this picture. The divine attachment‘verifies’human existence, and the
attachment moves between God and the believer in a gift-like fashion.
Calvin (section 2.7) basically takes over these Lutheran ideas,
emphasizing the cognitive or epistemic aspect more strongly than
Luther. For Calvin, religious knowledge assumes that humans
acknowledge and honour God. While such acts are interpersonal
expressions of submission, not philosophical judgements, they under-
line the view that personal attachment is the basis of genuine religion.
More than Luther does, Calvin emphasizes self-knowledge as the result
of this religious process. The difference between old self and new self
in Calvin stresses the idea of identity change and transformation.
The component of attachment becomes a personal conviction in
Hobbes and Locke (section 3.1). While its relative importance con-
tinues to be strong, the act of acknowledgement represents one dimen-
sion of the free and voluntary choices of autonomous individuals.
A more holistic view of personal attachment and appropriation is
present in German Pietism. For Zinzendorf, such attachment does
not represent theoretical knowledge but a practical and emotional life
that is achieved through labour and struggle. The line from Calvin to
German Pietism contains a neo-Stoic emphasis on the primacy of
attachment. At the same time, it employs heteronomous elements of
Christian theology in a dialogical manner that precedes Hegel.
In Spalding’s late philosophy of religion (section 3.2), this line
flows into the epistemic view of recognition as a condition of possibil-
ity, a view that we called‘existential’above. For Spalding, attachment
continues to be prominent as an existential component that underlines
the primacy of personal relevance and transformative power in reli-
gious recognition. In sum, the Christian tradition from Bernard to
Zinzendorf teaches a pre-existential attachment, a heteronomous
grounding of one’s own being on the radical divine commendation
that can be called the‘promise of self-preservation’.Theterm‘promise’
here captures the idea of divine favour and commendation as the
horizon of expectation.
4.1.5. Recognizing Persons vs IssuesAt a purely lexical level,agnosco,recognosco, and their vernacular
equivalents can have non-personal things as their objects. The phrase
agnitio veritatisis an obvious example of this usage. This feature may
Recognition in Religion 191