Theological Anthropology

Anthropologists have invariably engaged in their discipline as a form of redemption, whether to escape from social restriction, nourish their souls, reform their home polities, or vindicate "the natives". Redeeming Anthropology explores how in pursuit of a secular science sired by the Enlightenment, adherents to a "faith in mankind" have vacillated between rejecting and embracing theology, albeit in concealed and contradictory ways.

In Embodied Hope, Kelly Kapic invites us to consider the example of our Lord Jesus. Only because Jesus has taken on our embodied existence, suffered alongside us, died, and been raised again can we find any hope from the depths of our own dark valleys of pain. As we look to Jesus, we are invited to participate not only in his sufferings, but also in the church, which calls us out of isolation and into the encouragement and consolation of the communal life of Christ.

Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? What rituals will structure their days? Whom can they consider family? As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, gathers footage from the neighborhood like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,” chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you’re filming a park.”

"There is not and has never been tension between God's sovereignty and man's free will." How can God's absolute sovereignty coexist with genuine human freedom? For millennia, this central free will dilemma has challenged Christian philosophy and theology. It forces rigorous thinkers to confront the tension between God’s foreknowledge/predestination and the human experience of making real choices. Must we compromise God’s power or human agency? Many discussions comparing Calvinism and Arminianism end here, suggesting an irresolvable paradox. Resolving the Free Will Dilemma argues ...

How can Christian men and women live faithfully in a world confused over sexuality and gender? Surely we must be reminded of what Scripture teaches. Yet as God’s design for sexuality is being suppressed and denied in the modern world, we need to hear it articulated in a fresh and accessible way. God’s Good Design presents the historic, biblical view of sexuality in a manner that is appealing even to those who have been conditioned to believe it is scary or oppressive.

In his Ecclesial Being Professor Constantine Scouteris focuses most ably on the mystery of the human person in the context of the conciliarity of the Church. His vision of the unity of the Orthodox churches, based on the Pauline theme of the New Israel, embraces all Orthodox Christian peoples - wonderfully diverse in language and culture - as one nation in Christ, which the entire world is invited to join.

While millions of believers around the world are finding their understanding of Christianity to be outdated and untenable, Matthew Distefano has managed to paint the gospel in such a way that even an atheist could appreciate its beauty. Rather than a message of rapture, or rewards and reprisals, Distefano presents the good news of what God has done in history to stem the tide of our own violence and evil - inviting us into a whole new way of living and being in this world.

THE current creed of Christendom is a chaos of contradictions. Truths and lies, facts and fancies, intuitions and superstitions, essentials and excrescences are bound in one bundle of tradition which the honest believer finds hard to swallow whole, and which the earnest doubter is equally reluctant in toto to reject. It is high time to attack this chaos, to resolve it into its elements, and to reorganize our faith into a form which shall at the same time command the assent of honest and the devotion of earnest men. This work cannot be done roughly with the broad-axe. The problem is not ...