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Abstract
How we view youth influences how we engage in youth ministry. While social science is important for understanding young people, it cannot answer some questions that are significant for youth ministry: What is the role of youth as creature? What does it mean for our view of youth that we are God’s children? How do we engage in youth ministry as a reflection of God’s agape? Through a theological anthropology of youth formulated in light of how God relates to us, the Christian community might form a renewed youth ministry that goes beyond a one-way approach wherein youth ministry is reduced to simply trying to get young people to stick around. To understand the contribution of young people to the Christian community—beyond ensuring its future existence—we need to understand what “youth” is theologically. Using the thought of David Kelsey as a basis, the author formulates a theological anthropology of youth to present a theologically enriched view of youth that not only can guide how we think about youth ministry in general, but also aid in reflecting about young people with disabilities.
Notes
1 Young people are seen as imperfect in their being “underdeveloped” and people with disabilities are seen as imperfect in not being “able” to do things according to certain social norms.
2 The view of young people’s imperfection as not-yet-adults is particularly problematic when imperfection is connected to the concept of sinfulness. But that the topic outside the limits of the present article.
3 From an ecclesiological point of view, it is also a very problematic. In the first of his eight theses on youth work, Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated that not youth but Christ is the future of the church (Root, Citation2014).
4 The relationship between creation, eschatological summoning, and reconciliation is rather complex and outside the purpose of this article. Here I presume being created is the prerequisite for being eschatologically summoned and reconciled but being created does not necessarily result in either eschatological summoning or reconciliation. The human person can be understood as perfectly created even without being summoned or reconciled, but how we are summoned and reconciled adds to understanding our unique nature.
5 The relationship between creation, eschatological summoning, and reconciliation is rather complex and outside the purpose of this article. Here I presume being created is the prerequisite for being eschatologically summoned and reconciled but being created does not necessarily result in either eschatological summoning or reconciliation. The human person can be understood as perfectly created even without being summoned or reconciled, but how we are summoned and reconciled adds to understanding our unique nature.
6 While the three questions—What? Who? How?—specify the content of the present theological anthropology, the context of the questions is also very important. What is the goal of our engagement with young people? Thus “From where?” is a fourth question that qualifies our discussion, because our context forms our reflections. Within youth ministry research, the “From where” question interrogates our reasons for engaging in youth ministry.
7 While in his theological anthropology, Kelsey sis not reflecting particularly on youth and young people, it is nevertheless helpful in formulating a theological anthropology of youth. As will be seen, one of the challenges with many classical theological anthropologies is that they are based on the creation accounts in Genesis in which the human creature is perfectly created in God’s image and likeness. There are no children or young people in these accounts, and they are not able to explain growth and development. Instead, Kelsey’s double context of human existence and the interplay between them is helpful in understanding youth as a period of human existence formed by God’s creative relating through the concrete lived contexts of each young person.
8 While youth does not exist as an abstraction, I still use the term as a category to indicate that which is common for the lived lives of young people as a period of the human existence.
9 For years, various social sciences (in particular sociology, cultural studies, developmental psychology, and neuroscience) have been used to understand young people as a means to create a more relevant and efficient youth ministry. While these are important perspectives, a more theologically enriched view contributes to deeper reflection on youth and the Christian community.
10 That God creates a human living body—which includes our mental capacities—does not exclude the existence of the soul. But without going into a rather complicated theological discussion, we can merely not here that no human person is created without a body. What God creates is thus a human living body born into a concrete set of particular contexts.
11 Saying that who God creates is personal means that the creator-creature relationship always is personal and not just a relationship between God and the human species in general. To say it is unsubstitutable underlines that this relationship is unique.
12 This human acting is formed by God’s creative activitys because it is a response of acting wisely according how God relates to us in creation.
13 Again, this does not exclude the existence of our soul.
14 What we often experience as imperfections—i.e., disabilities—are not flaws in God’s creative relating but an expression of the limits of the human living body. That the human body is finite expresses our dependence on God and our proximate context. To be created with limits is therefore not an imperfection.
15 Our body is both what God creates and part of our proximate context since the human person is more than his or her actual body. We both are and have a body. Job mentions that he is both born as a body and has been given a body (Job 10:8–12).
16 While age does not define what a human person is, it does, as a part of the proximate context, help the human person understand who he or she is.
17 However, their ultimate context, and thus their identity, can only be understood through their proximate context, including their age.
18 It would be too bold a claim to say that disability, like the period of youth, is an expression of being created perfectly without qualifying the discussion further. While this would require a more elaborate theological reflection than what is possible here, the important factor is how we understand what it means to be created as a finite actual human living body. In creating, God makes God’s creative relating dependent on the finite proximate contexts in which we are created, just as my actual human living body depends on the genes of my mother and father. Theologically speaking, God could have created every human living body ex nihilo; God also could have created deathless life. A relevant theological question would be: Where do disabilities come from? If they are a part of how God perfectly creates the actual human living body, then actual disabilities are “willed” by God. If they are the result of the finite nature of our proximate contexts on which God’s perfect creation is dependent, then the actual disabilities are not “willed” by God but are the result of the actual human living body’s finite nature.
19 This personal relationship is by God’s initiative through creation, so the young person might not be aware of it.
20 This is a very strong impulse within Western consumer society in which young people are not valued according to their youth but according to their potential for consumerism. The formation in the educational systems of such a society is focused on creating good citizens consumers. Unfortunately, this tendency is also visible in many youth ministries in which the formation is focused more on creating adult believers than on discovering God’s glory within young people.
21 Without going into more extensive theological reflection, the call to sanctification is fulfilled by flourishing within created reality while holiness is fulfilled by being united with God. In becoming children of God through adoption, we are called to holiness, too.
22 Kelsey’s expression “love as neighbor” also serves to clearly distinguish it from love for God, with the latter having greater significance.
23 These include virtual communities and physical communities, including families, schools, sports teams, church, etc.
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