Pistis Christou

When we think of ourselves as people, there is a predilection to think ourselves as having an identity. Because we typically experience our own life as a flow of experiences, with their being continuity from one moment to the next, we abstract from our experiences a sense of one identity. Furthermore, since I experience my body as unique from all other bodies and that there is not another body that I experience as I experience my body, I am inclined to think myself as a singular self. These experiences of continuity of identity and singular uniqueness of my own self/body blend together to lead us to the conception of “myself” as one. This is not the only way we may construe ourselves, as we conceive of myself as bearing different identities, such as a child, spouse, parent, minister to a congregation, a congregant in a church, friend, worker, citizen of a political entity, etc. So, we can also construe ourselves as multiple identities. Both singular and plural conceptions of ourselves are very possible.

However, in Western society that has placed emphasis on the individual, the one-ness conception of selfhood making this one-ness not just a possible construal of ourselves, but as the default mode of thinking about who “I” am. This is more than simply a statement of how we exist in the social world, as many critiques of individualism are focused upon, but my concerned is more on the numerical nature of how we conceive ourselves.

When it comes to talking about identity, we exhibit a predilection to think ourselves as a singular, coherent person. While we may recognize those plural aspects of ourselves, we tend to construe these all as fitting together into a singular, coherent sense of who we are. Consequently, we are predisposed to construct narratives about who we are as a person that attempts to neatly and tidily integrates into one narrative so as to adequately and reliably expresse everything that is significant about “me” as one person. Here, the singular identity the default mode of self-perception and then we integrate our plural aspects into coherent account of who we are.

But this is not universal pattern; the polarity between integration and the plurality of relationships and experiences can be reversed in cultures, such that we construe ourselves as multiple, typically in terms of our multiple relationships. But this multiplicity isn’t chaotic, but rather there are still attempts to integrate the various identities but they are not integrated as the “one” self/identity. Instead, given that our sense of our selves/identities that treat our social relations as more salient for our attention rather than inner experience, our various senses of who we are tend to be integrated around significant (social) powers that undergird these socially construed identities. Various identities are brought into different centers of coherence, such that identity here may consider one’s political citizenship as primary, such as “I am a Roman citizen” during ancient Rome or “Jesus is Lord” for the early Christians. These identities are not construed as inherently antagonistic, where either one or the other are the only true representation of who we are, but rather as being in sometimes in tension and sometimes being in union with each other.

Because this manner integrates selves/identities around prominent powers in the our realm of existence rather than around personal experience and determination, self-definition of the person is not singular but multi-polar. It is this that defines Paul’s view of the Christian life as a conflict between flesh and Spirit. Far from identifying the “flesh” and “spirit” as singular substances that are joined together in a dualistic composite, flesh and Spirit are expressions of the primary powers that determine who the person is.

Pertaining to the flesh, Stoicism, which Paul is aware of, had developed their own universal account of human life, construing persons as bodies and construing all persons as being citizens, human embodiment was not simply an existential concept but an intrinsically relational and political concept. This is why, for instance, Paul talks about the flesh principally negative relational terms, as in 1 Corinthians and Galatians 5:19-21. The flesh is not merely our body in isolation of the world, but the flesh is the present relation of our body to the present social world where God’s presence had yet to transform. Paul’s conception of the flesh as the present state of our embodied life includes internal emotions and desires, so it does have an experiential-phenomenological component to it, but it has implicit social understandings. Hence, Paul talks about the body as a metaphorical, militaristic stronghold of the power of sin in Romans 7. Thus, the flesh serves as one way of construing the individual person, with its own tendencies and its own narrative that leads to death.

By contrast, the Spirit functions to offer another center of integration of various plural identities. The Spirit is the power of God that relates the believer to Christ, that joins them to a new relational status with God and with others. The Spirit is the other power that influence and impacts the person’s life, creating a different narrative where the person’s life becomes formed to the pattern of Christ.

Therefore, for Paul, there are two centers of human identity for believers, one centered around the flesh as a center of engagement with the social powers and others who share flesh, whereas there is another identity centered around the Spirit as a center of engagement with Jesus Christ and fellow believers that also have the Spirit. There exist two conflicting narratives, one with impulses that lead to death and another with leadings that bring about life. So, for Paul, the struggle is that the Christian ceases to be like the people of the world, whose lives are united around a singular power as influencing them through the flesh, but for them to move to another power, the power of God.¹ One proceeds to participate in the narrative of life that the Spirit brings as one puts to death the deeds of the flesh (Romans 8:12), which itself conveys a metaphor of violent warfare. One actively move towards one’s new collection of identities defined around God when one fights against the powers that have colonized the flesh.

I bring all this together to make a point about sanctification within the modern world. Because we are deeply biased construe ourselves as individual person with a singular, central identity and narrative around which everything fits, almost to a point that it is an implicit ideology that can resist any alternative, it serves as a hindrance to the journey of sanctificaton that Paul mentions and Wesleyan theology highlights.

Because we construe ourselves around one identity, we feel the need to integrate everything about who we are into a singular narrative this identity expresses. If it does not all fit, then rather than trying to fit it into another coherent narrative, we are prone to deny its existence. Recognition of aspects of who we are as persons becoming an either-or sort of process, where we entirely accept something as true about ourselves or entirely reject it. Consequently, we find people who have deep struggles with having complex views of who they are and their self-esteem, either vacillating between the extremes of all-good or all-bad as in splitting or having deep identity crises because the truth of who they are cannot be integrated around any coherent account of the self. This is the more extreme forms of dissociation of the person, as can be witnessed in people with certain personality disorders like borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, etc., but this tendency exists within all of us. Rather than a recognition that we contain multiple, interconnected identities that are struggling within the one person, which is to say that we have different centers of coherence about ourselves that are then coherently, but unconsciously integrated into our self-perception as a singular entity, we reject anything that may suggest we are not what this identity and narrative we hold to be true about ourselves. We are prone to see ourselves as either sinner or saint, as a devil or deified, as repelling or compelling, etc. and struggle to see how there are aspects of who we are that do not neatly fit into the primary identity and narrative we wish to hold about ourselves.

But for Paul, sanctification entails the recognition of the flesh so that one can fight the deeds of the flesh, so that one participates in the narrative of life of the Spirit. There is an identification and acceptance of existence of certain powers within ourselves and that there is a spiritual war to fight with it to move towards the other power within our self that is calling us in a different direction. In this war, obedience is construed as the power of the Spirit, disobedience is construed to the power of the flesh. We can recognize the multiple realities of who we are, instead of feeling the need to deny and rationalize away anything that suggests the prevailing self-narrative and identity isn’t entirely true.

Furthermore, the ideological-like stranglehold of ourselves in terms of a singular, coherent identity and narrative makes obedience and disobedience about defining that whole person rather than defining  different aspects of who we are. As such, either successes or failures, either righteousness or sin are prone to be taken as reflective of the whole of the person, with the other valence being rejected, particular the more emotionally intense the judgment about one’s actions is. We obey not in order to live according to and relate with a power that influences us, but in order to maintain our inflexible identity.

So, the end result is that we in the West are prone to obey to maintain self-perception and our identity rather than to be formed by and in relation to the significant powers in our life. We are prone to deny any aspect of ourselves that doesn’t fit within our prevailing narratives. This isn’t destiny being in the West, as it is possible for our sense of identity to be more complex, but it does present two barriers to the nature of sanctification: recognition of sin as contained in repentance and obedience as part of a loving relationship in response to God and His power. Religion becomes more about identity maintenance rather than personal transformation where one power is lessened whereas we experience a great impact from the other power. But it is this movement from flesh to Spirit, from the power of sin to the enslavement to righteousness, that defines the Christian journey of sanctification. This means, therefore, that to help people along the journey of sanctification, it will entail identifying and recognizing the different powers that pervade us as persons, that influence us in different directions to make us live differently in different circumstances.

1. It is important to note that this is the world being defined by the singular entity of the flesh and the powers that pervade it in sin and death is how Paul construes the world in a singular manner; that is not necessarily how non-Christians in the Roman world construed themselves, particuarly if they were a part of a social group that had less status.