That is, Jesus of Nazareth manifests in tangible and visible human form the authentic and fulfilled imago Dei, to which humans are called to be conformed in a gradual process that will reach its culmination only in the eschaton. ![]() From a Christian viewpoint the interpretation of this concept is decidedly christological and eschatological. The imago Dei has been and continues to be a cornerstone in particular of Catholic theological anthropology. The Christian tradition has from the beginning appropriated the concept of the human person as created in the image and likeness of God (Gn 1:27). The nontheological fields of study contribute enormously to the understanding of the human, and Christian anthropology builds upon their discoveries, integrating them into an overarching vision that goes beyond the methodological boundaries of anthropology as a secular discipline. In other words, Christian thought does not simply consider how people actually live, but also makes claims about how people could and ought to live. The entire trajectory that begins with creation and ends with the realization of a promised eschaton makes up what is referred to in the Christian tradition as the divine economy ( oikonomia ), that is, the plan or design by which God governs, manages, administers the affairs of the created "household" (from oikos, "house," and nomos, "rule" or "law").Ĭhristian anthropology is distinct from the secular disciplines of anthropology, such as cultural anthropology, in that it moves beyond the descriptive and empirical toward the prescriptive and the normative. ![]() Correspondingly, individual persons come to discover within themselves the dimensions of creatureliness, fallenness, redeemedness, and hopefulness that simultaneously constitute their humanity from a Christian perspective. Thus human existence in its condition as originally created passes through stages of distortion, redemption, and hope for perfection. On the level of the human race as a whole, the Christian tradition envisions humanity's situation as progressing through a sequence of distinct states of existence, namely, the state of being created by God, the state of fallenness brought on by the misuse of human freedom, the state of redemption made available by the missions of Christ and the Spirit in history, and the future state of eschatological fulfillment for which the human race hopes. Christian anthropology offers perspectives on the constitutive elements and experiences of human personhood -bodiliness and spirit, freedom and limitation, solitude and companionship, work and play, suffering and death, and, in specifically theological terms, sin and grace.Ī comprehensive account of the situation of the human necessitates the broad range of topics that are taken up under the rubric of Christian anthropology. ![]() Concrete human existence is studied within its various contexts and systems -as personal and social, as unfolding within history, as rooted in networks of communities and traditions, as situated within political, economic, technological, and cultural systems, and as embedded within the material ecology of Earth and the cosmos. Reflection upon human origins and destiny yields the doctrines of creation and eschatology. Christian anthropology is the branch of theological study that investigates the origin, nature, and destiny of humans and of the universe in which they live.
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