Foucault understands critique as a process connected to three predominant themes: power, truth, and the subject. The work of critique, he suggests, is “the movement by which the subject gives himself the right to question truth on its own effects of power and question power on its discourse of truths” (Foucault, 2007, p.47). In this paper I present a critique of the notion of self-development as a form of fitness through which one seeks to develop oneself according to neoliberal power. Such a critique is relevant to urban studies because neoliberal governance has emerged through various techniques of urban planning that seek to construct cities for competitive, capital accumulation under the veil of self-actualised well-being. Foucault’s own interest in self-development takes the shape of a two-part lecture series (1980-81) in which he constructs a genealogy of the modern self through the lens of confession. It is my intention to proceed with Foucault’s exploration of confession as an exercise by which one can evaluate the constitution or subjectivity of the self in relation to truth and power. However, my own work unfolds in several distinct ways: While Foucault’s aim is to “construct a genealogy of the subject” (Foucault, 2007, p. 152), my research seeks (1) to unpack Foucault’s interest in governance through his dual exploration confession; (2) to reconsider Christian self-development through confession according to the critique posited by 16th-century Christian reformers; and (3) to use this reframing of Christian confession as a way to critique the emergence of the neoliberal “entrepreneurial of himself” as applied to urban planning (Foucault, 1979, p. 226). Therefore, my research complicates Foucault’s genealogy of confession which in turn restructures an argument against the modern subject as one who is fit to be governed by himself. 

 

concepts

I propose that the concept of self-development might be understood as an exercise by which one seeks  to achieve some form of fitness. The praxis of self-development has often taken the form of confession, by which I mean the declaration of the self as either fit or unfit according to a set of principles. The Ancient Greek term for confession—ἐξομολόγησις (exomologesis)—may be most associated with the orthopraxy of Christianity, linguistically connoting an external performance of the self. Distinct from this type of confession is the philosophical search to know thyself (gnothi seauton) or to care for oneself (epimeleia heautou), found in the classical techniques of the self, according to Michel Foucault (1986). However, both the Christian and the classical Greek concepts of confession present a common theme of the self who seeks to develop—according to an assumed set of potentialities—from one state of being to another, which is presumably activated by the exercise of confession. 

 

Writing on the distinctions between the confessional practices of the classical Hellenistic world and Christianity, Foucault suggests that the term is connected to the declaration of the truth about oneself. In the Hellenstic period, confession was seen as a way to evaluate oneself in order to become a more virtuous individual—making the self a place where the force of truth can appear (Foucault, 2007). According to a Koine dictionary[1], the term is fourfold and can mean distinctly or simultaneously a consent, admission, profession, and/or praise.[2] Given these varying definitions, my research proposes that confession involves the declaration of the self in relation to either a former, future, or alternative self.

 

This inevitably leads to questions of the self and the body. Across various disciplines, the self/the body has a range of definitions such as an accumulation strategy (Harvey, 2000, citing Haraway, 1995), a multiplicity or assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), a construction (Butler, 1993), the measure of all things (Protagoras), a site for truth (Foucault, 2007), a site for resistance (Foucault), the image of God (Genesis 1), and a collective (1 Corinthians 12). Each of these unique and at times conflicting ideas of the self plays a part in this research to move towards a dialectic of self-development that at once resists the neoliberal production of the body while also recognising the limitations of absolute self-governance.  

 

(1) unpacking Foucault’s interest in governance through his dual exploration confession

In a 1978 lecture, Foucault anchors critique in three historical points, primarily revolving around the idea of “not being governed”: first, not wanting to be governed according to Scripture and thus critique was posed as a challenge to the authority of Scripture; second, not wanting to be governed by particular “unjust” laws and instead seeking more just legal rights; and third, critique is rooted in a particular defiance against authority by challenging their claims to truth simply on the basis of their telling you it is true. 

 

Stemming from this interest in problematising the emergence of an “enlightened public”, Foucault begins to explore the hermeneutics of the self by developing a genealogy of the modern subject (2007, p. 152). In his back-to-back lectures on the Hermeneutics of the Subject (1980–81), he narrows his exploration to what he calls the “technologies of the self,” which he articulates through forms of governance—that is, “processes through which the self is constructed or modified by himself” (2007, p. 154). Foucault provides a brief account of the goal of the philosophical practice of self-examination during the Hellenistic period (“Subjectivity and Truth”), followed by a review of the Christian practice of confession (“Christianity and Confession”). He suggests that the goal of Greek philosophy was transformation and, in this way, confession was an exercise of memory: a practice where one reflects on one’s actions each day and accounts for the ways in which he did or did not conduct himself according to the principles of a virtuous life (2007, p. 159). Thus, the individual here confesses his actions in order to “recall the truth forgotten by the subject” (2007, p. 159). This sort of self-administration, as expressed by Foucault, is a practice of the mind—an exercise in recollection rather than repentance. In this way, the exercise is distinct from the Christian confession which implies in its exercise the role of a judge. “In the Christian confession,” Foucault remarks, “the penitent has to memorize the law in order to discover his own sins, but in this Stoic exercise the sage memorizes acts in order to reactivate the fundamental rules” (Foucault, 2007, p. 159). In the classical self-examination, which Foucault traces through the work of Seneca, the aim is a work of progress in bringing about truth, not in discovering a hidden truth. This is significant for Foucault because he suggests that the purpose of Christian confession is the discovery and subsequent exposure of the hidden self.

 

In his follow-up lecture, Foucault reviews the Christian practices of confession in more detail in order to draw out its distinctions from the classical perspective and to show the resemblance among Christianity’s concept of confession and modern hermeneutics of the self. He proposes that the “the self is like a text or like a book that we have to decipher, and not something which has to be constructed by the superposition, the superimposition of the will and the truth,” which provides the link to the modern subject who must interrogate himself in order to make himself fit for living (2007, p. 166). 

 

Foucault’s review of Christianity and its confessions are limited to a particular collection of early Christian writers including 2nd-century writer Tertullian and, most predominantly, 4th-century monk John Cassian. Although relevant for the sake of comparing a particular emergence of early Christianity to the Stoic philosophers of the centuries prior, Foucault’s exploration of the topic of confession in Christianity is limited to these particular thinkers with no references to the biblical text studied by theologians today, nor the Septuagint[3], the four Gospels, or Paul’s epistles, which would have been studied fully or considered by many as canonical texts by Christians in Tertullian’s and Cassian’s lifetimes. Given the many variations of Christian interpretation over the past 2,000 years of church history, my own interest is in re-opening Foucault’s discussion through the lens of a reformed view. A review of Foucault’s aforementioned propositions through the reformed perspective maintains that the Christian confession is distinct from the classical philosophy of self-examination; however, it also challenges Foucault’s presumed conclusions that Christianity sits in the genealogical lineage of modern hermeneutics of the self. The consequences of this are twofold: first, they place Foucault in the midst of the many theorists who inaccurately articulate the central claims of Christianity; and secondly, they miss the opportunity to consider Christianity as a partner in the critique of unjust governance because they overlook its peculiar and complex discourse of governance which differs from its fragmented or incomplete institutional manifestations.

 

Foucault seems to centre his argument on the institution of the Catholic Church in order to connect the institutional power of the Church with the ways that the modern self is governed. His final statement is in the interest of moving beyond a positivist production of the self and towards an interpretivist constitution of the self. But what if we reconsider Foucault’s ideas by evaluating not merely the Catholic Church (which is itself an assemblage of elements produced in a particular space and time) and instead consider the ideas of Christian confession according to Scripture.  

 

(2) reconsidering Christian self-development through confession according to the critique posited by 16th-century Christian reformers

The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century was a period of reconsidering the institution of the Catholic Church in Europe. Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin sought a return to the Word of God, which they believed had been inappropriately warped and misapplied, particularly in the authority granted to the Pope. Foucault briefly mentions this as an anchoring point for the emergence of critique, but moves quickly into a binary by which one’s resistance to the Church is linked to a resistance to all authority of Scripture, and thus boils down to a challenge of the authority of Scripture. However, the Reformation was a period in which Christians sought to critique the hermeneutics of the Catholic Church and its inappropriate articulation of governance by reorienting their focus on Scripture as truth. Though much has been written about the Reformation, the main principles that were raised by the reformers have since been articulated as the five solae: sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, and soli Deo gloria. These five phrases provide a doctrinal foundation for understanding Christianity, and they provide a framework for both reconsidering Foucault’s description of Christian confession as well as positing a critique towards the emergence of the neoliberal self.  

 

Sola scriptura (by Scripture alone) emphasises the Old and New Testament texts of the Bible as the inspired Word of God—that it is one of the primary ways in which God has revealed himself to the world. The remaining four elements of the solae follow from this first point, using a high view of Scripture to understand who God is and who man is in relation to God.

 

Sola fide (by faith alone) stems from the Gospels[4]. For example, when Jesus visits a blind man in Jericho, the man cries out to him to ask for mercy. Jesus responds by recovering his sight and stating, “your faith has made you well” (Luke 18:42, ESV).

 

Sola gratia (by grace alone) is derived from passages such as Paul’s epistle to the church in Ephesus: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9, ESV). Simply put, grace is “free, undeserved goodness and favour of God to mankind” (Henry, 1710). Through centuries of study, reformed biblical scholars concur that sin prevents us from being able or willing to choose to follow God on our own. Augustine and later Martin Luther describe sin as man’s propensity to turn inward on oneself—incurvatus in se—and thus to seek one’s own path of self-development: “Scripture describes man as so curved in upon himself that he uses not only physical but even spiritual goods for his own purposes and in all things seeks only himself” (Luther’s Works, vol. 25, p. 345). The reformers suggest that sin has permeated every sphere of life, and that it is both something all humans have been born into but are also responsible for continuing. Thus, reformed theologians interpret passages such as this one from Ephesians as a claim that faith itself is not something an individual can accomplish on his own; rather, it is a gift from a just God who, out of his compassionate and loving nature, forgives individuals for their sins and desires to be united with them.

 

Solus Christus (through Christ alone) emphasises the role of Jesus as the saviour of the world. Because sin has affected humanity in such a way that one has the tendency to do terrible things (to oneself, to others, to creation, and to God), humanity requires some kind of intervention—someone who can redeem these problems and reconcile these distorted realities (which Christians trace to an origin point known as the Fall[5]). Christians believe that the multidimensional figure of Jesus—both fully man and fully God[6]—is the only substitute able to reconcile this dilemma, to satisfy the just payment for our mis-fitness (which, according to the Bible, is death). Although “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, ESV), solus Christus emphasises that God loved man and so sent his Son, Jesus to be “pierced for our transgressions; … crushed for our iniquities” through his death on the cross (Isaiah 53:5, ESV). “For our sake” describes Paul to the church in Corinth, “he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (1 Corinthians 15:21, ESV).

 

Soli Deo gloria (or glory to God alone) which operates as the summation of the life of the Christian, given the preceding solae. “All classes of men glory, the highest and the lowest, the richest and the poorest, the best educated and the most illiterate” states 19th-century theologian Charles Spurgeon (1874). And if “All things that are exist only by the will and sovereign good pleasure of the Lord of all, let us not glory, then, in that which depends upon him, but in God himself, the well-head of all.” The Christian, acknowledging these statements to be true, thus moves through life seeking to honour God in his work and relationships—not as a means of earning favour but as a response to God’s favour towards him; not as a means to develop oneself as a more fit being, but in response to God’s willingness to become unfit on behalf of mankind. 

 

Taken together, these five phrases account to the following confession: According to Scripture, which is believed to be the Word of God,  sin has infected the world, which means that the self is bent inward and is distant from his Creator—God the Father. Because sin exists in the Christian as well, he cannot solve this problem on his own and instead places his hope in the person and work of Jesus Christ—God the Son—who, by the grace (or compassion) of God the Father, was sent to justify the consequences of sin by dying on the Christian’s behalf. This paradigm presents Jesus as the sacrifice required for salvation but unable to be achieved by the Christian himself. The Christian believes that this is true by faith ( by the presence of God the Spirit). And this work of restoration enables the once-sinner, now-redeemed Christian to live and work in the world with the purpose of glorifying God. Key to the Christian confession is that Jesus did not remain in the grave but was resurrected, which provides eternal hope that death has been defeated. Some further nuance is required here that extends beyond the frame of this paper.[7]

 

It is my understanding that Foucault negates the key element of confession: acknowledgement of Jesus as the key labourer on man’s behalf. Confession of sin—the declaration that I am not yet what I want to be because of the all-pervasive effects of sin—can only be made in a context in which the hearer of such a confession is able to provide grace in the face of shame. Christianity’s account for this is in the labouring body of the fully man and fully divine Jesus who declares the Christian to be already justified even though his life is not yet free from all effects of sin. Without the figure of Jesus, Christian confession is a workout. The critique of the Reformation posed a confrontation against such a workout by seeking to return to Scripture in which the belief in Jesus is rest for the weary thanks to the mercy of Jesus’s perfectly fit, labouring body which hangs on the cross in place of mankind’s own. The confession of faith in Jesus’s body over one’s own leads to a repentance that simultaneously declares oneself as a sinner but before a God whose nature it is to bestow grace.[8] 

 

This reframing emancipates the believer from the toil of remembering or controlling the “tiniest movements in thoughts”; indeed, it is “necessary” to remember them, but Jesus has fulfilled the meticulous requirements of such a law on mankind’s behalf.[9] Christian confession is a simultaneous declaration from the individual alongside a declaration from God himself (manifested through the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, who is God’s Word made flesh (John 1:14; Hebrews 1:3, ESV)). This notion confronts the idea of confession as a singular actor speaking into an abyss, practicing a game of memory, or appeasing an angry God by reframing it as a highly relational activity with multiple actors present: man and a trinitarian[10] God. 

 

The significance to be drawn from these distinctions is that any form of self-development that articulates a self-constitution on the basis of proclaiming one’s agency alone results in the production of a futile body. This self-referential body, who seeks to confess the truth of oneself against governing structures reveals a critique towards unjust power dynamics which the Christian believes can only be critiqued via the death and resurrection of Jesus. And it is this belief that places the Christian into a slanted dialectic, believing simultaneously that Jesus has already conducted the ultimate critique—not merely of unjust governance but of all sin—and yet waiting for this work to be made wholly manifest in the world. Rather than producing the modern subject as only a resting body (in opposition to an active body), the paradigm of Christianity reconstitutes the self as an already-redeemed but not-yet complete being who is a co-labourer in the work of justice, peace, and equality, but is not capable of removing his own sin from the equation. This revised hermeneutics of the self can lead us to a nuanced critique of self-development as it is promulgated within neoliberalism.

 

(3) applying this reframing of Christian confession as a way to critique the emergence of the neoliberal “entrepreneurial of himself”

In his writings on biopolitics, Foucault articulates the theory of homo œconomicus. Foucault suggests that homo œconomicus is not “a partner of exchange” but rather “an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur of himself … being himself his own capital, being for himself his own producer, being for himself the source of [his] earnings” (1979, p. 226). Foucault distinguishes this from the classical economic analysis in which the unit of analysis is a “man of exchange, one of the two partners in the process of exchange” (1979, p. 225). Foucault presents a discussion of this new kind of homo œconomicus within neoliberalism (specifically the neoliberalism of America emerging at the time of his writing) by which the life of a child “will be possible to calculate, and to a certain extent quantify, or at any rate measure, in terms of the possibilities of investment in human capital” (Foucault, 1979, p. 230). 

 

When Abraham Maslow first presented his theory of self-actualisation, he suggested that one will remain discontent “unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. … what a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualisation … which refers to the tendency for him to become actualised in what he is potentially” (Maslow, 1970, p. 46). Maslow’s framework has been popularised in the business world, and over the past decade, has gained traction in the urban planning and design fields. Similar frameworks have cropped up, such as Happy City’s well-being wheel or the OECD’s well-being framework, which view the body as a system of fragmented needs that need only be measured and resourcefully met. Maslow’s pyramid-shaped model reworked into these urban planning schemes presents a reductionist guideline which suggests that by planning cities that meet these basic needs, planners can construct well-developed citizens and thus develop a self-actualised city. The models rely on a fitness methodology by which the achievement of self-actualisation becomes the reference point of what it means to be fit. Maslow states that ascending through the hierarchy is itself a “quest for identity and autonomy,” thus reducing those with needs who may be dependent on the state or others to provide for them as misfits (1970, p. xii). Because of this tendency, the adoption of such self-actualisation frameworks into planning policy and design guidelines results in a dangerous adoption of the encouragement to make individuals fit for self-actualisation according to market values. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs applied to the urban scale through various well-being frameworks is one such way in which the “problems of the economy” are being “rethought on the basis of human capital” (Foucault, 1979, p. 232). 

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The confession of the self within a neoliberalism paradigm is an “I am” statement that equates the self with one’s own exchange value, which develops according to the fluctuation of the market and whose body is produced as a site of metabolic transformation of capital. This form of self-actualisation is intimately linked with the accumulation of capital as the “entrepreneurial self” remakes not merely someone who has potential to make an income but as the income itself—“the ability-machine of which it is the income cannot be separated from the human individual who is its bearer” (Bröckling, 2015; Foucault, 1979, p.226). The emergence of well-being and urban fitness frameworks in the 21st century thus reinforce a capitalist hegemony under the guise of encouraging an individual pursuit of the self within the urban environment. The concern of urban planners becomes the governance of the “fitness of beings” whose identities may be defined according to a hierarchy of needs that is inherently formed and reformed around the volatility of the free market. Within such a system, to stop pursuing self-actualisation would compromise one’s own livelihood. And in this framework, the self is capital—human capital—and thus the interest of human well-being at the scale of a city cannot be decoupled from the interest in economic growth.

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In some respects, this is merely an interesting shift to trace. However, with the ideas of confession of the self before us, we can re-consider this neoliberal confession of self-actualisation in a new light. The Christian form of self-development—as that which confesses a liminal identity by acknowledging the history of the labouring body of Jesus while progressing towards a resurrected body after the trajectory of Jesus—is both distinct from and challenges the model of neoliberal self-actualisation in several ways. We can articulate this succinctly by distinguishing the five solae of reformed Christianity in opposition to the following three proposed solae of neoliberal self-actualisation: sola capitis, solus ego, soli ego gloria. These three phrases, which I am deriving from the structure of neoliberalism, encourage an inward-curving posture that stands in opposition to the confession of Christianity through its development of the self by the self, and for the self, in accordance with capital. 

 

Sola capitis (by capital alone) describes the neoliberal self as one who is bound to the authority of capital. Irish theologian Kevin Hargaden suggests that when the “competitive market logic stretches to become the ordering rationale for all of life, we can see how the neoliberal subjectivity falls into idolatry” (Hargaden, 2018, p. 27). The idolatry of capital within the neoliberal scheme threatens the confession of Christianity through its declaration of the Thatcherism claim—that “there is no alternative” to this form of life defined by the continual circulation of capital. By exploring its totalising effects, Hargaden links the idolatry of capital to the work of Martin Luther’s description of what it means to worship a god: “A God means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the heart” (Hargaden, 2018, p. 29, citing Luther, p. 565). Christianity critiques the ways that neoliberalism produces the modern subject to worship Capital, and suggests through Jesus’s New Testament teachings that one cannot worship both God and money. Self-actualisation via capital sits in contrast with the self-development of Christian confession in which one develops not by accumulation of monetary or human capital but by acknowledging oneself as in need of another to make amends for one’s own debts. Important to note is that these debts are not owed to a volatile system that re-shapes the body as a unit of labour but to a benevolent God.  

 

Christian confession clings to the labouring body of Jesus. Neoliberalism, however, presents a confession of self-actualisation accomplished solus ego (by the self alone) by its assertions of the entrepreneurial self. As Glenn Adams and his colleagues point out in their critique of neoliberalism from a psychological studies point of view, “the concept of entrepreneurial self marks a tendency to develop oneself as a product or brand in response to demands of the social and economic marketplace” (Adams, 2019). The body for which one depends and makes into the measure of well-being is thus the labouring body of oneself, not merely abstracted from the personal as Marx would suggest but fit and refit, continuously exercising as an “enterprise-unit” itself in order to maintain its survival (Foucault, 1979). The once-for-all justification provided through the body of Jesus critiques the futility of solus ego by dismantling the toil of such an exercise seeking to earn a place for itself. Instead of encouraging the self to “continuously pursue growth, self-development, and refinement of their own capital” (Adams, 2019)—and thus, of themselves—the solus Christus alternative emancipates the collective body of believers from the self-mutilating development of self-actualisation.

 

While soli ego gloria (for the glory of the self) could be combatted by the Christian confession of soli Deo gloria, there is something more complex that needs unpacking. Neoliberalism presents itself as an effort of soli ego gloria while in actuality operating as something more akin to solus gloria urbis oeconomia. Development under neoliberalism presents a self-referential dilemma which lacks a genuine progression because it must involve destruction in order to create again. The confession of Christianity presents an alternative paradigm of a God who creates to love, and when that which he loves finds itself in the midst of self-destruction, God restores and reassembles. This does not negate a particular type of creative destruction—the figure of Jesus becomes incarnate on Earth in order to die on the cross—but this narrative provides an entirely unique articulation of such a creative destruction by presenting a belief in a resurrected Saviour. While glorification of the self posits a false restoration that can never be met because it requires the self to be destroyed in order to be maintained, and the glory of the development of the city follows suit, the glorification of God as presented by the reformed Christian confession rests in not only the destruction of a substitutionary, labouring body but on a fully resurrected body that “ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father” (Apostle’s Creed, developed circa 390 AD).

 

conclusion

It has been my intention through this research to move the discussion of self-development beyond the idea of the “fitness of beings” and towards a dialectics of the self as an entity of becoming. By reconsidering the critique of the Reformation, however, such a dialectic emerges through the confession of Jesus as fit on mankind’s behalf.

 

As we retrace the genealogy of the hermeneutics of the subject, the modern exercise of confession as produced by neoliberalism appears to bear a closer resemblance to the classical confessions articulated by Foucault, which seeks to “give the individual the quality which would permit him to live differently, better, and more happily, than other people” (soli ego gloria; Foucault, 2007, p. 156), “to equip the individual … to conduct himself in all circumstances of life without losing mastery of himself or without losing tranquility of spirit, purity of body and soul” (solus ego; Foucault, 2007, p. 156), and to remember “what he ought to have done … the collection of rules of conduct that he had learned” (sola capitis; Foucault, 2007, p. 160). Just as the classical self is constituted as a point of intersection between rules and memories (“the point where rules of conduct come together and register themselves in the form of memories” in Foucault, 2007, p. 160), so too the modern neoliberal individual constitutes himself as a point of intersection between values according to the rules of capital and his own abilities as a worker to meet them.

 

The Christian confession, on the other hand, which simultaneously declares “I am” a sinner and yet “I am” saved, transforms the concept of becoming as it pertains to everyday life. This bears significant weight for our urban geographies because it announces that the self as an already-not yet being is a co-labourer in “seeking the peace and prosperity” of the spaces we inhabit (Jeremiah 29:7, ESV). This work of welfare is summarised in the Hebrew word shalom which is concerned not with a prosperity determined by capital accumulation but with comfort for those who mourn, justice for those who are oppressed, and ultimately with the presence of the resurrected body of Jesus amidst a people whom he loves.  

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footnotes

[1] A dictionary for the Greek dialect used at the time of the writing of the Christian Bible’s New Testament (circa 50–100 AD)

[2] The Koine dictionary entry for εξομολογεω suggests that the phrase has four definitions: “1) to indicate acceptance of an offer or proposal, promise, consent … 2) to make an admission of wrong-doing/sin, confess, admit—to confess sins to the Lord, confess transgression in the congregation, make a confession of transgressions, make a confession of sins … 3) to declare openly in acknowledgement, profess, acknowledge … [and] 4) from the meanings ‘confession’ and ‘profess’ there arose … a more general sense to praise, in acknowledgement of divine beneficence and majesty of one praised” in relation to several passages including Matthew 3:6 “and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins” (ESV), Luke 10:21 “In the same hour, he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth …” (ESV), and Romans 15:9 “… ‘Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, …”

[3] The Septuagint is the Koine Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, read by Greeks in the first and second centuries in particular and still used today for theological study

[4] The Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are the four accounts of Jesus’s life and teachings in the New Testament—four of the twelve disciples who lived during, witnessed, and participated in Jesus’s ministry.

[5] The Fall is a way to describe the period articulated in Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve are removed from the Garden of Eden. In summary, “humans choose to define good and evil on their own,” and markers the time when sin first enters the God’s creation (The Bible Project, Genesis 1–11). Augustine used the phrase “original sin” to describe the influences of the Genesis 3 history on our lives even still today. See 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 for more clarity.

[6] The Christian faith hinges upon the belief in the body of a fully divine and fully human, identified in Jesus: Pastor and theologian Tim Keller articulates it this way: “Jesus is one of us—he is human. The doctrine of Christmas, of the incarnation, is that Jesus was truly and fully God and truly and fully human” (Keller, 2016, p. 47–48). Keller points out that this is distinct from all other philosophies and religions which tend to debate: “What is more ultimate, the absolute or the particular? The One or the Many? The ideal and eternal or the real and the concrete? Is Plato right or Aristotle? But the doctrine of the incarnation breaks through those binaries and categorises. ‘Immanuel’ means the ideal has become real, the absolute has become a particular, and the invisible has become visible! The incarnation is the universe-sundering, history-altering, life-transforming, paradigm-shattering event of history” (2016, p. 48)

[7] After the Reformation, the Heidelberg Catechism was developed in Germany as a compilation of Christianity’s core beliefs in the form of question and response. It is still used today during church services as part of the liturgy or individually as a way to articulate and memorise key concepts for life as a Christian. For example, the first question and response is as follows: “Q. What is your only comfort in life and death? A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him” (Lord’s Day 1, Heidelberg Catechism). “We are justified before God by grace alone, on the basis of Christ’s blood and righteousness alone, through the means, or instrument, of faith alone, for the ultimate glory of God alone, as taught with final and decisive authority in Scripture alone” (Piper, 2017). This is exercised by the Christian through the two-fold practice of confession—on the one hand of faith, or belief in these ideas, and on the other hand of sin, or belief in these ideas as they are manifested within one’s own life.

[8] “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, hall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (Romans 5:6–11, ESV)

[9] “He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” (Hebrews 10:9b–14)

[10] Tertullian articulates the trinity in this way: “…there is one only God, but under the following dispensation … that the one only God has also a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made” and “sent also from heaven from the Father, according to His own promise, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost. ... All are of One, by unity (that is) of substance; while the mystery of this dispensation is still guarded, which distributes the Unity into a Trinity, placing in their order the three Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three, however, not in condition but in degree; not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect; yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power inasmuch as Hs is one God from whom these degrees and forms and aspects are reckoned, under the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Against Praxeas, Chapter II)

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