Contract and Covenant

PSYCHOLOGISTS tell us that there is no more important or complex process in childhood than the formation of an answer to the question “Who am I?” It is a recurring question that is not settled once and for all. From infancy through adulthood and until the day we die, we are defining ourselves, and we are defining ourselves in relation to others. Beginning with our parents and family, the question of who I am is inseparable from the question of who we are. In the Christian understanding of things, the questioning will continue until the end of time-until, in the words of St. Paul, “we know even as we are known” (I Corinthians 13).

The question is that of identity, which is a very big word in our cultural, political, and psychological vocabularies. The word is from the Latin idem, meaning “the same.” A standard dictionary definition of identity is “sameness of essential or generic character in different instances.” As much as we might wish it were not so, sameness is defined by difference, like is defined by unlike. In the jargon of the social sciences, identity may be ascribed, inherited, elected, achieved, or constructed-or all of these in confused combination-but it is always and inevitably a process of differentiation. Identity, whether personal or communal, also excludes. We are this and not that.

RJ

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Richard John Neuhaus

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Alexis de Tocqueville

Constitutional Government

United States

PSYCHOLOGISTS tell us that there is no more important or complex process in childhood than the formation of an answer to the question “Who am I?” It is a recurring question that is not settled once and for all. From infancy through adulthood and until the day we die, we are defining ourselves, and we are defining ourselves in relation to others. Beginning with our parents and family, the question of who I am is inseparable from the question of who we are. In the Christian understanding of things, the questioning will continue until the end of time-until, in the words of St. Paul, “we know even as we are known” (I Corinthians 13).

The question is that of identity, which is a very big word in our cultural, political, and psychological vocabularies. The word is from the Latin idem, meaning “the same.” A standard dictionary definition of identity is “sameness of essential or generic character in different instances.” As much as we might wish it were not so, sameness is defined by difference, like is defined by unlike. In the jargon of the social sciences, identity may be ascribed, inherited, elected, achieved, or constructed-or all of these in confused combination-but it is always and inevitably a process of differentiation. Identity, whether personal or communal, also excludes. We are this and not that.