Over the course of my final year at Bible College, I undertook a research project looking at the problems I have with the phrase 'Finding your Identity in Christ." I wrote about the foundations of my problem with it in a prior blog, you should read that first:
But I didn’t just think about the problems, I also delved into thinking about what a more helpful way of thinking was. A huge part of this was the importance of relationships. This blog is a little more dense than the last one, but stick with me.
Inward Turns and False Dichotomies
The inward turn has been key to our identity obsession. As people have grown increasingly isolated from others, places and most especially God, they have been looking solely within to find self-understanding. Rather than asking, “Who am I in my context and time?” the question has become, “Who am I, within myself?” Charles Taylor calls this new conception of self “The buffered self.” 1
The problem is, that the buffered self is ultimately a fiction. It doesn’t represent reality. Problematically, instead of encouraging an awareness of how external things, especially relationships (from close friends and family to the broadest relationships with society and culture), shape a person’s self-conception, people are left believing the lie that they can create themselves while leaving them unaware of the impact others are having on them.
When we exhort someone to 'find their identity in Christ', it encourages a similar logic. When we hear the concept of identity, we are conditioned by culture to turn inward to find some internal sense of this identity in Christ. There is some validity in part of this inward turn (maybe a future blog post). However, the pendulum has swung so far in the direction of individuality in Western thought that effort is needed to reign in this mindset. This static language of finding identity in Christ is also gives the believers very little direction in what that might look like in their life. Focusing instead on the relational dynamics gives believers a foundation to build on, as relationships grow and develop over time.
Persons in relationship is a foundational aspect to reality. Our relational nature predates any modern identity obsessions. As such, persons in relation is an important place to start because it neither erases the uniqueness of the individual nor does it ignore the essential relational characteristic of existence. Rather than pitting one at odds with the other, persons in relation says that one is true because of the other.
A key term in this discussion will be that of particularity. In philosophy, particulars are thought of in contrast to universals. That is something is particular if it is defined in the specifics of place and time, as opposed to universals which stand as principals across them. In this article, ‘particularity’ will be used to describe all the things that make you specifically you and not someone else. Your embodied place in space and time and relational networks.
In Biblical Critical Theory, Christopher Watkin uses the helpful concept of diagonalisation, where something cuts across two supposedly polarised concepts, exposing the false dichotomy.
On the one had we have the concept of Self Definition- an atomised self, attempting to define themselves without any external reference point. This is largely how we think about the self in western cultures. On the other we have Self negation. An abdication of any sense of you being a unique person, instead you are absorbed into the ones of the mass. You as a particular person loses all definition, rather all you are is a member, this tends to be more of the focus in collectivist cultures.
Cutting across these two polarised options is that of Relational Particularity: individuals are defined as such by their relationship with others.
The Relational God
The foundation for the augment of the relational character of existence, and the importance of persons defined in relationship has its grounding in the godhead. Basil of Cesarea says “God is a sort of continuous and indivisible community.” The paradoxical idea of the Trinity is one of both united separation and separated unity. The relational character of God is prior his creative work, having always existed as Father, Son and Spirit. For a more detailed explanation of the below diagram, have a read of this Gospel Coalition article here.
Consistent with his being, God, as he reveals himself in his word, is relational. John's Gospel begins with a prologue that exposes this relational dynamic- The word was both with God and was God in the beginning, Calvin draws out the distinction between God referring to the Triune whole, and persons referring to their relationship within that unified whole:
“Here relation is distinctly expressed because when God is mentioned simply and indefinitely, the name belongs not less to the Son and the Spirit than to the father. But whenever the father is compared with the son, the peculiar property of each distinguishes the one from the other.” Institutes, Book I, Ch 13 point 6
Across Johns's Gospel, Jesus reveals the Father, and Jesus gains definition as ‘Son’ as he reveals his relationship with the Father. The revelation is done relationally. The actions of the Father towards the Son, and the Son towards the Father, and the Spirit in relation to the Father and the Son give the members of the Trinity particular definition. The terms that he uses in and of themselves imply relationship- You cannot be a father without a child, and you cannot be a child without someone who begat you; even the word for Spirit implies breath. God's act of self-revelation is unambiguously relational.
A warning in considering the relational nature of God: There is a danger in reading human logic back the other way in thinking about the Trinity this way, which we must be careful to avoid. We cannot then take what we know of fathers and sons and read them back into the Trinity. God uses concepts our minds can grasp at to reveal what he is like. We should be careful then in implying too much from the human equivalent. We also must be careful to not reduce God down just being a relationship between the persons, instead of than something central to him. Rather we should consider that the trinity sets the pattern of reality in which all other things find their origin. All things come from God, but we cannot then reflect all things back onto God in the reverse direction.
We cannot separate out the oneness of God from the triune persons of God. This particularity of persons is central to God, and to undermine or have a poorly developed theology of this has implications for both how we see God, but also, as we will go on to establish, how we see particular human persons as well.
The concept of the particularity of persons comes from God, the persons are only defined as a particular person in relationship with others. In the trinity, the persons are not defined independently of the other persons, neither are the persons lost in some all-consuming onenes of divinity. Rather, the unity of the triune relations brings definition to the persons.
The Relational person
Colin Gunton connects our own relational particularity to the Trinity, pointing out that our relational nature is an echo of God's. Defining an individual needs an ‘other’, one that the person is not, in order to know what they are. Detrich Bonhoeffer puts it succinctly like this:
“It is only in the you that I originates”
Sanctorum Communio
That is, it is only in the other, that I myself can gain definition. If there is no 'other' how can there possibly be a way to know what 'I' is?
Our relational nature isn't the sole aspect of us being made in the image of God, but it is a significant part. When God creates humans he breaks from the pattern of saying, “let there…” but instead, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen 1:26). And then goes on to create male and female. Man is created with an ‘other:’ woman. It is, as established in chapter 3 ‘not good’ that the man is alone. The man’s aloneness is not good because it goes against his nature, as one created in the image of the triune God, to be alone. He must have an ‘other’ to be himself. That one person is that particular person and not another is defined precisely through having an ‘other’.
In defining the particular relationally, humans reflect their creator whose triune nature is defined in relationship with the other members of the Trinity.
For God this relational definition is complete, there is no hiddenness between the unified persons and the relationship does not grow or change or progress over time. However, for contingent time bound humans this knowing and shaping of the self happens over time. Charles Taylor paints the process of self-understanding through the other as a kind of dialogue. A personal sense of self is formed in conversation with others. This dialogue as Charles Taylor points out, is most defining in our most significant and intimate relationships.
For the Christian, ultimately our most significant and intimate relationship with with our creator and saviour. As we grow in our relationship with Christ, we will see ourselves more clearly, and be shaped to be more like Christ. On a human level, we see this all the time, picking up mannerisms and interests from others, as well as understanding the ways we are different from them. The book of Proverbs is replete with warnings about how being in the company of fools will lead to you becoming like them, and the same for the wise, because we gain definition in relationship with others, and others will also, over time, shape who we are.
Sin has put a great fracture in our relational nature however. It cuts right across everything. The first obvious consequences of sin were alienation- the man and woman turn on each other, and disobey and then lie to God, who casts them out of the garden.
This state prior to sin, in perfect relationship with each other and with God, Bonhoeffer calls “The primal state” but now, after sin in the world he says "every person lives in complete, voluntary isolation; everyone lives their own life, rather than all living the same life in God”2
In an encounter with God in Christ a person takes a step back towards this ‘primal state.’ The restored relationship with God, as Bonhoeffer goes on to state, is fundamental to everything and utterly transformative. It is our relationship with God that allows us to begin to truly understand reality. Prior, we were alienated from God, from others, from ourselves. Alienated from reality. But an encounter with God and an ongoing relationship with Him is an encounter with reality that changes this alienation.
This relationship with God, by necessity, creates a community as well. To understand ourselves, we should look not inward, but outward. To God, to our community to make sense of ourselves and our place.
The Consequences of Forgetting Our Relational Nature
Losing sight of our relational nature and how it reflects our creator has a myriad of consequences. Here are just three:
1. We intellectualise Faith
For Augustine, the theological task was not an end in itself. Theology was always directed towards God, because the purpose of theology is knowing God. Forgetting the essential relational character of existence means that we can divorce knowing about God, from knowing God himself. But when we forget how relationally geared we are and how that reflects God, We focus more on knowing about God, than knowing God. We embrace the individualistic thinking of the Enlightenment that preferences rationality over relationship, the very thinking that has contributed to our identity dilemmas today.
2. We neglect the Church
Church is the essential community of the Christian life. If we consider ourselves as internally constituted, even encouraged to ‘find our identity in Christ’ and then look inside to make sense of this supposed ‘internal reality’ we will neglect church. At worst when church is hard It will become an inconvenience to my internal journey of self-discovering this ‘in Christ identity’, and will at best, when church is going well, become a means to my own self-actualisation, rather than a good in its self.
But if instead, we realise that it is our relationship with God first and others through God that we make sense of ourselves then Church is a place where actually you can be yourself most truly, as people who are designed for communion with God and others, and church is the place where we experience that most clearly before the new creation.3
3. We misunderstand sanctification
This focus on 'finding your identity in Christ’ by looking inside means that we also place immense pressure on the individual to realise for themselves what it looks like for them to live the Christian life. We put pressure on our individual devotional life, rather than our collective devotional life. But for instance, in historic Anglicanism, morning and evening prayer in the prayerbook were communal activities, not solo. It also makes us impatient with Godliness, and unable to interact with the complexity of the Christian life in this world. We use binary terms like finding your true identity in Christ and using that to negate other aspects of people's lived experience rather than emphasising the transformation that comes through a relationship with Christ and his church and allowing that to do the heavy lifting in changing people into the image of Christ. We become impatient with people's growth in maturity, while misunderstanding that growing relationships take time, are inefficient and different for every person. While we might never say it out loud, we can so easily imply that we want people to be better Christians, rather than wanting people to have an ever deepening relationship with Jesus. John Owen draws a helpful distinction between union and communion- Here’s Kelly Kapic’s summation of his distinction:
While union with Christ is something that does not ebb and flow, one’s experience of communion with Christ can fluctuate. This is an important theological and experiential distinction, for it protects the biblical truth that we are saved by radical and free divine grace. Furthermore, this distinction also protects the biblical truth that the children of God have a relationship with their Lord, and that there are things they can do that either help or hinder it.4
Identity in Christ language can confuse union with communion, and so we misunderstand how a relationship with God can ebb and flow, and growth in our relationship with God will shape our sense of self, but only over time. Crucially, this is not opposed to the concrete objective truths of the gospel.
In my last post, we explored the multiple ways that our use of identity language can be unhelpful, but it is this concept of relational particularity is at its core. Our identity obsession divides us, pitting us against each other. But God has made us understand ourselves in and through relationships. If we continue to only emphasise our internal, individual identities, we will continually feel isolated and purposeless. Instead, we should embrace the fact that we are inescapably defined by our relationships. Neither atomised nor anonymous. We are made by our God, who is triune, who reveals himself as relational in himself and desires a relationship with us. So in assessing what is helpful, we should start there and work outwards. Start with reality as revealed to us by God, so that we might truly understand who we are as we grow in our relationship with him and his people. Instead of focusing on the identity question, lets put our efforts into growing together in our relationship with Jesus. Only then will we understand ourselves. Only then will we become more like him.
Charles Taylor, The Secular Age
Detrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio
I recognise that the Church often falls short of this reality; feeling alone in church is real, hard, and painful because we know that is not how things should be. It’s the not yet part of the now.
Kelly Kapic’s introduction to “Communion with the Triune God” by John Owen