An Emptied Self

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

The journal Religions have published a special issue on the Catholic philosophical imagination. Among the pieces published is a contribution by myself on the subject of identity, particularly the reinforcement of identity via the chauvinistic exclusion of outsiders. I particularly focused on the recent trend to use exclusion of outsiders (particularly migrants) as the means of reinforcing what is touted to be Christian identity, making Christian identity and static category that can only be reinforced by the exertion of external force, which is the stuff of contemporary identity politics of both the left and the right.

Call me old fashioned, but I was under the impression that one got a Christian identity by following Christ, but I digress…or do I?

In opposition to this chauvinistic form of state identity politics, my article, “Towards a Kenotic Identity Politics”, seeks to provide an alternative, one that is grounded in Scripture and the patristic theme of kenosis or self-emptying.

In addition, my article relied on an important essay by Creston Davis and Aaron Riches on what they call the “Theological Praxis of Revolution” (regular readers might remember me making reference to their work in other contexts). The center of that piece is their coverage on Christ who emptied himself, and in the process of doing so, became an Event. Metaphysically, the incarnation, is an event because when the Word emptied itself to became Flesh and dwelt among us, there was a fundamental interruption to the structure of the material world. In the wake of the self-emptying of Christ, the Event interrupts every single event in history. This interruption does two things to the material world.

First, it breaks the stasis of the material world and makes it undergo a complete transformation, only this transformation does not mean the destruction of the material order. Paradoxically, the more something is transformed in the wake of the Christ Event, the more itself it becomes. Second, the reason that it will become more itself is because the Christ Event brings all material things not to their end, but to their beginning. Metaphysically, everything brought into Christ is brought to its perfection by its being brought back to an Eden.

Jumping off Riches and Davis’ essay, I argue that a properly Christian identity must pattern itself on the self-emptying logic of the Christ Event. If we are threatened by the loss of identity, it is because we have placed our identity on something other than Christ. Conversely, insofar as we are embedded in the Christ Event, Christians should welcome the loss of identity as a paradox: for it is the very point at which the identity sought for becomes renewed by the Event.

Ultimately, I argued that this provides the foundation an identity politics grounded in the Scriptural reference: “He who loses himself for my sake will find it” (Jn 12:25).

My essay is available as an open access article and is available in full by clicking here.

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