Religion and Development

This article is a contribution to the discourse on religion and development. The contribution seeks to investigate the role of religious conceptualisations in development. Theological anthropology, and specifically the Christian doctrine of the imago Dei, is critically analysed from the historical-biblical approach, a feminist and postcolonial approach, and a contextual approach. Themes such as progression, responsibility, relationships, and the spiritual dimension of personhood are identified as contributing toward the role of religion in development. Drawing from theological concepts such as “vocation,” “rule,” “image,” and “likeness,” the specific connections between religion and development derives from the central theological anthropological doctrine of the imago Dei. The themes that are identified are not explored exhaustively but are nonetheless highlighted as markers that should be considered by both practitioners and academics in the broad-based development discourse and practices. The limitations of the modernisation and materialistic approaches of the post-war period are countered by the centrality of personhood.

Memory, embodiment, ethics: In conversation with Wentzel van Huyssteen’s work on theological anthropology

This article focuses on Wentzel van Huyssteen’s work on theological anthropology, attending especially to his emphasis on the temporal and narrative dimension of personal identity. In this regard, Van Huyssteen draws on the thought of Paul Ricoeur, including his view that memory is the gateway to the self. With this in mind, the first part of the article highlights some key features of Van Huyssteen’s engagement the last decade or two with the question what it means to be human, namely the affirmation of interdisciplinarity, embodiment and vulnerability. The argument is put forward that Van Huyssteen’s work invites and displays the need to uphold the interconnections between embodiment, memory, vulnerability, imagination and empathy. It is furthermore claimed that his constructive proposals ‘in search of self’ should be seen as inextricably connected with its crucial ethical and theological motivation and contours.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article focuses on the South African theologian Wentzel van Huyssteen’s work on theological anthropology. He is internationally renowned, and this article discusses key features of his views and brings it into conversation with the work of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur and perspectives from memory studies. As such, it presents a novel engagement that can enrich systematic theological discourse.

Existential Symbolism and Theological Anthropology

This chapter focuses on The Theological-Anthropological Method and the work of its principal architect Paul Tillich. It examines features of Tillich’s thinking that have had appeal in religious studies by elaborating on two frameworks in his thought and six Tillichian tenets about religion. It then exposes a striking paradox in Tillich’s theology. In his view, religions typically fail to apply the Protestant Principle, by which he means a self-critical criterion that is based on the belief that no human symbol is adequate to the task of representing the unconditioned. Tillich would thus have one judge many religions—those that lack, or fail to apply, that self-critical principle—as sources of idolatry and existential despair. It is argued that the potential of the Theological-Anthropological Method to provide motivating reasons to study religion is weakened by this fact.

Alone in the world? Imago Dei from theological anthropology to Christology

In Princeton theologian Van Huyssteen’s (2006) major interdisciplinary work, Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology, human uniqueness is rhetorically coupled with human aloneness. A comparison with a contemporary theological anthropology, namely Yale theologian Kelsey’s (2009) Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology, shows an alternative approach to the notion or concept of the imago Dei, namely a theological shift from viewing human beings as image(s) of God, to viewing human beings as images of Christ, or images of the image of God. This contribution responds to the invitation implied in Van Huyssteen’s book title – are we alone in the world? – by exploring some of the rhetorical implications of a Christological interpretation of the imago Dei. One such implication may imply a different answer to Van Huyssteen’s question – are we alone in the world?; not yes, but no. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s idea of Christ’s promeity illustrates how the rhetorical dynamics behind such a move in response – from yes to no – may potentially look, and that a rearticulation of human uniqueness could have direct consequences for how we imagine our human aloneness in the world.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article contributes to a specifically intradisciplinary conversation in Systematic Theology, on reading and interpreting the notion or theological idea of human beings being created in the image of God. This article does this through a close reading and comparison of two interdisciplinary projects on what it means to be human, namely Van Huyssteen’s Alone in the World? and Kelsey’s Eccentric Existence.

From Agent to Witness: Reading Stanley Hauerwas in the Korean Context

I seek to introduce Stanley Hauerwas’s understanding of the church as a communal agent, in order to strengthen Angella Son’s concept of the Christian as an agent of joy. After briefly demonstrating the shortcomings inherent in Son’s concept of an agent of joy, which is based on Karl Barth’s theological anthropology, I show that Son’s notion of agency lacks the sense that it is the community that bears the stories of God in Christ. Individual Christians are called through and to the church, where the distinctive character and story of God, as revealed in Christ, are embodied through the life of both church and Christians.