Theological Anthropology I: Creation and Eschatology

This course is fundamentally a course in theological anthropology – the study of humanity. The concern of this course lies with the anthropological question of how God deals concretely with human beings who are in the world, and how Christianity understands eternal life as the promise God has given to us through the Son, and the sanctification and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The course also explores what implications this future promise has on human life here and now. In this quest, we will be guided by questions in the collective memory of the Church, the Christian tradition, the theory of evolution, the concern for ecology, to name a few. The course will explore the Christian understanding of what it is to be human beings “in the world, but not of the world.” This course locates the Christian view on the origin and destiny of the world and humankind within the contemporary dialogue involving science, religion and culture. Classic Christian themes (God’s creation of nature and humans in relation to each other, the meaning of matter/body and spirit/soul, and traditional eschatology in terms of heaven, hell and purgatory) are studied in their historical contexts as well as critically interrogated by insights from material and cognitive sciences. This interaction draws out the ecological, moral and spiritual implications for Christian praxis, and enriches our understanding of God’s action in partnership with humans and nature from creation through history to absolute fulfillment.