The people around Socrates want him to be quiet and stop asking so many questions. Socrates in Plato’s apology. Socrates says he will not stay quiet because, “examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living.”[1] Life examination is the fundamental way to uncover life purpose. One of the major worldview questions is “Where did we come from?” And to state this personally, “Where did I come from? Who am I?” These are fundamental questions for human existence. What tools, or soul microscopes does one use to examine his own life? How can one arrive at any knowledge of himself? Whatever tools and epistemological outlook create a predetermined mold for complex identity issues. Most of these are assumed by the individual on the basis of their culture and upbringing.

Within the Western philosophical thought tradition, mankind understood identity through ontology, i.e., that which is real. Man sought to know what is and conform himself to it. Plato, though he thrusts ethical dualism into the metaphysical dualism, argues, “And in this way, freeing ourselves from the foolishness of the body and being pure, we shall, I think, be with the pure and shall know of ourselves all that is pure.”[2] Though the Christian would not go so far as to see the physical as bad and spiritual as good (as the Gnostic heresy would), Plato still attempts to uncover what is real. Paul does the same thing when the people claimed he was a deity, “Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you. . .” (Acts 14:15). Paul, like Plato, grounds human identity (in this case, collective rather than personal) in what is real by using the term, “nature.”

Simply assuming a Christian metaphysical ontology does not settle the question of personal identity. Personal identity seeks to discover what makes one person a different individual from another.[3] This has been answered in a number of ways: memory, physicalism, or via the soul. Personal objective identity grounded in memories or physicality alone has obvious faults because memories are fluid and forgotten and physical aspects are subject to change. To ground one’s personal objective identity in the “browness” of his hair would force him to become a different person if he changed his hair color or shaved it off. However, to root objective identity only in the soul would lean toward the Gnostic error to elevate the spiritual over the spiritual over the physical. Objective identity is best rooted in embodied souls formed in God’s image.[4] Therefore, personal objective identity would be the particularities of one such embodied soul. Greg Allison, professor of Christian theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary names six particularities: ethnicity, family, temporality, spatiality, context, and story.[5]

In the Enlightenment, the focal point shifted from ontology to epistemology. Objective identity took a blow. Existence switched from assumed fact to something that had to be proven. Thus, Rene Descartes famous statement, “I think; therefore, I am.” C.S. Lewis puts this transition aptly, “In a word, the old was a kind of propagation—men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.” [6] The dangerous shift is that man “knows himself” no longer by what is real—by nature—but rather by what is the loudest, most convenient, or most fitting.

The call to know oneself is the call of old to make what is objective into the subjective—to make what is real deeply experienced. This process can be called endysis. Endysis is the process whereby one’s human nature and temperament translates an objective personal identity factor into his or her subjective personal identity via cognition, affection, and volition.[7] In other words, endysis is the interpretive process that takes objective and makes it subjective.

Endysis is tethered to what is real. Ontological debates certainly ensued, and there was no absolute certainty in some matters, but whatever was real about someone is who he is. Endysis is the process by which he comes to know who he is—i.e., “know thyself.” This can be contrasted with another process of identity forming called seautopoiesis which is a form of volitional self-making. Seautopoiesis is the “propaganda” rather than the “propagation.” It is to “make thyself” rather than to “know thyself.”

In John 8:53, the Pharisees respond to Jesus’s outstanding claim that those who follow him will never see death. They ask, “Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” The Pharisees do not ask Jesus who he knows himself to be, but rather who he makes himself to be, as if he is someone of his own invention. But Jesus refuses to answer their trap. He does not make himself into anything, he is as God says. Jesus responds, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God,’” (John 8:54). Jesus refuses to make himself (seautopoiesis) and instead clothes himself with what God says about him (endysis).

Late nineteenth century revivalism untethered to historic creeds functionally catechized seautopoiesis into its converts which elevated the influence of human volition over the cognition and affection, allowed the human creature to make himself with the exalted will, and helped lay the foundation for widespread confusion around subjective personal identity for the average modern evangelical. This thesis will be established first by examining Charles Finney’s “new measures,” then following revivalists’ pragmatism, and conclude by examining today’s research in Christian self-identity.

Seautopoiesis is a process every unregenerate man undertakes to deny his own sinfulness. Mostly this process takes place within a set of authority structures: culture, religion, government, family. These authority structures use mythology (whether fictional or not), authoritative texts, philosophy (e.g., especially ethics), ontology (e.g., natural law) in order to cast a mold for the process. Unregenerate man makes himself like his kinsmen by such authoritative structures.

Martin Luther’s strike of a nail on October 31, 1517 sparked a new authority structure: self-determination. Of course, this was not Luther’s intention, nor did anything of the likes precipitate in his lifetime. The rejection of authority structures like popes and monarchs and priests led to the search for a new authority structure. Luther’s answer was clear: it was the Scripture. But the seautopoietic man was not so satisfied. The Enlightenment shifted the central focus from ontology to epistemology in order to discover a “more sure” authority than supernatural revelation.

Shifts in epistemology caused seautopoiesis to no longer be governed by external authority sources but instead become autonomous. The age of enlightenment saw a rise in individualism. This came into Christian religious experience by form of pietism. Pietism focused on the individual experience of God and were heavily influencing the Christian life in America in the late 1600s.[8] Mark Noll, professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, IL writes of this time period, “German Lutherans under pietistic influence emphasized ‘heart religion’ and self-sacrificing service over the formal institutions and creeds of the church.”[9] Pietism whittled down the an individual’s conversion experience. People began to see themselves as Christian on the basis of their heart rather than on the basis of the authority of the church, Bible, or creedal affirmation. In other words, the process of conversion was slowly morphing from endysis to seautopoiesis.

In the next century, The First Great Awakening swept the country causing controversy between what were called Old Lights and New Lights. Jonathan Edwards was a key figure who not only witnessed revival, but also defended it. His own conversion experience was much like the Old Lights defended. George Marsden, author of one of the definitive biographies of Jonathan Edwards writes about him:

True to his Puritan heritage and his father’s teachings, his conversion, as he experienced it, was no sudden transformation in which he could name the day and the hour. . .Despite an intensity of experiences that would have satisfied most people, Jonathan continued in “great and violent inward struggles” to purge his faults so as to prove to himself that his transformation was genuine.[10]

This conversion experience in Edwards’s late teenage years may sound foreign to the modern evangelical who walks the aisle, shakes the hand, and says the prayer. But it brings this to the heart of the issue for the person who questions, “How do I know that I am saved?” The earliest church in Acts would answer on the authority of the Apostles and Holy Spirit. When pondering the need to circumcise the Gentiles in the Jerusalem Council, their conversion was affirmed by a clear giving of the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:8). Such manifest confirmation of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (i.e. speaking in tongues) were not normative, but worked to show the validity of a “new” group of people’s regeneration. The fact that this was not normative can be seen in Paul’s injunction to the Corinthains to “examine themselves” (2 Cor. 13:5). If such a clear sign of the Holy Spirit took place at their conversion, what need would there be for such self-examination?

Baptism was implicitly a way that a church authority confirmed the salvation of a convert. In the early church, a new convert would not be baptized until three years of instruction.[11] This catechism process greatly shortened after the conversion of Constantine. Church historian Justo Gonzales writes, “The long training before receiving baptism was dramatically shortened, and soon many went to the baptismal font with very little idea of its significance.”[12] This shift is parallel to the shift in Jonathan Edward’s day. Conversion for both Old and New Lights was by grace through faith. However, conversion for the Old Lights was marked by external authority (i.e. a creed) and consistent obedience over time; yet, for the New Lights it was marked by autonomy and a conversion experience. Edwards proposed a mediated position. He did not want to do away with all the good the revivals wrought; however, he also knew the danger of promising people heaven on the basis of an emotional experience. Marsden writes, “Edwards’s efforts to find a middle way in the awakening. . .culminated in one of his greatest works, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections.”[13] In this work, Edwards argues that true religious experiences are focused on God’s greatness rather than oneself.[14]

[1] Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes, trans. Harold North Fowler, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), accessed July 17, 2025, https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0170%3Atext%3DApol.%3Asection%3D38a.

[2] Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 1., Phaedo, 67 b.

[3] Steven B Cowan and James S Spiegel, The Love of Wisdom : A Christian Introduction to Philosophy (Nashville, Tenn.: B & H Academic, 2009), 235.

[4] Gregg R. Allison, Embodied : Living as Whole People in a Fractured World (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2021), 37. It is easy to emphasize the spiritual over the physical or vice versa. “Embodied soul” attempts to place the two on equal footing.

[5] Allison, Embodied, 62-65. Although “story” is perhaps the most subjective of these, perhaps one could sterilize it by saying “events.” “Story” implies plot, which usually occurs after the subjective interpretive process. Allison is not careful to differentiate between the subjective and objective aspects of personal identity, but that is not the nature of his work.

[6] C S Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Harperone, 2008), 23.

[7] The term “endysis” comes from “clothe” in, for example, Col. 3:10.

[8] Mark A Noll, The Old Religion in a New World (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans ; Northam, 2002), 34.

[9] Noll, The Old Religion in a New World, 34.

[10] George M Marsden, A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub, 2008), 23.

[11] Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation, vol. 1 (New York: Harperone, 2010), 112.

[12] Gonzales, The Story of Christianity, 144-5.

[13] Marsden, A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards, 77.

[14] Marsden, A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards, 79.