A Protestant-Specific Argument for Egalitarianism

I believe that it is inconsistent for one to be a strong complimentarian and a Protestant at the same time. Complimentarians often hold that, though women can be involved in various forms of ministry, they cannot become "ordained ministers." But consider the following:

According to one of the fundamental tenets of Protestantism, the priesthood of all believers (PAB):

(1) All baptized believers are ordained by God as priests.

From here the rest of the argument quickly follows:

(2) Some women are baptized believers.

Therefore,

(3) Some women are ordained by God as priests.

We might thus simply ask our complimentarian friends the following: If God has ordained someone as a priest, who are we to deny her ordination?

I suppose one might reply that PAB is purely a spiritual matter that does not pertain to our ecclesiological affairs. However, that reply seems to miss the original meaning of the doctrine, not to mention the context in which Luther himself re-discovered it. Whether or not Luther understood the egalitarian implications of the doctrine is another matter, but to the extent he didn't, we could say that even he wasn't being a consistent Protestant! (I am not in a position to say what his view on this matter was, so I am not claiming that he was, indeed, inconsistent.) It appears that, while Luther did make a distinction between priests and ministers, he saw the latter not as a God-ordained position, but simply as those whom we Christians choose from among us to do certain tasks. Since the latter is not based on divine ordination, I would assume that we choose people for these tasks based on our discernment of their natural abilities and spiritual gifts related to those various tasks. So, unless we are willing to state categorically that women are physically or spiritually incapable of performing certain tasks (a strong claim indeed!), then I cannot see how a Protestant would in principle be able to hold to strong complimentarianism. I suppose one could deny PAB, but in so doing, one would cease to be properly Protestant.

Book Review: Fact, Value, and God

In his preface to Fact, Value, and God (Eerdmans 1997), Arthur Holmes describes his primary objective in writing this book:

This book began as an attempt to explore historical ways of grounding moral values objectively in the nature of reality. Unconvinced that we live in a value-free universe, that fact and value are ultimately unrelated, or that we have to create all our own values rather than discovering the good, I wanted to explore the fact-value connection in the larger context of metaphysical and theological views. (vii)

Based on the findings of his study, Holmes concludes, “What emerged is a more pervasive linkage than I had anticipated between religious and moral beliefs. …[T]he claim that values are somehow objective, ‘out there,’ is the legacy on which we still need to draw” (vii). What follows, then, is the unfolding of Holmes’s case for the historical relationship between religious and ethical views, a link that Holmes believes should be continued (or revived) in contemporary ethical discussion. As Holmes argues, “The relationship of theological facts to moral values is inescapable, unless the existence of theological facts is denied” (viii).

The bulk of Fact, Value, and God is thus descriptive, leading the reader through the long history of ethical theorizing from the pre-Socratics all the way to Nietzsche. In chapter 1, “Cosmic Justice and the Pre-Socratics,” Holmes describes how the pre-Socratics began to question the Homeric view of an impersonal cosmic Fate (Moira) and subsequently developed “the idea of a law-governed universe” (2). Though the pre-Socratics were not uniform in this regard, and some even rejected it outright, this development nonetheless paved the way for Plato’s theory of universals or forms as the basis of morality, which Holmes’s describes in chapter 2, “Plato and the Improvement of the Soul.” Holmes discusses how Plato grounds morality in the form of the Good, which in the Timaeus is connected to Plato’s conception of God. Then in chapter 3, “Aristotle and Nature’s Teleology,” Holmes argues that despite Aristotle’s many divergences from Plato’s thought, he nevertheless likewise stressed the importance of God in his account of morality. For Aristotle God is the “measure of all things, for only God is perfectly good. In reality, the human telos, our highest end, is God” (30).

In the next three chapters, Holmes discusses how the views of Plato and Aristotle find their fullest expression in early Christian thought, most notably in Augustine’s integration of Plato’s philosophy and Aquinas’s integration of Aristotle’s. Goodness is wedded to various degrees of being, and God as the pinnacle of Being is thus the standard of goodness. For the early Christian tradition, then, goodness is grounded in the being of God, while the law is grounded in the very order of the universe, as designed by the divine Logos. Morality is grounded in reality. Holmes labels this view—that the “entire cosmic order is intrinsically teleological”—the “maximalist position” (173). In later chapters he also finds this maximalist position worked out differently through the moral philosophies of the Cambridge Platonists (ch. 9), Kant (ch. 10) and Hegel (ch. 11).

However, in chapter 7, “Scotus, Ockham, and the Reformers: What God Commands,” Holmes describes the gradual shift away from this maximalist position to the more nominalist idea that values are not inherent to reality, but are entirely contingent on God’s commands, governance, and human rationality. Labeling this the “minimalist position” (174), Holmes argues that

The outcome of all this is the rejection of a metaphysically grounded natural law ethic and of the idea of a moral universe. The intrinsic union of fact and value is no longer accepted. Instead, we rely on God-given reason to prudently order our present world. The theist may well find this initially acceptable. But when the underlying theology gets discarded and replaced by mechanistic empirical science, then a relativistic and consequentialist ethics is likely to prevail. (77)

Indeed, this outcome is precisely what Holmes finds historically, as the minimalist position is eventually advocated in the humanistic forms of the likes of Hobbes and Mill.

Between these two extremes, Holmes locates a “mediating position,” which “limits itself to moral psychology” (173). According to this view, which Holmes finds in the moral systems of Descartes, Hume, and Reid, God’s purposes provide the “psychological foundations of morals,” though the natural world is still viewed mechanistically rather than teleologically.

Finally, Holmes offers a fourth position, represented by Nietzsche (ch. 13), in which God is removed completely from the equation and morals are seen as purely human conventions in the never ending struggle for power. Homes aptly calls this the “moral skeptics’ position” (174). Holmes argues that while Nietzsche’s perspectivalism offers a much needed critique to an overconfident foundationalist view, his argument is primarily epistemological rather than ontological. Thus, it does not address the metaphysical question of the relation of fact and value. Holmes thus argues in his concluding chapter that in the wake of Nietzsche’s criticisms and the stranglehold they have had on ethical theory in the past century, it is time to “reopen the fact-value question” (174). Holmes concludes with four issues that need to be brought to bear on this discussion: (1) the historical “appeal of philosophers, even in the minimalist position, to the will of God in regard to ethics” (174); (2) the “need to reopen the discussion of teleology that was aborted by the rise of mechanistic science” (176); (3) the importance of “the Logos doctrine [as] the theological basis for a developing theory of universals; and finally, (4) the need to remember the “holistic nature of worldviews” when addressing particular metaphysical, theological, or ethical questions (179).

The first thing that should be noted about Holmes’s argument is that it is rather difficult to follow. I think this is due to a few related factors. First, Holmes does not clearly distinguish between his two closely related but nonetheless separate theses: (1) that there is a strong historical connection between (theological) facts and (moral) values and (2) that there is an actual metaphysical connection between facts and values. Holmes thus walks a fine line between intellectual historian and meta-ethicist, and it is sometimes unclear which hat he is wearing at any given time. Secondly, the bulk of his discussion is arranged chronologically, while the primary associations he draws among the various philosophers for his argument have less to do with chronological relationships than with formal similarities among the various philosophers’ positions. Certainly Holmes finds general historical trends, but his final categorizations between the maximalist, mediating, minimalist, and skeptic’s positions in many instances have little to do with historical arrangement. These ahistorical associations were thus rather unclear throughout the bulk of the reading. Finally, and perhaps more significantly, Holmes waits until the last chapter to lay out his argument in any detail. While he does offer a couple pointers toward the direction he will be taken in his preface, he saves the primary presentation of his argument until the conclusion of the book. Perhaps this was for rhetorical effect, but I found it a bit disorienting throughout the bulk of the book. If I were to recommend this book, I would thus suggest reading the final chapter first, and then going back through the book from the beginning. Otherwise it may be easy to get stuck in tangential historical discussions that may or may not be directly relevant to Holmes’s primary argument.

Regarding the substance of his argument, I have stated that Holmes actually proposes two distinct though related theses: (1) that there is a strong historical connection between (theological) facts and (moral) values and (2) that there is an actual metaphysical connection between facts and values. As one not as well read in historical philosophy as I should be, I am in no position to assess the first of Holmes’s theses. All I can say is that if Holmes’s presentation of these historical views has any degree of accuracy, then it seems that the first of his theses stands. While I am a bit dubious about some of the connections Holmes draws—for example, it seems rather odd that Calvin and Hobbes wind up in the same category (comics notwithstanding)—on the whole it appears that Holmes has been careful with the evidence.

Holmes’s second (and perhaps primary) thesis is significantly more interesting, but it also may require a bit more defending. Here he moves from mere historical description to an actual philosophical thesis. In order to prove this thesis—that fact and value are somehow related metaphysically—he needs to offer more than a historical survey. For it seems that based on the historical evidence presented here, one could justifiably conclude: Yes, I know for most of intellectual history, fact and value were indeed associated, but I just happen to think that Nietzsche got it right! To respond to this assertion using philosophical tradition alone would be like using Patristic texts to argue against open theism or anthropological materialism. The proponents of these views are aware of these authoritative writings; they just reject them in light of other reasons or evidence.

So what reasons or evidence (other than the historical tradition) does Holmes employ? None that I can find. However, if we look more closely at his argument, we will see why he does not offer any evidence for the fact-value relationship. Even though he clearly believes that there is such a relationship, his second argument is not for this relationship per se but is rather simply for the need to reopen the fact-value question. As support for this thesis, Holmes believes that philosophical history does serve as evidence. He states that the fact-value relationship’s “long influence in several strands of philosophy, its ongoing fruitfulness, and its agility in the fact of objections, all argue for its continued viability” (174). Holmes thus seems aware that the historical evidence is not enough to establish the metaphysical fact-value connection. But despite appearances to the contrary, he is not out to establish that metaphysical connection after all. Rather he is simply attempting to lay the groundwork for future discussion on this question, which he believes will be able to finally make the connection clear. Instead of concluding with arguments, then, Holmes contents himself with establishing four key issues for future discussion (described above).

Perhaps I am simply a bit dense and was thus unable to initially pick up on the nuance of Holmes’s theses and the self-imposed limitation of scope of his argument. After all, it is a rather tall order to defend a historical thesis and a philosophical one in a single 180 page book. However, I think Holmes would have done well to make his purposes a bit more explicit from the outset. Like philosophical works of old, it would have helped for Holmes to add a simple subtitle along the lines of, Prolegomena to any Future Ethical Theory or Groundwork for Rethinking the Fact-Value Question. All that notwithstanding, I think Holmes has raised an important question in this book, which does need to be followed up by future philosophical work. But to steal Holmes’s conclusion, I will simply confess that that is beyond the scope of this review.

Some of my favorite people

The Meisters

It's been a while since I've talked about my favorite people, but I was reminded this morning by a post on Nate Louck's blog of how cool my friend, mentor, and former professor, Chad Meister, is--along with his wife, Tammi, and boys, Justin and Josh. For those of you who don't yet know Chad, I'd like to introduce you. For those who do know Chad, you already know how cool he is, but feel free to read on.

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Chad is the director of the philosophy program at Bethel College, Indiana, where he received tenure last year. For those of you interested in philosophy of religion, you would do well to remember his name, as he's on the cutting edge in that field. Over the last couple years, he has been producing a number of top-notch publications in philosophy of religion, including anthologies published by Routledge, Blackwell, and Oxford. He has also done quite a bit of work in Christian apologetics, publishing with Baker and Crossway. Check out Nate's post for a local TV interview with Chad promoting his new book (co-edited with Normal Geisler) as well as links to Chad's other works.

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But with all of Chad's academic success, it is Chad's personal side that is most admirable. I've been able to witness Chad in action over the years, from an evangelism trip to Northern Ireland in the summer of '02, to a road-trip to Atlanta for the ETS/EPS meeting in '03, summer discussion groups hosted at his home, "philosophy parties" at his dad's pond in Bremen, and countless conversations over coffee or dinner.

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Perhaps the most memorable and impacting Meister experience was a couple years ago when Andrea and I met with the Meisters for some informal pre-marital counseling. Chad and I were talking in the family room, while Tammi and Andrea were talking in the kitchen, where Tammi was doing some final dinner preparation. Suddenly we heard a loud explosion from the kitchen. Apparently the glass dish containing that night's dinner--homemade enchiladas--literally exploded after sitting on the electric stove, which to everyone's surprise had accidentally been left on. Glass shards and hot enchilada goop shot across the room, covering the stove and kitchen floor.

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Now, I believe in most marital situations, this would have devolved into an ugly scene. The husband blaming the wife about not being careful enough and ruining dinner; the wife becoming defensive; kids crying; the guests feeling increasingly awkward, etc. In this instance, however, what happened next was quite remarkable. After quickly checking to make sure no one was injured, Chad and Tammi both started laughing. Chad quickly began helping Tammi clean up the mess. Tammi apologized for the ruined dinner, though it was apparent that no apologies were necessary. Chad recommended ordering Mexican from a nearby restaurant, and we continued on with our night with a story that none of us will forget. It's a story I think of often, and it has helped shape my outlook on life and marriage. In a way it was the best bit of pre-marital counseling I could have received!

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For that and many other reasons, I would have to say that the Meisters are good people. Good, good people.