The Unsuitability of “Unsubstitutability” in Theological Anthropology

Abstract

When we wait for a significant other, it is not as if we are waiting for someone who looks like her, talks like her, or even walks like her. Instead, what we want is her. And, the same goes for the afterlife: if there is an afterlife, we long to see our loved ones. Not those who look like our loved ones, who sound like them, or even smell like them, but we actually want them. In the study of human nature, this is, arguably, one of the modern insights on humanity. The question of the “particularity” of human beings matters. In technical philosophical studies, the question of “particularity” is a question of thisness (i.e., the fact that objects are countable as discrete in virtue of some property or feature that makes an object what it is). What makes one person this person rather than that person? By showing how the concept of thisness is important in modern and contemporary theology, I will argue for a specific view as that which accurately captures both the historical consensus and the modern emphasis of personhood.