Human identity is formed in large part by the historical, social, and geographical situation in which a person lives, and thus the Christian hope for eschatological glorification of human beings cannot be separated from hope for eschatological glorification of creation as a whole. However, this also means that the Christian eschatological hope presents a potential problem regarding human identity and ontology. The world and all who live in it are indelibly marked by our history of brokenness and subjection to evil. For example, a war refugee’s identity is forever shaped by being a war refugee; even if she finds complete wholeness from any physical, spiritual, or psychological pain and damage that her experience caused, having been a war refugee will remain part of her own history and identity. But if the advent of the kingdom of God is to accomplish the goal of bringing a fallen world into eschatological glory, the evil that afflicts creation must be brought to an end. This raises a significant question: if at least some elements of human identity arise from internal and external conditions of brokenness1 in which a person lives, and eschatological glorification will bring an end to all brokenness in creation, how will glorification not amount to the destruction of a person’s identity and its replacement by some other identity?
This paper argues that glorification does not involve the elimination of broken elements of our identities, but rather their transfiguration. This transfiguration becomes possible only as humanity’s creaturely finitude is turned from its un-graced natural tendency towards non-being into a graced eschatological potential for fuller being. The Son’s assumption of finitude in its current mode of mortality allowed him to change it into eschatological potentiality. It is this subversion/conversion of mortality into eschatological potentiality that enables glorification of humans and all creation to occur without destroying our contextually informed identities.
1 The term “brokenness” is used here as a shorthand for the idea of destructive, painful, or damaging conditions or situations that arise as consequences of moral or natural evils. In this regard, “brokenness” is to be carefully distinguished from the concept of “fallenness,” where the latter is understood to refer to tendencies to perpetrate evils. The Christian eschatological hope also involves the elimination of fallenness, of course, but that is a distinct matter from the topic of this paper.
The full paper is attached to this post.
