Abstract
This article sets out a Christian theological anthropology for community development. This critical engagement with traditional and doctrinal forms of Christian theological anthropology will analyse two contrasting perspectives of theological anthropology to construct a contemporary community development model that considers the responsibility of communities for community development. The theological model of community development considers narrative as an interlocutor of personhood and community development. This article further investigates conceptual linkages between personhood and community development through classification or categorisation of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox views of personhood. I will use the narrative as a lens to interpret the two perspectives and identify foundations for a triad community development model of personhood, narrative, and community development.
Highlights
Who we are is essential for community development
This research will consider Christian theological anthropology and will attempt to contribute to the understanding of humans from a particular perspective and how Christian theological anthropology contributes to community development
Horan challenges the universalist and essentialist notion of humanity by pointing out that particularity and individuation is a much more plausible and progressive foundation for Christian theological anthropology in the twenty first eco-centred created order. His model for a Christian theological anthropology is built on a contemporary theological anthropology that reinterprets personhood through catholicity and calls for a historical form of interaction
Summary
Who we are is essential for community development. But who we are is not as simple as it may seem. Horan challenges the universalist and essentialist notion of humanity by pointing out that particularity and individuation is a much more plausible and progressive foundation for Christian theological anthropology in the twenty first eco-centred created order. His model for a Christian theological anthropology is built on a contemporary theological anthropology that reinterprets personhood through catholicity (whole-making) and calls for a historical (narrative) form of interaction. Horan draws from Uhl’s ecological consciousness, he criticises the “stewardship model of humanity’s relationship to the rest of creation.” His model sustains the universalist and essentialist nature of human persons that keeps the status quo. There are numerous parallels presented and continuity seen between human beings and nonhuman creation within the narrative.”
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