Wysgerige Onderskeidinge insake Identiteit Relevant vir ’n Studie van die Nuwe Testament en vir die Hermeneutiek

Abstract

Our everyday experience is well acquainted with the reality of constancy and change. Persistence over time – continuity – is normally accompanied by an awareness of change – discontinuity. This article wants to highlight the underlying ontological issues and distinctions required to gain a better understanding of the familiar term ‘identity’. In order to achieve this goal the idea of identity is related to the nature of an entity and its properties. Plato’s account of identity and change paved the way for an enduring philosophical wrestling with this problem. In the Dooyeweerd tradition, acknowledging the more-than-functional and multifunctional nature of the identity of an entity helps us to understand the distinction between conceptual knowledge and concept-transcending knowledge.
In the first part of the article the problem of constancy and change is epistemologically investigated and described. The second part deals with lingual constancy and change, as illustrated by biblical the letter to Philemon. It is argued that the identity of the letter entails an implicit awareness of the foundational relationship between constancy and change. The relevance of this distinction is also briefly highlighted for the impasse of historicism, the linguistic turn and the nature of hermeneutics.