After the 1950s, personal identity became increasingly disengaged from beliefs about character and basic human nature and was associated instead with consciousness - that is to say, with something a good deal more shifting and elusive.

we find that we are able to resolve internal conflicts,

In our experience, the line between flesh and spirit becomes blurry.

But the distinction remains at the heart of knowing how to preserve a biblical understanding of God.

Kant initially argued that reason cannot establish the reality and nature of God, and then, in his Critique of Practical Reason, he went on to propose that it is only in moral experience that such knowledge can be grounded, for the knowledge we have of ourselves as moral beings is inexplicable

personal identity became increasingly associated not with the narrative of one's inner life but with the projectionof one's public image.

They labor under the illusion that the God they make in the image of the self becomes more real as he more nearly comes to resemble the self, to accommodate its needs and desires.

It is the inwardness of experience, he says, that guarantees its authenticity in this expressive and narcissistic culture.

Schleiermacher,