released 7/27/2026
In this April 2026 lecture, Dr. Angela Franks explains the history of the modern concept of identity as a project and shows how it falls short of a holistic Christian view of the self. Franks identifies three ways of understanding identity that premodern thinkers believed comprise one’s complete self: (1) a metaphysical baseline of identity (the substance of an actual being in time and space); (2) the central Platonic concept of a “true self” that can be known; and (3) one’s feelings and emotional experience of one’s identity. She then explains how John Locke and secularism reduced identity to the latter (#3, a self-constructed identity based on feelings and desires), evacuating it of substance and content. Exposing inherent contradictions in this way of thinking of identity, Franks shows how Christianity is the “only and last defender” of personal identity in its fullness.
This lecture is provided by the James M. Houston Centre for Humanity and the Common Good at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.
00 minutes
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