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At the centre of reality Every person is the centre of reality. A world exists because it exists to consciousness, without which, the world would cease to exist, at least in that site of consciousness. This is not a recent postmodern assertion; it is central to modernity, even if human self-centredness is also an ancient theme. In the late eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant demonstrated that human perception is located in space and time—here not there, in this time not another. Space and time are intrinsic to perceptions of the world. Our understanding of the world therefore always has a perspective. In the early twentieth century, Edmund Husserl extended this insight to show that perceptions of phenomena are both received from the world through language, culture and relationships and also perceived and intended to be a certain way. Our world is at once intended, yet beyond our intentions, as it is also intended to be a certain way by others. The centrality of the human person remains firmly intact as humans compete, each for the pre-eminence of a perceived and intended world. Talk about “the other” does not alleviate the problem of the human self being at the centre of existence, for there is invariably, selective acceptance and therefore assimilation of “the other.” The self-standing human is intrinsic to modern engagement with the world that is intended and interpreted from a thinking centre. In one sense, this is not a new idea. Yet the elevation of the interpreting human to a pervasive and dominant view of life is its uniquely modern characteristic; each person as the interpretive centre of existence was paramount by the twentieth century. Yet the human person as interpretive centre of reality stands on nothing but shifting perceptions within changing constructions of reality. v When Christians claim that “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me,” they point to radically different human self-perception. Adulation for the self-standing human is contested by Christian testimony, which cites true personhood in God as love. God is given to Christian faith as dynamic self-deference cohering within a communion of love known as perichõrẽsis. Jesus Christ makes this reality explicit. Triune reality models personhood in which relinquishment of self as centre is the beginning of another possibility beyond the assumed prerequisites for survival that gather extraordinary momentum in nineteenth century survival of the fittest and variations on this impetus. Triune reality calls us out of self-centredness and invites us to participate in the ultimate community of desire through the deference of love. A Christian participates, through Christ and the Holy Spirit, in this intrinsically relational reality, a reality that forgoes any claim to an eternal solitary centre, as for example, in mono-personal theism. Inscribed with the triune confession—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—Christian baptism defines an epic shift from self-centred to Christ-centred reality. As a prerequisite to life, baptism suggests nothing less than death, as a person undergoes momentous transformation. By being baptised into Christ, we are baptised into his death as a reversal of the self orientated toward a world conceived and intended, materially or ideologically, as a source of secure self-standing. v Modern human perceptions are formed amid a plethora of images, which in a compound of desire, acquisition, pride and impunity, endorses and reinforces my place under the sun. Such perceptions are antithetical to creaturely humility and trust in the source of all life. In Christ, a person is transformed to participate in an entirely different possibility for human life. This occurs through grace in the response of faith as a person’s inner being is exposed as naked before the reality of God, the source of life that exceeds the scope of human resources and intention. This exposure of the self through being in Christ and life in the Spirit opens unexpected apertures for human possibility. Christian testimony, anchored in the event of God’s self-giving love—the passion—gives a perspective of the human self that does not figure in any logic of which we can make sense apart from grace. This ultimate movement of relinquishment as the inner reality and meaning of a different self is given in Christian remembrance as a perspective that is known within grace. The logic of Christian remembrance is only compelling through the risk of faith in self-relinquishment after the Son’s obedience, to be given over to life that is sustained otherwise than by self-preservation. Its outcome, against logic, is life. Alternatively, every movement of installing the self as the centre of a world, sustaining a lie in its own logic, delivers death in an ever shrinking and constricting egocentrism of existence. Humans are not made for egocentrism. They are made for God. In discovering this, each person discovers integral humanity. The movement of faith is exposure to the relational reality of God made known in a unique word to and for humans, but not able finally, to be adjudicated by humans. It is experiencing reality as a communion of love. Its explicit definition is given in Jesus Christ. v Self-relinquishment appears strange, even odious to modern sensibilities, especially when coupled with imperatives that imply loss or curtailment of assumed liberties and rights. Self-relinquishment seems antithetical to everything a person is taught explicitly and implicitly in our time. As the centre of reality, human desire—as liberty, right or license—is only limited by the hard edges of resources, time and space or social latitude. A combination of indifference to limits and nurture of the human self as the centre of existence can inculcate and reinforce a tacit assumption—the assumed right to any desire. Alternatively, Christians are called to live within an unnerving reality after the redemptive paradox and gift—death is at work in us, but life in you. This is one sure test that we are not making-up our own parameters for Christian identity. Integral humanity relates to Christology. Christology concerns the affirmation of humanity in incarnation, while also dislodging self-standing human life as a prerequisite to discovering an integral human self. This self is given in the reality—whoever seeks to secure life will lose it, but whoever ceases to grasp at life, for the sake of Christ and the gospel, will find it. How reality is intended and given by Jesus Christ is intrinsic to Christian personhood as radically different from the self as an autonomous entity. The Christian self is contingent on exposure to a word otherwise than our own that gives testimony to transformative grace for all human life in Jesus Christ. In exposure to the word of grace defined in Christ, each person can discover integral humanity in having relinquished any claim to self-standing existence. This possibility is necessarily prefaced by recognising perennial human self-compromise and our capacity for self-deception in hubris and desire. Precisely in their search for a true self, humans are taken seriously in their capacity for self-compromise. In Christ, humans recognise they are made for God. To be exposed as naked before God is also to be given through grace, the capacity to respond. Response
to Christ requires listening, beyond speaking to ourselves or beyond regurgitation
of what seems plausible. Response is exposure to being called into question by
another. Without exposure to the word of grace, we perpetuate a relay of talking
to ourselves in self-confirmation of our collective self-inclinations, yet with
each one still remaining the epicentre of reality. |
