Importance: 10%
The Big Idea
This is a Tree of Thought for the ideas surrounding what it means to be human from a biblically founded perspective that we are creatures
Need
Start with the reason we need such an anthropology and basis for life and theology
We have lost the ability to see God in the world around us. Sure we see him in the spectacular or the stunning but hardly ever in the normal or the ordinary or even the holy that we encounter
Vocation gets us a lot of the way there but it also doesn’t give us a practical understanding of actually doing what we say we should do. We know we are all of the roles we are for the glory of god and the reflect his light but then practically we go about all of those vocations in the exact same way as anyone else
The reality of competing cosmologies
The idea the we sometimes don’t see how different cosmologies affect us
The idea of worldview doesn’t really capture this reality
Mechanistic nature of the universe as described by Christoper Alexander in nature of order book 1 preface
We often operate like the world around us is a mechanistic world that God kind of just breaks into now and again but the actual daily moment by moment participation and perceptible reality of God is not there. Or if it is then we end up acting like conjurers looking for got to bend reality for our benefit or something along those lines
Evolutionary cosmology as a way to think of change, development and “progress”
Both of these can come into a Christian’s interaction of the world without ever rising to the level of “worldview” but can deeply affect how we approach and enact our vocations and life in the world
Foundation
Then move to the basic laying out of a creaturly anthropology. That is defined as the dependence and overlay of parts
Application frameworks
Next outline the basic idea of building on this basis with the idea of common characteristics
My work with rhythm and liturgy is off of the coming characteristic of being time bound beings
The work of Christopher Alexander (Architect, Author) is interesting in this area since it is based on the commonality of human feelings and the basis of wholeness as essential for understanding the world.
Many other possible common starting places that would all work legitimately off of the foundation
- Models of Human Rhythms
- Patterns of Liturgy-The Rhythm of Life
- Embodiment of Community
- Sacred Space
- Thoughts on Liturgy and Rhythm