Depression, Salvation, and the Human Person

“… depression memoirs point us as we strive for a more relevant and empowering account of God’s work in the lives of those who suffer with depression? ”

Team Members/Contributors

Jessica Coblentz Boston College Contact Me

About this dissertation fellowship

This systematic project draws on narrative theology to develop a constructive soteriology grounded in the realities of the depression that is endemic to the contemporary U.S. Based on autobiographical and phenomenological accounts of depression, I introduce the realities of depressive suffering (Ch. 1). While recent theological discourse predominantly employs liberation soteriology in response to suffering (Ch. 2, 3), I illuminate the shortcomings of liberation for engaging depressive suffering. Drawing on feminist and black theologies, I demonstrate how liberation soteriology elides God’s transformative work amid chronic suffering and engenders a myopic notion of humanity’s telos as freedom from suffering and the vulnerabilities of the body (Ch. 4). Turning back to the voices of depression sufferers as a heuristic for constructive soteriology (Ch. 5), I retrieve resurrection as a soteriological image that obviates the shortcomings of liberation while offering a more relevant and empowering soteriology for those enduring and recovering from depression (Ch. 6). This resurrection soteriology affords an anthropology that reflects the theological insights engendered by depressive suffering; this anthropology also provides a grounds for Christian resistance to social understandings of the human person that stigmatize depression.