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PAUL RICOEUR AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS: NARRATIVE IDENTITY AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY
Author(s) -
DeLASHMUTT MICHAEL W.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
modern theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.144
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1468-0025
pISSN - 0266-7177
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0025.2009.01556.x
Subject(s) - narrative , identity (music) , philosophy , foot (prosody) , psychoanalysis , aesthetics , epistemology , psychology , linguistics
This article attempts to reconcile the holistically understood and embodied philosophical anthropology indicated by Paul Ricoeur's concept of “narrative identity” with Christian personal eschatology, as realized in the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Narrative identity resonates with spiritual autobiography in the Christian tradition—evinced here by a brief comparison with the confessed self of St Augustine of Hippo—and offers to theology a means of explaining identity in a way which: 1) places care for the other firmly within the construction of one's sense of self; 2) accounts for radical change over time and 3) hints at the possibility of the in‐breaking of the infinite into the finite. In this article I will contend that narrative identity provides theology with an exemplary means of framing selfhood which is ultimately congruent with the orthodox Christian belief in the resurrection of the body.