In defense of a self: the theological search for a postmodern identity

Abstract

The author's purpose in this essay is, first of all, to evaluate the recent assessments of the self given by Stanley Hauerwas and Rowan Williams. Second, in registering his reservations with these views, he claims that confessional theologians have rich resources for shaping a powerful and innovative redescription of the tradition of transcendental subjectivity that does not conclude in, or require, the self's disappearance (or the concomitant annihilation of interiority). The person willed by God into being possesses a certain formfulness that is neither pure intentionality nor interiority, a certain formful unity constitutive of its being created in the image of God. Third, the author argues that Dietrich Bonhoeffer's christological account of the self, supplemented by Eberhard Jüngel's trinitarian account, offers a promising alternative to Hauerwas and Williams. The article's general concern is to show that modern theology does itself and Christian congregations a disservice if it fails to appreciate the depth, complexity and created dignity of human personhood.