Theological Anthropology
This is a modern term for what, in my youth, was called “the doctrine of man.” It refers to Christian thought, insight, and theoretical consideration of what it means to be human. For instance, if you have wondered how to think of a frozen embryo, you were wondering about theological anthropology. And that’s just one particular case. Other contemporary questions surround such varied concerns as AI, pornography, automatization of jobs, the mesmerizing effects of screens, drone warfare, harvesting organs from prisoners—the list goes on almost endlessly, with new particular cases arising at every turn. With all these particular questions there is one big, basic question: What does Christian faith reveal about our humanity?
To help people think through these multitudinous questions, I am persuaded we need to focus on that big question. Many particular questions arise from new things that we now have the technology to do (freeze embryos, build smart machines). But to focus on these things is to bypass an important, earlier stage of thought. Instead of focusing on new tech, we should start with old flesh. For the theological understanding of the human being begins with old and basic things: the coupling of man and woman, having children, having friends, neighborhoods and society, work and play, death and burial. With the technological transformation(s) of society we have lots of new questions about those old things, new possibilities, perhaps new temptations; yet the old questions remain.
Here’s an instance. You could wonder, Why not create artificial wombs within which human beings could gestate until they are ready to be born? The important question is not, Would an artificial womb be a good thing? Rather, the first question is, What’s the good of being born of a woman? What does it say about being human that each of us has or had a mother?
Similarly, I think, the important first theological endeavor in all these areas is to identify the good of the older practice that has come down to us. For instance, What’s the good of being born? What’s the good of work? What’s the good of dying? (And so forth.)
Some of you have been thinking of these questions for awhile already; more of us need to do so, and we need, I think, to do so with our fellow Christians, just as friends, and perhaps through programs and study together. This perhaps would be a fitting new year’s resolution.
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Out & About: Sunday, Dec. 14, in the morning at Church of the Epiphany in Richardson, Tex.: At 9 a.m. I will speak in the rector’s forum on what’s the good of being born and then preach at the 10 a.m. eucharist. That afternoon at 4 p.m. I am to preach at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas, their eucharist being moved to the afternoon on account of the marathon.
My final talk on Augustine’s Confessions will be on Books VIII and IX, at St. Matthew’s, Sun., Dec. 21, 10:20 a.m. in the great hall.
Good Books & Good Talk seminars in 2026: At St. Matthew’s in Dallas on Sundays at 5 p.m.:
Jan. 18, The Skin of our Teeth by Thornton Wilder
Feb. 1, The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
March 1, The Little Princesses by Marian Crawford (nonfiction memoir)
(I’ll include notes about these books in due course.)