Trinity and individualism

Tim Chester's comments on how we balance the one and the many, how we maintain both individualism and community without losing either, are very helpful. Everything relates to the Trinity:

If a society organises itself around individual consumer rights alone or diminishes mutual obligations then it impoverishes its members.

This individualism has its seeds in Augustine’s focus on the human mind as that which best reflects the image of God within us. A century after Augustine, the Christian philosopher, Boethius, formed what proved to be an influential definition of a person as “an individual substance of rational nature”. This comes to fruition in René Descartes’ declaration that “I think, therefore I am.” A person is a solitary, rational individual. But if what makes me human is my rationality or my rights or any other supposedly universal characteristic of humanity then it is difficult to say what makes me unique. “If you are real and important.., as the bearer of some general characteristics, what makes you distinctively you becomes irrelevant.”(Colin Gunton) I am lost in the mass of humanity.

But if relationships define my humanity, then it is a different story. The matrix of relationships of which I am part are unique to me. The role I play within them defines my distinctiveness. "Everything ... is what it uniquely is by virtue of its relation to everything else." But, because I am defined by relationships, this uniqueness does not lead to a solitary, fragmented existence. We find ourselves by being related to others, not by distancing ourselves from them. We find ourselves in giving and receiving. We are neither wholly the active subject of individualism nor the passive object of collectivism. "The heart of human being and action is a relationality whose dynamic is that of gift and reception."(Gunton)

'When marriages and parenthood are deficient in love and its generous self-expression and self-giving, and when our old, sick, handicapped poor or disadvantaged are ignored and unhelped, then the life of the triune God is not reflected in our humanity as it should be; then personhood itself is wounded and reduced. Where recognition of others, where kindness, gratitude and care are lacking, the person who has left these behind, however successful in other respects, has shrunk not grown in terms of their true person-hood. They are diminished, not greatened, in their self-sufficiency.' (Peter Lewis)

Tim Chester "Delighting in the Trinity", 166,167