Should We Say that Personhood Is Relational?

Abstract

A current emphasis in theological anthropology is that we become persons through our relations to others. Ethically valuable and pastorally illuminating insights that as persons we develop in relation to others have been used wrongly to underpin the claim that personhood is relational — a claim which is logically confused and ethically precarious. Alistair I. McFadyen, whose book The Call to Personhood has been influential in this respect, describes personhood as the ‘sedimentation’ of interpersonal relations. Elaine L. Graham places the stress on cultural interaction as a prerequisite for the development of beings into persons. In her study of gender and personhood, Making the Difference , Graham argues that her ‘relational’ account of gender is ‘suggestive of a model of human nature as profoundly relational, requiring the agency of culture to bring our personhood fully into being’. The potential ethical danger behind a view of personhood as relational is apparent from statements made by Vincent Brümmer in his volume The Model of Love , to the effect that ‘both our identity and our value as persons is constituted by our relations of fellowship with others’.