Calvin intriguingly says that the Spirit is the power of persistence and growth and life in creation: not merely the agent for the formation of things, but for their persistence. Spirit ensures the temporal endurance of the creature. As Barth summarizes, ?Both the existence of things, created for as chaos (inordinata moles, massa indisposita), and also their nature or form (pulcher ac distinctus ordo), in order not merely to be created but also to be, to persist, needed an arcana Dei inspiration, a vigor imparted to them by God.?EThis vigor is the gift of the Spirit. Thus, what maintains the creation and the individual creature in its identity through time is nothing within the creature itself, no “substance” that endures. Its persisting identity is entirely dependent upon Another, the Spirit. This is why, as postmodernists have found, any search for the substance of identity in the creature must end by dissolving the subject. Postmodernism thus sharpens the choice: Either identity is an illusion and the subject is really a thousand fragments of a subject; or identity is grounded in something other than the subject, something outside the creation.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
