ANDERSEN John Thesis

Deficit Identity and Being-in-Contradiction: Reconceiving Original Sin with reference to the Psychology of Identity by John Andersen In fulfillment of: Master of Theology (Honours) Charles Sturt University, 2010 This thesis is dedicated to the memory of: Winsome Wendy Lesmay Jones Special thanks is given to my father, Dr. Francis Ian Andersen for your mentoring, support, guidance, enthusiastic theological engagement, endless supply of books, and pedantic proof reading. Your commitment enabled me to complete this project. I wish to acknowledge my supervisor Dr. Heather Thomson. A particularly valuable contribution was your challenging me to aspire to higher standards of academic excellence. I also wish to acknowledge the contribution of my associate supervisor Dr. John Capper for your enthusiasm and encouragement over cups of coffee, and ready engagement with the theological ideas I was developing in this thesis. I am indebted to Dr. Stephen Pickard for introducing me to the latest developments in Trinitarian theology. You changed my view of God. I am grateful to Prof. Ben Bradley for finding time to review and comment on the early chapters of this thesis. Your input was invaluable. Finally, I wish to give heartfelt thanks to Deborah Andersen, my wife, best friend and life-long companion, for your gracious tolerance of the intrusion of this project over the last four years, and your continued encouragement when I needed it. I love you always. Table of Contents Introduction i Part One: The Social Dimension of Human Existence Chapter 1: Social Constructionism: Perspectives 1 Chapter 2: Personal Being and Identity 27 Chapter 3: The Social Dimension of Personhood 53 Chapter 4. Social Being of Persons in Theology 73 Part Two: The Concept of Sin Reexamined Chapter 5: Sin in Social Context 111 Chapter 6. Original Sin as Inherited Sinfulness 160 Certificate of Authorship I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material that to a substantial extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at Charles Sturt University or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contributions made to the research by colleagues with whom I have worked at Charles Sturt University or elsewhere during my candidature is fully acknowledged. I agree that the thesis be accessible for the purpose of study and research in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Executive Director, Division of Library Services or nominee, for the care, loan and reproduction of theses. Name: John Andersen Date: 21 June 2010 MTh Thesis Introduction i Introduction Often the task of integration between psychology and theology has focused on the ways that theology addresses and sheds light on psychological theory. This thesis attempts the reverse task of starting with social psychological theories regarding human identity, and in the light of these theories, exploring what implications and new insights they may offer for the Christian conception of sin. This thesis is organized in two parts. The first part, comprising four chapters, lays out the foundation for the second part. Chapter One outlines some of the features of the social constructionist perspective. Social constructionism provides new perspectives on the nature of human knowledge and the intersubjective nature of human reality. This thesis utilizes some of these insights in its reconception of sin as a social action in Part Two. Chapter Two explores the social psychological concept of identity with its recognition of the social dimension of human existence. The concept of identity presents personal being as having two dimensions – a social and an individual one. Chapter Three argues that contrary to the popular conception in the West that humans exist as autonomous individuals, humans exist as persons-in-relationship. As Chapter Four demonstrates, this recognition is also emerging in theological thinking. Under the influence of Martin Buber‘s dialogical personalism, Karl Barth and Emil Brunner emphasized that humans exist in personal relationships characterized as I – Thou encounter. Barth particularly emphasized that the social dimension of human existence as persons-in- relationship was integral to human personal existence. Consistent with this emphasis, Barth interpreted the image of God as a reference to human capacity for personal relationship, and that God had the human couple as co-humanity in MTh Thesis Introduction ii view when he declared them to be in his image. Subsequent theologians made explicit the similarity of human life as differentiated persons in relationship with the personal life of the Trinity as differentiated persons in perichoretic communion. This represents a profound shift from the traditional theological conception of imago dei as a reference to human rationality and original righteousness. The most original contribution of this thesis occurs in Part Two, laid out in Chapters Five and Six. It explores the implications of the social dimension of personal being for understanding human sinfulness. Chapter Five argues that sin is a social act with an intersubjective reality. Its significance lies in the social meanings of the act. Sin consequently is intelligible in a social context as a relational violation, rather than a legal transgression or failure to live up to a moral standard of perfection. More particularly, sin is intelligible essentially as a relational violation against God. Furthermore, there is a close interrelation between sin and identity such that actual sins can be regarded as an outworking of deficit identity. A deficit identity is conceptualized as a condition of being oneself as a particular being where one‘s self-concept of identity is fashioned in terms of what one lacks, or in terms of the deficit between who one actually is and who one ought to be. Deficit identity is experienced emotionally as a sense of shame. A common expression of deficit identity is the description of human beings as sinners. Deficit identity reflects human awareness of a profound flawed state in our being. This deficit of being is so profound that Barth described human existence as being-in-contradiction. Indeed humanity was described as an ontological impossibility in that who humans now are is far MTh Thesis Introduction iii removed from the beings we were created to be.1 Deficit identity reflects an awareness of this state of being-in-contradiction. The thesis then uses Barth‘s concept of self-enactment to make a connection between sinfulness, identity and actual sins. Self-enactment reflects Barth‘s insistence that human being expresses itself in dynamic action. This viewpoint is supported on an experiential level by the social psychological recognition that a person‘s self-concept or identity is generally expressed and reflected in that person‘s behaviour. That is my actions reflect my beliefs regarding my identity. Therefore actual sins are a self-enactment consistent with an identification of oneself as a sinner. If sins are a self-enactment of identity, then the transformation of the believer‘s identity from one of sinner to that of saint is a crucial yet unacknowledged issue in theological reflection upon the relation of the Christian to sin. Furthermore, a crucial factor in the reorientation of the Christian from a propensity to sin to a pursuit of godliness is a corresponding transformation of one‘s identity from that of sinner to that of saint. Because people tend to act in a way consistent with their identity, is it is self-defeating to on the one hand identify believers as sinners while on the other to expect of them to be godly. This serves only to raise the profound ontological self- contradiction of human being in sin to a conscious level. Finally, Chapter Six proposes an alternative way of conceiving original sin. Original sin has been traditionally conceives as a corrupt nature inherited directly from Adam. It not only refers to an inherited corruption, but also to an inherited guilt. While this conception has been widely criticized, what is needed is the development of a more adequate alternative conception that explains the universality and inevitability of human sinfulness, upon which the central 1 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Creation, trans. H. Knight, et al., vol. III/2 (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 136. MTh Thesis Introduction iv Christian doctrine of the necessity of salvation by grace through Christ is based. Chapter Six is an initial exploration of a possible alternative conception that emphasizes the central role that social processes play in institutionalizing sinfulness and the multigenerational impact of the sins of one generation upon another. Sin becomes universal and inevitable as a result of the impact of ancestoral sin on subsequent generations. Chapter Six argues that the social dimension of human social existence supports the case for the importance of social processes of institutionalization of sin, socialization, and multigenerational family legacies in explaining the universality and inevitability of human sinfulness from generation to generation. Human sinfulness can be explained in terms of the cumulative impact of sin upon human history in a way that makes original sin as a concept distinct from individual sins redundant. A consequence of individual sins from Adam onwards in constructing a social reality shaped by sin is that humans are born into a sinful social situation. Each generation is inevitably socialized into becoming sinners with deficit identities through the social processes of identity formation. These processes provide an alternative explanation to the traditional concept of original sin as a corruption of human nature transmitted to each generation through the process of procreation. MTh Thesis Chapter 1 1 Part One: The Social Dimension of Human Existence Chapter 1: Social Constructionism: Perspectives The theological task of reflection upon God occurs within an ever-changing social/cultural context.

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