Abstract

This dissertation takes its point of departure from three post-modern theorists of Christian identity, John Milbank, Kathryn Tanner and Rowan Williams. Using the resources of contemporary cultural theory, these theologians share three emphases. First, they identify Christian identity as fluid: Christian existence necessarily involves negotiation of previous exemplars and particular cultural contexts rather than the application of unchanging norms. Second, all three argue that Christian identity involves a relationship with Christian tradition(s), but that relationship is constantly under negotiation. Third, all three see Christianity as performative, both in the sense that Christian identity is socially constructed and involves improvisation within communally constructed boundaries, and in the sense that Christian identity is the living out and performing of a life received in Christ.

Through my first three chapters I explore the resources offered by these theologians and argue that they also share two problems. While all place much weight on the importance of Christian identity as fluid performance and negotiation none has attempted to develop an account of how Christians might be formed for this fluid identity. Not only do these three theologians lack an account of formation, they similarly lack an account of how sin affects the Christian's practice of discernment---although each acknowledges the reality of sin in a somewhat abstract manner.

In my last two chapters I suggest that Gregory of Nyssa offers an important resource for supplying what is lacking in Milbank, Tanner and Williams. Gregory is claimed as a resource by all three, but inadequately appropriated. I first suggest that Gregory's account of the soul enables a dense account to be given of the effects of sin and the character of the transformation necessary for shaping the Christian habitus. Appropriating aspects of this account also enables us to develop better some of Milbank's theology of Christian life as an “active reception” of the divine life. In my last chapter I argue that Gregory's account of the function of doctrine in the shaping of the imagination and hence the soul enables just the account of the relationship between belief and performance that Milbank, Tanner and Williams require.