“PERSON” MAIL: Rob Dakin writes, I think that Nietzsche is correct to this extent: I don’t believe that grace is available to just anyone who, in the end cries “Lord, Lord”. I think it takes an emptying out of that “meanness” and the unintelligence of the personal history, through striving, as Jesus put it, to “be perfect, like our Father in heaven.” Not that one can achieve that, but that one must be constantly approaching that goal by discarding those parts of the self that weigh one down, allowing gravity to win. “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

I think our disagreement here may be explained by the fact that Dakin characterizes his own beliefs as Gnostic and I, well, don’t. Only persons can love; that in itself is enough for me to be pro-persons and anti-depersonalizing. The world and history and personality in which we find ourselves embedded also produces some of the efflorescent vitality among the wildly different saints, described in the Will to Power post below. So, yes, discard “parts of the self” that keep one from God–put off the old Adam. But put on Christ; become more of a person, more of what it means to be a human person, not less, ever. I don’t think this is a strictly semantic difference, though it may seem like one on the surface.