Names, Voices, and Faces: The Logic of Persons

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Absolutely crucial to the development of Christology in the patristic period was the understanding of Christ as one Person. Whether it was St. Cyril’s emphasis of the one subject, or Chalcedon’s definition of the hypostatic union as “…concurring in one Person (prosopon) and one Subsistence (hypostasis), not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ…”, this perfect and peaceful union of natures took place in the singular divine Person of Christ.

Yet again, here we have an instance of Christian reflection shedding its Light upon other domains. Up until the development of Christology (and Trinitarian Theology), the understanding of personhood had remained largely unexamined within western intellectual thought. With the advent of phenomenology in the nineteenth century, the person has not only been examined, but is now placed at the forefront of human inquiry.

Attempting to analyze personhood has its difficulties. One can discover various important truths about personhood in general, but that will tell you very little about any particular person. One can examine generic properties of rocks, water, or trees will tell you all that you need to know about each particular rock, drop of water, or tree. Not so with the person. The person is unlike anything else presented to us in our experience; they have their own individual loves, fears, and desires that cannot be known through mere abstraction. Unlike everything else in our lives, individual persons cannot be abstracted, only experienced. I can tell you all about my friends, but until you meet and experience them, you don’t know them, you merely know about them. There is no such thing as a priori personal knowledge.

Individuals are utterly irreducible to any facts. Ask a mother about her child and before attempting to speak she will light up, and tell you all you need to know by doing so. Ask a married man about his wife of fifty years and he will have no words; that love is too deep to be expressed in speech. Ask the mystic about God and you will encounter a silence, but one that is deafening. Each individual person is irrepeatable; each of us makes manifest an aspect of God’s heart that only we can. As Pope Benedict said, “Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed. Each of us is loved. Each of us is necessary.”

The things that can best express who individual persons are are their names, voices, and, most of all, their faces. These realities are the best and fullest expressions of the person. Once you hear someone’s name, they are made present to you. Once you hear someone’s voice, they are made even more present. Once you see their face, then you see them. In a way, a face is the fullest expression of a person’s being, the reality that is most clearly associated with them as individuals. The thing we first notice and memorize about a person is their face; to remember that is to remember them. We cherish pictures and paintings so much because through them, the persons they are representing are made present to us. All individuals are unique and irreducible. They are not puzzles to be completed, but persons to be known and loved; persons that, above all else, show who they are in their faces.

In the person of Christ, God has shown us His face, and the fullness of the Godhead has been revealed to man. To have seen Him is to have seen the Father. In this Image we see both ourselves and the God who infinitely cherishes each of us, to the point of making Himself most fully manifest by showing to us His face.

Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved!