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Stellenbosch Theological Journal 2020, Vol 6, No 2, 295–312
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17570/stj.2020.v6n2.a13
Online ISSN 2226-2385 | Print ISSN 0028-2006
2020 © Pieter de Waal Neethling Trust
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Narrative and personhood:
e quest for triad community development
John Klaasen
University of the Western Cape
Bellville, South Africa
jsklaasen@uwc.ac.za
Abstract
is ar ticle sets out a Christian theological anthropology for community development.
is critical engagement with traditional and doctrinal forms of Christian theological
anthropology will analyse two contrasting perspectives of theological anthropology
to construct a contemporary community development model that considers the
responsibility of communities for community development. e theological model
of community development considers narrative as an interlocutor of personhood and
communit y development. is art icle further i nvestigates c onceptua l linkages be tween
personhood and community development through classication or categorisation
of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox views of personhood. I will use the narrative as a
lens to interpret the two perspectives and identify foundations for a triad community
development model of personhood, narrative, and community development.
Keywords
Anthropology; personhood; community development; Eastern Orthodox; whole-
making; relationship; narrative; history; agency
Introduction
Who we are is essential for community development. But who we are
is also not as simple as it may seem. Dierent disciplines have dierent
theories and models about anthropology. is research will consider
Christian theological anthropology and will attempt to contribute to the
understanding of humans from a particular perspective and how Christian
theological anthropology contributes to community development. e
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author acknowledges that Christian theological anthropology is not
homogeneous on the issue of anthropology. Despite the heterogeneity of
the ontology of humans within creation, the Christian tradition is marked
by many controversies, such as Arianism and Eunomianism, to mention
a few. Responses such as the creeds of Nicaea (381) and Chalcedon (451)
to counter heresies, and the Cappadocian Fathers’ attempts to account for
Trinity, laid the foundation for theological anthropology for centuries to
come. As much as these foundations provided theological substantiations
for the identity of humans, it also provided humans with a position in
creation that separated humans from nonhuman parts of creation. e
separation of humans from the rest of creation has consequentially resulted
in domination and alienation.
is research seeks to construct a theological model of community
development with narrative as an interlocutor of personhood and
community development. e theoretical framework is situated within
the intersection of personhood and narrative. e article will investigate
conceptual linkages between personhood and community development
through classication or categorisation of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox
views of personhood. Who we are is inextricably linked with our story
and Christian narrative. is article will also engage critically with two
juxtaposed perspectives of Christian theological anthropology which are
represented by Daniel P. Horan and John Zizioulas. Finally, the article will
use the narrative as a lens to interpret the two perspectives and identify
foundations for a triad community development model of personhood,
narrative, and community development.
Horan, narrative, and whole-making as personhood
Horan is critical of the classical or traditional use of the concepts of
creation, image of God, and in the likeness of God. ese concepts are the
foundation of the nature of God and G od’s relationship with huma nity. ey
have also become the theological assumptions of Christian anthropology
throughout Christian history. Horan considers the theological feminist
theories and poststructuralist philosophies’ critique of static and doctrinal
theological anthropology to revisit the Christian foundations of human
nature and the place of humans within creation. He further claims that
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Christians appropriated Hellenistic philosophical traditions in the use
of human nature. is essentialist use of human nature has dominated
Christian theological anthropology over the value of the particular
individual human person. “e primacy of substance from a hylomorphic
metaphysical standpoint within the Christian anthropological tradition
has re-inscribed an implicit androcentrism and the privileging of a certain
male normativity, which feminist theologians have raised to greater
consciousness” (2014:94–95).
One of the classical views of the use of concepts such as created in God’s
image and the likeness of God is found in the complementary notion
of Augustine. With regard to complementarity, Augustine, under the
inuence of Neo-Platonism, divides the soul into deliberative and obedient
functions which represent male dominance over female and the female’s
subordination to the male. is view espoused by Augustinian was further
developed by omas Aquinas who assumes that women are inferior to
men – both physically and biologically. Only men could represent Christ
in the sacraments and in presiding over worship. is hierarchical nature
of man and woman also found normativity in Luther’s teachings of sex,
lust (concupiscence) and sin in the marriage sacrament (Klaasen 2016:6–
7). is kind of binary gender-classication results in power imbalance,
isolation, unequal division and, more seriously, domination on the basis of
discrimination.
e diculty with complementarity and essentialism as foundations for
Christian theological anthropology is that humanity has been regarded as
separate from the rest of creation and in a hierarchical order that subjugates
one under the other. e categorisations and essence have also not taken
particularity and individuality into consideration. ose who seem of the
same substance by law, biology, and sex are dened in opposition to the
other.
Horan challenges the universalist and essentialist notion of humanity by
pointing out that particularity and individuation is a much more plausible
and progressive foundation for Christian theological anthropology in the
twenty rst eco-centred created order. His model for a Christian theological
anthropology is built on a contemporary theological anthropology that
reinterprets personhood through catholicity (whole-making) and calls
298 Klaasen • STJ 2020, Vol 6, No 2, 295–312
for a historical (narrative) form of interaction. With regard to the latter,
Horan provides three indispensable components to be considered when
addressing the limitations of the Christian doctrinal use of Hellenistic
philosophical methods of Christian theological anthropology which has
dominated the Christian tradition.
Firstly, Horan counters the static, complete, unmediated, and absolute
notions of subjectivity by introducing the use of language to that of
humans by poststructuralists such as Jacques Derrida. Derrida’s use of
“diérance” instead of “dierence” derives from the French word dierer,
which can be translated “diering” or “deferring.” According to Horan,
“Derrida clams that language nds its meaning through a series of other
referents (anterior, concurrent, and posterior elements in relationship) and
that an expression of language, a sign, or phenomenon also never derives
at its complete or absolute meaning, but is instead perpetually deferred
or postponed.” Speaking about the subject in these terms means that the
essence or nature cannot be taken as absolute or eternal. Diérance also
nds a collaborator in Karl Rahner’s transcendental theology. Because of
the reliance on other referents there exists congenital resistance to expose
one’s complete meaning at any one moment in the present. “In other words,
deconstruction challenges theological anthropology to a sense of presence
in the moment when in women and men become attuned to both the
foundationally relational dimension of their existence and the historical
grounding of reality …” (Horan 2014:103–104). According to Klaasen
(2018:6), “Diérance refers to the distinction, inequality and discernment
between two or more phenomena, on the one hand, and the delay or space
that hides until later what is possible.”
Secondly, postmodern approaches to anthropology have cha llenged the type
of relationships evident in modern and pre-modern Christian theological
anthropology. Horan uses relationships with alterity which causes a greater
distance amongst humans and between humans and the rest of creation.
e combination of relationships and alterity is an attempt to engage with
the inherent subjectivity of the Christian tradition’s passing on of the “self-
enclosed and contained human ‘nature’ and ‘essence.’” Horan attempts to
keep in tension the distance between humanity and the rest of creation and
the reciprocal interaction between and amongst humanity and creation.
Acknowledging that social institutions and social practices construct, or
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at least contributes to, the construction of humanity, Horan asserts that
poststructuralists’ deconstruction of common experience and common
human nature unmasks distorted history (Horan 2014:105–106). Feminists
theologians such as Radford Ruether uses dialectics to uncover the hidden
truths that male dominance failed to pass down. “Dialectics is far more
inclusive than the dualisms, like man/woman, are divided for the purpose
of either/or, dialectics move beyond both poles to a synthesis … dialectical
thinking explores the ‘other’ and brings both poles into a new relationship”
(Klaasen 2018:13). is kind of relationship that poststructuralists promote
also raises questions about the identity of humanity in relation with the
rest of creation. What is the dierence between humanity and the rest of
creation and how does the dierence inuence the kind of relationship?
Is it a relationship of reciprocity or hierarchy? Christian theological
anthropology is challenged by poststructuralists to rethink alterity in
view of the devastating eects that Christian theological anthropological
essentialism and complementarity has caused creation. A dierent
interpretation of alterity also challenges the position of God as the source
of otherness (Horan 2014:106).
e third foundation for a Christian theological anthropology, according
to Horan, is the historical context of human persons. e historical context
includes the past as meaning making for the present. Human persons
cannot be viewed from an abstract ahistorical context as social, political,
and cultural phenomena impact the person, in both their relationships
with the other and their sense of identity. Horan (2014:107) quotes Rahner’s
anthropological intuition presented in his Hearer of the Word (Rahner
1994:94), “To be human is to be spirit as a historical being. e place of the
transcendence is always also a historical place. us, the place of a possible
revelation is always and necessarily also our history.”
History is existential and ontological in the human person’s reality. Helmut
Richard Niebuhr reminds us that history, as real as it is for the reality of
the human person, has limits and can be exploited. Niebuhr asserts that
two histories exist. e one is external history, which deals with facts that
can be evaluated through analytical means, and the other is inner history,
which uses metaphor as the means for sense making. e former includes
the history of natural science, human sciences, and metaphysics, which
observes and discovers reality from a distance. It is limited by scepticism
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of true knowledge and current paradigms. e latter, inner history, can
fall prey to ideology or illusion because of the personal power over reality
(Meylahn 2003:114).
Horan asserts that “this forgotten memory of our origins and
interrelatedness” started o with a forgetfulness of the place of humans
in the creaturely order. He further suggests that we do not look to a
sustainability which seeks to keep the status quo, but to look back as “… the
members of the human species,” to “an increased awareness of who God
created us to be and an honest reckoning with our creaturely origins in the
ecological consciousness of the early Christian apologists such as Justin
Martyr and Irenaeus of Lyons” defence of the doctrine of God’s creation ex
nihilo and God as the only divine source to oppose the repetitive claims of
Platonic Gnosticism (2019:25). Glimpses of this lost memory are also found
in the Patristic thinkers such as Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus, the
battles that Augustine had with the threats of Manichaeism, the mystical
writings of Hildegard of Bingen, and later scholastics such as Francis of
Assisi and Angela da Foligno (Horan 2019:25–26).
Human persons as part of the created order can be retrieved as a plausible
anthropology within the postmodern scholarship through narrative. e
narrative of sustainability seeks to maintain the current status and fails
to remember the true position of the human person within God’s created
order. Although Horan draws from Uhl’s ecological consciousness, he
criticises the “stewardship model of humanity’s relationship to the rest of
creation.” His model sustains the universalist and essentialist nature of
human persons that keeps the status quo. Uhl came to reject this model
because “it is founded on a false narrative of reality – a story about our
absolute uniqueness and separatism from the rest of creation, a story that
perpetuates anthropocentrism and speciesism” (Horan 2019:27–28).
Moving from a scientic story of anthropology (Uhl) to an indigenous
story, Horan contends that indigenous stories, such as that of the Native
Americans, is another form to renew the skewed story of the relationship
between humanity and creation of the last ve hundred years (2019:30).
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Haecceitas
Horan calls for a story that is not necessarily new but renewed. A story
that connects with the origins of human persons in relation with creation,
dierent from that of the dominant Christian theological anthropology
of the last ve hundred years. is story is about human persons. Horan
draws on Scotus’ haecceitas which is individuation above the community
or singularity above the universal. Even though common nature is possible,
the principle of individuation decreases it into singularity. e two
principles of haecceitas are, rstly, its distinction from the specic nature,
yet it forms a unity with the specic nature. Secondly, individuals with
the same nature dier. “According to Scotus’s principle of individuation
(entitas individualis or haecceitas), what makes an individual an individual
is identical with the thing’s very existence or being. It is not an external,
accidental, or material modication of an eternal idea or of a universal
substantia, but a real, positive, unique, unalienable, and unrepeatable
principle. is principle haecceitas, is absolutely intrinsic to that which it
individuates within creation – including both material and nonmaterial
things – and really identical with such an individual thing’s very being”
(Horan 2014:111–112).
According to Horan, the haecceitas principle which Scotus used for the
human person provides theological anthropology that is not universalistic
but particularistic. e individual is primary over the community
although community and relationality are not excluded. e notion of the
human person is not negative as formulated by mediaeval scholars such
as omas Aquinas, but it is positive. e human person is about “a this”
instead of a “not-that” (Horan 2019:137). Another signicance of haecceitas
for theological anthropology is the innate “relationality, dignity and value
of each person over against the depersonalizing elevation of humanity
in a general and essentialist sense” (Horan 2019:138). Horan’s notion of
individuating also goes beyond the human person and every part of the
created order has value “according to the divine act” (Horan 2019:138).
Haecceitas also challenges the traditional notion of the imago Dei that
passed on the idea that human persons are the culmination of creation,
that human persons alone possess imago Dei, and that human persons
have absolute uniqueness in a hierarchical created order (Horan 2019:238).
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On the other hand, dierent notions of human persons are found when
we view the creation narrative in spatial rather than linear terms. Horan
(2019:40–41) asserts that “a renewed sense of the text actually provides an
unexpected resource for recalling our origins and recognizing the kingship
of creation. For example, there are numerous parallels presented and
continuity seen between human beings and nonhuman creation within the
narrative.”
Zizioulas and personhood
Horan’s notion of the human person through catholicity or whole-making
challenges the dominant Christian theological anthropology of the last ve
hundred years. e theological anthropology is rooted in essentialist and
complementarity that leaves a static, absolute unique and alienated human
person that is at the top of the created order. is has serious consequences
for the ecology and human persons. It leads to exploitation, domination,
alienation, and distinction. Horan’s haecceitas or individualisation
ontology of the human person has particularity and individuality as its
core principles.
Like Horan, Zizioulas has also been critical of the traditional foundations
of the Christian theological anthropology. Like Horan, Zizioulas seeks the
relevance of Christian theological anthropology for the postmodern period
that is marked by a retelling of the story of modernity, which include the
identity of the human person and what constructs such an identity. ese
include language (Ludwig Wittgenstein), relationships (Habermas), and
history (Gadamer).
Departing from the strict formulation of personhood by the Cappadocian
Fathers, Zizioulas starts with the ecclesiological context, or the communion
context, as the ontological basis for personhood. Where the church is the
body of Christ, there is the personhood that God bestowed on the people
(imago Dei). His second most important diversion from the traditional
theological anthropology is that divine personhood and not ousia is the
basis for the Trinitarian God (Micallef 2019:224). In congruence with
the Greek Fathers, Zizioulas contends for the oneness of God, but God as
Trinity is divine personhood and therefore communion and relationship
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is ontological in the Trinitarian God (Micallef 2019:224–225). e
Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea 329–379, Gregory
of Nyssa 335–394, and Gregory of Nazianzus 329–390) in particular
formulated the Trinity as three hypostases that relate in an inseparable
relationship instead of a mathematical or power-relational way. A person
is dierent from an individual in such a way that the latter is measured by
the degree of independence, while personhood is characterised by relation
with each other (Klaasen 2013:186–187).
For Zizioulas, the following can be derived from divine personhood. Firstly,
the person develops identity through relationship in terms of Trinitarian
theology. Secondly, freedom is freedom with the other and not from the
other. is implies that the person’s uniqueness is absolute, and thirdly,
personhood is creative when it comes to creating an “Other” (Micallef
2019:229–230).
Persons relate to creation not in a hierarchical top-down way as found in the
fourth century formulations of Trinitarian theology, but in a ritual sense
of uniting creation with God. Personhood implies that persons are priests
of creation insofar as their role in terms of “its hypostatic aspect, through
which the world is integrated and embodied in a unied reality” and “its
ecstatic aspect by virtue of which the world by being referred to God and
oered to Him as ‘His own’ reaches itself to innite possibilities” (Otu
2012:61). Otu asserts that this relationality of personhood and creation is
dierent from the stewardship model of human persons’ relationship with
creation. e relationship is not one of functionality, but it is ontological
(2012:61).
When persons dominate, alienate, or exploit creation, it is much more than
a moral or ethical transgression. To be in relationship with creation is not
just for the sake of stewardship or even for the sake of vocation. In other
words, it is not the neglect of a duty, or an inaction, but it is an existential
transgression. It aects the existence of personhood. Like Horan’s whole-
making or catholicity’s approach to theological anthropology, personhood
is ontologically related to creation. Both approaches engage critically with
the hierarchical-dominated relationship of the fourth century approach
that has become doctrinal for the church. ere is a closer historical link
between Zizioulas and the Greek Fathers with regard to the assertion that
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the unity of God, the one God, and the ontological “principle” or “cause”
of the being and life of God, does not consist in the one substance of God
but in the “hypostasis,” that is, “the person of the Father” (Zizioulas). e
dierence between Zizioulas’ emphasis of the Father and that of the Greek
Fathers is that unity lies in the person and not the ousia of the Father.
Notwithstanding this dierence between Zizioulas and the Greek Fathers,
the approaches of Horan and Zizioulas brings the relationship between
persons and creation closer to each other through particularity (Horan)
and relationality (Zizioulas).
Where is the relationship embedded if community is existential to
personhood? Zizioulas regards the ecclesia as the community of
personhood. It is within the church that the interrelatedness of humans
as personhood is situated. According to Zizioulas, personhood entails a
relationship between God, humans, and the rest of creation. “Personhood
implies the freedom to be oneself, it means the freedom of being the ‘other’
and the freedom to live with the ‘other’” (Otu 2012:58). “is freedom is
not freedom from the other but freedom for the other. Freedom in this case
becomes identical with love. God is love because he is Trinity. We can love
if we are persons, that is if we allow the other to be truly other, and yet in
communion with us” (Zizioulas 1994a:17).
Referring to the ecological problem, Zizioulas applies the same principle
as the relationship between humans and the other to the relationship
between humans and the rest of creation. Creation is not just for personal
consumption but to bring creation in the right relationship with humanity.
Using the bread and wine in the context of the Eucharist, Zizioulas
demonstrates how material elements take on personal traits (1994b:8).
Ecological deprivation and exploitation are two common themes that both
Horan and Zizioulas take up in their Christian theological anthropology.
For Horan, the ecological exploitation by humans is the issue that demands
a relooking at what it means to be human. In order to construct a relevant
theological anthropology that will relate to the ecology in a way that will
run around the serious degradation of the world, humans must be freed
from the misconceptions that they are absolutely unique and therefore near
the top of the hierarchy of creation. It is for this reason that Horan reverts
to the individuation of human persons. Individuating denies the absolute
uniqueness of humanity, although it arms that humanity is a dierent
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kind of species. Human persons are the same as the rest of creation based
on their same origins and dependence. Zizioulas, on the other hand, arms
the relationship between humanity and the rest of creation through the
community that is formed in rituals such as the Eucharist. e non-human
part of creation takes on personal traits within the context of the ecclesial
community. By virtue of one community, the non-human community is
part of the community and the communion with God forms personhood
and a right relationship that arms the divineness of the personhood of
creation.
Community development and Christian theological
anthropology
Christian theological anthropology, when looked at through the lens of
narrative provides a transforming community. In the two contemporary
Christian theological anthropologies of Horan and Zizioulas discussed
above, there is both divergence and convergence with traditional doctrinal
formulations of what it means to be human. It is from the perspective of
convergences that I draw agency for community development. Firstly, I
dene community development as that which “is about cultivating and
nurturing the potentially transforming agency. It is a process of movement
towards transformation of form, forming and formation. It is a process
of mutual and reciprocal growth towards our God-given humanity. It is
about transcending the solid boundaries that divide by domination and
separation. Community development starts with the acceptance that every
person and community deserve the symbolic taking o of our shoes when
entering the holy ground of the constructive-other” (Klaasen 2019:3).
Personhood and community development
Community development is not experiential but ontological for
personhood
Within Ch ristian theologic al anthropology in b oth of the inuential notions
above, the identity of a person is not in individualism or absolute autonomy.
Both notions challenge the modern abstract autonomous individual as
one who can discover objective truth by personal eort independent
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from tradition, history, or others. Being is in person(hood) rather than
substance. e person is not complete, static, or alienated, but interacts,
transforms, and discovers through looking back and making sense of the
presence through the past and future. While Zizioulas gives an ontological
position to community for personhood, Horan’s use of haecceitas is not
a community. Haecceitas distinguishes individuals from each other and
from the rest of creation in order to preserve the deeper meaning of the
divinity of the human person and non-human person. Horan’s perspective
points out the position that traditional Christian theological anthropology
ascribes to the human person in relation to the non-human creation.
Zizioulas’ notion of personhood is captured in two terms, that of priests
and koinonia. With regard to the former, the persons role is viewed in
terms of its hypostatic aspect and its ecstatic aspect. e function does not
relegate the relationship to functionality, but it is ontological. With regard
to the latter, the ecclesial community is the space – the interdependence of
humans – where God and the rest of creation is found. It is in this space of
ritual and sacrament that non-human elements, like bread, water, and wine,
are transformed with human traits. To be a person involves a relationship
between God, humans, and the rest of creation.
Any kind of growth, development, or prosperity includes the other human
and non-human parts of creation, not because of the individual’s ability,
functionality, or work, but because the Other (whether human or non-
human) is inextricably part of the person. Personhood implies growing,
maturing, and developing (Horan’s catholicity/whole-making and Eastern
Orthodoxy’s use of likeness in God) in relation with the rest of the creation.
Personhood is not so much about the static and unimaginative union
(universalis) of the earth, but the expansion of potential and possibilities
of the human person and non-human parts of creation (catholicity).
Poststructuralists such as Derrida connect language with identity when
inferring that the full meaning of words is not easily observable by what
is visible. e meaning of words lies as much between the lines as within
the visible concrete letters. In the same way, a person’s identity is not fully
disclosed at any given moment but there is always the delayed fullness
of the person. ese potentialities are somewhat connected to dierent
referents that unlock the fullness of the person. Notwithstanding the
criticisms of poststructuralists that language can be used in such a way that
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only language exists or that language is the only reality, Derrida’s point
about language’s ability to represent reality as beyond is so that persons
are developing within communities that unlock mutual growth through
personhood.
Personhood implies the ability to respond to de-personhood
Personhood is not a matter of functionality, but theologically, persons
have the agency to respond to community underdevelopment. Both Horan
and Zizioulas assert that action or doing is part of what it means to be a
person. Both agree that the alienation of human persons from the ecology
and persons from each other is tantamount to alienation from God. Horan
uses Rahner’s notion of mysticism “as the primordial experience of God in
everyday life” and Zizioulas uses the “priest” as priests of creation. Both
mystics and priests imply the connection of God’s indwelling and doing
in creation.
Meylahn asserts that “For an action to be intelligible there needs to be this
close relation between action and narrative. is close connection is not
a new invention but was already present in Aristotle’s thinking. Aristotle
dened tragedy as the imitation of action and understands action as a
connection of incidents, of facts, of a sort susceptible to forming to narrative
conguration” (2003: 91). Christian theological anthropology includes
the actions of persons. Actions or narrated actions take cognisance of the
historicity of the person and the reality within which the action takes place.
Within the context of personhood, actions are closely connected to God
and the church. With regards to mysticism, Horan (2019:234) quotes Eagan
who asserts that “Rahner seemingly identies mysticism as the primordial
experience of God in everyday life.” On the other hand, Zizioulas’ notion
of priest has the role of “hypostatic,” which keeps the world in unity, and
“ecstatic,” which implies the world returning to God.
e late Steve de Gruchy contended that doing is integrated with being
for identity. He pointed out that both creation stories (Genesis 1:27 and
Genesis 2:7) are part of the vocation of persons. He applied this Christian
theological anthropology to the agency of the poor. “is is the message of
the Gospel for the poor, that they are both in the image of God and called
to be actors in the drama of creation and salvation itself. ey are not,
308 Klaasen • STJ 2020, Vol 6, No 2, 295–312
and cannot be, simply passive objects of history, but are invited to be the
subjects of their own history” (2015:70-71).
Personhood through the lens of narrative addresses the agency of persons
within community. Agency can take dierent forms such as specialized
skills, material resources, emotional resources, and human resources.
ese kinds of agency are combined into whole-making by the community
for the development of the community. Persons take responsibility for their
own development. Dietrich et al (2014:30) draws from the “theology of
creation” when they contends that “When God calls humankind into being
and into community and relationship with God himself and one another,
God at the same time calls us into responsibility for each other, and care
for one another.”
Particularity and universality
When we use the lens of narrative for personhood, we discover two
interrelated phenomena. Firstly, the person does not disappear as part of
what the communit y has in common but remains unique. is un iqueness is
questioned by Horan if it is absolute and causes alienation and domination.
Drawing from the Trinitarian formulations of the Greek Fathers, Zizioulas
argues for the uniqueness of the person, which is less particular than
Horan. However, Zizioulas follows the Cappadocians’ distinction between
Father, Son and Holy Spirit as three hypostases. “Analogically, one can
speak of the universal and its particulars. e Father is that from which the
Spirit and the Son derives” (Klaasen 2013:187).
Community de velopment is eective when the contextua lity or part icularity
is taken ser iously by agents. Every community a nd every person have unique
circumstances that determine the need for development. A universalised
approach to community development might miss the eectiveness of
agency and minimise the development of communities. Universalism
of development dominates cultures, traditions, and patterns of life that
diverts from essentialism. On the other hand, when particularity is applied
then existing patterns of life, traditions, and cultures become living human
traits (to use Zizioulas’ analogy of bread and wine within the ecclesial
community) that assist sustainable community development.
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Klaasen • STJ 2020, Vol 6, No 2, 295–312
Particularity also guards against abstract and generalised development.
Particularity addresses specic needs of specic persons in community.
Time as well as tradition are not limited to the empirical, observable, and
measured linear phenomena. When community development considers
the particular, the past and future becomes the concrete in the present.
Particularity does not mean separation between dierent communities
or persons. ere is still a place for dierence but not in such a way that
barriers are xed, permanent, or alienable. To draw on Derrida’s diérance,
persons and communities dier with the potential for convergence, or even
emergence. Dierence is not static, but uid, and leads to freedom and
whole-making. e barriers between persons and communities interlock
or overlap where the potential of diérance signies development.
Conclusion
Christ ian theological ant hropology contributes to community development
through ontological and not experiential means. Personhood, as espoused
by both contemporary catholic and Eastern Orthodox formulations, as
a response to the ecological crises assumes community development as
concern and calling of persons. Community development is not a function
but an inherent part of what is means to be human. Personhood also
assumes that persons have the ability to do community development.
e poor are called to take responsibility for community development
as much as the rich have a vocation to exercise community development
agency. Agency is not restricted to universal principles or essentialism but
particularity and contextuality is tantamount to taking responsibility for
community development. ese three pillars form the basis of a theological
community development paradigm to enhance eective, sustainable, and
people-centred community development.
310 Klaasen • STJ 2020, Vol 6, No 2, 295–312
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