Editorial Note
Links to other media and further information regarding this topic can be found in the German version of this article.
1. The Question of Identity and the Concept of Identity
The question of one’s own identity is one of the fundamental questions of human life. It can arise in various social and biographical contexts. According to Erik H. Erikson 
, it is primarily during the developmental phase of adolescence that the question of identity temporarily takes on a dominant significance. But it is not only adolescents who grapple with questions of identity. Given the fragmentation of late modern life into a multitude of roles and relationships, working on one’s own identity has instead become a potential ongoing theme. Social media, techniques of self-assessment and self-optimization, as well as the institutionalization of professional services focused on self-reflection (psychoanalysis, counseling, coaching) further contribute to this dynamic. The question of identity does not always and everywhere become an explicit theme in this process. In late modern society, however, the occasions and situations in which horizons of reflection and representation of individual selfhood open up are indeed becoming more diverse.
The fact that the question of identity is one of the fundamental existential questions of human life does not mean that it is thereby automatically classified as a religious question in the strict sense. Exploring the concept of identity, however, does open up numerous connections to topics in philosophy and religion. For this reason, the topic of identity is also a popular focal point in religious education curricula. The significance of biblical and religious themes is underscored here by the fact that they are introduced as frameworks for exploring and reflecting on identity-related questions.
From an analytical perspective, it makes sense against this background to distinguish between the question of identity as it pertains to everyday life and the logic and history of the concept of identity. However, a deeper examination of the concept of identity presents its own unique challenges. For in the twentieth century, identity has evolved into an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary category in which the processes of differentiation within the social sciences and humanities are reflected, as if in a panoramic mirror. Theories of identity have been formulated from psychological, sociological, and cultural studies, and gender theoretical perspectives, among others, often with an emancipatory stance that emphatically positioned the individual’s identity against the constraints of the social system. The social scientific prominence of the concept of identity since the 1960s has been met with various programs of identity criticism, such as the assertion that identity is the “archetype of ideology” (Theodor W. Adorno ). This criticism takes on particular relevance in light of the co-opting of the concept of identity by the “Identitarian Movement,” which is associated with the new right.
Just as diverse as the scholarly concepts and political programs associated with the concept of identity are the possibilities for its theological interpretation. Here, the concept of identity is presented, among other things, as a theoretical framework for describing and analyzing religious development and formation processes (James W. Fowler , Hans-Jürgen Fraas ), as an interdisciplinary interface for dialogue between theology and the social sciences (Wolfhart Pannenberg ), and as a hermeneutical key to interpreting dogmatic topics such as the concept of sin (Gunda Schneider-Flume ).
2. Personal Identity as a Topic in Modern Philosophy
The term “identity,” as it is used colloquially today, has a long and complex history. A turning point in this history is the work of the English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). With his discussions of Identity and Diversity in his major epistemological work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke sparked a debate that remains controversial to this day.1Cf. Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by Peter H. Nidditch, Oxford 1975. The significance of Locke’s arguments for the theory of identity lies in four points. (1) Locke links the question of identity to certain characteristics or criteria that constitute the concept of the entity in question. The identity that defines a thing cannot be determined independently of the concept to which it is referred. (2) On this basis, Locke then raises the question of personal identity. In order to define what constitutes a person’s identity, the concept of the person itself must therefore be analyzed. (3) As for this conceptual analysis, Locke defines persons by their ability to relate self-reflexively to what they do and think. A person (potentially) knows themselves as the agent of their own thoughts and actions. (4) Accordingly, a person’s identity consists in the mental space in which they can bring their acts of consciousness and action to consciousness as their own. Personal identity is an identity in consciousness that is realized primarily through the medium of memory.
Locke’s argument was widely received positively (for example, by Immanuel Kant ), but it has also drawn criticism. As early as Joseph Butler (1692–1752), the objection was raised that the attempt to ground personal identity in the concept of memory is circular, since the phenomenon of memory already presupposes the identity of the remembering entity with the subject of its remembered states. Others adhere to Locke’s first two fundamental insights but define the concept of the person not in mentalistic but in biological terms, and consequently arrive at different criteria for personal identity.2Cf. Quante, Michael, Personales Leben und menschlicher Tod. Personale Identität als Prinzip der biomedizinischen Ethik, Frankfurt a. M. 2002. As an alternative to Locke’s “memory criterion,” a “body criterion” or a “brain criterion” has been discussed. The reductionisms associated with these positions in their one-sidedness can only be avoided by conceiving personal identity as phenomenologically graded – beginning with the persistence of the biological organism, through a continuity of mental experience, up to higher-order forms of reflexive self- and ego-consciousness.
3. Sociological Dimensions of Identity
Relatively independent of the philosophical debates initiated by Locke , a distinct social-scientific discourse on identity developed in the twentieth century.3Cf. Henrich, Dieter, Identität. Begriffe, Probleme, Grenzen, in: Marquard, Odo/Stierle, Karlheinz (Eds.), Identität, Poetik und Hermeneutik VIII, München 1979, 133–186. Its two main sources were Freudian psychoanalysis and ego psychology (Erik H. Erikson ) on the one hand, and interaction and role theory (Erving Goffman , Lothar Krappmann ), which traces back to Georg Herbert Mead on the other. In this context, the concept of identity was discussed along various key distinctions.
Biography and Resume: The first distinction refers to biographical or “personal” identity. As a first approximation, this can be understood as the sum of all personal data that can be collected about an individual. This body of data, however, is never fully available to anyone, not even to the person in question. Rather, depending on the occasion and situation, certain elements of one’s life story are selected. In court or during an interview about one’s medical history, different parts of one’s life are recounted than those on a first date. It therefore makes sense to distinguish terminologically between “biography” and “resume,”4Cf. Hahn, Alois, Konstruktionen des Selbst, der Welt und der Geschichte, Frankfurt a. M. 2000, 97–115. whereby biographies can be defined as occasion-specific presentations of individual life stories. The key point here is that the individual does not possess a fixed and objective biography, but rather constantly reconstructs or narratively modifies it depending on the situation.
Identity and Social Role: Sociologically, a “role” can be defined as a set of expectations associated with a specific social position. For example, there are certain occupational or familial roles. Roles are always stereotypes. The expectations they embody draw from a reservoir of socio-culturally established schemas and normative patterns of interpretation.
From the perspective of critical sociological theories, the homo sociologicus – who, as a member of civil society, must fulfill certain “ideal” role expectations – was viewed as an alienated being. Roles were seen as being imposed on people by society, preventing them from living out their true, free selves. Other sociologists argue that such a “true,” completely unbound self beyond all social expectations does not even exist (Friedrich Tenbruck ). The individual self does not exist beyond the roles an individual plays, but manifests itself exclusively in the way in which it does so, balancing between its various roles.
In summary, from a sociological or social-psychological perspective, identity can be defined not as a possession that one has at one’s disposal once and for all, but as a social performance that must be carried out through communication and that encompasses or requires a whole range of social skills, such as the ability to maintain role distance, self-presentation, and tolerance for ambiguity.5Cf. Krappmann, Lothar, Soziologische Dimensionen der Identität. Strukturelle Bedingungen für die Teilnahme an Interaktionsprozessen (1969), Stuttgart 1993.
4. Identity and Religion
Identity is an empirically mediated phenomenon, yet it cannot be reduced to its empirical mediating contexts. Individual selfhood is not limited to the roles through which it becomes tangible to others. It is true that all material determinations of selfhood, all concrete role attributions and self-characterizations are mediated by the social context, and that all contents of concrete identity consciousness are shaped by coexistence with others. But at the same time, the social self is the self of an (empirical) subject that, in its coexistence with others, is for itself in an irreducible way. In this precise sense, identity is imbued with a moment of inalienability.
But even in its reflexive existence-for-itself, the self ultimately remains beyond its grasp. For all attempts at reflexive self-comprehension are already grounded in a reflecting or “determining self” (Kant ), which eludes reflexive self-recovery precisely because it is already engaged as the recuperating instance in every attempt at such recovery. The identity of the determining (“subjective”) and determined (“objective”) self, which is always already presupposed in the act of self-reflection, is consequently not itself accessible to the subject. Its identity, from which it lives, as it were, in unquestioned “self-familiarity” (Dieter Henrich ), remains opaque and hidden to it in the origin of its being.
The tension between self-assurance and self-alienation constitutes the subject’s identity in its abstract, transcendental basic structure – one that underlies all empirical self-references. Herein, however, lies the religious-philosophical significance of the topic. For the basic structure outlined above implies that the consciousness the subject has of itself and its identity does not merge into the sphere of the empirically given. Rather, it knows itself potentially as “more” and “other” than could ever be empirically ascertained about it. Its concrete sense of identity points beyond itself; in other words, it encompasses an aspect of self-transcendence. Against this backdrop, the identity-theoretical function of religion can be seen as expressing, through the medium of symbolic communication, the transcendental basic structure of identity that already underlies all empirical self-manifestations, and thereby making it indirectly accessible to the subjects involved. How this might look in detail will be illustrated below using examples from material systematics.
5. Identity and the Symbolic World of the Christian Faith
Religion is experienced as meaningful when it addresses, explores in depth, and articulates questions of identity through an existential symbolic language. Particularly under the late-modern conditions mentioned above, many of Christianity’s teachings and themes appear relevant to everyday life to the extent that they are recognized as potential answers to questions of identity.
It is important to emphasize that there is not just one question of identity, but a whole multitude of questions revolving around human selfhood. Identity becomes thematically relevant conflict of conflict situations and experiences of difference, such as biographical experiences of contingency and crises, in experiences of social deviance and otherness, but also in inner upheavals and crises of conscience in which one’s own self-image is called into question. Depending on how or as what identity becomes the subject, however, a different religious motif is then addressed in each case. This will be illustrated using three systematic areas of study as examples.6For further systematic correlations between identity and religion and their philosophical foundations in religion, see Zarnow, Christopher, Identität und Religion. Philosophische, soziologische, religionspsychologische und theologische Dimensionen des Identitätsbegriffs, Tübingen 2010, 303–356.
Creation: The consciousness of personal identity unites elements of facticity and freedom in tension. On the one hand, the human individual finds itself in circumstances that it did not choose for itself. In this respect, one’s own identity always appears to be determined by physiological, psychological, and sociocultural conditions that define “who I am.” On the other hand, this identity is determined as a given only insofar as it is given to the subject as his own and entrusted to him therein as a task to be realized. To paraphrase Martin Heidegger’s existential philosophy, the individual has only one’s self, insofar as he is to be this self.
Creation faith can be defined as the place where this fundamental, tension-filled structure of identity is deepened in a symbolic-religious sense within the Christian faith. As part of the created world, the individual experiences itself as a being defined “from elsewhere” (Friedrich Schleiermacher ). It owes its very existence to a transcendent origin. This origin now appears as the “source” from which the individual arises. At the same time, alongside the aspect of facticity, the aspect of freedom is also present in creation faith: as a being made “a little lower than God” (Psalm 8:6), the individual is endowed with a mission to shape and form the world, and thereby also one’s own selfhood. Seen in this light, the task of self-realization is not to be regarded as an expression of sinful perversion (as, for example, in the view of Wolfhart Pannenberg ), but is already inherent in the created nature of humanity. This is expressed in a special way in the symbol of humanity’s likeness to God.
Inner Person: The question of “who one is” always arises within the context of specific group affiliations and the associated role schemata. Identity thus proves, on the one hand, to be mediated and substantively determined by the social sphere in which the individual moves. It “has” its identity exclusively as part of the groups to which it belongs and through which it defines itself. This holds true even in the mode of defiance and rebellion. On the other hand, the individual, as a personal subject, can fundamentally distinguish itself from all social objectifications of its identity. The self is not exhausted in the sum of social self-representations in which it appears. Consequently, the theme of identity is simultaneously linked to that of the difference between the self and the empirical manifestations of its social selfhood.
This tension also finds expression in the religious symbolic world. One might, for example, consider the motif of the “inner person,” which appears in various forms in the works of Plato , Paul , and Luther . While the “outer self” is defined by how one appears to others, the human soul harbors a desire for a counterpart who recognizes it as it is independently – as it were, “truly.” However, this counterpart cannot be another person in the same way that other people are. The sought-after counterpart, as a “knower of the heart,” should not remain “external” to one’s own self, but – as a mirror of the true self – be intimately close. Coram Deo (before God), a person consequently does not gain a new social identity, but a new understanding of themselves. The relationship with God appears as a religiously deepened form of the relationship with the self. The metaphor of the inner person thus stands for an irreducible part of the ego-identity that is not exhausted in empirical relationships of recognition.
Redemption: The spectrum of experiential horizons in which the self and its identity become central includes experiences of self-transcendence. In the movement of a “transcendence of the ego” (Jean-Paul Sartre ), the individual experiences a dissolution of the boundaries of the self and feels a universal sense of connectedness. Similar experiences are known from the history of Christian mysticism. As early as Paul , salvation is described as a kind of mystical relativization of one’s own ego: “and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Religious consciousness, so to speak, understands itself from a standpoint outside of itself; it adopts the position of an “eccentric positionality” (Helmuth Plessner ), in this case, one mediated through Christology. This shift in perspective, however, possesses a “redemptive” quality insofar as it liberates the individual, at specific moments, from their anxious self-absorption and self-fixation. The question of identity thus finds a uniquely religious answer: even before God, the human being remains a mystery to himself. But he can now leave it at that, because even if he does not recognize himself, he knows that he is recognized by God.7See the closing lines of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s poem “Who am I?”: ““Who am I? Lonely questions mock me. Whoever I am, You know me; I am Yours, O God!” (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Widerstand und Ergebung. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft, Gütersloh 222016, 188, translation by Jacob N. Cerone). German original: “Wer bin ich? Einsames Fragen treibt mit mir Spott. Wer ich auch bin, Du kennst mich, Dein bin ich, oh Gott!” The question of identity thus ultimately finds a religious answer – and its resolution – in a trust that relieves it of its existential urgency.