THEO 640 - Theological Anthropology

This course will examine how we define the human individual in light of the Christian Revelation.Starting with the assumption that the Incarnation of Jesus Christ was intended to re-orient humanity to the fullness and reality of human creation, i.e., human beings were created in the image and likeness of the Divine (Gen 1:26), this course will examine the implications of such a starting point on the nature and status of humanity within the whole of God’s creation. Beginning with a careful examination of the early Church writings on anthropology, the course will weigh the traditional Church definition(s) of the human individual against the modern and postmodern efforts to re-define humanity as a result of the radical shift within Western intellectual discourse from a theocentric perspective to an anthrocentric perspective. This discussion will give special attention to the definition of human provided by Vatican II in the “Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World,” thus allowing the course to investigate the implications of theological anthropology in terms of ecclesiology, church polity, church ministry, and the liturgy.