The idea of what it means to be a person was shaped by theologians undertaking to define God in terms of personal relationships through the doctrine of the Trinity. But, as writers in the spiritual tradition show, theological definitions need to be supplemented by an imaginative grasp of how persons are also agents of transformation, called to engage and transfigure the historical conditions within which they find themselves. Consequently, the literature of Western spirituality explores the idea of the person by reproducing extensively a dialectic between theological definitions and evocative literary accounts of individual transformative experience. The gospel story of Transfiguration provides an especially useful way to chart the historical course of this dialectic because New Testament Greek prosopon (the countenance which is transfigured) is, in Latin, persona

The idea of what it means to be a person was shaped by theologians undertaking to define God in terms of personal relationships through the doctrine of the Trinity. But, as writers in the spiritual tradition show, theological definitions need to be supplemented by an imaginative grasp of how persons are also agents of transformation, called to engage and transfigure the historical conditions within which they find themselves. Consequently, the literature of Western spirituality explores the idea of the person by reproducing extensively a dialectic between theological definitions and evocative literary accounts of individual transformative experience. The gospel story of Transfiguration provides an especially useful way to chart the historical course of this dialectic because New Testament Greek prosopon (the countenance which is transfigured) is, in Latin, persona