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A Christian Anthropology from Conception to Resurrection and the Renewal of All Things
Answer who a person is before prescribing how people should be formed.
Becoming Fully Human offers a Christian anthropology that follows the human story from conception through life, death, resurrection, and the renewal of all things.
Read the full description ↓Before asking how education should form a person, ask what a human being is.
Becoming Fully Human offers a Christian anthropology that follows the human story from conception through life, death, resurrection, and the renewal of all things. It considers persons as embodied, relational, developing, vulnerable, image-bearing creatures who receive life and respond to grace.
Childhood, work, friendship, worship, service, suffering, aging, and dependence are not treated as rungs on a ladder of human worth. They are contexts in which people love and are loved, give and receive, and encounter the limits of self-sufficiency. Christ stands at the center of this account of humanity and hope.
For Christian educators and readers interested in the foundations of formation, the book addresses the question beneath educational method. It is a theological account of the person, distinct from an instructional guide or a system for measuring spiritual maturity.
Dignity before achievement
Life received as gift and the image of God, without making ability, independence, or usefulness the measure of a person.
One embodied, relational life
Body and soul, relationships, development, and the settings that shape what we notice, love, and do.
Fracture without worthlessness
Sin, disordered love, evil, and responsibility, held together with protection, care, and the need for grace.
Christ and holy love
The humanity revealed and restored in Christ, with grace preceding, reconciling, and transforming our response.
Hope beyond self-improvement
Resurrection and new creation as God’s promised action, not the final achievement of a successful life.
These movements belong together. A child can give love, an adult can need care, and faithful participation begins before life’s final horizon. They are not a required sequence, a measure of anyone’s worth, or steps that earn salvation.
Receiving care within life and receiving resurrection are different gifts. The book keeps both in view without treating care, development, or effort as the source of resurrection.
Introduction: The Question Beneath Formation
Life as gift, the image of God, embodied personhood, and the meaning and limits of development.
Human fracture, disordered love, evil, and spiritual opposition, without erasing dignity or responsibility.
Fifteen settings and experiences of human life, from the womb and family to dependency and dying. These are not a required life sequence.
Christ’s revealing and restoring work, grace, Christian formation, practices of becoming, and vocation in holy love.
Death, bodily resurrection, new creation, and the responsibilities of communities that participate in formation without owning it.
Conclusion: The Whole Human Story
Appendix A: Glossary of Essential Terms
About the Author
Chapter 1 · What Does It Mean to Become Fully Human?
Human dignity is given, not achieved. It is easy to agree with that principle. It can be harder to live by it when someone’s abilities differ from our own, when we cannot measure their growth, or when their need for care challenges our idea of a good life.
A child has not yet learned what an adult knows. A person with profound disability may never display capacities another person takes for granted. An older adult may lose abilities that once shaped work and daily life. None of these differences creates a lesser kind of person. The value of a human life cannot rest on a performance that some have not yet reached and others can no longer sustain.
Becoming fully human does not mean earning the right to be called human. Intelligence, virtue, faith, and service do not turn us into people or make us deserve belonging. The question is how we grow into the life and calling God has already given us.
Christian educators, theological readers, and formation leaders.
Where the educational books attend to learners and the responsibilities of teaching, this book asks the prior question: who is the human person whose formation matters? It extends that inquiry across the lifespan and into the Christian hope of resurrection and new creation.
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Dr. R. C. Titus is an author, researcher, and educator whose work explores whole-person formation, educational psychology, emotional intelligence, and the ways learning shapes who people are becoming. As Director of the SNU Lab School and Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at Southern Nazarene University, he brings together research, educational practice, and Christian formation to help educators and leaders cultivate environments where people can grow in wisdom, character, belonging, and purpose.
About the author →
A Christian account of human dignity, embodied life, and grace—from conception through the changing relationships of a lifetime to resurrection and new creation. Growth matters, but no one has to earn the right to belong.
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