Repetition and Identity

This monograph presents a theological critique of modern conceptions of identity through an examination of repetition, arguing that only a participatory metaphysics grounded in divine transcendence can adequately account for the persistence of identity through time. Catherine Pickstock challenges both ancient Platonic and contemporary secular approaches to the problem of how things remain themselves while undergoing change, proposing instead that creaturely identity depends fundamentally on participation in God's eternal self-identity.

The work engages critically with the philosophical tradition from Plato through Deleuze, demonstrating how non-theological accounts of repetition inevitably collapse into either static sameness or pure difference. Pickstock argues that Platonic forms cannot explain the dynamic identity of particular things, while modern philosophies of pure becoming dissolve identity altogether. Her analysis reveals how secular metaphysics oscillates unstably between these extremes because it lacks the conceptual resources to think identity and difference together.

Against these inadequate frameworks, Pickstock develops a sophisticated theological alternative drawing on patristic and medieval sources, particularly Augustine and Aquinas. She contends that created beings maintain their identity through time only by participating in God's simple, eternal act of being. This participation is neither static copying nor autonomous self-creation, but rather a dynamic reception of identity as divine gift. The work shows how liturgical repetition paradigmatically enacts this participatory structure, as ritual practice constitutes community identity through repeated reception of transcendent meaning.

The monograph's philosophical rigor and historical breadth make it a significant contribution to theological responses to postmodern critiques of stable identity. By demonstrating the incoherence of purely immanent accounts of repetition and identity, Pickstock provides a robust defense of classical theistic metaphysics against both ancient and contemporary alternatives. Her argument implies that coherent discourse about identity, whether of persons, communities, or things, ultimately requires reference to divine transcendence.

The work matters for the God debate because it shifts the terrain from epistemological questions about proving God's existence to ontological questions about the conditions for coherent thought and speech about identity. Pickstock suggests that attempts to explain identity without God generate conceptual aporias that undermine their own intelligibility, thereby providing an indirect but powerful argument for theism's philosophical necessity.