Self and Justification

False subjectivity has led to nihilism.  To combat the nihilism of modernity, Levin says that we need to challenge the “timeless” Cartesian self by affirming a “self open to changes in itself; a self which changes in response to changes in the world; a self capable of changing the conditions of its world according to need.”  In short, “I am not what I am and I am what I am not.”

That last sentence seems to me a fine way of stating the Protestant doctrine of justification.  And I cannot see how Levin’s is/is not self can be anything but another, more intense form of nihilism, unless it is an eschatologically shaped doctrine of justification.  That is: I am declared to be, and therefore I  am , what I’m not yet.