Personality
personality
(Latin: persona, mask)
A complete individual rational or intelligent nature, distinct from, and incommunicable to, every other being, so that it exists and acts “of its own right” (sui juris), autonomously, independently of every other being except the Creator. Briefly it is a rational or intelligent individual. The attributes and actions of an intellective nature are always referred to the person present. This person is not communicable ”as an accident” since it is a substance – not ”as a universal” to individuals since it is itself an individual – not ”as an integral part” to a whole, as a foot or hand to the whole body, nor ”as an essential part” to the whole as the body or the soul to the composite, since it is itself “complete” – nor can it be communicated to, or assumed by, a higher person by which it would be controlled and to which its actions would be referred, since it has a perfection giving it its “own proper independent existence” called subsistence.
The latter perfection by which a complete individual rational nature is rendered incommunicable to another being and hence a person according to the common opinion of Scholastics is some positive perfection, really distinct from the complete individual nature. By many it is considered to be a “substantial mode” perfecting the nature in the line of substance and rendering it independent and incapable of being communicated to or assumed by another.
Since the human nature of Christ was communicated to or assumed by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, there was no human person in Christ, only the one Divine Person. To this Person were referred all the acts of Christ’s human nature. There are three persons in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, really distinct as persons although possessing the same nature. Personality in the Trinity is based on the “opposition” of the relative perfections, which are founded on the Son’s having been “generated” and on the Holy Ghost’s having “proceeded” from the Father and the Son. The Divine Substance or Essence as such is not a person, since it is communicated to the three Divine Persons.
PERSONALITY
That substantial permanent being which is the subject of, and to which are referred, all the states and acts of an intellective being. It is that which is understood by the “I,” the “self.” It remains numerically and essentially the same throughout life, differing at various times only in accidents, in super-added states or acts. Since the sensations of “seeing,” “hearing,” etc.” modify the “self,” personality consists of body as well as soul; Personality in this sense is a particular view of the Scholastic “person.” Personality (as a perfection) differs from individuality. Individuality is that perfection by which a being is rendered unique, distinctive, and separate from others, incapable of being duplicated into another of that same being. It is possessed by inanimate objects, by plants, and by animals, as well as by men. Personality, however, is that perfection by which a being has control, control of self and of others through self, is free and independent, and superior to material forces, dominates instead of being dominated. Hence it is possessed only by beings with a spiritual principle. One could possess great individuality through remarkable “uniqueness” and distinctiveness and yet have little personality, due to his dependence and inability to control himself and others. Most moderns place personality in self-consciousness or in freedom or in some act. Self-consciousness “manifests” the personality but does not constitute it. Consciousness is the modification of some thing, which thing is the self, the person or the personality. Likewise there must be some being which is free and which acts, and that being is the person.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Personality
It is proposed in this article to give an account; (1) of the physical constituents of personality in accordance with the scholastic theory; (2) of concepts of personality that conflict with the theory; (3) of abnormalities of consciousness with reference to their bearing on theories of personality.
(1) THE PHYSICAL CONSTITUENTS OF PERSONALITY
A man’s personality is that of which he has cognizance under the concept of “self”. It is that entity, substantial, permanent, unitary, which is the subject of all the states and acts that constitute his complete life. An appeal to self-consciousness shows us that there is such a subject, of which thought, will, and feeling are modifications. It is substantial, i. e. not one or all of the changing states but the reality underlying them, for our self-consciousness testifies that, besides perceiving the thought, it has immediate perception in the same act of the subject to whom the thought belongs. Just as no motion can be apprehended without some sort of apprehension of the object moved, so the perception of thought carries with it perception of the thinker. The changing states are recognized as determinations of the “self”, and the very concept of a determination involves the presence of something determined, something not itself a determination, i. e. a substance. It is permanent, in that though one may say, “I am completely changed”, when referring to a former state, still one knows that the “I” in question is still the same numerically and essentially, though with certain superadded differences.
This permanence is evident from a consideration of our mental processes. Every act of intellectual memory implies a recognition of the fact that I, thinking now, am the “self” as the one who had the experience which is being recalled. My former experiences are referred to something which has not passed as they have passed, to my own self or personality. From this permanence springs the consciousness of self as a unitary principle. The one to whom all the variations of state belong is perceived as an entity complete in itself and distinguished from all others. Unity of consciousness does not constitute but manifests unity of being. The physical principle of this permanence and unity is the simple, spiritual, unchanging substance of the rational soul. This does not mean, however, that the soul is identical with the personal self. There are recognized as modifications of the self not merely acts of thought and volition, but also sensations, of which the immediate subject is the animated body. Even in its own peculiar sphere the soul works in conjunction with the body; intellectual reasoning is accompanied and conditioned by sensory images. A man’s personality, then, consists physically of soul and body. Of these the body is what is termed in scholastic language the “matter” the determinable principle, the soul is the “form”, the determining principle. The soul is not merely the seat of the chief functions of man — thought and will; it also determines the nature and functioning of the body. To its permanence is due the abiding unity of the whole personality in spite of the constant disintegration and rebuilding of the body. Though not therefore the only constituent of personality, the soul is its formal principle. Finally, for the complete constitution of personality this compositum must exist in such a way as to be “subsistent” (see PERSON).
(2) NON-SCHOLASTIC THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
Many modern schools of philosophy hold that personality is constituted not by any underlying reality which self-consciousness reveals to us, but by the self-consciousness itself or by intellectual operations, Locke held that personality is determined and constituted by identity of consciousness. Without denying the existence of the soul as the substantial principle underlying the state of consciousness, he denied that this identity of substance had any concern with personal identity. From what has been said above it is clear that consciousness is a manifestation not the principle, of that unity of being which constitutes personality. It is a state, and presupposes something of which it is a state. Locke’s view and kindred theories are in conflict with the Christian revelation, in that, as in the Incarnate Word there are two intellects and two “operations”, there are therefore two consciousnesses. Hence accepting Locke’s definition of personality there would be two persons.
From Locke’s theory it was but a step to the denial of any permanent substance underlying the perceived states. For Hume the only knowable reality consists in the succession of conscious thoughts and feelings. As these are constantly changing it follows that there is no such thing as permanence of the Ego. Consequently, the impression of abiding identity is a mere fiction. Subsequent theorists however, could not acquiesce in this absolute demolition; an explanation of the consciousness of unity had somehow to be found. Mill therefore held personality to consist in the series of states “aware of itself as a series”. According to James, personality is a thing of the moment, consisting in the thought of the moment: “The passing thought is itself the thinker”. But each thought transmits itself and all its content to its immediate successor, which thus knows and includes all that went before. Thus is established the “stream of consciousness” which in his view constitutes the unity of the Ego. Besides the fundamental difficulties they share in common, each of these theories is open to objections peculiar to itself. How can a number of states, i. e. of events ex hypothesi entitatively distinct from one another, be collectively conscious of themselves as a unity? Similarly, in the theory of James, successive thoughts are distinct entities. As therefore no thought is ever present to the one preceding it, how does it know it without some underlying principle of unity connecting them?
Again, James does not believe in unconscious states of mind. In what sense then does every thought “know” all its predecessors? It is certainly not conscious of doing so. But the objection fundamental to all these theories is that, while pretending to account for all the phenomena of self-consciousness, its most important testimony, namely that to a self who is not the thought, who owns the thought, and who is immediately perceived in the act of reflexion upon the thought, is treated as a mere fiction. Against any such position may be urged all the arguments for the permanent and unitary nature of the self. The modern school of empirical psychologists shows a certain reaction against systems which deny to personality a foundation in substance. Thus Ribot: “Let us set aside the hypothesis which makes of the Ego ‘a bundle of sensations’, or states of consciousness, as is frequently repeated after Hume. This is . . . to take effects for their cause” (Diseases of Personality, 85). For them the unity of the Ego rests merely on the unity of the organism. “The organism, and the brain, as its highest representation, constitute the real personality” (op. cit., 154). A system which ignores the existence of the human soul fails to account for the purely intellectual phenomena of consciousness, abstract ideas, judgment, and inference. These require a simple, i. e. non-extended, and therefore immaterial principle. The various theories we have been considering make the whole personality consist in what is really some part of it. Its substantial constituents are soul and body, its accidental constituents are all the sensations, emotions, thoughts, volitions, in fact all the experiences, of this compositum.
(3) ABNORMALITIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
We may here review briefly some forms of what are known as “disintegrations of personality”, and consider to what extent they affect the scholastic theory of the constitution of the person. In double or multiple personality there are manifested in the same individual two or more apparently distinct series of conscious states. There is a break not merely of character and habit, but of memory also. Thus in 1887 a certain Ansel Bourne disappeared from his home at Coventry, Rhode Island, and two weeks later set up business as A. J. Browne, a baker, at Norristown, Pennsylvania. This new “personality” had no knowledge of Ansel Bourne. After eight weeks he one morning woke up to find himself again Ansel Bourne. The adventures, even the existence, of A. J. Browne were a vanished episode. Subsequently under hypnotic influence the latter “personality” was recalled, and recounted its adventures. The phenomena of double personality may also be recurrent apart from hypnosis. In such cases the two states reappear alternately, each having the chain of memories proper to itself. The instance most frequently cited is that of “Felida X”, observed for many years by Dr. Azam. Two states of consciousness alternated. In state II she retained memory of what happened in state I, but not vice versa. Her character in the two states was widely different. Frequently in such cases the character in the second state tends to become more like the character in the original state, appearing finally as a blend of the two, as in the case of Mary Reynolds (cf. “Harper’s Magazine”, May, 1860).
In “multiple personality” the most extraordinary abnormalities of memory and character occur. In th case of “Miss Beauchamp” (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, xv, 466 sq.), besides the original personality, there were no less than four other states periodically reappearing, different from one another in temperament, and each with a continuous memory. Owing to a mental shock in 1893 Miss Beauchamp’s character changed, though memory remained continuous. This state was afterwards called B I. Under hypnotism two other states manifested themselves B II, and B III. Of these B III (“Sally”) practically developed an independent existence, and continually manifested itself apart from hypnotic suggestion. B I had no memory of B II or B III. B II knew B I, but not B III, while B III knew both the others. Eventually in 1899 after another mental shock there appeared a fourth “personality” B IV, whose memory presented a complete blank from the “disappearance” of the original Miss Beauchamp after the first shock till the appearance of B IV after the second, six years later. Her character was, however, very unlike that of the original personality. B III had memory of all that happened to B IV, but did not know her thoughts. Furthermore, B III was exceedingly jealous both of her and of B I, and played spiteful tricks on them. In connexion with these phenomena, the theory has been proposed that the original personality became “disintegrated” after the first shock, and that B I and B IV are its components, while B II and B III are varying manifestations of the “subliminal self”.
Sometimes again the phenomena of “double personality” are manifested in an individual, not in alternating periods, but simultaneously. Thus M. Taine cites the case of a lady who while continuing a conversation would write a whole page of intelligent and connected matter on some quite alien subject. She had no notion of what she had been writing, and was frequently surprised, sometimes even alarmed, on reading what she had written.
In dealing with the problems suggested by such phenomena, one must first of all be sure that the facts are well attested and that fraud is excluded. It should also be noted that these are abnormal conditions, whereas the nature of personality must be determined by a study of the normal individual. Nor is it permissible even in these exceptional cases to infer a “multiple” personality, so long as the phenomena can be explained as symptoms of disease in one and the same personality.
The various groups of phenomena enumerated above would merit the title of different “personalities”, if it could be shown; (a) that personality is constituted by functioning as such, and not by an underlying substantial principle, or (b) that, granted that there be a formal principle of unity, such cases showed the presence in the individual, successively or simultaneously, of two or more such principles, or (c) that the principle was not simple and spiritual but capable of division into several separately functioning components.
The hypothesis that functioning, as such, constitutes personality has already been shown insufficient to account for the facts of normal consciousness, while the other theories are opposed to the permanence and simplicity of the human soul. Nor are any of these theories necessary to account for the facts. The soul not being a pure spirit but the “form” of the body, it follows that while it performs acts in which the body has no share as a cause, still the soul is conditioned in its activity by the state of the physical organism. Now, in the case of non-simultaneous double personality, the essential feature is the break of memory. Some experiences are not referred to the same “self” as other experiences; in fact, the memory of that former self disappears for the time being. Concerning this one may remark that such failures of memory are exaggerated; there is no complete loss of all that has been acquired in the former state. Apart from the memory of definite facts about oneself there remains always much of the ordinary intellectual possession. Thus the baker “A. J. Browne” was able to keep his accounts and use the language intelligently. That he could do so shows the permanence of the same intellectual and therefore non-composite principle. The disappearance from his memory of most of his experiences merely shows that his physical organism, by the state of which the action of his soul is conditioned, was not working in the normal way.
In other words, while the presence of any form of intellectual memory shows the continuance of a permanent spiritual principle, the loss of memory does not prove the contrary; it is merely absence of evidence either way. Thus the theory that the soul acts as the “form” of the body explains the two partially dissevered chains of memory. What sort of change in the nervous organism would be necessary to account for the calling up of two completely different sets of experiences, as occurs in double personality, no psychologists, even those who consider the physical organism the sole principle of unity, pretend to explain satisfactorily. It may be remarked that such manifestations are almost always found in hysterical subjects, whose nervous organization is highly unstable, and that frequently there are indications which point to definite lesion or disease in the brain.
The alleged cases of simultaneous double personality, manifested usually by speech in the case of one and writing in the case of the other, present special difficulty, in that there is question not of loss of memory of an action performed, but of want of consciousness of the action during its actual performance. There are certainly degrees of consciousness, even of intellectual operation. The doubt therefore always remains as to whether the so-called unconscious writing, if really indicative of mental operation, be literally unconscious or only very faintly conscious. But there is a further doubt, namely, as to whether the writing of the “secondary personality” is intellectual at all at the moment. The nervous processes of the brain being set in motion may run their course without any demand arising for the intellectual action of the soul. In the case of such highly nervous subjects, it is at least possible that images imprinted on the nervous organism are committed to writing by purely automatic and reflex action.
Finally, there remains a sense in which phenomena. of the same nature as those we have been considering may be indicative of the presence of a second personality, e. g. when the body is under the influence of an alien spirit. Possession is something the possibility of which the Church takes for granted. This, however, would not imply a true double personality in one individual. The invading being would not enter into composition with the body to form one person with it, but would be an extrinsic agent communicating local motion to a bodily frame which it did not “inform”. (See CONSCIOUSNESS; SOUL.)
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MYERS, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, I (London, 1903), ii, and appendix; RIBOT, Les Maladies de la Personnalité (Paris, 1885), tr. The Diseases of Personality (Chicago, 1906); MAHER, Psychology (London, 1903); ROURE, Etudes, LXXV, 35, 492, 636; RICHMOND, An Essay on Personality as a Philosophical Principle (London, 1900); ILLINGWORTH, Personality, Human and Divine (London, 1894), i, ii; HARPER, Metaphysics of the School, bk. V (London, 1879), ii, iii; BINET, Les Altérations de la Personnalité (Paris, 1892), tr. (London, 1896); On Double Consciousness (Chicago, 1905).
L. W. GEDDES. Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Personality
The word person is derived from the Latin persona, originally a term of the theater, and signifying the mask worn of old by actors. Hence it signified a dramatic character, and in Cicero a personage; in Suetonius an individual, as also in law Latin. Tertullian seems to use the word in its original sense, where he says Personae Dei, Christus Dominus, for he immediately interprets the words by the apostle’s expression, Qui est imago Dei i.e. Christ is the eternal manifestation of the Deity (Adv. Marc. v, ii); he uses it also in its conventional meaning, personam nominis, the personage to whom the name attaches (ibid. 4:14); but elsewhere he applies the word in its true ecclesiastical sense of an intelligent individual Being, Videmus duplicem statum non confusum sed conjunctum in una persona Deum et hominemn Jesum (Adv. Proef: 28 Similarly the adverb personaliter means with him relative individuality in contrast with absolute being: Hunc substantialiter quidem appellant; personaliter vero et, i.e. the first absolutely, the second in antecedent relation with every after- emanation. It is important to ascertain the meaning of ecclesiastical Latin terms in Tertullian, for when he wrote the language of the Church at Rome was Greek; and the Latinity of the Western Church, as well as the barbarisms of its version of Scripture, were imported shortly afterwards from Africa. Persona in Latin bore the same relation to substantia as to in Greek theology; but in the sense of person was etymologically equivalent for the very different theological idea of substantia in Latin; hence arose the confusion that has been noticed under the article HYPOSTASIS SEE HYPOSTASIS.
Hilary first coined the term essentia, to convey the meaning of ; novo quiden? nomine, as says Augustine, quo usi non slunt veteres Latini auctores, sed jam nostris terimporibus usitato, ne deesset etiam linguae nostrae quod Grseci appellant (Civ. Dei, 12:2), and persona was retained as the equivalent for .
The meaning of person in theology is as Locke has defined it in metaphysics: A person is a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places. There must be a continuous intelligence and a continuous identity, as well as individuality. The memorable axiom of Descartes, Cogito, ergo sum. may be applied not only to the reality of thinking substance, but also to the true personality of that intelligent being. I am a conscious being, therefore in that consciousness I have a personal existence. But personality, as applied to the divine substance, involves a contradiction that defines in this direction, as Dr. Mansel has observed, the limits of human thought (Limits of Religious Thought, p. 59). We are compelled to apply to the Absolute our own insufficient human terms of finite relation. The idea of personality must always involve limitation; one person is invested with acqidents that another has not. Yet God, as the designer and creator of the universe, must have a personal existence; as Paley has well stated it, The marks of design are too strong to be gotten over, and design must have had a designer; that designer must have been a person. That person is God. But how is substance thus affected with personality? Analogy in such a matter cannot lead us through the difficulty, for God is one, and such a test is an impossibility for want of any true means of comparison. Yet thus much may be said: So far as it reaches, analogy shows that the personality of the Deity is very possible; for if beings of another world could watch the growing results of human civilization, without having the power of tracing out the individual efforts that produce it, they would find themselves in a somewhat similar difficulty. Humanity, they might reason, is certainly an intelligent substance; but substance is something vague and undetermined; yet the intelligence that is developing all terrestrial works must be the result of personal design and personal skill: therefore this world-wide humanity must have a definite, personal substance. Adam, in the first instance, was that personal substance. Christ in the end shall recapitulate (Irenaeus) all humanity in himself, we know not how. Therefore in some way that is a present mystery, but of certain future solution, God may be Substance that is All-wise and Absolute, and personality may attach to his being, limiting the Unlimited, and defining the Indefinite (ibid. p. 56-59). In the mean time the idea of personality is mixed up intimately with all man’s highest and noblest notions of the Deity (ibid. p. 57, 240), neither is it possible to form the faintest possible conception of a non-personal God. The religious idea revolts against the negation, which, in fact, would be its annihilation. The sense of personal individual responsibility to a personal God and Father of all would pass away, and a caput mortuum of pantheism would be all that would remain an illusive Maya for the present, a hopeless Nirvana for the future. Next, with respect to a plurality of persons in the Deity, Hooker excellently defines the properties that determine this phase of the divine nature; and his generalization may serve to impress upon the mind the impossibility of expressing the mutual relations of three hypostases in one substance by any adequate term that human language can supply. That which transcends thought can never find expression by the tongue. The personality of the Father and Holy Spirit is affected by nothing without the divine nature; the personality of the Son has been modified since the incarnation by taking the manhood into God; and a second definition by Locke exactly covers this modification; Person, he says, belongs only to intelligent agents, capable of a law and happiness and misery, all of which accidents of personality pertain to Christ, though not to the person of the Son of (God as pre-existing eternally in the Word. SEE HYPOSTATICAL UNION; SEE SUBSTANCE.
We attribute personality, says Ahrens (Cours de Theologie, 2:272) to every being which exists, not solely for others, but which is in the relation of unity with itself in existing, or for itself. Thus we refuse personality to a mineral or a stone, because these things exist for others, but not for themselves. An animal, on the contrary, which exists for itself, and stands in relation to itself, possesses a degree of personality. But man exists for himself in all his essence, in a manner more intimate and more extensive; that which he is, he is for himself, he has consciousness of it. But God alone exists for himself in a manner infinite and absolute. God is entirely in relation to himself; for there are no beings out of him to whom he could have relation. His whole essence is for himself, and this relation is altogether internal; and it is this intimate and entire relation of God to himself in all his essence which constitutes the divine personality. It should be observed, however, that personality implies limitation. Infinite personality, therefore, would be a contradiction in terms. The term person, as applied to the Godhead, is not used in its ordinary sense, as denoting a separate being, but represents the Latin persona or the Greek hypostasis, which means that which stands under or is the subject of certain attributes or properties. Three persons are not thus three parts of one God, nor are they three Gods; nor yet are Father, Son, and Spirit only three names, but distinct hypostases with characteristic attributes. In modern times, especially in Germany, and through a prevalent philosophical mysticism, opinions are propagated about the person of Christ which are quite opposed to the doctrines of all the orthodox and evangelical confessions. The second article of the Church of England, and the eighth of the Westminster Confession, express the general view. So does the Quicunque vult of the Liturgy. But the modern theory teaches a different dogma, thus: Martensen and Ebrard seem to adopt a view very similar to that of Beron in the early ages, who held that the Logos assumed the form of a man, that is, subjected himself to the limitations of humanity.
The infinite became finite, the eternal and omnipresent imposed on himself the limitations of time and space; God became man. The statement of Ebrard is, The eternal Son of God, by a free act of self-limitation, determined to assume the existenceform of a center of human life, so that he acted as such from the conception onward, and having assumed this form, he fashioned for himself a body, etc. According to this view there are not two natures in Christ, in the established sense of the word nature, but only two forms of existence, a prior and posterior form of one and the same nature. The most common mode of presenting the doctrine is to say that the Logos assumed our fallen humanity. But by this, we are told, is not to be understood that he assumed an individual body and soul, so that he became a man, but that he assumed generic humanity, so that he became the man. By generic humanity is to be understood a life-power, that peculiar law of life, corporeal and incorporeal, which develops itself outwardly as a body and inwardly as a soul. The Son, therefore, became incarnate in humanity, in that objective reality, entity, or substance in which all human lives are one. Thus, too, Olshausen, in his comment on Joh 1:14, says, It could not be said that the Word was made man, which would imply that the Redeemer was a man by the side of other men, whereas, being the second Adam, he represented the totality of human nature in his exalted comprehensive personality. To the same effect he says, in his remarks on Rom 5:15, If Christ were a man among other men, it would be impossible to conceive how his suffering and obedience could have an essential influence on mankind: he could then only operate as an example. But he is to be regarded, even apart from his divine nature, as the man, i.e. as realizing the absolute idea of humanity, and including it potentially in himself spiritually as Adam did corporeally. To this point archdeacon Wilberforce devotes the third chapter of his book on The incarnation, and represents the whole value of Christ’s work as depending upon it. If this be denied he says, the doctrines of atonement and sanctification, though confessed in words, become a mere empty phraseology. In fine, Dr. Nevin, in his Mystical Presence, p. 210, says, The Word became flesh; not a single man only, as one among many; but flesh, or humanity, in its universal conception. How else could he be the principle of a general life, the origin of a new order of existence for the human world as such? How else could the value of his mediatorial work be made over to us in a real way by a true imputation, and not a legal fiction only? The hypostatic union, on these hypotheses, is the assumption on the part of the eternal Son of God, not simply or primarily of a true body and a reasonable soul, as the Church has always held, but of humanity as a generic life, of our fallen humanity, of that entity or substance in which all human lives are one. The effect of this union is that humanity is taken into divinity: it is exalted into a true divine life. The life of Christ is one, and it may be designated as divine or as human. On this point, more than any other, its advocates are specially full and earnest. Schleiermacher ignores all essential difference between God and humanity, holding that they differ in our conception, and functionally, but are essentially one. Dorner, also, the historian of the doctrine concerning Christ’s person, avows that the Church view of two distinct substances in the same person involves endless contradictions, and that no true Christoloy can be framed which does not proceed on the assumption of the essential unity of God and man; while Ullmann makes this essential oneness between the divine and human the fundamental idea of Christianity.
The term person, when applied to Deity, is certainly used in a sense somewhat different from that in which we apply it to one another; but when it is considered that the Greek words’ and , to which it answers, are, in the New Testament applied to the Father and Son (Heb 1:3; 2Co 4:6), and that the personal pronouns are used by our Lord (Joh 14:26), it can hardly be condemned as unscriptural and improper. There have been warm debates between the Greek and Latin churches about the words hypostasis and persona: the Latin, concluding that the word hypostasis signified substance or essence, thought that to assert that there were three divine hypostases was to say that there were three Gods. On the other hand, the Greek Church thought that the word person did not sufficiently guard against the Sabellian notion of the same individual Being sustaining three relations. Thus each part of the Church was ready to brand the other with heresy, till, by a free and mutual conference in a synod at Alexandria, A.D. 362, they made it appear that it was a mere contention about the grammatical sense of a word; and then it was allowed by men of moderation on both sides that either of the two words might be indifferently used., See Beza, Principles of the Christian Religion; Owen, On the Spirit; Marci Medulla, 1:5, 3; Ridgley, Divinity, qu. 11; Hurrion, On the Spirit, p. 140; Doddridge, Lectures, lec. 159; Gill, On the Trinity, p. 93; Watts, Works, v. 48, 208; Gill, Body of Divinity (8vo), 1:205; Edwards, History of Redemption, p. 51, note; Horoe Sol. 2:20; Stuart, Letters to Charming; Keith, Norton, and Winslow, On the Trinity; Knapp, Theology, p. 325; Bibliotheca Sacra, Feb. 1844, p. 159; Oct. 1850, p. 696; July, 1867, p. 570; New Englander, July, 1875, art. iii; Stud. u. Kritiken, 1838, 1847. Older monographs on the subject are cited by Volbeding, Index Programmatum, p. 82. SEE TRINITY.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Personality (2)
is an attribute of conscious beings only, and thus distinguishes individuals from each other. In the Trinity it is simple and absolute, so that the three persons of the godhead are not three beings, since they have a common consciousness. In man it is compound, consisting of a boldy and a soul, which are not homogeneous, as are the three divine persons, and yet constitute but a single being, inasmuch as the consciousness essentially resides in the soul, which is therefore per se the real person, and remains such after the separation from the body. In Jesus Christ there was a double or complex personality, because he had a complete human soul (as well as body), and was also filled hypostatically with the divine spirit. He consequently may be said to have had a sort of double consciousness; for the divine spirit did not always communicate everything to the human spirit, and the latter could not be commensurate with the former. Yet he was not two persons, inasmuch as the two natures were indissolubly blended, and the twofold personality likewise. The partial lack of homogeneity between the divine and the human spirit in him did not negative this, just as the still greater dissimilarity between human flesh and soul does not negative unity in man.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Personality
PERSONALITY
1. Definition and analysis.Personality is the substance and summary of a mans qualities, or rather it is the man himself, discovered in the last analysis and in the highest category of being short of God. Indeed, complete personality can be in God only, while to man can belong but a weak and faint copy thereof, (Lotze, Outlines, p. 72). The truth is that through the limitations of bodily existence there are mental and moral workings which do not at once cross the threshold of consciousness, but may at any time surprise the soul, as in the flash of genius or the turn of conversion. But personality implies a grip of these things as our own. We know that we exist when self is revealed to us over against the world. There the self-conscious life begins. But it is not until God is revealed over against both self and the world that personality is fully exercised. The recognition of a moral authority is the touchstone of the self-determined life. Thus, for popular purposes, personality may be expressed in terms of character. It is made up, says F. W. Robertson, of three attributesconsciousness, character, and will. In other words, it is the power of self-assertion on lines of character. But, philosophically speaking, the two chief factors in personality, in so far as it can be analyzed, are self-consciousness and self-determination, the contents of which it will be necessary to examine. Put briefly, self-consciousness is the souls utterance I am; self-determination is the souls assertion I will.
(1) Self-consciousness is the souls utterance I am. (a) I am myself and nobody else (cf. Joh 9:9 ). Almost the first sense of personality is that it speaks from behind closed doors. It can look out on others, but they cannot enter uninvited to share its life. This point is brought out in Holman Hunts famous picture The Light of the World, in which the door has no handle outside. Each self is a unique existence, which is perfectly impervious to other selvesimpervious in a fashion of which the impenetrability of matter is a faint analogue (Seth, Hegelianism and Personality, p. 216). (b) I am myself amid the varied functions of my being. Spinoza based personality on the intellect, Schleiermacher on the feeling, Schopenhauer on the will. But personality subtly underlies thinking, feeling, and willing. They are only modes of the souls self-expression. They are unified in the intuition I am. In Joh 6:20 there is an illustrative use of , when Jesus assured the disciples of His personal identity behind an unfamiliar appearance. (c) I am myself in a continuity of experience. In all movement of time and change of circumstances the soul still knows itself as the same. We cannot get rid of our own past; it is with us still. And no sceptical philosophy can dissolve this elemental fact. There is a corresponding sense of in Joh 8:58, where Jesus says, Before Abraham was, I am, and reveals the wonderful secret of His self-consciousness.These modes of the souls utterance I am enter into the basis of our understanding, on which is erected that faculty of the soul called reason, by which we cognize and construe the world. But the soul must be considered not only in this static, but also in its dynamic aspect, in its
(2) Self-determination, which is the souls assertion I will. The soul selects and pursues its own ends at the bidding of its own desires. It has music of its own to beat out, by appreciating and appropriating objects in its own environment. The whole range of enjoyment in the pursuit of happiness on the one hand, and of endurance in the path of duty on the other, rests on the use of this power of self-determination. But that which moralizes the human will is that it responds to two voices(a) I can. The sense of liberty therein expressed is an essential element of personality, and through the intuition of the soul it has held its own as an assertion of free will in spite of the affirmations of reason respecting the will of God (in theology) or the laws of nature (in science). Our moral sense is strictly bound up with this assertion of the soul, without which there can be neither merit, nor blame, nor any accountability. It is this which binds up our being with that of God.
So near is glory to our dust,
So nigh is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can. (Emerson).
(b) I must Not, however, until I will is consummated in I must is the height of personality reached, for its liberty of will is given for the sake of its voluntary obedience. When the personality has found its master, its resources are all enlisted on the side of self-determination, especially when for loves sake we lose ourselves. In other words, the highest outgoing and incoming of personality in self-determination is in the exercise of love.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might,
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.
2. Christs influence on the conception of personality.The full extension of the possibilities of personality is due to Jesus Christ. He opened up new vistas for the souls self-consciousness by revealing the inherent but hitherto hidden natures of God, the world, and the soul, whereby the value of the personality has been infinitely enhanced; and higher ways for the souls self-determination by bringing the gift of the Holy Spirit, in the strength of which the soul overcomes the world, submits to God, and thus realizes itself. This is what the world was waiting for. Prof. Bigg (The Church and Roman Empire) shows that the Eastern religions of Isis and Mithras were being welcomed because by their virtual monotheism and their proffer of peace and happiness they seemed to meet the needs, of the newly discovered personality. Christ did this completely. He supplied the key of knowledge to self-consciousness and the nerve of power to self-determination. Henceforth the soul is a possibility to be realized through knowledge in obedience. These are the two factors of faith, for faith is at once a vision and an allegiance (Hort). Prior to Christ, and still apart from Him, the conception of the world has largely absorbed both the notion of God (in Polytheism, Pantheism, and Fatalism), and that of the soul (in Naturalism and Materialism). But through Christ, God and man draw out apart from the world, apart from each other too (sin being the sunderer); and yet more truly close to each other, under the common conception of personality in which both share as distinguished from the world. Illingworth has put the whole point finely at the end of his 5th Bampton Lecture: As reason qualifies and conditions our whole animal nature by its presence, so that we are never merely animals, spirituality also permeates and modifies all that we call our natural faculties; and our personality itself is, in this sense, as truly supernatural as the Divine Person in whom alone it finds its home.
God soul the only facts for me.
Prove them facts? That they oerpass my power of proving
Proves them such. (R. Browning, La Saisiaz).
Through Christ man has learned to read God and himself as being gathered under the same categories, perfect and infinite in the one, derivative and fettered in the other. But that is only the intellectual aspect of what we owe Him. And, as Martensen has said (Dogmatics, p. 154), No intellectual creation can ever be perfected by dint of a mere psychological possibility; it must first be fructified and awakened by a higher inspiration. Christ has shown us the way to the consummation of our personality in the voluntary and glad surrender to God and in fellowship with Him through the Holy Spirit (1Jn 1:3), so that we learn to say
Our wills are ours, we know not how:
Our wills are ours to make them Thine.
There is such an utter absence of the language of the schools in the speech of Christ, that one might be tempted to think that He made no contribution to the subject of personality. And it is true He was no philosopher in the accepted sense of the term. But He gave philosophy a new world to discover. He roused and satisfied experiences of the soul which at length called into being a new terminology. The fact that the analysis of personality first went to the depths in Pauls Epistles, argues that the first perfect exposition of personality was in Pauls Master. For a thing must be before it is thought upon. Where even Plato and Aristotle had groped blindly because they had no true conception of personality, Christ moved with perfect assurance. What was hidden from them, the wise and prudent, was all in all to Him. It might truly be said that personality is the pivot of the gospel. The gospel was in the highest and most perfect sense a personal religion (Bousset, Jesus, p. 164). It does not move in the regions of mere intellect or will or feeling, nor even in the field of their joint exercise. It moves throughout in the region of the man himself, in his self-consciousness and self-determination, and finds its highest expression in the Divine passion for the soul and the human hunger for God. Christ did not coin terms, and yet there is what may be called with Rothe, a language of the Holy Ghost. His psychological expressions do not travel beyond the accepted antitheses of soul and body, flesh and spirit, using the first to express simply the two elements in mans nature (Mat 10:28), and the second to emphasize their distinction in origin (Joh 3:6) and divergence in character (Mar 14:38). Indeed, Jesus did not make use of the psychology available in His own day, e.g. (Sir 14:2), which is a plain reference to conscience.
Although the word spirit () is reserved in the Gospels chiefly for super- or sub-human agencies, it is also used indifferently as a synonym for or soul, to express the region of the inner life where the feelings especially have full play. In fourteen instances of such a kind, occurs seven times (five times in reference to Jesus), and also seven times (in reference to Jesus only twice). (With Paul, however, these two words fall apart in psychological connotation). The favourite word of the Evangelists, and presumably of Jesus Himself, is , which is not only the region of the feelings, but the seat of the will () and of the thoughts (). In fact, throughout the Bible it means the organ of the personality (cf. Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible , art. Psychology). It is, by the way, suggestive of the moral emphasis of Christs teaching that He never uses , , or their correlatives. But, while Jesus employed terms simply In their popular connotation, He sometimes transfused them with His own transcendental conceptions, and then they stand in excess of light. Thus, If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light (Mat 6:22); Whosoever will save his life () shall lose it (Mat 16:25); Blessed are your eyes, for they see (Mat 13:16); The things that proceed out of a man defile him (Mar 7:20); He that believeth on me, out of his belly () shall flow rivers of living water (Joh 7:38).
But Christs exposition of personality was not vocal, but vital. It was essentially the realm in which He lived, moved, and had His being: it was the true life to which He invited the careworn and heavy laden, and those who were entangled in their material and worldly environment. Secure in the possession of His own personality, His self-consciousness being at one with God, His self-determination being merged in the will of God, He could affirm, The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me (Joh 14:30); I am in the Father and the Father in me (Joh 14:10); I do always the things that please him (Joh 8:29). That personality is the pivot of the gospel which Jesus lived and taught may be illustrated in detail.
(1) The personal temptation of Jesus is given as the record of a unique struggle within the chambers of personality. It was associated with that enhancing of His self-consciousness which was represented by the descent of the Spirit as that of a dove, and the hearing of a voice, Thou art my beloved Son (Mar 1:10). The first temptation was overcome by His affirmation that the soul is infinitely more precious than the natural life, and that there is eternal provision for it in communion with the Father (Mat 4:4). As Christ said afterwards to His disciples, I have food to eat that ye know not of (Joh 4:32). The second temptation was resisted on the ground that man has the responsibility of cherishing his life and using it wisely, as the vehicle of a God-given personality. To depend on the aid of angels would be an act of presumption (Mat 4:6 f.). God has chosen that they should minister only when personality has achieved its proper work (Mar 1:13), or before personality is permitted to begin it (Mat 18:10). A true man scorns the aid of impersonal forces when affairs of the soul are at stake (Mat 26:53). The third temptation was met in the confidence that personality is of itself worth more than all the world. It may subject itself only to God (Mat 4:10), by whose gentleness it is made great; for it is meant to be king of all, but not through the acknowledgment of Satan (cf. 1Co 3:23). So Jesus taught elsewhere, What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?; but The meek shall inherit the earth (Mar 8:36, Mat 5:5).
(2) The public teaching of Christ never moved far from the personal character of true religion. (a) The Kingdom of heaven is essentially the realm of personality. It thus calls for no less an analogy than a new birth, and the breath of the Spirit (Joh 3:7-8). Its boundaries are specifically in character, for it is inherited by such as are poor in spirit, pure in heart, and peaceable in will (Mat 5:3; Mat 5:8-9), and those who revert to the attitude of children (Mat 18:3). Deeds of themselves, however zealously performed, are outside this realm (Mat 7:22 f.), for a house may be swept and garnished, yet vacant for evil spirits (Mat 12:44). But even our words will witness against us, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh (Mat 12:35). The approach of this Kingdom, therefore, is a call to repentance (Mar 1:15): its entry involves the binding of the strong man (Mat 12:29); and its extension needs such a personal influence as the word or the gospel incorporated in the lives of the disciples (Mat 5:13 f.). (b) The inner righteousness is only another way of stating that in true religion the personality must come to its own, as the character of fruit is fixed by the tree on which it grows (Mat 7:17). Nothing done by rote or for show is worthy of the souls approach to its God (Mat 6:1-8). The only genuine worship is in spirit and in truth (Joh 4:23), in the consciousness that the best things may be asked for from a Father (Mat 7:11), who in turn expects the inward attitude of a believing (Mat 6:31), lowly (Luk 18:14), and forgiving heart (Mat 6:15). The only defiling thing in life is the effluence of a mans personality (Mar 7:20). The only unforgivable sin is the sin against the Holy Ghost, which is essentially a sin against ones own personality (Mat 12:31). And behind Christs teaching were His miracles of mercy, which were sacramental of this rescue of personality from its fetters (Mar 2:5 ff., Luk 13:16). In short, with Christ, religion is positive because it is spiritual. Saintliness is not by contraction, but by expansion. Keeping the Law is acting the Good Samaritan. In a word, religion is raised to personality-power.
(3) The private training of Christ was always and wholly exerted on the personality of His disciples. He left behind Him no documents, nor any organization, only men who knew whom they believed (2Ti 1:12). He was satisfied, therefore, that they should be with Him (Mar 3:14), sure that afterwards they would become fishers of men (Mat 4:19), lambs in the midst of wolves (Luk 10:3), all because of His influence on their character. They had nothing else to carry with them but the secret of this wonderful change (Mat 10:7 ff.). This change was due to something deeper than even the personal magnetism of Jesus. It was due to a revelation at the core of a mans nature (Mat 16:17 f.), by an organ of personality undiscovered by the wise (Mat 11:25), and unappreciated by the rich (Mat 19:23). The Church rests on the confession of a convinced personality (Mat 16:18), in whom it has pleased God to reveal His Son (Mat 16:17, cf. Gal 1:15 f.). And this revelation provides the clue to spiritual truth and the criterion of religious authority (Mat 10:34 f., Mat 23:9, Joh 8:31 f., cf. 1Co 3:21-23, 1Jn 2:27) [cf. art. Authority in Religion (iii.)]. It is worth while for a disciple to lose his life in order to gain the hidden life of his true personality (Mat 16:25); and if he finds stumbling-blocks to this in his nature, he must act with surgical severity (Mat 18:8-9).
On the other hand, there is an infinite range to the possibilities of personality clear to the mind of Jesus, but hardly fathomable to ourselves, as where He says that to receive a disciple is to receive One who is greater than he (Mat 10:40), and the service even of the helpless and forlorn is done to Himself (Mat 25:40, cf. Mat 26:1 f). (Is it on this account that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John the great individualist?) Another great saying which suggests that we are more than ourselves through Christ, is, Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them (Mat 18:20); and yet one more, Lo, I am with you all the days (Mat 28:20). In such utterances, which give ample support to Pauline and Johannine mysticism, Christ at least suggests that personality, when once released, is not bounded by the limits of the individual, but is only fulfilled when lost in union with Himself, as the Spirit of all Love. In the words of Dr. Moberly (Atonement and Personality, p. 254), Personality is the possibility of mirroring God, the faculty of being a living reflexion of the very attributes and character of the Most High. But for the final expression of this profound truth we turn to the words of our Saviour in His intercessory prayer: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one ( ) that the love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them, and I in them (Joh 17:23; Joh 17:26).
3. New factors introduced by Christ.The way in which He directly met the needs of personality was twofoldby a revelation and a reinforcement. (1) To mans self-consciousness He revealed God as our Father, with the full illumination of mans worth, hope, and destiny which this truth brings. (2) To mans self-determination He brought the gift of the Holy Spirit, as a power in aid () of the fettered personality. The essential conjunction, in the view of the early Church, of these two elements of redemption, which are ours through Christ, is well illustrated in the variant of St. Lukes recension of the Lords Prayer. After the acknowledgment of the Fatherhood stands the petition, Thy Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us.
(1) Jesus made the soul aware of its high origin and destiny, for the acceptance of the Fatherhood of God clears a path through Time and through Eternity. The issues of life become of supreme account to those who believe in One who lives and loves, watches and listens, provides and controls, and will at length either welcome or reject. There is a place for the least, the last and the lost. The angels of the little ones, who have achieved nothing and possess nothing, are before the face of the Father (Mat 18:10). Though uncounted in a nation (Luk 19:9), though unvalued by society (Luk 7:47), though classed with publicans and sinners (Luk 15:1), a man is counted among the Fathers children, and valued in the Fathers heart (Mat 12:9 f., Luk 15:20 f.). It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. But the greatest hindrance to the full emergence of personality is not so much the lack of outward respect as the loss of self-respect through sin. Self-consciousness becomes thereby a conscience of slavery, of impotence (Romans 7, esp. Rom 7:7-11). When St. Paul speaks of having been once alive apart from the law (Rom 7:9), he means a non-moral existence, before true self-consciousness was born. In the words of Schleiermacher, The sinner prior to conversion is overlooked, and is not in this respect a person at all in the eyes of God. He is a particle of the mass, out of which the continued operation of the same creative act of God which gave us the Redeemer does, through Him, call him into personality (A. Vaughan, Works, vol. i. p. 87; cf. Aug. de Pecc. Or. 36). The process in the experience of many is a painful one. And although for others it is gradual and apparently natural, there does not seem to be much footing in the NT for those whom F. W. Newman designated as the once-born (cf. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 80 and Lect. 3 and 4).
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied oer with the pale cast of thought.
The tying to a dead past cramps the souls activities. Now was I sorry (says Bunyan in Grace Abounding, 87, 88) that God had made me a man, for I feared I was a reprobate. Yea, I thought it impossible that ever I should attain to such goodness of heart, as to thank God that He had made me a man. Yet, as St. Paul implies in the above reference, this humiliation is the way to the heights of self-consciousness, for guilt is the awful guardian of our personal identity (Illingworth). Simon Peter only half knew himself when he cried to Christ, Depart from me: for I am a sinful man, O Lord (Luk 5:8). The lost son did not come to himself, fully until he was at home with his father, reconciled. Here we come upon the great doctrine of Justification (wh. see), which is St. Pauls interpretation of the Fathers forgiveness in forensic terms. In the experience of the justified man, the conscience of sins is transmuted into a consciousness of peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 5:1). Actually and in fact Justification is only accomplished by an act of human freedom, an act of the deepest self-consciousness in man, appropriating the redeeming love of the Son of God by the power of awakening and life-giving grace (Martensen, Dogmatics, p. 391).
Starting from this point, the revelation of God as Father is the means of the enlargement of our personality in three ways, through (a) His forgiveness of us, (b) our imitation of Him, (c) the communion between Him and us.
(a) Gods forgiveness, gratefully received, is the first stage of mans moral freedom. It must always be a factor in our filial consciousness, but at first it may be said to be the only, or at least the chief one. Thus it was the message in which Christ first expressed the meaning of the Fatherhood (Mar 2:5), and which He ever delighted to bring to the children who felt themselves farthest from home (Luk 15:4; Luk 15:32). Their repentance made joy in heaven (Luk 15:7), while the Divine forgiveness woke love in their hearts (Luk 7:47). For it is the spiritual release that goes to the root of our being, and sets free the wholesome springs of goodness, long sealed and ignored (Luk 18:14, Luk 19:8). But forgiveness was more than a word of grace: it was a gain for the world at the cost of Calvary (Mat 26:28). And that cost was ultimately met out of the treasuries of the Fathers heart, who so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son (Joh 3:16, cf. Rom 8:32). Forgiveness in the name of Christ is thus the measure of the estimate in which our personality is held in the sight of God.
(b) Our imitation of God.Sonship, being ours potentially through forgiveness, becomes ours actually through imitation. If one may venture to say so, without seeming to undervalue the continuity of grace, in forgiveness God pays our debts, in order that in imitation we may pay our way. We are made nigh (Eph 2:13), that we may grow like our Father who is in heaven. Having received the adoption of sons (Rom 8:15, Gal 4:5), we are to become imitators of God as dear children (Eph 5:1). Even as God (or the Lord) forgave you, so also do ye (Col 3:13). For the standard of our new nature is nothing less than (Eph 4:24). This connexion of thought is as clear in John as in Paul. Herein is love that God loved us, and sent his Son. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another because as he is, even so are we in this world (1Jn 4:10-11; 1Jn 4:17). These words point to their original in the teaching of Christ, who bade us give mind, heart, will, and strength to this holy task (Mat 22:37). To be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect (Mat 5:48), to forgive as He forgives (Mat 6:12, Mat 18:35), to make peace and love our enemies that we may prove ourselves His sons (Mat 5:9; Mat 5:45), is the Christian standard of conduct, and the final challenge to our personality.
(c) Communion between God and man.If personality finds its release in the forgiveness, its scope in the imitation, of God, it finds its fulfilment in communion with Him. Religion is nothing if it is not the vital act by which the whole spirit seeks to save itself by attaching itself to its principle. This act is prayer (Sabatier, Philosophy of Religion, p. 28). But prayer, to be real and effectual, must rest on faith in the Father revealed by Jesus Christ. He who makes prayer simply a way to reach God invents a god for himself, and one that does not hear. There can be no true worship unless we come through Christ into the relation of children towards God (Luther, quoted by Herrmann, Communion with God, p. 244). This is the prayer that is surely answered by God (Luk 11:9-13, Joh 15:7), the worship that is in spirit and in truth, which He Himself both inspires and seeks after (Joh 4:23-24, Rom 8:26-27). This is praying after the manner of the Lords Prayer, when the storm of desire dies away into stillness before God. Yet whatever really so burdens the soul as to threaten its peace is to be brought before God in prayer, with the confidence that the Fathers love understands even our anxious clinging to earthly things (Herrmann, p. 247). There is no higher employment of the powers of personality than real (Mat 6:5-6), believing (Mar 11:24), consecrated (Joh 14:13), persistent (Luk 18:1) prayer, from a forgiving heart (Mar 11:25), when it throws itself without reserve upon the loving will of the Father (Mat 26:39; Mat 26:42). Such prayer is far more than an act: it invests all the outgoings and incomings of life with the sacred sense that the Father is over all, through all, and in all (Eph 4:6). Thus prayer has a natural effect in spiritualizing and elevating the soul. A man is no longer what he was before. Graduallyimperceptibly to himselfhe has imbibed a new set of ideas, and become imbued with fresh principles. He is as one coming from kings courts, with a grace, a delicacy, a dignity, a propriety, a justness of thought and taste, a clearness and firmness of principle, all his own (J. H. Newman). Resting on life eternal as a principle, a man cannot sink into being the mere plaything of events, a puppet in his environment. Christ has invited him to ascend a higher storey of his being, whence he can see the hosts of God beyond the encircling enemy. Heaven lies about us in our infancy. And the fulfilment of that truth is when the saint, with the heart of a little child, endures as seeing Him who is invisible.
On these three steps of heightened self-consciousnessforgiveness, imitation, and communionstands the temple of immortality for the soul.
(2) Jesus made the soul capable of attaining its high destiny (in correspondence with its Divine origin) by the gift of the Holy Spirit. This was the one great object of His saving ministry besides revealing the Father. It is not that there was no Holy Spirit except for the ministry of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit, we must believe, was as truly at the centre and circumference of the universe as the Father Himself. But none the less, for the purposes of human personality, the Fatherhood and Spirit of God were alike the creation of Jesus Christ. On these twin pillars His Kingdom of the redeemed is founded; Justification being the result of the Fathers relation to personality, and Sanctification being the effect of the Spirit s influence on personality: both being secured through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It were of little use to heighten the souls self-consciousness without increasing its powers of self-determination. The knowledge that God is our Father, with all it implies, must be completed by our receiving the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba, Father (Rom 8:15), and the power to become sons of God (Joh 1:12). The connexion between this Spirit of God and our spirits is too subtle for our analysis. In the ephemeral and empirical Me, there is a mysterious Guest, greater than the Me, and to which the Me instinctively addresses its prayer and its trust (Sabatier, Religions of Authority, p. 318). But there can be no doubt (and this is the meaning of Romans 8) that the result is an enhancing of the souls power to realize itself in respect of character which is the real realm of personality. In other words, the Holy Spirit is preeminently the mainspring of the life inspired by Christ (vis vicaria, Tertullian), not, however, as substitute for the will, but as its partner and prompter (cf. Gal 2:20 with Gal 5:25, and Eph 3:16 with Eph 3:17). The Spirit and faith, says Dr. Denney (art. Holy Spirit in vol. i. p. 738b), are correlative terms, and each of them covers from a different point of view all that is meant by Christianity. Regarded from the side of God and His grace and power in initiating and maintaining it, Christianity is the Spirit; regarded from the side of man and his action and responsibility in relation to God, it is faith. The bearing of the Spirit on mans self-determination (i.e. as a moral motive) may be viewed in two aspects.
(a) There is the entrance of the Spirit, which is sometimes called simply a gift (Luk 11:13), but also a new birth (Joh 3:3 ff.), because its origin is behind the will of man (Joh 1:13), and a baptism (Mar 1:8), because its outcome is in the will of man, in his personal dedication (cf. Php 2:12).
My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
A dedicated Spirit (Wordsworth, The Prelude, iv. 334 ff.).
And cf. Paracelsus:
As He spoke, I was endued
With comprehension and a steadfast will;
And when He ceased, my brow was sealed His own.
In any case, it brings the power of the Highest ( , Luk 1:35) to those who have high work to do. Christ began His public ministry (Luk 4:14) in the power of the Spirit, who first brooded over Him and then drove Him forth (Mar 1:10; Mar 1:12). The Spirit also endowed the behaviour and bearing of Jesus with its unique characteristics (Mat 12:17 ff.). But this belongs more properly to the section below. The most critical act of the souls self-determination is known as conversion, which is the final acceptance of the will and love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, so that the motives stored in the gospel become henceforth dominant partners in the life of the soul. In conversion (says Starbuck, quoted in James, Religious Experience, p. 210) a person must relax, i.e. must fall back on the larger power that makes for righteousness, which has been welling up in his own being, and let it finish in its own way the work it has begun. This is the true leverage of all moral possibilities; and it is due to the entering of the Spirit, which has its own heavenly ways (cf. Luk 9:55 Authorized Version ), and releases the soul from the encumbrance of habit and the tyranny of desire. The entrance of the Spirit thus brings the release of the personality. The unseen region is not merely the ideal, for it produces effects in this world. When we commune with it, work is actually done upon our finite personality, for we are turned into a new man, and consequences in the way of conduct, follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change (Professor James, op. cit. p. 516).
(b) The indwelling of the Spirit is the consummation of the Christian faith, its distinctive feature and peculiar power (Luk 11:13; Luk 24:49, Joh 7:38; Joh 14:16; Joh 20:22, cf. Act 11:15-18; Act 19:1-6, Rom 8:2, 2 Corinthians 3, Gal 5:16 ff.). The human problem is stated in a famous chapter (Romans 7) by Paul, in a memorable sentence by Christ (Mar 14:38). Without the higher inspiration the mind becomes carnal instead of the body being consecrated. Christ Himself suffered from no division in His nature (cf. Harnack, What is Christianity? p. 32 f.), because He was filled with the Spirit (Luk 4:1): the Prince of this world had nothing in Him (Joh 14:30). And this is the summum bonum to which He invites His disciples: Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you (Joh 14:27). It resolves the antinomies of flesh and spirit, body and soul, whereby the self-determination of man is tested, enabling us to believe, and live by the truth, that our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost which is in us, which we have from God (1Co 6:19); or, using the original analogy of Christ, that we are branches of the true Vine, into which, and through which, the sap of His ever-living word is to flow, producing fruit to the glory of God (Joh 15:1-8). The fruitfulness of life in character, which is the crown of personality, depends in short on the partnership of our personality with the Paraclete, whose dominion brings us liberty from the Law, as the obverse of our obedience to Love (Rom 8:15 cf. Rom 8:9, Gal 5:22-23 cf. Gal 5:16; Gal 5:18, 2Pe 1:8 cf. 2Pe 1:4). All this is the process of sanctification. If it has come to pass that the saints of the New Covenant have a higher idea of holiness, have walked by a more perfect rule, have shown forth a more excellent and lovely character, these are the fruits of the blessed Spirit (Dean Church, Village Sermons, p. 121).
The manifestation of this spiritual fact was at Pentecost (Acts 2), and it presupposed two prior eventsthe advent of Jesus, and His ascension. And the meaning of these three events for mans self-determination lies here.
(i.) The Spirit as revealed in the earthly life of Jesus was the unique illustration of a Personality moving only in the direction of truth, holiness, and love, and yet on the lines of human nature. And this was manifestly due to the unhindered operation of the personal Spirit of God. Henceforth the association between Christ and the Spirit is so close for us, that we may say that the Spirit is Christ interpreted in terms of our experience; even as the Father is Christ read into the Eternal. To use the fine analogy of Martineau (Essays, iii. 1, p. 50), If it has pleased God, the Creator, to fit up one system with one sun, to make the daylight of several worlds, so may it fitly have pleased God, the Revealer, to kindle amid the elliptic of history One Divine Soul to glorify whatever lies within the great year of His moral Providence, and represent the father of Lights. Only we must go on to say that, in the name of God the Redeemer, Jesus represents the sunshine as well; for it is through Him the Holy Spirit is mediated to us. The truth is (as against Beyschlag, vol. i. p. 279), not that the Spirit is identical with Christ, but that it was from the first so entirely the principle of His personality, and He was throughout so completely one with it in His Divine humanity, that He became its perfect organ and expression, not merely in a temporal and impersonal sense, but in a personal and abiding sense. The Holy Spirit as it comes to us in Christianity, therefore, includes the personal presence of Christ (Walker, Spirit and Incarnation, p. 85).
(ii.) But it is equally true that the earthly life of Jesus had to be superseded if it was to have its full effect on mans personality. On the one hand, He Himself said, I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me (Joh 12:32); and, on the other hand, the response came from the experience of an Apostle: Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no more (2Co 5:16). If any one have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his (Rom 8:9). Faith is more than an outlook; it is also an up-look and an inlook. The Christ of history must become the Christ of experience. Just as the painter passes from the stage of imitation to origination before he becomes an artist, so a Christian is one who, looking away to Christ, loses himself in Him, and so finds himself again as a new creation (2Co 5:17; cf. Mar 8:35). Thus the Lord is the Spirit. Christ in whose face was the glory of God-becomes Christ in us the hope of glory (2Co 4:6, Col 1:27). He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things (Eph 4:10).
(iii.) The significance of Pentecost is, in brief, that Christ is now to be made known to the world through living epistles, known and read of all men, written by the Holy Spirit on the fleshy tables of the heart, i.e. in the promptings of conscience and compassion, which prove the working of the Spirit of Christ (2Co 3:2-3). In other words, the honour of Christs name and the success of His cause are thrown upon the personality He has evoked,that personality which in partnership with the Spirit of God, and in union with fellow-Christians, is to do even greater things than Christ in His earthly life could accomplish. And who is sufficient for these things? But we have the mind of Christ and the ministry of the Spirit (1Co 2:16, 2Co 2:16; 2Co 3:6).
4. The redeemed personality.For the redeemed personality, Justification is its liberty; Sanctification its law. These great words were invented to express personality at its highest, and in its fulfilment, from the point of view of self-consciousness and self-determination respectively. It may fairly be said that this redeemed personality has been the keynote of Christendom, the secret of its history, the source of its progressoften misleading and misled, but having the power of an endless life. This sketch of the subject may be completed by a few suggestions as to the significance of the redeemed personality for the history of Christendom. It has caused man (1) to stand for his rights and liberties, (2) to recognize his debts and duties.
(1) The rights and liberties of the soul.Modern history is the steady unfolding of the powers of the personality in. answer to the challenge of the civilization by which it is surrounded. The world is so much with us through facilities of knowledge, communication, and enjoyment, that the inner life of the soul would have little chance indeed were it not continually replenished in spirit and in truth. But because personality is conscious of its eternal environment, it can endure as seeing him who is invisible, and must assert itself in the name of its Creator and Redeemer. Steadily it has been rising to the height of its possibilities against the weight of an accumulating tradition and venerable institutions, in the belief that the word of God comes most directly to this world through its dedicated personalities. That word has always breathed Justice as the social, and Liberty as the personal ideal. And reformers have always found their inspiration for the former in the OT, for the latter in the NT. Constitutional history could not be explained but for the continual inflow of these principles upon the consciences of the people from their springs in the Christian faith. We cannot fail to observe that the action of the Christian conscience through the leaders of the Church had much to do with the Magna Charta. The uprising from the condition of villenage in the 14th cent. was vitally connected with the Lollard movement and the distribution of the Bible in the English tongue. The Peasants Wars in Germany which followed, and the national movements in all the northern countries of Europe, found the secret of their power in the recovered gospel. It is the testimony of all who know, that the rights of the Christian man were the first objective of our own Puritan Revolution. Said Pym, its typical exponent: The greatest liberty of our country is religion. The American Commonwealth was founded, as to its true nucleus, in the passion for freedom to worship God. And although the French Revolution triumphed in an age of reason, in defiance of Church and creed, its passionate hope was derived from the Christian conception of the rights of man which had certainly drifted into the mind of Voltaire.
Finally, in religion itself personality has played its true part only under the aegis of Jesus Christ. In Mohammedanism the political and social bonds are drawn very closely, and its military associations have tended to promote the type of the devoted soldier (Moslems)Theirs not to reason why, theirs but. to do and die. Under such a form of religion personality has little chance. The Hindu philosophy which underlies Buddhism regards personality as the chief seat of evil in the universe, and works towards its obliteration. Socially, this philosophy results in the caste system, which is well calculated to this end. The religion, if so it may be called, of Confucius, throws the weight of every moral sanction on the dead past, and, by the worship of ancestors, depreciates to the utmost extent the homage due to the living soul. Christianity has no doubt many points of contact with these and other religions; but in this respect it is utterly antagonistic, in that its unit is the individual, whatever his race, colour, or class, on the sublime ground that God seeks him and needs him. Hence its life has always been fed by personalities, whose love to God has been with the heart, mind, soul, and strength. As Christ founded His Church on Peter, so on the man who adopts the motto of the Northern universityMen say: Quhat say they: lat them sayin the spirit of Peter (Act 4:19), has the Church as a matter of history always been refounded. By the touch of Christ on the individual all bands and bars have snapped, and in the inspired personality the word of God has found free course and been glorified. It might almost be said that no other religion is anything but a framework. Only in the religion of Jesus Christ do we see the face of a renewed personality changed into the same image from glory to glory.
(2) But the new-found personality has not only rejoiced in rights and liberties, political and social, mental and spiritual; it has also made an ever fuller discovery of its debts and duties. The Fatherhood of God means the promise at least of personality in every human being, and that means the essential brotherhood of men. The Incarnation has drawn them into one by declaring them one; so that each must bear the others burdens, and so fulfil the law. of Jesus Christ. The Atonement on Calvary has focussed the conception of vicarious suffering, and summoned Christians to fulfil that which is lacking of the sufferings of Christ (Col 1:24). In the train of Christian salvation mutual service becomes the truest expression of the bond of union (Joh 13:15-17). So we are bidden to respect one anothers personality, to honour all men, to receive one another as Christ also received us to the glory of God (Rom 15:7). Being hopelessly in debt to God, we are to pay off all we can on the altar of humanitys need. Our indebtedness to God involves our forgiveness of others (Mat 18:32-33), our help of any one in every time of need (Mat 10:8, Luk 10:37), and especially our hope and labour for their spiritual welfare (Mat 28:19, Luk 10:2).
This consciousness of duty to humanity for Christs sake soon showed itself in the breaking of yokes, although the yokes crumbled rather than snapped under His humane influence. It worked upon pagan notions of slavery and conquest, and after abolishing the gladiatorial shows, first eased and finally freed the human chattel. The rights of woman, too, as partner rather than subordinate, and the honour paid even to children, as against the Roman practice of infanticide, have gradually come into being through the changed standpoint from which personality is regarded through Christ. Continuing the story thus begun, the recognition of our debt and duty towards others on account of their personality has (a) secretly undermined the resistance of racial barriers. More than this can hardly be said in view of events East and West. But at any rate the Christian Church, now a fellowship of many peoples, kindreds, and tongues, has to a large extent anticipated the fulfilment of the ideal which leaped to the imagination of St. Paul, when there shall be neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female; for all are one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28). (b) It has slowly produced an attitude of tolerance, i.e. a recognition of the rights of others in thought. That is a position far in advance of the claim to personal independence. Liberty of thought for others, with a resulting equality of opportunity, is an ideal hard of attainment. But because humanity is logical, though men are not, it will at length be established as the corollary to the rights of personality, (c) It has steadily permeated law with the larger justice of mercy. This is another comparatively recent development of the Christian consciousness. The criminal code and the service discipline were both administered on brutal lines, and the industrial system was beset by conditions hardly less degrading. But the claim of personality is steadily laying hold of the popular imagination and conscience, and asserting itself in the acts of our statute-book. (d) It has turned older methods of education upside down. The claim of the personality is now respected even when in the bud. The teacher now learns to sit first at the feet of the child, who is no longer trained to be a kind of imitation adult, but is desired to develop on the lines of its own personality, (e) It has inspired all crusades of compassion. Christianity has led the way, to the marvel of the world, in the provision of hospitals, asylums, orphanages, etc. And this consideration for the blind, the insane, the leper, and such afflicted ones, is the monument to Christs care of the body as the home of the personality. (f) It has been the fulcrum of foreign missions; for there are souls to be saved wherever humanity is to be found. This is the most beautiful and characteristic task of the Church of Christ.
These are some of the modern developments of personality as to its rights and duties. By means of their proper balance and mutual influence, Christendom makes its advance. And this balance is maintained so far as man is in Christ. For from Him alone comes the ultimate sense of human dignity both for oneself and for all. At His feet we learn that personality is given its full enfranchisement in order that it may co-operate with the Father in the employments or perfect love.
Literature.Besides the works alluded to above, see Illingworth, Personality, Human and Divine; Moberly, Atonement and Personality, esp. ch. ix.; Martensen, Ethics; Dorner, Ethics; Seth, Hegelianism and Personality; W. Richmond, Personality; Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics; James, Problems of Personality; Lotze, Microcosmus, i. 248 ff.; Green, Proleg. to Ethics; Augustine, Confessions, etc. See also A. Chandler in A Lent in London (1895), p. 193; C. C. Hall, The Gospel of the Divine Sacrifice (1897), p. 267; II. Rashdall, Doctrine and Development (1898), p. 268; T. G. Selby, The God of the Frail (1902), p. 22; J. Newton, The Problem of Personality (1905); W. N. Clarke, Outline of Theology, pt. 2; Lotze, Outlines of Philosophy of Religion, 3035; Oman, Vision and Authority, pp. 1924; Myers, Human Personality, i. 10 ff.
A. Norman Rowland.
Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels
Personality
See PERSON.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Personality
The totality of mental traits characterizing an individual personality or self. See Self. — L.W.