Individuality

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

INDIVIDUALITY. —The word ‘individuality’ may be used merely for the quality of being an individual, but its common use is to indicate the special characteristics which distinguish one individual from another, that which, as it has been expressed, marks each one as a particular thought of God. Only in this latter sense is the word considered here.

Both in morals and in religion it has always been a difficult matter to determine the due place of individual differences. The great weakness of Deism, e.g. , was that, while it abundantly exalted the individual, it had no place for individuality. Its natural religion and utilitarian ethic had, as its very standard of excellence, that it excluded everything whereby one man was different from another. Even Kant, the highest product of Rationalism, with his view of religion as an appeodage to a moral law, and his supreme test of a moral law by its fitness to be a law universal, only accentuated this limitation. The Romantic reaction had as its characteristic note the glory of individuality. The marvel of the universe was just its variety, and the glory of man that he was the most varied thing in the universe. The whole duty of man was to be himself and admit no law except the law of his own nature. Then unfortunately it too frequently appeared that what man took to be his nature was only self-pleasing, and what he thought was religion was only satisfaction of the artistic sense. There was also another very strange result. This excessive insistence upon individuality came to obliterate the individual. So much stress was laid upon what was changing and varied, that nothing was thought of what is one and unchanging. Hence everything was reduced to the great World-Spirit whose artistic pleasure in unfolding His variety constituted the history of the world.

This insistence on the importance of individuality by Romanticism, nevertheless, bore large fruit in both ethics and religion. Indeed, all modern study at least of the historical religions may be dated from Schleiermacher’s insistence on the marked individuality of all the great founders of religion. Nor is it possible to question his right to point in particular to Jesus. The supreme human interest in all the Scriptures is their immense gallery of persons who gave scope to their individuality. For the most part they are very far from being perfect, but none of them is fashioned on the common worldly type, none of them is rolled like smooth stones on the beach, in the continual social attrition. Yet, even in this great gallery of the children of nature and of God, Jesus stands out pre-eminent. Whatever may be said of the stories of His birth, they mark the profoundest impression made on His contemporaries by a great, a striking, an unforgetable individuality. Though the many attempts at painting His human individuality, from the Apocryphal Gospels downwards, cannot be regarded as nearer a true likeness than the attempts at portraying His human features, every reader of the Gospels feels that, amid all the things He surrendered, He never surrendered His own marked human individuality. On the contrary, it continued to be a prominent thing that forced itself on everyone. He went His own way, thought His own thoughts, lived His own life, and never accorded anything to that tyranny of fashion to which, in our weak regard for others, we continually sacrifice what is greatest and best in our natures.

Our Lord’s regard for the individuality of the persons He dealt with might be used as a key for understanding large portions of the Gospels. He took special care to bring out the individuality of each one’s faith. He brings the modesty of the woman with the issue of blood into prominence, to give her the assurance she needed for her comfort ( Matthew 9:20 ff.). He rejects roughly the prayer of the Canaanitish woman, to show more clearly her right to be heard ( Matthew 15:21-28). He sits at meat in the publican’s house, to create self-respect in the social outcast ( Mark 2:15). He meets the centurion, the man of command, by working through a command ( Luke 7:1-10); and He answers John, the man who had required action, by action ( Luke 7:22). He justified wisdom both in John the ascetic and in Himself who came eating and drinking, and only blamed the narrow censoriousness which could appreciate neither ( Matthew 11:19).

In the Fourth Gospel, in particular, the key to almost everything Jesus says or does is that He knew what was in man ( John 2:25). Nicodemus, the man dried to parchment and swathed in conventional considerations, needs to be born again into a new and fresh life ( John 3:1-15). The woman of Samaria, no longer able to command the protection of even the poorest marriage tie, and too disreputable to appear at the well except when the midday sun kept the other women at home, is offered living water to refresh her soul parched for sympathy, and is so interpreted to herself that she said, ‘He told me all that ever I did’ ( John 4:1-26). Because the nobleman has the aristocratic spirit of his class, he is simply told to go his way, his son lives ( John 4:50); because his bed has for thirty-eight years been the centre of all his interest, the cripple at Bethesda is told to take it up ( John 5:8). All the Gospels are full of persons of vivid individuality. A striking feature of our Lord’s whole ministry is the way in which, in His presence, a man’s true qualities inevitably come to light. The respectable convention behind which men hide inevitably falls away, and men appear in all their real characteristics, often with the unhonoured to their honour, and with the highly esteemed to their shame. Even the Pharisee, the type in all ages in which individuality is most suppressed by creed and custom, cannot keep the curtain drawn in His presence. At first sight this definiteness seems to be lost in the strange, vague atmosphere of the Fourth Gospel, which is so strongly irradiated by one individuality—that of the writer. But in life it is not the persons who are themselves colourless who do most justice to the individuality of others. So it is that in John we see, more than in any other Gospel, the vivid individuality, in particular, of the disciples, and how Jesus recognized it and dealt with it. Andrew and Nathanael, Philip and Thomas are mere names and shadows in the other Gospels, while in John they have each one his own characteristic note. Even Peter, in the other Gospels, is little more than an inexplicable mixture of insight and error; but in John he is drawn in a phrase by the Master Himself, ‘When thou wast young thou girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest’ ( John 21:18). This enterprising but impetuous character appears in the whole presentation of him in John, till, in the days of heaviness, he flung off the slackness which had fallen upon all the disciples, and said with his old grip at his girdle, ‘I go a fishing’ ( John 21:3). In considering the question of the authenticity of John, this, at all events, deserves consideration, that it leaves us with such a sense of the strong individuality of the Apostles, both as children of nature and as children of grace, as to make it not incredible that a handful of poor men should start to conquer the world. In this Gospel, moreover, faith is not only an individual act, which it must always be, but also an attitude which brings out a man’s deepest individuality. Men do not believe, because they trust only what they see ( John 4:48). They cannot believe in Christ, because already they have not believed in the highest they knew ( John 5:47). It is a certain preparedness for Christ which makes men believe in Him ( John 6:35;  John 6:37). Belief is a special word to oneself, a hearing from the Father ( John 6:45). Unbelief arises from being from beneath ( John 8:23), from being of one’s father the devil ( John 8:44). There is, throughout, a family likeness in unbelief; while belief, in the consciousness of its own special needs, finds its own call. It does not lean on Abraham, or fashion itself on the accepted model, but, like Nathanael, it seeks God under the fig-tree, like Philip it is ready to say to conventional questions, ‘Come and see.’ This faith, moreover, issues in an eternal life, the present effect of which is to give us possession of our own souls, to know God in such a way as not to be greatly concerned about men, to be in the world yet not of it ( John 17:1,  John 17:5).

Though less prominent in the Synoptics, our Lord’s regard to individuality is not less significant. To enter the Kingdom, so pronounced an individuality is required that it can take by itself the narrow way, while the common course is the broad road ( Matthew 7:13); it is to be one in so characteristic a fashion as to cause more joy in heaven than the ninety and nine who, satisfied with the received standard, need no repentance ( Matthew 18:13,  Luke 15:7). This strong insistence that many are called and only few chosen, indicates not arbitrariness in dealing with individuals, but the rarity of the individuality God requires ( Matthew 22:14). His true disciples must be of so pronounced a type that, while they shun the poor glory of self-display ( Matthew 6:2), they must yet be the salt of the earth, and not even fear the prominence of being as a city set on a hill. They must shun the all-pervasive, all-assimilative creed of the time, the leaven of the Pharisees; nor will the accepted Christian formula, the saying of ‘Lord, Lord,’ be any more approved ( Matthew 7:21).

Our Lord does not really differ from the pagan view that the worth of the individual depends upon his individuality. The difference is in the estimate of that wherein this individuality consists, and of the possibilities in each man of attaining it. Even to Aristotle individuality meant something aristocratic. The qualities in a person worth considering are liberality (ἐλενθεριοτης), magnificence (μεγαλοτρέτεια), and magnanimity (μεγαλοψυχια). These all require a certain social station, a certain aloofness from the petty concerns of life, which could be possible for all men only when the great mechanical slave whom Aristotle dreamt of could be made to do the drudgery. With Christ, on the other hand, a man could have true individuality in the lowest seats and at the lowliest services.

Nor is Christ’s conception that of modern culture, which, indeed, is much nearer Aristotle than Jesus. He does not seek, with Goethe, to build up as high as possible the pyramid of his nature. A man does not fail of that individuality which the Kingdom of God requires, even though he have to cut off an offending hand or pluck out an offending eye, and enter blind and maimed ( Matthew 5:29).

The classical presentation of the type of individuality permitted and required in the Kingdom of God is in the Beatitudes. Too often they are read as a suppression of individuality, which they are if a man’s chief characteristics are possessions, popularity, self-assertion, self-indulgence. But in Christ’s eyes this should not be the way of showing a man’s true nature. The description, taken as a whole, presents an energetic type which, just because of its superiority both to society and to nature, is bound to be of marked individuality. To be poor in spirit is not to be poor-spirited, not to bend and break under every trial, but is to be rich in a faith which accepts poverty or anything else in the assurance of never being broken or bent. The mourner is not one given to tears, but one in energetic opposition to wrong and in energetic sympathy with suffering. The meek is not the meek and mild, not the soft, timid person, but one who has too high a faith in a wiser power than his own to strive and cry. To hunger and thirst after righteousness is necessarily to take an independent and difficult course in the world; while to be merciful requires decided strength of character, most of the cruel things on earth being done not in self-will and malice, but in thoughtlessness and weakness. Purity of heart never could survive in this world as mere innocence and ignorance of evil; the soft people who seek to shun everything disagreeable are the chief makers of dispeace; and only persons of determined character and decided principles ever run any risk of being persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Were there no other condition but this last, it would mark the contrast with the accepted type, with the person whose first motive is prudence, whose guiding star is agreement with the authorities, who feels an obtrusive individuality to be in bad taste, and who regards a somewhat colourless membership of the Church and of Society as the hall-mark of the Divine approval. Instead we see one who is the old man in the hundred, one who will not walk with the crowd in the broad way, one who has something of the singularity of the prophet which will ensure for him the singularity of the prophet’s reward.

This large scope for individuality is maintained chiefly by resting the guidance of life not on a rule, but on a relation to God, revealed not in a code, but in a Person. This was the basis of a rule of love to God and to man to which all the Law and the Prophets could be reduced. Love is the way of at once giving scope to our own individuality and cherishing the individuality of others. Not that love can be without law. As it has been well said, What is love at the centre is always law at the circumference. But love at the centre will always keep law mindful of human differences. It will be a law in accordance with the Apostle’s interpretation of his Master’s meaning when he enjoins us to be true to our own highest individuality, i.e. the special demands of our own conscience, to do nothing that is not of faith ( Romans 14:23); to attend so far to the weakness of our own individuality as not to be enslaved to anything; and to regard the individuality of our neighbour so far as to take heed to what edifies ( 1 Corinthians 10:23). Nevertheless it is no true development of Christian faith or morals, as Newman (in his Development ) and countless others have argued, that the faith has been elaborated into a creed that omits no detail of doctrine, and the morality into a code that lays down every detail of duty. Nor can it ever be true humility to surrender our individuality to any other man made like to ourselves.

Yet a free Protestant code and a smaller creed do not necessarily give us a true and characteristic faith, or save us from a mainly negative standard of duty, and perhaps there is no kind of consideration for others more needed at the present day than to have courage to be ourselves.

To leave room for this individuality is one of the most difficult and most neglected tasks of theology, and to leave scope for it in the Church is a task that has never been very anxiously pursued by the ecclesiastic. Yet if the true manifestation of faith is power to become sons of God in spite of society and circumstances, a very important element of it should be the maintenance of our true individuality; and though truth can only be one, there should be something characteristic in each man’s faith. The preservation of this difference among the Scripture writers is the real task of Biblical Theology, which should not aim at evaporating truth into what each man thinks, but at showing how important every man is for his faith.

Literature.—Goethe, Wilhelm Meister  ; Schleiermacher, Reden [translation On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers , 1893] and Monologen [translation Monologues ]; Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte [translation Philosophy of History , 1857]; Carlyle, Heroes  ; Emerson, Essays  : J. S. Mill, On Liberty  ; Lüdemann, Personlichkeit und Individualität , 1900; Lemme, Christliche Ethik , § 56, 1905; Schian, ‘Glaube und Individualität’ ( Zeitschr. für Theol. u. Kirche , 1898); A. Breithaupt, Rechte und Pflichten der Individualität im Christlich-sittlichen Leben , 1901.

John Oman.

Webster's Dictionary

(1): ( n.) The character or property appropriate or peculiar to an individual; that quality which distinguishes one person or thing from another; the sum of characteristic traits; distinctive character; as, he is a person of marked individuality.

(2): ( n.) The quality or state of being individual or constituting an individual; separate or distinct existence; oneness; unity.