True personhood is not about the psychological "self" - be it true or false

My musings here are mixed with the words and thoughts of my mentor, Gil Bailie.


The kenotic self-giving obedience of Christ on the cross reveals the God whose kenotic act is an endlessly self-giving gift of self. So much so, that in a Christian context, selfhood is oxymoronic. The key to Christian subjectivity is being subject to the Other. The true self is the giving away of the self to the Other and/or others. It is pouring out one's life, losing one's life in order to find it.


So where did our modern idea of self - distinct from another - come from? Is there any ground to it?


Psychologically speaking, the modern age could be said to have begun at the moment when two things happened: first, a relative social independence became widespread enough to become the defining experience of those living in Western culture, and, secondly, this relative social independence was misinterpreted as autonomous individuality, whose indebtedness to the Cross and Christian revelation was no longer taken into account. G. K. Chesterton insisted that even minuscule mistakes in Christian doctrine would eventually lead to huge blunders in human happiness. In misconstruing the meaning of the growing social independence of those living in cultures under biblical influence, modernity made precisely one of those mistakes. The modern world's mistake was the myth of autonomous individuality.

So pervasive did this notion of selfhood become, that it is now the air we breathe. The Cartesian self -- the psychological entity standing alone and surveying the world with its narrow view of relating and understanding -- has been until recently the unquestioned assumption of our world. Few stopped to notice not only that this notion of selfhood was preposterous, but that there was absolutely no biblical warrant for believing in its validity. Selfhood as the biblical tradition understands it is radically dependent. The social independence the biblical self enjoys is directly related to the degree of that self's dependence on the biblical God. That personhood is radically different from the snatching at distinction and self-reliance that passes for modern "personality." Citing a passage from the Gospel of John, Hans Urs von Balthasar remarks on how radically different Christ's being was:

"It is the will of him who sent me, not my own will, that I have come down from heaven to do." ... The meaning of the Incarnation, of Jesus' manhood, is first borne in upon us as a notdoing, a not-fulfilling, a not-carrying-out of his own will.... [A]lways he is what he is on the basis of "not my own will," "not my own honor." (7:18)... If in him "having" were for one moment to cease to be "receiving", to become a radically independent disposal of himself, he would in that moment cease to be the Father's Son... It is indeed this receiving of himself which gives him his "I," his own inner dimension, his spontaneity, that sonship with which he can answer the Father in a reciprocal giving. (A Theology 29-30)

Few have summed up this situation better than Johannes Baptist Metz did when he wrote this of Jesus:

Did not Jesus live in continual dependence on Someone else? Was not his very existence hidden in the mysterious will of the Father? Was he not so thoroughly poor that he had to go begging for his very personality from the transcendent utterance of the Father? 

Let me plow further into this radical and subversive undertaking to get at the originality of selfhood:

(Acts 5:34-42) A Pharisee in the Sanhedrin named Gamaliel,
a teacher of the law, respected by all the people,
stood up, ordered the Apostles to be put outside for a short time,
and said to the Sanhedrin, "Fellow children of Israel,
be careful what you are about to do to these men.
Some time ago, Theudas appeared, claiming to be someone important,
and about four hundred men joined him, but he was killed,
and all those who were loyal to him
were disbanded and came to nothing.
After him came Judas the Galilean at the time of the census.
He also drew people after him,
but he too perished and all who were loyal to him were scattered.
So now I tell you,
have nothing to do with these men, and let them go.
For if this endeavor or this activity is of human origin,
it will destroy itself.
But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them;
you may even find yourselves fighting against God."
They were persuaded by him.
After recalling the Apostles, they had them flogged,
ordered them to stop speaking in the name of Jesus,
and dismissed them.
So they left the presence of the Sanhedrin,
rejoicing that they had been found worthy
to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.
And all day long, both at the temple and in their homes,
they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the Christ, Jesus.

"Selfhood as the biblical tradition understands it is radically dependent. The social independence the biblical self enjoys is directly related to the degree of that self's dependence on the biblical God." We have apostles who speak "in the name of Jesus," not on their own or on some human other but a Transcendent Other and this generates fear of those whose task it is to maintain social order. Again, let me repeat selfhood, in the biblical tradition, is understood as being dependent and not some autonomous, distinct-from-other identity. So what the Sanhedrin found threatening and different about the apostles was that their identity was grounded in something other than of human origin. The Sanhedrin knew all about how to handle people to maintain social order - and when there was a threat of violence they would put that threat down by using violence. It is the way of order.

There is Something Greater Here.

A new way of being and a new way of being in community - a Spirit of communion is making itself known. Our selfhood has always been dependent, this is not new. And this dependence was always "ordered" by another, be it a culture or significant other. It was a spirit that inevitably would fall into resentment and violence. The apostles begin to act - to live outside of the "old self" and mirror a new creation - dependent but "clothed in a new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness... Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil... Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you." (Eph 4:22-32)

This is no small task - impossible for humans. Jesus says, 'You have used the sacrificial system up to this moment to stay sane and civil. I'm now going to take it away from you. You're now going to have trouble staying sane and civil. I'm going to give you another way, and that is to fall in love with me, to follow me.' Not out of some piety, or 'wouldn't it be nice,' or 'isn't he a lovely guy,' or even 'he's God's incarnation.' No, it's the alternative to the way we humans have lived with since the beginning of culture.