Diffident and the Introspective Conscience of the West

The word "diffident" will never stump anyone in a spelling bee, but I now write about words that make me stop and listen, rather than simply about words that are difficult to spell. I hope, if I live long enough, to learn "all the words" that make me stop and listen, but sometimes in this task you just have to go one word at a time.

An explanation of the title of this essay is in order. Those nurtured in Biblical studies from the last generation will recognize that I have cribbed my title from the title of a famous 1963 article by Professor (later Dean) Krister Stendahl of Harvard Divinity School. Stendahl, who just died about 4 1/2 months ago at age 86, was a scholar, teacher, academic administrator, churchman and proponent of interreligious dialogue. He had the habit of mentioning a thought in an article that not only could turn into a book but would, frequently, re-orient the church or the entire field of Biblical studies on his particular point. In his 1963 article entitled "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West," Stendahl argued that it was Paul's interpreters, especially St. Augustine and Martin Luther, who read the concept of Paul having a tortured and sin-obsessed conscience from their experience back into the Biblical text, rather than vice-versa.

In contrast, Stendahl argued, Paul had what Stendahl called a "robust" conscience and, rather than being obsessed with his failure to meet the requirements of the Jewish law, was overwhelmed by the sovereign grace of God. By so arguing, Stendahl opened the door for a "new view of Paul," one that would root Paul deeply in his Jewish environment and remove him from the familiar interpretive tradition of Protestantism. Stendahl argued, further, that the obsession with sin, our personal shortcomings and the "introspective conscience" was something brought to the Christian tradition several hundred years after Paul. Thus, the "instrospective conscience" of the West came to us not by from the Bible itself but through certain leading thinkers in the Christian tradition. We, in the West, have become obsessed with the "self"..

How Does Diffident Relate to This?

I would like to play with Stendahl's provocative insight in the context of my discovery of the linguistic history of "diffidence." Diffidence isn't a word we use too frequently today, but it is a good and robust word, which generally means "wanting in self-confidence; distrustful of oneself; timid, shy, modest, bashful." A diffident person is one who puts a brake on the self, who spends excessive time examining motives, intentions, actions and, as a result, is both hesitant to act and reluctant to present oneself without qualification. A diffident person knows of the many ways s/he might screw up and therefore tends to withdraw or downplay the self rather than assert the self. The word is derived ultimately from the Latin verb diffidere, which means to mistrust (from de--"from" and fidere--"trust").

But upon looking at the word more closely I realized that the usage of diffident today is the second definition in both the Century and the OED. Its first, and older, signification is to be distrustful of others. Examples of its use in this way are not hard to find. From 1618: "In the constancie of his people he was somewhat diffident," meaning, of course, that he couldn't really trust the steadfastness of his people. Jeremy Taylor, the famous 17th century Anglican divine, knew this meaning: "Piety so diffident as to require a sign." He is referring to a belief system or confidence in God that is so tenuous that it requires some kind of physical demonstration of God's love in order to believe that love is real. John Milton also used the word this way in Paradise Lost:

"Be not diffident/ Of wisdom; she deserts thee not, if thou/ Dismiss her not," PL viii. 562.

It was only in the mid-17th century that our current meaning of diffident arose. The first user of it in this "modern" way knew he was using it in a new way because he said: "I am not so diffident of My selfe, as brutishly to submit to any men's dictates." Thus, he had to fill in the idea of the "self" or else the normal understanding would kick in--that diffident meant a lack of confidence or trust in someone else. Though the older meaning persisted (An 1873 quotation reads: "The English are not musicians, and are diffident in general of the artist class"), the newer meaning gradually took over. No clearer indication of this can be found than by looking up the word in the Collegiate, an admittedly "modern" dictionary. Its first, and longest, definition is: "hesitant in acting or speaking through lack of self-confidence." Thought it lists another meaning as "distrustful," it says that this is an "archaic" definition. Thus, our modern definition of the word.

A Morphing Definition/A Window Into Our World

I would like to argue here that the change in significance of diffident, from distrustful of others to distrustful of the self is indicative of the trend in our modern world increasingly to think that the amorphous concept called the "self" is the overriding concept that needs to be defined, understood and nourished. The self, we are told (by modern psychology) is the basic building block of identity and of confident ability to act in the world. Unless one has a strong "self-concept," for example, one runs the risk of not realizing one's "potential" and getting bogged down in lots of negative self-criticism. But at the same time that the psychologists were telling us that we had to focus on the self in order to develop a strong self-concept, the definition of diffident was changing from distrust in others to distrust of the self. That is, by opening the door to encourage people to dive into the bottomless pit of the "self," in order to "be well," psychologists were also, perhaps unwittingly, opening the door to the kind of self-criticism and self-attack that can lead to immobilization rather than mobilization of the self's resources. It can lead to diffidence--lack of trust in the self.

Conclusion

So, people began to feel diffident in the sense of distrusting the self. You can probably argue that people lacked self-confidence long before diffident gave them a word to describe this lack, but the linguistic change tells us something about our modern world. The modern, or post-modern if you will, world is all about the self, all about the pursuit of happiness and the chance to realize the self. Though service to others is lauded and encouraged, we are mired in the paradigm of "personal development"--that first requires us to identify and get rid of those negative self-concepts that somehow stick to us like glue. And, when we look at negative aspects of the self, what do we find occupying a prominent place? Why, diffidence of course. Let's return it to its original meaning and then, perhaps, we can also see that the goal of life isn't simply the omphaloskeptic one of "self-realization."

3771