Theology and the Fragmentation of the Self

Theology and the Fragmentation of the Self

LINDA WOODHEAD*

Abstract: Modern Christian anthropology frequently adopts from socio-culturaltheory the thesis that modern selfhood is fragmented. This ‘fragmentationthesis’ should be placed within a framework which sees modernity not ashomogeneous but as stranded. Four conflicting construals of modern selfhoodcan be discerned: the bestowed self, the rational self, the boundless self and theeffective self. In promoting versions of the bestowed self through commu-nitarian and Trinitarian ideas, contemporary theological anthropology oftenfails to meet the challenges posed by other construals of selfhood, or to takeseriously lessons learnt from contemporary forms of Christianity like theevangelical–charismatic upsurge.

Are our modern selves fragile and fragmented? In what follows, I consider thecommon claim that they are. Whilst I do not wholly repudiate this claim, I suggestthat it becomes more substantial and more plausible when placed within aframework which views modernity not as a single, homogeneous entity, but as aninternally diverse interweaving of various cultural strands. By considering thenature of these strands, I identify four influential forms of modern selfhood: thebestowed self, the rational self, the boundless self and the effective self. I explorethese renderings of selfhood and some of the more common conflicts betweenthem, and suggest that it is in terms of such conflict that the fragmentation thesismakes most sense.

In the course of this exploration of the strands of modern selfhood I show howclosely Christianity is implicated in all of them, and draw out the implications ofthis analysis for contemporary attempts to forge Christian anthropologies. I reflectin particular upon the communitarian, Trinitarian, relational understanding ofselfhood which seems to dominate much recent theology, and suggest ways inwhich it may fail to meet the challenges posed by conflicting contemporary con-struals of selfhood. I also consider briefly the possibility that Christian anthro-pology may have something to learn from the success of certain contemporaryforms of Christianity, not least the evangelical-charismatic upsurge.

International Journal of Systematic TheologyVolume 1 Number 1 March 1999

Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UKand 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

* Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YG, UK.

The fragmentation thesis

The question of how human identity is constituted in modern societies has longbeen of central concern to sociologists. One of the most influential theses to arisefrom consideration of this question postulates the fragmentation of identity inmodernity. According to the fragmentation thesis, many of the most central andcharacteristic processes of modernity lead directly to the decentring anddestabilization of human identity. It is claimed that whereas in traditional andpremodern societies the self was firmly embedded in wider, stable systems ofmeaning and social organization, modern societies have witnessed the breakdownof such order and stability and the concomitant collapse of stable identities.

This is to put the fragmentation thesis at its most abstract. In practice, differenttheorists work out the thesis in more concrete ways, developing different versionsin the process. To take one of the more influential examples, the British sociologistAnthony Giddens characterizes modernity in terms of a number of inter-relatedprocesses including:

1. the speed and extent of change in the modern world2. detraditionalization and the loss of a sense of the authority of the past3. reflexivity, the process whereby ‘social processes are constantly examined and

reformed in the light of incoming information about those very practices, thusconstitutively altering their character’1

4. globalizing processes that ‘lift out’ social relations from local contexts andrestructure them ‘across indefinite spans of space–time.’2

Giddens argues that the effect of these macro-processes is felt even at the level ofthe personal and intimate. Their impact on self-identity is immense, and all serve tofragment, destabilize and disrupt that identity – in a process which Giddensportrays as simultaneously emancipatory and fraught with danger.3

Giddens’ statement of the fragmentation thesis, and of its relation to widerstructural change, carries echoes of Marx’s much earlier depiction of the samephenomenon. InThe Communist Manifesto, for example, Marx spoke of modernityin terms of

[the] constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance ofrelations, everlasting uncertainty and agitation... All fixed, fast-frozen relation-ships, with their venerable ideas and opinions, are swept away, all new-formedones become obsolete before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air...4

1 A. Giddens,The Consequences of Modernity(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), pp. 37f.2 A. Giddens,The Consequences of Modernity,p. 21.3 See A. Giddens,The Consequences of Modernityand Modernity and Self-Identity

(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).4 Cited in S. Hall, D. Held and T. McGrew, eds,Modernity and Its Futures(Cambridge:

Polity Press, 1992), p. 277.

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ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999

Yet Giddens sees that the fragmentation thesis has gained further force since Marxas a result of wide cultural developments, not all of which need to be related back tomacro-economic transformation. Those who identify themselves as sociologists ofthe postmodern have been particularly active in detailing these developments and insuggesting their constitutive importance for the decentring of the subject. Differenttheorists point to different cultural developments as key to this process. SoBaudrillard, for example, singles out the new electronic media of communication asmost influential in the disruption and falsification of the self and social relations;Lacan shows how psychoanalysis reveals the self to be a problematic on-goingproject rather than a stable given; Foucault presents the modern subject as theproduct of different forms of disciplinary power; and those influenced by linguistictheory since Saussure picture the self as the inhabitant of unstable worlds ofmeaning and identity never fully amenable to control and closure.

Despite debate and disagreement about the processes by which the modern andpostmodern self has become fragmented, there is thus widespread agreement thatsuch fragmentation has indeed taken place, and that the modern self stands insignificant discontinuity with the stable identities that are thought to characterizethe inhabitants of premodern societies. The transition from pre- to postmodernity isseen to be accompanied inevitably by the transition from stable to increasinglyfragmented identity.5 And yet, despite the extent of the agreement that surroundsthe fragmentation thesis, and despite the thesis’ undeniable explanatory power in anumber of areas, it still seems vulnerable on several fronts.

First, it is far from clear that the assumption that modern selves and identitiesare in a state of chronic disruption is anything other than an assumption; a goodcase can be made for saying that the burden of proof in this matter still lies with thefragmentation thesis. Until the notion of identity and the mechanisms by which it isformed are more clearly understood, the gathering of evidence in this matter isbound to be difficult, yet in practice the fragmentation thesis seems often to rely onanecdotal and autobiographical evidence, conclusions derived from developmentsin high culture (especially French philosophy), and contestable readings of popularculture. Counter evidence, which suggests that strong and stable identities are stillalive and well in the modern world, must also be taken into account. Theresurgence and resistance of religious, ethnic and national identities must count as amajor part of this evidence – even though the fragmentation thesis can explain suchunexpected phenomena in terms of a reaction to fragmentation, this is an argumentthat very easily becomes circular. Other counter evidence includes, for example,

5 S. Hall, ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’ in S. Hall, D. Held and T. McGrew, eds,Modernity and Its Futures(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), pp. 273–316, presents agood summary of sociological theories of identity which makes the extent of theagreement in this area very clear. The three-fold typology offered by Hall of 1) theEnlightenment subject, 2) the sociological subject and 3) the postmodern subject is veryrevealing of the way in which the fragmentation thesis is most often formulated, and ofthe way in which it understands the passage from stable/premodern to fragmented/postmodern identity.

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the persistence and continuing influence of stable ‘Enlightenment’ discourses ofhumanity, human rights and human values,6 and readings of popular culture whichshow how, against the readings of postmodern theorists, clear identity typescontinue to be recognized and reinforced in many areas.7

Furthermore, the fragmentation thesis’ foundational belief that there was apremodern era in which selves and identities were (even relatively) stable anduncontested seems highly dubious. There is a revealing disagreement betweentheorists about when and where this golden (or benighted) age existed. Some tendto identify it with the Enlightenment and its presumed belief in rational, substantialselves (most notably the Cartesian self). Others identify it with so-called‘traditional’ societies, which are pictured as undifferentiated and deeply religious,their religion consisting of a set of ancient beliefs, practices and institutions thatwere unified, consistent and unchanging, which regulated every aspect of life,which were accepted unquestioningly as the edicts of higher power, and which hadsovereign authority over the obedient and heteronomous individual. As ZygmuntBauman puts it

In the ‘traditional’ way of life... the totality of ways and means, in all itsaspects, was lived as if validated by powers no human will or whim couldchallenge; life as a whole was a product of Divine creation, monitored byDivine providence. Free will, if it existed at all, could mean only... freedom tochoose wrong over right... to depart from the way of the world as God ordainedit; and anything that visibly deflected from custom was seen as such a breach.Being in the right, on the other hand, was not a matter of choice: it meant, onthe contrary, avoiding choice – following the customary way of life. All thischanged, however, with the gradual loosening of the grip of tradition.8

Bauman mentions traditional Christianity as an example of the sort of society he isspeaking of – yet it is extremely hard to tally his remarks with any known period ofChristian history. If such traditional societies full of stable selves really existed, itseems strange that so few historians and anthropologists have yet stumbled uponthem. One is left with a strong suspicion that such societies exist in theideologically conditioned imaginings of sociologists rather than in historical reality.

This objection is tied to a wider one. The fragmentation thesis seems weakenedby its dependence upon what David Martin (speaking in relation to the secular-ization thesis) calls a ‘unilinear view of history’.9 On this view, history moves

6 P. Heelas, ‘On Things Not Being Worse and the Ethic of Humanity’ in P. Heelas, S.Lash and P. Morris, eds,Detraditionalization. Critical Reflections on Authority andIdentity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 200–22.

7 See, for example, D. Kellner, ‘Popular Culture and the Construction of PostmodernIdentities’ in S. Lash and J. Friedman, eds,Modernity and Identity(Oxford: Blackwell,1992), pp. 141–77.

8 Z. Bauman,Postmodern Ethics(Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. 49 D. Martin, Forbidden Revolutions. Pentecostalism in Latin America, Catholicism in

Eastern Europe(London: SPCK, 1996), p. 17.

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forward through a set of identifiable stages, all societies inevitably pass throughthese stages, and the different social processes within each stage are ultimatelyconvergent. Most commonly, the unilinear view divides history into three stages:the premodern (or traditional), the modern, and the postmodern, with each stageviewed as a cultural whole – at least to the extent that generalizations about identityare thought to hold good for each periodin toto.

It is scepticism about this unilinear view – together with the foregoingcriticisms of the fragmentation thesis – which suggest that it may be helpful toretain some of its insights whilst recasting it in a way which is more sceptical ofcatch-all periodizations, and which, even if it accepts the usefulness of the categoryof the modern, can take account of its cultural diversity, and of its continuities aswell as discontinuities with the past.

Recasting the fragmentation thesis

How might it be possible to preserve the insights contained in the fragmentationthesis, whilst avoiding its tendency to generalize about modernity and the crises ofidentity to which it gives rise? One way in which this may be done is by recastingthe fragmentation thesis in terms of a more nuanced understanding of modernity, anunderstanding which recognizes that modernity is not one thing and attempts tomake sense of its diversity through a schematization of its main culturaltrajectories, currents or strands. By its nature, any such schematization is boundto be somewhat arbitrary, provisional and inadequate to the complex reality ofmodernity. Yet, as I hope to show, the attempt to ‘strand’ modernity maynevertheless provide us with an extremely useful tool of understanding, and mayilluminate sociological generalizations like those about fragmentation in new andhelpful ways.

One of the most impressive and helpful schematizations of modernity arose outof close empirical research into post-1960s American moral and cultural attitudes.Steven Tipton’sGetting Saved from the Sixties(1982) gave an early presentation ofthis schematization, though Tipton himself was drawing upon earlier work byBellah, as well as upon typologies of moral philosophy and theology.10 In 1985 thisschematization was again used in Bellah and Tiptonet al.’s Habits of the Heart,once more revealing its power to account for the patterns of values and attitudesrevealed by the book’s empirical research. In 1989 the scheme was recast byCharles Taylor in hisSources of the Self, this time in the course of a narration of themain philosophical and religious sources of the modern self rather than an

10 One of the main influences upon Tipton’s formulation of this schematization was a ThDthesis by Ralph Potter, which categorized different Christian responses to the nucleardilemma: see S. Tipton,Getting Saved from the Sixties(London: University ofCalifornia Press, 1982), p. 309, n. 2. See also R.N. Bellahet al., Habits of the Heart.Individualism and Commitment in American Life(Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1985).



empirical survey.11 And most recently, Paul Heelas’ study ofThe New AgeMovementhas shown once again the power of this schematization (of which hegives a particularly clear synthetic rendering) to illuminate and explain one of themore intriguing cultural and religious developments of late modernity.12

The schematization of modernity as it appears in Tipton divides modernculture and its ‘styles of ethical evaluation’ into four main strands: authoritative,regular, consequential and expressive.13 As Tipton explains this scheme, theauthoritative is oriented toward an authoritative source of morality and truth – aGod, sacred scripture, or authoritative leader, who is known by faith. The regularlocates the good in rules or principles known by reason. The consequential isoriented toward principles which are tested by cost–benefit analysis; though it isconcerned with maximizing benefit, the nature of this benefit is left open to theactor to decide. Finally, the expressive takes its authority from ‘within’, frompersonal feelings and intuitions. Its goal is appropriate, sincere and honest self-expression.

Clearly this scheme operates at a high level of generality. Neither Tipton nor theother scholars who make use of it would wish to claim that it offered anything morethan a framework within which to organize and understand a vast array of diverse andoften highly subtle cultural positions. Taylor’sSources of the Self, for example, iseffective in showing the ways in which each strand is represented and developed by avariety of philosophical and theological writers. Each strand maps a cluster ofpositions which are diverse – and yet which, despite their differences, have enough incommon to be classified within the same broad trajectory.

The attempt to come to a fuller and more nuanced understanding of modernculture by identifying its main strands has an immediate relevance for thefragmentation thesis. As Taylor shows particularly clearly, each of the strands ofmodern culture embeds a particular form of identity. And the simple fact thatmodernity offers a number of different cultural possibilities for the self is enough toexplain why identity confusion and fragmentation occur. To that extent pluraltheories of identity may be used to recast the fragmentation thesis. Extrapolatingfrom such theories, fragmentation may be viewed not so much as the result ofcertain universal and unilinear modern processes, but as born from the confusiongenerated by the plural modes of selfhood available to modern men and women.

11 In his own words, Taylor presents a ‘map’ which ‘distributes the moral sources [ofmodernity] into three large domains: the original theistic grounding... a second one thatcentres on a naturalism of disengaged reason, which in our day takes scientistic forms;and a third family of views which finds its sources in Romantic expressivism or in oneof the modernist successor visions’. See C. Taylor,Sources of the Self: The Making ofModern Identity(Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 495.

12 P. Heelas,The New Age Movement(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). It is through myacquaintance with this book, and through conversation and collaboration with PaulHeelas, that I have come to understand the nature and the power of this particularschematization of modernity. In this – and in many other ways – this paper is greatlyindebted to him.

13 See Tipton,Getting Saved from the Sixties, pp. 282–6.

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Four strands of modern identity

Bellah, Taylor and other commentators build upon the original stranding modelproposed by Tipton in various ways. Continuing this enterprise, I shall in turn offeran interpretation of this scheme, and an attempt to spell out its implications for anunderstanding of identity in the modern world.

Authoritative strand: the bestowed self

Whilst Tipton’s exposition of the authoritative strand tends to focus upon a ‘higher’authority which stands over against the individual, and to which the individual mustbe obedient, I believe it is helpful to understand this strand and its construal ofidentity rather more broadly. On this wider understanding, the authoritative strandis identified by its insistence upon the necessity of looking beyond the self in orderto understand and to perfect the self. The human being is understood, not as self-sufficient, but as formed through wider relations, whether that be with God,scripture, a religious community, the family, or some other authoritative source orsite. Contrary to Tipton’s understanding, such authority need not be thought of ascompletely external to the individual, but may be conceived as something withwhich the individual becomes bound up inseparably – a community into which theindividual is incorporated, or a God who, as Holy Spirit, indwells an individual andtheir community, for example. For this strand, true selfhood is something which isreceived or bestowed. It is not the natural inheritance or achievement of anindividual, and it demands an attitude not just of passive obedience, but ofreceptiveness, openness, gratitude and (possibly) faith.

The authoritative strand incorporates both religious and secular, Christian andnon-Christian construals of selfhood. To begin with the Christian, many aspects ofChristian doctrine and practice provide evidence of the importance of such aconstrual within Christianity. Common Christian use of the language andconceptuality of ‘creatureliness’, for example, throws the emphasis, not onto theindividual actor and his or her ‘nature’, but upon human beings existing in relationto God the creator and to other created beings. So Psalm 8, in answering thequestion ‘What is man?’ depicts human beings not in terms of their possession of aparticular nature or attributes, but in terms of their position intermediate betweenGod (‘a little less than God’) and the rest of the created order. Jesus’ preference forthe term ‘neighbour’ reveals a similar reluctance to define the self in terms of itspossession of a certain substance or attributes. The neighbour is rather the concreteperson upon whom one stumbles in life’s path, the one to whom one is bound by thesimple fact of proximity (neighbour =proximus).14

The central Christian rite of baptism may also be cited as evidence of thecentrality of bestowed selfhood in Christian thought and practice. Baptism reveals

14 See O. O’Donovan,Resurrection and Moral Order. An Outline for Evangelical Ethics(Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1986), pp. 226–44.



an understanding of the human person born not just by natural human means, but bythe gift of God’s grace and through membership of the Christian community. In theradical form developed by Augustine, this belief was expounded in terms of anotion of original sinfulness (the natural human state) which can only be (partially)overcome through the second birth of baptism. Though Christian interpretationsand understandings of human sinfulness are various, some sense of sin as aninescapable part of the human condition is common in many forms of Christianity.The naked self is both insufficient and corrupt. It stands in constant need of divinegrace for redemption from this condition. Only by such a means as regularparticipation in Christian worship, the gift of Word and sacrament, prayer anddiscipline, can theimago deiin man and woman be realized.

As well as stressing the importance of God and the Christian community in thebestowal of selfhood, some forms of Christianity additionally stress the importanceof other authoritative engagements. The Lutheran tradition, for example, developsthe notion of different ‘orders’ of creation, different spheres through participationin which human beings obey divine calling. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer expounds thistradition, for example, there are four such spheres (or realms of divine ‘mandate’):marriage, government, labour and church. To be fully human is to live creativelyand obediently in each of these spheres. It is to be husband or wife, citizen, workeror member of the church – not a self-subsisting and self-sufficient individual.15

The belief that identity is bestowed by participation in community is not, ofcourse, exclusive to Christian thought. Many forms of contemporary commu-nitarianism provide clear evidence of how the authoritative strand of culture may begiven a secular rendering.16 Some communitarianism also draws upon a wide rangeof older sources, some of them secular, ranging from Aristotle to JohnMacmurray.17 Related attempts to recover the institution of the family and topresent it as the main site of soul-making also work within the trajectory ofbestowed selfhood, and these too are manifest in both secular and Christianforms.18

Liberal humanistic strand: the rational self

In contrast to the authoritative strand of culture, which rejects the idea that selfhoodis constituted by possession of a particular nature or attributes, the liberalhumanistic strand takes its stand on just this belief. Selfhood is construed in termsof being human, and humanity is construed in terms of the possession of a rationalnature. The roots of this strand of rational selfhood can be traced at least as far as

15 D. Bonhoeffer,Ethics (London: SCM Press, 1978), pp. 252–67.16 See, for example, A. MacIntyre,After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory(London:

Duckworth, 1985); S. Benhabib,Situating the Self(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).17 Tony Blair, the current leader of the Labour Party in Great Britain, recently claimed that

Macmurray was the chief influence upon his communitarian brand of democraticsocialism.

18 See, for example, F. Mount,The Subversive Family(London: Cape, 1982).

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Plato, and it was kept alive within some traditions of Christian thought until revivedand renewed by the Renaissance and Enlightenment and undergirded by thesuccesses of scientific reasoning. Descartes’ famous depiction of the human personas thinking subject gives this strand one of its clearest and most influentialarticulations, as does Kant’s categorical imperative with its bidding to treat‘rational nature’ as an end in itself ‘whether in your own person or in that ofanother’.19

In secular renderings of the liberal humanist strand, selfhood is identifiedwith the possession of rationality because it is this which defines the humanbeing; in Christian renderings, it is the possession of rationality which constitutesthe image of God in man. For both, reason is understood as the ability to know, tothink, to understand. Above all, perhaps, it is the ability to discern order. AsTaylor puts it, ‘reason can be understood as the perception of the natural or rightorder, and to be ruled by reason is to be ruled by a vision of this order alone’.20

Through its perception of order, the rational itself becomes ordered. By imposingcontrol over other potentially rebellious elements of the self – spirit, desires, thebody, animal nature – a person becomes fully human; virtues such as self-mastery, self-control, temperance, even-temperedness and consistency are highlyprized within this strand of selfhood, and the category of law is central. But theorder which the rational self discerns and brings into being extends beyond itsown boundaries. Rational selfhood construes the self as bounded, as existingwithin clear limits, and as taking its allotted place within a wider (natural orprovidential) order whose laws reason can discern. So the rational self tends to beclearly differentiated from God, from other human beings and, particularly anddecisively, from animals (the non-rational). Again, this forms something of acontrast with the bestowed self, whose boundaries are more blurred, and whichexists not as an individual monad, but through interaction with God and othercreatures.

The rational self thus has clear limits and a clear individuality. But within itsown sphere it is sovereign. The self’s possession of reason grounds not just itshumanity but its liberty. The self, able to know and to understand, must also be ableto choose and to will. It has no need of an authority to legislate for it, for it iscapable of self-legislation. The ideal for the rational self is autonomy, and thebestowed self (especially as represented by pre-Enlightenment Christianity) isrejected as heteronomous. Equally, the rationality of the self grounds its equalityand fraternity with other selves. Since all human beings possess reason, and all aresubject to the same universal laws, all human beings must be equal. Though womenwere sometimes excluded from this equation, the first feminists were able toappropriate the rationalists’ own belief in a liberty common to humanity to fightthis exclusion.

19 I. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, ed. M. Gregor (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 37f.

20 C. Taylor,Sources of the Self, p. 121.



Like the bestowed self, the rational self has both religious and secularrenderings. Deistic or rationalistic theistic interpretations of Christianity were keyto the emergence of this strand of selfhood at the beginning of the modern era. Inlater centuries it has been most clearly manifest in Christianity in some of thevaried forms of belief and practice subsumed under the wide heading of liberalChristianity (in the twentieth century, for example, it was clearly evident in the‘personalist’ interpretations of Christianity so central to Liberal Theology in the1920s and 1960s). This strand has also been prominent in other non-Christian andpost-Christian forms of modern religion; in Comte’s proposal for a ‘religion ofhumanity’, and in many of the forms of alternative spirituality which appeared inthe West in the first part of this century, for example.21 And, of course, the rationalself has also taken violently anti-religious forms – in traditions of secularhumanism and free thought, for example. The continuing influence of this strand ofselfhood is still apparent today in the continuing and uncontroversial appeal to‘human values’, ‘humanitarian values’, ‘human rights’, ‘freedom of choice’ and‘human equality’.22

Expressive strand: the boundless self

Some sociologists and social commentators argue that a ‘turn to the self’ constitutesone of the most striking and generalized features of late modernity. So Taylorspeaks of ‘the massive subjective turn of modern culture’, Talcott Parsons refers toan ‘expressive revolution’, and Ronald Inglehart identifies the same phenomenonas a ‘silent revolution’.23 The revolution finds its clearest and most extremeexample in the emergence of a new mode of selfhood: the boundless self.

In many ways the boundless self seems diametrically opposed to the rationalself. Most obviously, it differs through its rejection of rationality. The expressivestrand not only denies that rationality is the defining mark of the human, it isactively opposed to reason and its rule. Here its romantic origins are most clearlyevident. In place of reason, the expressive strand exalts feeling, intuition andcreative impulse. The desires which Enlightenment reason sought to order andcontrol are unleashed and liberated, and reason’s activity in ordering, differentiat-ing, analysing and dividing is abandoned in favour of a search for connections,linkages, harmonies and creative unities.

The boundless self also differs from the rational self in its refusal toacknowledge bounds or limitations to selfhood and in its refusal to differentiate selffrom God, from others, and from the natural order. It is this unbounded and ‘de-differentiated’ quality which marks the most characteristic strand of selfhood

21 See, for example, R. Tagore,The Religion of Man(London: Macmillan, 1931) and theprogressive and messianic humanism of much Theosophy, particularly evident in thework of Annie Besant.

22 P. Heelas, ‘On Things Not Being Worse and the Ethic of Humanity’.23 Quotations from P. Heelas,The New Age Movement, p. 160.

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according to this tradition. The bestowed self stands not in relation to God, nor inisolation from God, nor in a Godless universe, but totally immersed in the divine. Inits more religious renderings this strand of selfhood speaks of the self as having twomodes: the everyday, phenomenal, limited self (the self with a small ‘s’), and thetrue, unfathomable Self, which is one with all (the self with a big ‘S’). For theboundless and sacralized self, the goal of human life is to break through the illusionwhich is the ‘self’ to the divine reality which is the ‘Self’.

Finally, the boundless self differs from the rational self in its high valuation ofthe natural world. Where the rational self was sharply differentiated from thenatural and non-rational world (as from its own ‘animal’ nature) the boundless selftends to embrace the natural as part of its own essence. Nature is no longer an arenain which the divine may be partially revealed through law-like order; nature is nowdivinized. As such, nature is now understood to be deeply linked to the self, andself-realization and contemplation become complementary activities.

In some respects, however, the boundless self reveals a closer continuity with therational self than might be imagined. For a start, the boundless self takes over – andtakes further – the rational self’s exaltation of freedom. In addition, as Tayloremphasizes, both traditions manifest an ‘inward turn’, the privileging of the ‘inner’over the ‘outer’, which is such a characteristic mark of contemporary selfhood. Thissubjective turn may be seen as part of a wider and even more far-reaching process bywhich the self comes to usurp privileges formerly reserved for God. If the tradition ofthe rational self begins this process, that of the boundless self completes it. Now theself is seen as omnipotent and as intrinsically good, the source of all value and thecreator of all meaning. For the boundless self, morality becomes a matter of self-expression, and the self-referential notions of authenticity become the key virtues.

Whereas the rational self and the bestowed self may be understood withineither secular or religious frames of reference, it should be clear that the notion ofthe boundless self lends itself particularly easily to a spiritual rendering. This can,however, take more or less explicitly religious forms. The expressivist turn is nowvisible in many quarters, some of them religious only in the most minimal sense. AsHeelas explains:

Educationalists, therapists, counsellors, management trainers and HRDspecialists, readers of psychological self-help books, social workers, membersof AA, counter-culturalists, and students are among those most likely to thinkin terms of delving within to ‘get in touch with one’s feelings’, to discover andcultivate one’s ‘authenticity’ and in general to experience the riches of lifeitself.24

Heelas’ argument, however, is that the boundless self comes into clearest focus inits most radical – its most religious – renderings. He regards the New Agemovement as one of the most striking of such renderings, a form of religiosity thatexplicitly celebrates the divinity of the self and calls upon its followers to realize

24 P. Heelas,The New Age Movement, p. 161.



the God within. Charismatic Christianity, with its deeply experiential focus, mayrepresent the most important Christian rendering (and re-ordering) of the samecultural strand.

Utilitarian strand: the effective self

Steven Tipton traces the utilitarian strands of modern culture back to the work ofThomas Hobbes. He draws the contrast between Luther’s authoritative stance andHobbes’ utilitarian individualism in the following terms:

For Luther, all men are equal by virtue of their relation to the highest authority,God. For Hobbes, all men are equal by virtue of their relation to the most basicdrive, namely preservation. Protestantism relates the individual to the absoluteand personally unique judgments of God. Utilitarianism relates the individualto the constant end of his own self-preservation. It also relates him to theshifting, comparable (to objects as well as to other persons), and impersonaljudgments of the relative utility of means to the end of self-preservation. Everyman has his price in this sense, just as every thing does.25

As Tipton explains, the utilitarian individual in the twentieth as much as in thesixteenth century, concentrates on ‘seeking to satisfy his own wants orinterests’.26 Here, selfhood is seen to consist in effectiveness – in the effectiverealization of one’s goals and the effective satisfaction of one’s wants. Thenature of these goals and wants remains open. This strand of modern culture ispurely ‘procedural’. It is concerned to maximize efficiency, to devise bettermeans for the attainment of ends, but it does not prescribe or proscribe the endsthemselves. In Tipton’s understanding, the ends which utilitarian individualismseeks tend to be the goals which are widely accepted in the culture as a whole –which today means happiness, success in relationships, wealth, power, success,material goods and sensation. Anthony Robbins, the self-help guru, exemplifiesthis position in his best-selling bookUnlimited Power: The New Science ofPersonal Achievement:

If I were to say to you in two words what this book is about, I’d say: Producingresults! Think about it. Isn’t that what you’re really interested in? Maybe youwant to change how you feel about yourself and your world. Maybe you’d liketo be a better communicator, develop a more loving relationship, learn morerapidly, become healthier, or earn more money. You can create all of thesethings for yourself, and much more, through the effective use of theinformation in this book.27

25 S. Tipton,Getting Saved from the Sixties, p. 8.26 S. Tipton,Getting Saved from the Sixties, p. 6.27 A. Robbins,Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement(London:

Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. 24.

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Unlike the boundless self, then, the effective self is not thought of as particularly‘deep’ or ‘sacred’, nor as the natural possessor of a plenitude of resources. Its wantsare many, and they must be satisfied in order that adequate selfhood may beachieved.28 Yet though the effective self does not have the confident plenitude ofthe boundless self, it does have potential. This strand of selfhood assumes theexistence of untapped capacities of the self that can be maximized through theharnessing of all available techniques. And very often these capacities will beviewed as limitless; there is no end to what the self may achieve when it becomestruly effective – hence the use of the word ‘unlimited’ in Robbins’ title.

The effective self thus displays some similarities with the boundless self,particularly in its understanding of the self as (potentially) infinite. Like theboundless self, and to some degree the rational self, the effective self may also beviewed as a manifestation of the wider subjective turn so characteristic ofmodernity. In Heelas’ view, ‘The trajectory has to do with an instrumentalizedrendering of that ‘‘turn within’’.’29 Similarly, the rational self and the effective selfare linked by a common emphasis upon the importance of the will. As we haveseen, the rational self is a self which reasons and makes its choices on the basis ofthat reasoning; the will is seen as the enforcer of reason’s deliverances. The liberalhumanistic strand’s stress on the importance of human liberty is tied up with itsconfidence in the ability of each individual to make his or her own choices – andstands in contrast to more pessimistic Christian understandings of the weakness andcorruption of the human will. But the effective self takes voluntarism even furtherthan the rational self, and the will becomes more prominent than any other faculty,including reason. For the effective self, there is no limit to the capacity of thehuman will. Human beings are, above all, beings who make choices, and effectivehuman beings are those who make effective choices. There is nothing that the willcannot achieve if it is sufficiently powerful, directed, informed and disciplined –there is nothing which lies outside its control.

Despite the fact that the effective self’s belief in its own potentially unlimitedpower and its sovereign and effective will puts it at odds with many moretraditional Christian understandings of selfhood, the effective self does havereligious – and Christian – renderings. The father of self-help, Norman VincentPeale, was a Christian minister who presented his self-help gospel as a spiritualmessage. Similarly, American Protestantism has recently spawned various forms of‘prosperity gospel’, which promise material blessings and enhanced personaleffectiveness and contentment as the ‘gifts of the Spirit’. Steven R. Covey’s recenthighly successful interpretation of the self-help genre,The Seven Habits of HighlyEffective People, shows this spiritualizing tendency continuing into the 1990s.Interestingly, Covey not only presents the effective self as compatible with spiritualideals, he also presents it as compatible with respect for human values. In this way

28 cf. the analysis in C. Lasch,The Culture of Narcissism. American Life in an Age ofDiminishing Expectations(London and New York: Norton, 1991).

29 P. Heelas,The New Age Movement, p. 166.



Covey shows the remarkable assimilative qualities of effective selfhood; the way itis able to draw eclectically, and in utilitarian fashion, on other strands of modernselfhood.30 As the back cover of the book proclaims:

Steven R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centred approach forsolving personal and professional problems... Covey reveals a step-by-steppathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity –principles that give us the security to adapt to change, and the wisdom andpower to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.

Theology and the fragmentation thesis

When recast in terms of the different sources of modern culture and selfhood, thefragmentation thesis assumes a significantly new form. Now the cause of thefragmentation of the modern self is seen to lie not so much in the action of monolithicand universal processes of modernity but in the large number of cultural possibilitieswhich compete for the self in the contemporary context. The fragmentation thesis isno longer tied to a unilinear view of history. It can happily accept the historicalevidence which indicates that earlier ages and different cultures were not alwayscharacterized by stable, embedded identities (such as Late Antiquity, to take astriking example). Nor does it have any particular stake in showing that we are nowentering a postmodern age of intensified fragmentation. Instead, it accepts that someof the strands of modernity are in significant continuity with premodernity, and is notclosed to the possibility that premodernity was itself diverse and stranded.

Most importantly, however, the recast fragmentation thesis is better able toexplain why modern crises of identity take the many different forms they do.Fragmentation ceases to be a blanket explanation and becomes a more nuanced toolof analysis. One example must suffice. Revived national, racial, religious andethnic identities can be understood as variations on the theme of bestowed selfhood.As such, these identities might be expected to clash with liberal humanisticrenderings of selfhood – as indeed they do. This clash has come into theoreticalfocus in the rise of forms of communitarianism that distance themselves sharplyfrom liberal humanism, such as MacIntyre’sAfter Virtue. Feminist writers havealso played a central part in attacking the liberal rational self.31 But some feministsthen find themselves embroiled within another conflict, for secular humanism hasundergirded the struggle for women’s equal rights in the past, and its overthrowmay have serious implications for the feminist cause in the future. In actual lifepractice as well, it seems that many women find themselves torn between a feminist

30 S.R. Covey,The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People(London and New York:Simon and Schuster, 1989).

31 See, for example, R. Braidotti,Patterns of Dissonance(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991)and G. Lloyd, The Man of Reason. ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy(London: Routledge, 1993).

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allegiance that tends to encourage very independent forms of selfhood, and familylives that mesh much better with a tradition of bestowed selfhood.32 Should womenprize freedom above all things (liberal humanist) or should they nurturerelationality and connectedness (authoritative)? The debate continues to run, andthe recast fragmentation thesis helps bring it into clear focus.

As well as helping us interpret contemporary crises of identity, the strandedaccount of modern selfhood has clear relevance for theological anthropology.The current fashion is for anthropologies that restate some version of bestowedselfhood. Such anthropologies strongly emphasize the created and relationalnature of the self, insisting that persons should be understood not as self-sufficient or self-created beings, but as creatures who live, move and have theirbeing in the Trinitarian God. It is in Christ that we glimpse perfect humanity, andit is in being ‘conformed to Christ’, as Bonhoeffer put it, that we become fullyhuman. Furthermore, we become human only as part of the body of Christ, thechurch. As Stephen Fowl and Gregory Jones explain, ‘Being disciplined by theWord entails allowing our lives to be patterned in Christ... It involves awillingness to have our lives formed and transformed in and through particularChristian communities.’33

Contemporary Christian thought about the self is thus at pains to stress that it isonly in relation to God and other people that we become fully human. Very oftenthis preoccupation is spelt out in relation to an understanding of the Trinity as theinstantiation of what the influential Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas hasdescribed as ‘being as communion’.34 Just as the Christian understanding of God isnot of a self-contained solitary being, but of a God who is God in relation, so theChristian understanding of the human person is of a being who becomes humanonly in relation to the other. As Zizioulas says, ‘The being of God is a relationalbeing; without the concept of communion it would not be possible to speak ofGod... True being comes only from the free person, the person who loves freely –that is, who freely affirms his being, his identity, by means of an event of com-munion with other persons.’35 For Zizioulas, as for other contemporary theologianswho share his ontological insights, this Trinitarian model of personhood leadsdirectly to the church and, in particular, the eucharist as the site of human formationand perfection. As Alan Torrance says, ‘the ecclesial creation of the New Humanityrepresents the profoundest expression of our creation in God’s image’36 and asZizioulas says, ‘the church has bound every one of her acts to the eucharist, which

32 See L. Woodhead, ‘Faith, Feminism and the Family’Concilium: The Family(1995) pp.43–52.

33 S.E. Fowl and G. Jones,Reading in Communion. Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life(London: SPCK, 1991), p. 34.

34 cf. J. Zizioulas,Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and the Church(London:Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985).

35 J. Zizioulas,Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and the Church,pp. 17f.36 A. Torrance,Persons in Communion. Trinitarian Description and Human Participation

(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), p. 367.



has as its object man’s transcendence of his biological hypostasis and his becomingan authentic person.’37

The influence of Barth, Moltmann, Ju¨ngel, Pannenberg and even Rahner on thisnew Trinitarian–ecclesial–eucharistic theological understanding of personhood isclear. So, too, is the influence of the currently fashionable and somewhat moresecular classical–republican–communitarian tradition of thought represented bywriters like Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Bellah and Alan Bloom.In theology the latter tradition is perhaps played out most clearly in the work ofStanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas also develops an ecclesial anthropology of bestowedselfhood, but the Trinity and the eucharist assume a less prominent place in histheology. For Hauerwas, following MacIntyre, it is Christian narrative which takescentre stage; it is in living out the Christian story that church and self are shaped andformed. Similarly, Gerard Loughlin, a British narrative theologian, speaks of humanpersonhood as consisting in narratively formed ecclesial existence. As he says,‘Entering [the Christian] story, becoming a character within its storied world, is... amatter of becoming part of the story that embodies the story... shaping consists in theformation of virtuous habits through communal practices.’38 Selfhood, in otherwords, is bestowed by participation in a story-shaped church.

To liberal humanist and expressive ears, of course, such talk of a selfhoodbestowed by God and the church sounds dangerously ‘heteronomous’ (to use aword plucked from the liberal vocabulary). The conflict between the liberal and theauthoritative traditions of selfhood is, as we have seen, long-standing, and the twohave been shaped by mutual opposition since the Enlightenment. Somecommunitarians, like Hauerwas, are happy to acknowledge their enmity towardsliberalism and to spar with real or imagined liberal opponents, both Christian andsecular. Similarly, Gerard Loughlin’s theology often seems framed in opposition toliberalism, though he is equally concerned to critique those like Don Cupitt andMark C. Taylor whom he calls ‘nihilist postmodern theologians’.

The latter tendency is even clearer in Anthony Thiselton’sInterpreting Godand the Postmodern Self, where a Christian anthropology of bestowed selfhood isdeveloped in explicit reaction to all postmodernists and the entire postmodernscene. Despite its undeniable insights and critical power, it is in Thiselton’s book,perhaps, that some of the problems inherent in the current enterprise of restating acommunal anthropology of bestowed selfhood come into clearest relief. Thiseltonadopts the fragmentation thesis wholesale and without demur. For him thepostmodern self (the self of today) is simply the fragmented, decentred self. As hesays, ‘the postmodern self perceives itself as having lost control as active agent, andas having been transformed into a passive victim of competing groups’.39 The

37 Being as Communion, p. 61.38 G. Loughlin,Telling God’s Story. Bible, Church and Narrative Theology(Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 87.39 A. Thiselton,Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self. On Meaning, Manipulation

and Promise(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), p. 12.

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culprits in Thiselton’s view include party-politics, capitalism, advertising, bureau-cracy – in fact, the whole contemporary Western socio-political matrix. ForThiselton, postmodern thinkers, both Christian and non-Christian, are all those whoarticulate and thereby reinforce such fragmentation. They range from Nietzsche,Derrida and Foucault on the one hand to Don Cupitt on the other. Against thepostmodern self, it is the task of the Christian to reassert belief in a self given byGod and a God who gives himself to the self. By such a means, Christianity canreassert belief in love and relationality, and so ‘dissolve the acids of suspicion anddeception’.40 The Christian self is a self which is no longer passive victim to pre-given roles and performances, but a self which ‘perceives its call and its value asone-who-is-loved within the larger narrative plot of God’s loving purposes for theworld, for society, and for the self.’41

In terms of the analysis for which I have been arguing in this article,Thiselton’s blanket condemnation of the postmodern world and the postmodern selfis bound up with his uncritical acceptance of the fragmentation thesis. It thereforesuffers from a failure to understand the multiple sources of contemporary selfhood,sources which may, as we have seen, ground very stable identities as well as manydifferent kinds of identity crisis and fragmentation. (Thiselton’s book alsoillustrates how an acceptance of the undifferentiated fragmentation thesis oftengoes hand in hand with a broad-brush characterization of modernity orpostmodernity as characterized by unvarying and universal linear processes.) Ifmy analysis is correct, what is needed from theologians today is not such broad-brush characterizations and condemnations of modernity or postmodernity,followed up by the triumphalist claim that only Christianity can offer a viablealternative, but more honest and nuanced approaches to both the contemporaryworld and Christian construals of selfhood. This will involve at least two things:first, a recognition that there are several, often conflicting, strands of contemporaryselfhood and, second, a willingness to admit that Christianity is involved andimplicated in these strands and subject to many of the same tensions. Christianitycannot, in other words, pretend to stand aloof from the problems of modernselfhood and offer a timeless solution.

Once it is accepted that the contemporary debate about selfhood is an intra-Christian as well as a secular one, it is less easy to escape the fact that enthusiastictheological espousals of bestowed selfhood often amount to an attack on fellowChristians of different persuasions. As we have just seen, some theologians quitedeliberately attack other forms of Christian conviction – Thiselton and Loughlincontra the nihilist postmodern theologians, for example. On even the mostoptimistic estimates the number of such postmodern Christians is, however, tiny.The number of Christians who accept either a liberal or an expressive construal ofselfhood (or some combination of the two) is, by contrast, exceedingly large. In arecent extensive survey of a wide variety of Christian congregations in America, for

40 A. Thiselton,Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self, p. 160.41 Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self, p. 160.



example, Nancy Ammerman and her team of researchers found that liberalChristians (‘Golden Rule Christians’) were much the most numerous in Americanchurches (51%), outnumbering even evangelicals (29%).42 It is also possible toargue that the whole Diana phenomenon (the spirituality she espoused and theechoes of it in reactions to her death) provides evidence of a similarly widespreadreligion of expressive/liberal humanitarianism on this side of the Atlantic.43

Contemporary anthropologies of bestowed selfhood constitute an attack on suchforms of Christianity, and thus on vast numbers of fellow Christians. Obviously thisdoes not invalidate such an enterprise. It should, however, be made more explicit,and borne in mind as a factor which will undoubtedly affect the reception andinfluence of contemporary anthropologies of bestowed selfhood.

A much more serious effect of the failure of many contemporary Christianaccounts of selfhood to take seriously their historical situatedness is, I believe, theirfailure to address the criticisms of bestowed selfhood which led liberals andexpressivists to depart from this trajectory in the first place. It is not enough merelyto articulate communitarian versions of bestowed selfhood without answering themost weighty and long-standing objections which face them. Of these much themost important is the criticism that such selfhood degrades men and women byplacing too much emphasis on human weakness, fallibility, dependence andsinfulness. Such a criticism can be traced at least as far back as Erasmus, though itbecame much more widespread at the time of the Enlightenment. So frequentlydoes one come across such criticisms in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature that a good argument could be made for saying that dissatis-faction with Christian understandings of the human person was at least as importanta cause of secularization as the rise of the natural sciences. In the later part of thetwentieth century the objection has been stated with fresh force by feminist criticswho hold Christian doctrines of bestowed selfhood guilty of reinforcing patriarchaloppression by undermining women’s sense of self-worth and their confidence intheir own agency and ability.44

Such criticisms surely need to be addressed by contemporary advocates ofbestowed selfhood, though they rarely are. How is it possible to assert our completedependence on God without denying human freedom? How is it possible tomaintain belief in human agency whilst insisting that the self is constituted byrelationality? And how is it possible to remain faithful to Christian doctrines ofhuman sinfulness in ways which do not undercut belief in human dignity and have

42 N.T. Ammermanet al., Congregation and Community(New Brunswick, NJ: RutgersUniversity Press, 1997); N. Ammerman, ‘Golden Rule Christianity. Lived Religion inthe American Mainstream’, in D.G. Hall, ed.,Lived Religion in America. Toward aTheory of Practice(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).

43 cf. L. Woodhead, ‘Diana and the Religion of the Heart’ in J. Richards, S. Wilson and L.Woodhead, eds,Saint Diana: The Making of a Postmodern Icon(London: I.B. Tauris,in press).

44 See, for example, the influential essay by V. Saiving, ‘The Human Situation: AFeminine View’,Journal of Religion40 (1960), pp. 100–12.

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the baleful effects pointed out by feminists and other critics? None of thesequestions necessarily require that theologians should abandon their defence of aChristian version of bestowed selfhood, but they do require somewhat less evasiveaccounts. To take only the last question, the question about sin, it is noticeable thatmany contemporary anthropologies skirt around the doctrine altogether. Again,Thiselton’s book is instructive. Far from attempting to address the issue, he ends updeveloping an anthropology whose stress is overwhelmingly positive: Christianityalone can help us regain faith in human agency and the reality of relationality, loveand trust. Strangely, it is his postmodern opponents from Foucault to the feministswho end up articulating more powerful accounts of sinfulness than Thiseltonhimself, who is at pains to insist that institutions like the church are not really asprone to manipulate and abuse power and promote their own interests as thepostmodernists maintain.

Again, I do not wish to single out Thiselton for particular criticism, for hemerely brings into focus a more general failure to take seriously the issues that anyChristian defence of bestowed selfhood should face. Instead of tackling the issue ofsin head on, too many theologians skirt round it, with the paradoxical consequencethat they look remarkably naı¨ve, not just about individual, but particularlyinstitutional, sin. Enthusiasm about the need to be disciplined by the church would,I believe, carry more conviction if it went hand in hand with an honest explorationof the abuses of ecclesiastical power which this can invite. In actual fact, liberalChristians, often accused of being naı¨ve about sin, have tended to be much moreaware of the ways in which institutional Christianity can and has inhibited morejust forms of social and personal existence.

Part of the problem may be the unwillingness of theologians to take seriouslywhat is actually happening to the churches in the late twentieth century. We havejust noticed the way in which anthropologies of bestowed selfhood sometimes failto take account of the impact of their doctrines on the vast liberal constituency ofthe churches. The failure to take seriously liberal and expressive criticisms ofbestowed selfhood may be related. Just as important, however, seems to be thefailure of contemporary theology to take seriously another striking contemporarydevelopment: the worldwide evangelical–charismatic upsurge. This upsurge hasbeen most evident in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, but it is alsonoticeable in the Philippines, the Pacific rim (above all, Korea), China, parts ofEastern Europe, and in Western Europe and the United States. CharismaticChristianity has not merely spawned new churches and denominations; it has alsoexercized a powerful influence within the older churches, both Protestant andCatholic.45

The significance of this upsurge for Christian anthropology may lie in itsability to embody forms of selfhood which manage to combine elements of theauthoritative with elements of the liberal, expressive and utilitarian strands ofselfhood. At its best, in other words, charismatic Christianity seems to move

45 cf. D. Martin,Forbidden Revolutions.



beyond the old authoritative–liberal stalemate, and suggest new and creative formsof faithful selfhood. On the one hand, it restores human agency and empowersindividuals who often find themselves in the most desperate situations. On theother, it maintains belief in the transcendence of God, the authority of scripture, andthe reality of human sinfulness (often ascribed to demonic powers). David Martinexplains charismatic–evangelical religion’s ability to empower those who are mostoften downtrodden without succumbing to pure expressivism or abandoning beliefin the Trinitarian God in the following terms:

Evangelical religion provides empowerment through its offer of healing, itsdemand for responsibility, and its invitation openly to affirm and express. Forpeople to be addressed in evangelical language as persons is to be spoken to interms that truly speak to their condition, confirming beyond the shadow ofdoubt their dignity, worth and significance... It is just when your circumstanceis most severely limiting and when structures are most obdurately resistant thatyou need to know yourself as agent, otherwise you will be passively swept overthe abyss.46

At its best, evangelical–charismatic Christianity manages to build strong Christiancommunities at the same time that it upholds this stress on personal dignity – thusreinforcing an important theme of contemporary communitarian anthropologies. Atthe same time, its constructions of selfhood seem to bear witness to importantaspects of the tradition of bestowed selfhood, whilst also responding in new andremarkably creative ways to the contemporary situation. Of course, this form ofChristianity has its own particular weaknesses and blind spots, including a tendencyto give rise to authoritarian forms of personal leadership. It would be foolish to holdit up as the anthropological touchstone theologians have been seeking. It is far fromfoolish, however, for theologians to take note of the fact that the forms ofChristianity that appear to flourish in the contemporary world are those whichmanage to combine the elements of the liberal–expressive and the authoritarianstrands of selfhood (and in some cases the utilitarian as well).

It is not enough for Christians today merely to repudiate modernity and themodern (or postmodern) quest for selfhood. To have any real bite, theology shouldengage seriously with the complexity of the modern world and the diverse modernconstruals of selfhood. It should do so in honest acknowledgment that it is alreadyimplicated in these strands and has played a significant part in their unfolding. Itshould do so with the confidence that it can continue to influence and play a part inthe unfolding of modernity or even postmodernity. And it should do so with awillingness to learn from those flesh-and-blood men and women in the churchestoday who reveal to us something of the authentic selfhood to which we are calledin Christ.

46 D. Martin,Forbidden Revolutions, p. 45.

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Theology and the Fragmentation of the Self

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