition should comport with our command behavior about eschatology. A judicious use of theological imagination, he counsels, will as well consider pastoral implications such as speaking about the intermediate state, or of failing to practice so.

Hans Madueme, in chapter 4, likewise considers the fashion our view of human composition should be determined by outlying control beliefs. The beliefs he has in heed are Christian affirmations about sin, which require that nosotros be morally responsible for our actions before God. "Dualism makes improve sense of human sinning than physicalism," he says, considering mere physicalism enmeshes human agents besides completely in chains of physical causation. What Scripture presupposes is moral accountability that is most consistent with body-soul dualism. While physical determinism crowds out moral accountability, Madueme argues for a class of divine determinism that is compatible with human responsibleness and thus comports with Scripture's presuppositions most sin.

In chapter 5, Aku Visala considers the challenge that recent cognitive scientific discipline poses for any doctrine of the image of God that locates the image in man cognitive abilities. Visala believes that modernistic cognitive scientific findings, far from erecting insurmountable obstacles, actually point to human uniqueness in a new and helpful style for theology. Humans have several unique cognitive capabilities: flexible reasoning, the ability to adopt moral norms and to follow them behaviorally, and the most flexible social cognition of any animal. Visala argues that there is much to be gained from developing an account of the imago Dei that is informed by current cognitive sciences.

Gabrielle Thomas, in affiliate 6, considers the imago Dei from another perspective, arguing that homo nature is open to influence from two directions: contact with God on the ane manus and contact with spiritual enemies on the other. For her project, Thomas appeals to Gregory of Nazianzus, whose theology, spirituality, and poetry set along a archetype Christian conception of humanity in terms considerably more than holistic and dynamic than almost modern theologies have been interested in. One of the advantages of this retrieval of a patristic witness is, perchance unexpectedly, greater attention to the bodily lived feel of beingness in the image of God. This contrasts with merely structural or fifty-fifty merely relational accounts of the imago Dei, which are more concerned with identifying the paradigm than illuminating the feel of being in the image. To be man, on this account, is to stand between the cosmos and God in an active and dynamic relationship with both. The imago Dei is not only vulnerable to God because of its intended purpose of wedlock with God, says Thomas, but also vulnerable to "the world, the flesh, and the devil" every bit it moves toward its destiny.

In chapter 7, Ryan Peterson examines humanity'due south use of the category of identity, which has in recent decades get a pervasive and important way of talking. Peterson is interested in the relation between constructed identities—racial, ethnic, national, religious, and sexual identities, for case—and what he calls biblical-theological identities, such as creaturely, covenantal, redeemed, and eschatological identities. Every bit he points out, the novel category of identity has entered contemporary usage without much clarity or definition, then it is ripe for some theologically guided conceptual scrutiny. Extending his before work in this field, Peterson argues that biblical-theological identities have a sure priority. They should constrain and shape constructed identities, keeping them from some evident idolatrous tendencies. Merely within proper boundaries, a range of constructed identities can serve human flourishing past enabling people and communities to notice and proper noun their distinct places in the world. Peterson recommends using identity talk aslope of, just not in place of, more traditional categories like nature, ends, faculties, and habits.

Chapter 8, by Frances Young, is an ambitious project of considerable telescopic. Young opens up the world of patristic Christology, tracing the idea of Athanasius of Alexandria with special attending to the manner he could build arguments near redemption on the presupposition that there is such a thing as humanity. Stiff patristic notions of man solidarity, whether they drew on a Platonic conceptual background (a world-soul) or another ancient metaphysical schema (whatsoever sort of realism nearly universals), enabled thinkers similar Athanasius to make sense of biblical language about Adam and Christ every bit the locus of an onetime and a new humanity, respectively. If we as moderns do not share these ancient underlying metaphysical assumptions, Young says, we all the same take the aforementioned need to make sense of the biblical way of speaking well-nigh humanity equally a coherent entity. In pursuit of a gimmicky appropriation of patristic anthropological holism, Young offers a catalog of thick collectivities: slime mold, an oceanic feeling, a collective unconscious, interlaced narratives, emergent unity, and social forms of solidarity such as the shared life produced by the stresses of a labor camp. Immature announces an agenda for theological anthropology: since nosotros need to brand proficient sense of shared sin, shared guilt, and shared judgment, we demand to articulate in gimmicky terms an account of real human unity.

In chapter 9, "Life in the Spirit: Christ's and Ours," Lucy Peppiatt puts some hard questions to the proponents of Spirit Christology, particularly those who emphasize the role of the Spirit in the life of Christ in club to show that Christ's life is plenty like our life to serve as a model for Christian experience. Peppiatt shows how these accounts of Christology tend to run aground on questions of agency in the incarnation and especially on the question of how to manage the difference betwixt our willing and doing and Jesus's willing and doing. Deeply informed past the theology of John Owen and (to a lesser extent) Thomas Aquinas, her constructive account is more than circumspect to the analogical difference between Christ and us in this regard. The result is non an entire rejection of Spirit Christology's contribution to theological anthropology but an account of how a pneumatic christological model, with its attention to the empowering, guidance, and comfort of the Holy Spirit for Christ and for the states, is the near promising matrix for a view of homo development and spiritual germination.

In chapter ten, "Flourishing in the Spirit: Distinguishing Incarnation and Indwelling for Theological Anthropology," Joanna Leidenhag and R. T. Mullins consider the biblical portrayal of homo flourishing as being somehow related to the incarnation merely as well every bit beingness filled with the Spirit. They are especially concerned to offer a articulate conceptual distinction between incarnation and indwelling considering they desire to account for how Christ's humanity unlocks flourishing for the rest of humanity. By distinguishing the work of the Son from the work of the Spirit, they show that the special, divine, and personal presence of the Holy Spirit is what brings about transformative sanctification, and thus it provides the best model for understanding indwelling and the necessary condition for the flourishing of humanity.

In chapter 11, Matthew Emerson looks to Christ's descent to the dead as a crucial testing ground for both the Christian understanding of the afterlife and its distinction between torso and soul. In Emerson'due south retrieval of the traditional theology of the descent, Christ'south body went into the world as his human soul went to the place of the dead. Christ, in other words, experienced an intermediate state between his decease and resurrection. Because Christ's humanity is paradigmatic, human beings must also be capable of experiencing an intermediate land between their deaths and the final day, and one of the key conclusions to be drawn from this is that we should confess humanity as being composed of body plus soul.

Ian McFarland's chapter closes the volume by directing our attention to a very big question in theological anthropology: the relation between nature and grace. In some classic means of describing the relation, it seems that humanity can only have i or the other but not both. If humans were created to reach the terminate of union with God in glory past grace, then grace seems to exist built into the nature or definition of what information technology is to be man—just and so it is non a affair of grace. On the other hand, if we preserve the gratuitous character of union with God, then we have to ascertain human nature as existence complete in itself without such an end, in which case grace is supplemental and in no manner a natural end of humanity. McFarland proposes the category of vocation as a solution to this trouble of "the oddness of homo nature." To be called by God is to exist summoned to an end that is compatible with human nature only is beyond it and not intrinsic to it. With this business relationship of human nature as open-concluded, McFarland is undertaking to resolve a theological conundrum that has usually been posed in updated Thomist categories by the judicious awarding of a Lutheran category.

May these essays extend discussion of the job of dogmatics, ad maiorem dei gloriam.

—Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders, April 2018

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Theological anthropology is a vast and complex doctrinal bailiwick that needs to be elaborated with conscientious attending to its relation to other major doctrines. It must confess the glory and misery of humanity, from cosmos in the prototype of God to the fall into a state of sin. It must reckon with a holism that spans distinctions between body, soul, and spirit, and a unity that encompasses male and female, as well equally racial and cultural divergence.

The Christian Doctrine of Humanity explains and explores this vital, complex doctrine through twelve engaging essays. Read them yourself to enter a constructive and comprehensive conversation that engages the task of theological anthropology with insight and care.

Also, sign up to nourish the 7th annual LA Theology conference Jan 18-nineteen, 2019. The theme of LATC 2019 will exist divine activity and providence and feature these plenary speakers: William J. Abraham, Oliver Crisp, Christine Helmer, Brenda Deen Schildgen, and Philip Ziegler.

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