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.

In short, Christian spirituality is a mysticism of transfiguration; an evolving idea of the person is central to it; and in written form it best finds expression as literature.

This general argument is placed in the context of modern debates about personal identity and the idea of the self, with reference to the rise of modern literary studies. There are chapters on the New Testament, Origen of Alexandria, Julian of Norwich, Erasmus, William Law and John Henry Newman. A conclusion offers suggestions for a spiritual view of the person that remains viable in today's secular culture.