ABSTRACT
Few concepts have been as central to the development and articulation of early Christian theology as the idea of the human being, sitting, as it does, at the center of Christianity’s understanding of history, its offer of salvation, and its controversies regarding Christological formulation. But the idea of the human being also sits at the center of a process of Otherization in early Christian thought that functions to dehumanize non-Christians, and which would eventually come to serve as a justification for violence against, and authority over, non-Christians during the era of European colonial expansion that dawned at the setting of the 15th century. This essay explores how anthropology served as a mechanism for Otherization in early Christian thought, and argues that this mechanism still operates in our contemporary setting, requiring scholars to address problematic intellectual legacies such as this in the public sphere.
