"The Nature of the Human Person"

Theories on the nature of the human person influence scholarship in all the disciplines, but especially those in the social sciences. The field of psychology offers the most obvious case in point. Psychologists and psychiatrist have proposed numerous theories about the nature of humanity in their attempts to explain human behavior. These theories originate from deeply divergent paradigms and it is not surprising that psychology has often been the discipline fraught with ideological splits and professional antagonisms over this very subject. But psychology is not alone in its pursuit of this question. All disciplines construct theories that offer a wide variety of explanations for economic, political and social behavior. Existing theories vary in their complexity, but Christian scholars often find contemporary theories insufficiently complex in their explanations of what motivates human behavior.

The Christian Scholars Program has assembled eight teams from the social sciences and humanities to address how a Judeo-Christian perspective on the Nature of the Human Person would contribute to current topics of conversation in their disciplines. Though a majority of team members come from a Christian tradition, scholars from other faith traditions who are working on this topic and who are willing to take distinctively Christian perspectives seriously are also included.

Over the next three years these teams will hold a series of collaborative workshops on the subject and will organize several panels at academic conferences.