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Theological Anthropology and Application of Modern
Leadership
Brittany Hertig
CLED 300
October 15, 2018
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Believers or not, we all share a common characteristic; we are all human. There are
universal facts to being a human such as the necessity for sustenance and oxygen but there are
also Biblical declarations on what it means to be human that are not necessarily predicated on
being a believer or not. Genesis 1:27 states, “So God created man in his own image, in the
image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” The Bible is very clear that
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God created mankind in his own image and not just those that were believers. This provides an
opportunity for the application of what the Bible states about mankind to topics such as modern
day leadership, as it is all encompassing. The effectiveness of the modern day church hinges on
the ability to disconnect an overly secular-connected congregation but yet to remain engaging. A
Biblical approach to the study of people will provide the opportunity for Church leaders to
remain engaged, effective, and influential to the impactful development of the Kingdom of God
on earth.
In order to understand the basic tenants of theological anthropology, it is imperative to
have a baseline of the metaphysics of the philosophy which deals with the first principle of
things. At a cursory level, theological anthropology is the study of the human in relation to God
but this is not as simple as how God made mankind. There a number of disciplines to this
anthropology however most of them center around creation, sin and salvation, and relation to
Christ and this paper will focus on these with respect to leadership.
Looking at creation through a theological anthropology lens, one might ask from an
anthropological perspective, “What is man and why was he created?,” and from a theological
