PERSON AND PERSONALITY
A glance at the word “person”
seems to be in place here. Christian theology of today makes use of “person” in
referring to each member of the Trinity. It is said that Christ is a person in
the godhead. The Greek Christians had to find a word for that concept. They had
the word hypostasis which denoted something that stands under literally
a “support.” At first it was a synonym for ousia, meaning “substance” or
“essence,” then later the divine substance or essence. The members of the
Trinity came to be called hypostases, eternal distinctions within the
divine unity. Now the Latin word persona seems to combine per, “through”
and sona “sound” to denote an actor whose words came through the mask,
hence a character or individual, or a party in a legal suit. It carried the two
ideas, one of individual activity and also that of a social relationship. Persona
came to be sued to translate hypostasis, and carried its two distinct
ideas which appear in the famous definition that has come down from Boethius
(about 475-524 A.D.), “A person is an individual substance or subsistence of a
rational nature”. The “individual substance” corresponds to hypostasis,
and the “rational nature” to the social or universal element in persona.
This identification of persona with the individual rational nature marks
a radical change in the meaning of the word as compared with that which
prevailed five centuries earlier.
We use the word person every
day, and yet some interesting questions are asked as to its meaning. Does it
imply self-consciousness? Does it imply freedom? Are persons immortal? Is
pre-existence to be ascribed to them? Were they created or are they to be
regarded as eternal? Are there sub-human persons? Are there super-human
persons? and many more. The same questions can be asked about the Self.
Psychological studies of personality
result in finding a person or a personality to be a highly complex entity
composed of a multitude of elements or features, consequently one can think of Self
as denoting the feature that lies at the center, the core, the minimum of
Self-identifying power of a person or personality. A personality is thought of
as evolving from a stage very much less complex than later stages, and yet
identity is assumed. What interests us is that entity that very early says “I”
and knows he says it. We stay by the old idea of same or identity. If identity
is here a reality it is the reality supreme. (Benjamin F. Cummings, III, The
Eternal Individual Self [Salt Lake City: Utah Printing Co., 1968], 16-18)
