Personal Identity .Who do we think we are? ‘I think, therefor I am.’ I, who? Is it the same I who first heard that maxim some forty years ago? If I cannot be sure of my own existence, how can I be sure of anything else? I am looking at the other side of the Cartesian certainty.
Had I been suckled by wolves, would I not be something else? The idea of a God given soul with a factory warranty is reassuring. But it may be an oversimplification. Objectivism has no greater recommendation than its ability to objectify our own souls. The loss of identity is what we fear more than death. It is the final death. The guarantee of my identity is the identity of my creator. It may not be reassuring to realize that the Creator seeks its identity in its creation.
God may be as much the idea of Jesus as the other way around. Clearly Yahweh underwent an intertestamental personality change. Is that bad? Or is it smart? Is this not the heart of theism? Is not the creator reflected in the creature? Is that not the purpose of creation?
Identity is potency. There is synergy in the potency of creature and creator. The potency of Jesus may have existed before Yahweh, yet it required the latter to prepare the way for the former. The Parousia will somehow complete this dynamic.
The mutuality of creator and creature may be a cosmological necessity. It prevents a promiscuous creation from collapsing under its own weight. It serves as a safeguard to all identity by maintaining the personal dimension of the cosmos.
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rev. 2/3/99