PERSONHOOD

What does it mean to say that God is a person? We often hear Christians claim that they ‘have a personal relationship with Christ,’ and we’re told that in the Trinity, there are ‘Three Persons in one Godhead,’ but what, exactly, is a person?

First of all, when we say that God is a person, what we mean is that you, me, and everyone else who has ever or will ever live is a person. And because God is infinitely greater than us, omnipotent, perfect, and lacking nothing, then this thing we possess, personhood, must also be true of God as well, although the likelihood that He possesses it to perfection and whatever we have that we call personhood only exists in us, imperfectly and incomplete.

That still doesn’t answer the question of what Personood is. And the fact of the matter, we can only hope to hazard some guesses. Interesting, isn’t it? That whatever makes us unique amongst God’s creatures, this thing that separates us from the beasts, is something that we can’t quite exactly put our finger on?

One of the interesting things about Personhood is that it is a Christian concept. As Pope Benedict wrote in his book, Introduction to Christianity,

“Here it must be mentioned that the word persona and its Greek equivalent, prosopon, belong to the language of the theater. They denoted the mask that made the actor into the embodiment of someone else. It was as a result of considerations of this sort that the word was first introduced into the language of Christianity and so transformed by the Christian faith itself in the course of a severe struggle that out of the word arose the idea of the person, a notion alien to antiquity. (emphasis added)

And here lies one of the clues about Personhood, it is relational. The lone individual is never a person. Imagine someone dropped at birth on a desert island. Let’s skip the details on how this individual is fed, or how their diaper is changed. Somehow, they grow up with no other humans. Who does this human think he is? He can’t know whether he has an anger problem, is particularly skittish, funny, smart, kind, generous, or even that he’s a ‘he’. He has no ability to see himself reflected in his relationship with others, he has not been loved, or been able to love anyone.

Who we are as persons depends on these things. The love and acceptance (or lack thereof) received from parents, family, and friends. The guidance or shame we receive from mentors, coaches, and teachers, all effect our understanding of ourselves as persons. This also means we each bear a great responsibility for the personhood of others. Through our relationships, we affect other people’s understanding of themselves.

But our true personhood begins and ends in Christ. Through Him and our relationship with Him, we are accepted for who we truly are, not as we or others think of us, but who are as creatures made in the image and likeness of God. Importantly, although He accepts us as we are, He also knows who we can become. Acceptance does not mean capitulation to one’s own ideas of self, but rather, an acknowledgement of both our worth and our shortcomings. God accepts us as we are so that we can become something, someone, so much more.