Search Results for: "theological anthropology"

In the pages of Philosophia Christi (20:1, 2018), William Hasker responded to Joshua Farris’ “Souls, Emergent and Created: Why Mere Emergent Dualism is Insufficient,” in his “Emergent Dualism and Emergent Creationism: A Response to Joshua Farris.”

Farris now replies to Hasker, arguing that Hasker spends more time on secondary issues rather than the central objection. Farris shows that Hasker gives no good reasons for denying the primitive particularity view and offers no alternative particularity account.

The full-text of this article is available for FREE by clicking here. The paper is part of an ongoing EPS web project focused on a Philosophy of Theological Anthropology.

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The doctrine of the imago Dei is one of the center pieces of Christian theology. It is something that all human beings possess that unites them as well as sets them apart from the rest of creation.

There are, however, disputes over what the imago Dei entails. I propose that the doctrine of the Incarnation coupled with the doctrine of divine omniscience and theory of divine ideas can provide an explanation as to what properties constitute the divine image.

Since the Incarnation is a logical possibility for the Godhead, it resides as an idea within the necessarily and a se omniscient divine mind. This idea represents what God (namely the Second Person) would be like (i.e. his image) if he took on corporeal form.

As a result, human nature (i.e. the imago Dei) is derived from the divine ontology and its potential incarnation. Thus, both material and immaterial human properties can be said to be part of the imago Dei.

The full-text of this paper is available for FREE by clicking here. The paper is part of an ongoing EPS web project focused on a Philosophy of Theological Anthropology.

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This paper argues that the narrative of transgenderism contains mutually inconsistent claims and therefore fails.

First, the denial of gender essentialism is inconsistent with anyone’s insistence that facts about people make it the case that either they have always been gendered in some respective way, or that they in fact belong to other genders than what were originally recognized.

Second, the argument that sex and gender come apart is inconsistent with the view that persons can be born into the wrong bodies; and attempts to bring bodies in line with trans people’s self-understood genders via gender reassignment surgery undermine the claim that gender and sex are not normatively related.

Third, the argument that gender is a social construct is inconsistent with the idea that society’s assignment of a person’s gender can be mistaken based on privileged information that an individual has.

Finally, the social promotion of self-identification as veridical is inconsistent on both major accounts of gender. Hence, transgenderism is mutually inconsistent with its own aims and claims.

The full-text of this paper is available for FREE by clicking here. The paper is part of an ongoing EPS web project focused on a Philosophy of Theological Anthropology. For more on this paper’s theme, see the EPS web project’s Philosophical Discussions on Marriage and Family Topics.

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Let’s define revealed anthropology as the conception of human beings at which we can arrive thanks to the information of the Christian revelation (the Bible, and whatever magisterial documents, if one recognizes such authorities).

And let’s define natural anthropology as the conception of human beings at which we can arrive by the natural light of reason alone, unaided by the revelation. It is tempting for Christian philosophers to concentrate only on revealed anthropology, considered as providing the true anthropology.

In this paper, I argue that Christian philosophers should investigate more precisely natural anthropology and the relationship it has with revealed anthropology. I argue that discoveries in natural anthropology can affect our understanding of revealed anthropology itself.

The full-text of this paper is available for FREE by clicking here. It is part of an ongoing EPS web project focused on a Philosophy of Theological Anthropology.

How does one go about drawing anthropological conclusions from Christology?

One approach is to ask the question, “What account of human nature best makes sense of a particular account of atonement, X?”

In order to show the fruitfulness of this approach, Christopher Woznicki turns to T.F. Torrance’s doctrine of atonement. He argues that the account of human nature that best comports with T.F. Torrance’s doctrine of atonement is one in which human nature is an abstract universal that is instantiated by Christ and participated in by all other human beings.

Additionally, Woznicki suggests that this approach might be fruitful for drawing anthropological conclusions from other accounts of atonement.

The full-text of this paper is available for FREE by clicking here. It is part of an ongoing EPS web project focused on a Philosophy of Theological Anthropology.

Appeals to consent, autonomy, and self-ownership form the basis of much of contemporary liberal and libertarian social ethics. Call these ‘individualist theories’ of social ethics.

The plausibility of individualist theories, this paper argues, depends upon a number of background metaphysical commitments that are often left unstated and undefended. These commitments and their problems are the chief subject of this paper.

Individualist accounts of social ethics are essentially incomplete. They have no substantive content unless attached to a prior moral theory. Specifically, they are all attempts at specifying rights without reference to responsibilities. Once these responsibilities are fleshed out, however, we arrive at a set of conclusions that differ radically from that of the contemporary liberal and libertarian.

What makes consent, autonomy, and self-ownership worthy of moral protection in the first place is the fact that we are obligated to be stewards of ourselves. There are no rights without duties, and no self-ownership without self-stewardship.

The full-text of this paper is available for FREE by clicking here. It is part of an ongoing EPS web project focused on a Philosophy of Theological Anthropology.

What it might mean to be part of the church, or the Body of Christ? That is the overarching question for this paper.

This paper focuses on models of the soul and asks how each model might understand our unity as a church. The paper focuses on two models: a ‘castle model,’ in honor of Teresa of Avila’s image of the soul as an interior castle, and a ‘capacity model,’ following the broadly Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition.

Although these two models do not map perfectly onto any single thinker, they mark out tendencies and emphases that characterize a number of important thinkers, and they map, more or less, onto philosophical discussions of dualism and hylomorphism.

This paper articulates key features of each model, responding briefly to significant concerns relevant to ecclesiology, and then reflect on how adopting that model might shape ecclesiology.

The full-text of this paper is available for FREE by clicking here. It is part of an ongoing EPS web project focused on a Philosophy of Theological Anthropology.