Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Monday, January 10, 2022
Thus, here I want to note the thought of three men who, while very different thinkers, helped shape the way we imagine human nature today: Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Charles Darwin. All three in their different ways provided conceptual justification for rejecting the notion of human nature and thus paved the way for the plausibility of the idea that human beings are plastic creatures with no fixed identity founded on an intrinsic and ineradicable essence. While there are others whose thinking also played a role in this shift, these three are arguably the most influential as fountainheads for later developments up to the present day.

The Plausibility of Self-Creation
The idea that we can be who or whatever we want to be is commonplace today. Consumerism, or late capitalism, fuels this notion with its message of the customer as king and of the goods we consume as being basic to who we are. Commercials communicate this message in the way they present particular products as the key to happiness or life improvement. You have the power to transform yourself by the mere swipe of a credit card. The possession of this thing—that car, that kitchen, that item of clothing—will make you a different, a better, a more fulfilled person. Underwritten by easy credit, consumerist self-creation is the order of the day.
Such self-creation is perhaps more of a myth, or what Freud would have called an illusion, an act of wishful thinking, than a practical reality. Indeed, the underlying dynamic of the consumer marketplace is that desires can never be fully satisfied, at least not in any long-term manner. The consumer may not simply be a hapless dupe of the ruthless capitalist reinventing the market to maintain income streams, as some on the Left would argue, but the negotiation between producer and consumer is ultimately predicated on the fact that the desire for consumption never seems to be met by the act of possession. If the producer creates desires in order to fulfill them, then the consumer seems a willing-enough party in the process. To use Hegelian jargon, the consumer society really does present persons whose being is in their becoming, constantly looking to the next purchase that will bring about that elusive personal wholeness.
This illusion of sovereign self-creation through consumption still has its limitations. All of us are ultimately limited by a variety of factors that are not always susceptible to transubstantiation by credit card. First, there is the range of goods or lifestyles on offer. The marketplace does not have an infinite number of products for sale. The consumer is not an absolute monarch; as noted above, the marketplace involves a negotiation between supplier and consumer.
Second, society is constantly changing its mind about what is and is not fashionable, what is and is not cool, and what is and is not acceptable. We might think that we have the power to create ourselves and our own identities, but we are typically subject to the range of options and the value schemes that society itself sets and over which most individuals, considered as individuals, have very limited power. Consumerism makes us believe we can be whoever we want to be, but the market always places limits on that in reality.
Third, there are always specific individual limitations to our ability to invent ourselves. Physiology, intellectual capacity, income, location in time, and geographical location all play their role. I might truly desire to be Marie Antoinette, queen of France—indeed, I might happily decide to self-identify as such—but my body is male, has a genetic code provided by my English parents, is physically located in Pennsylvania, and exists chronologically in the twenty-first century. Being Marie Antoinette is therefore not a viable option for me. My body, not my psychology, has the last word on whether I am the last queen of France in the eighteenth century.
Nevertheless, the idea of self-creation, that we can shape our essences by acts of will, is deeply embedded in the way we now think, to the point that, while I may not be able to overcome the genetic and chronological issues that prevent me from being an eighteenth-century Austrian-born queen of France, I can at least deny the decisive say that my chromosomes might wish to have over my maleness. As Bruce became Caitlyn and was recognized as such by society, so Carl might now become Caroline, if I so wished.
The world in which this way of thinking has become plausible has both intellectual and material roots. Streams of philosophical thought from the nineteenth century have exerted a powerful effect in weakening and even abolishing the idea that human nature is a given, something that has an intrinsic, nonnegotiable authority over who we are. And changes in our material circumstances have enabled the underlying, antiessentialist principles of these philosophies to become plausible and, indeed, perhaps even the default of the way we think about selfhood today; however, I cannot address these material factors but will focus rather on intellectual developments.
Thus, here I want to note the thought of three men who, while very different thinkers, helped shape the way we imagine human nature today: Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Charles Darwin. All three in their different ways provided conceptual justification for rejecting the notion of human nature and thus paved the way for the plausibility of the idea that human beings are plastic creatures with no fixed identity founded on an intrinsic and ineradicable essence. While there are others whose thinking also played a role in this shift, these three are arguably the most influential as fountainheads for later developments up to the present day.
Charles Darwin
Darwin is likely the most influential. Setting aside the question whether evolution—or, to be more precise, one of the numerous forms of evolutionary theory that looks back to Darwin’s work as an initial inspiration—is true, there is no doubt that vast numbers of people in the West simply assume that it is so.
Whether evolution can be argued from the evidence is actually irrelevant to the reason most people believe it. Few of us are qualified to opine on the science. But evolution draws on the authority that science possesses in modern society. Like priests of old who were trusted by the community at large and therefore had significant social authority, so scientists today often carry similar weight. And when the idea being taught has an intuitive plausibility, it is persuasive.
The obvious implications of this situation are, first, that the sacred account of human origins given in Genesis is undermined and, second, that human beings are therefore relativized in relation to other creatures. Descent from a prior species excludes special creation of man and woman, and natural selection renders teleology unnecessary as a hypothesis. In short, human nature as a significant foundational category for understanding human purpose is annihilated. And in a world in which belief in evolution is the default position, the implications for how people imagine that world, and their place within it, are dramatic.
Friedrich Nietzshe
The influence of Nietzsche is perhaps less obvious in terms of it being a source—I suspect many more have heard of Darwin—but no less pervasive. As we noted, he, too, attacks the idea of human nature, though from the perspective of his assault on metaphysics. Nevertheless, the result is much the same: neither human nature nor human destiny any longer have any transcendent or objective foundation; in fact, they were never anything more than manipulative concepts developed by one group, most notoriously the Christian church, to subjugate another.
This points to two further pathologies of this present age that can be seen as finding some inspiration in the work of Nietzsche. First, his genealogical approach to morals carries with it a basic historicist relativism and a deep suspicion of any claims to traditional authority. Both of these are now basic to our contemporary world. From the casual iconoclasm of pop culture to the dethroning of traditional historical narratives, from the distrust of traditional institutions such as the church to iconoclastic attitudes to sex and gender, we can see the anarchic outworking of the challenge posed by Nietzsche’s madman and the ruthless critical spirit of On the Genealogy of Morals. The average twelve-year-old girl attending an Ariana Grande concert may never even have heard of Nietzsche, but the amoral sexuality of the lyrics she hears preach a form of (albeit unwitting) Nietzscheanism.
And that leads to the second area where Nietzsche’s thinking is reflected in current social attitudes: living for the present. When teleology is dead and self-creation is the name of the game, then the present moment and the pleasure it can contain become the keys to eternal life. While Nietzsche himself may have had a view of hedonism that was different from that which grips the popular imagination today (he understood the pleasure to be gained from struggle and from triumphing over adversity), the idea that personal satisfaction is to be the hallmark of the life—or perhaps better, moment—well lived is basic to our present age. Again, Nietzsche’s books may not be widely read, but his central priorities have become common currency.
Karl Marx
That brings us to Marx. As with Darwin and Nietzsche, he assaults the metaphysics on which traditional religions and philosophies have built their views of the moral universe. Again, as with Nietzsche, he not only relativizes ethics via a form of historicism, he also presents moral codes as manipulative, as reflecting the economic and political status quo and therefore designed to justify and maintain the same. Modern suspicion of traditional authority owes a debt to Marx, as to Nietzsche, for its theoretical foundations.
Marx also makes another major contribution that is now basic to how we think about society: he abolishes the prepolitical, that notion that there can be forms of social organization that stand apart from, and prior to, the political nature of society. For Marx—and even more for later Marxists—all forms of social organization are political because all of them connect to the economic structure of society. By Marx’s account, the family and the church exist to cultivate, reinforce, and perpetuate bourgeois values. In today’s world, this thinking helps explain why everything—from the Boy Scouts to Hollywood movies to cake baking—has become politicized. And one does not need to be an ideological Marxist to be pulled into this tussle, for once one side gives a particular issue or organization political significance, then all sides, left, right, and center, have to do the same.
Iconoclastic Influence
Finally, the cultural iconoclasm of all three thinkers is notable. Darwin is perhaps the least culpable in this regard: his thought relativizes culture but is not directly iconoclastic. For Nietzsche and for Marx, however, history and culture are tales of oppression that need to be overthrown and overcome. If ever the Rieffian deathworker of today needed a philosophical rationale, then the thought of Marx and Nietzsche and the traditions of cultural and political reflection they helped birth certainly provide it. These men shattered the metaphysics for the sacred order that underlay the Rieffian second world of nineteenth-century Europe and thus challenged the culture to maintain itself purely on the basis of an immanent frame of reference—something that Rieff declares to be impossible. In light of this, the words that Nietzsche applied to himself in his autobiography, Ecce Homo, might easily be applied to all three:
I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous—a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.1
Notes:

Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 326.

This article is adapted from The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl R. Trueman. This article is used with permission.

Written by Dr. David S. Steele |
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
John Knox was a faithful man who led a gospel-centered life, according to the grace that was given him by his Savior. His relentless preaching helped drive away the darkness and restore the light of the gospel to his land.

A Powerful Man
I stood in the shadow of St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland. Clouds gathered overhead and people walked curiously through the front doors. Here, the famous reformer, John Knox faithfully tended the flock until his death in 1572.
Once inside this massive cathedral, I was transfixed by the sheer beauty of this place. I was overwhelmed by the architecture – the awe-inspiring flying buttresses that point worshippers to the transcendence of God. A single elevated pulpit is located in the center of the sanctuary. It stands strategically above the worshippers, which symbolically places God’s Word above sinful creatures.
John Knox brought reform to Scotland and re-energized a nation that had all but forgotten God. Knox helped awaken a nation that neglected God’s truth which led to a virtual eclipse of the gospel. Martyn Lloyd-Jones describes Knox as a man who preached “with the fire of God in his bones and in his belly!  He preached as they all preached, with fire and power, alarming sermons, convicting sermons, humbling sermons, converting sermons, and the face of Scotland was changed …” Simply put, the faithful preaching of Knox brought much needed reform to the Scottish landscape and renewed evangelical fervor to the church.
John Knox courageously raised the banner of the gospel and defended the truths of the Protestant Reformation. He was unashamed of the gospel (Rom. 1:16) and fearlessly proclaimed the Word of God. He stood boldly and with Peter and the apostles, obeyed God rather then men (Acts 5:29). Indeed, Knox is a true exemplar of faithfulness in the face of adversity.
A Personal Lesson
As I made my way out of St. Giles, my mind was filled with stories surrounding the life and ministry of John Knox. As I turned to gaze again at the rising fortress where Knox served the Lord, a thought occurred to me. It was not a new thought. Rather, it was a lesson that has moved me for many years now but in this moment, the lesson was magnified as I scanned the edifice of St. Giles. The lesson is this: church history matters.
It seems like such a simple lesson. But it is a lesson that many contemporary Christians are unfamiliar with. Even as a young Bible College student, I failed to understand the importance of church history. The buildings seemed so old and the names were so hard to pronounce. It is a sentiment that is not unique to me. I hear it all the time. I hear the cruel remarks about John Calvin and the caricatures that biased people have cooked up about Jonathan Edwards. But when we move past all the petty talk and face reality, we realize that church history truly does matter.

We really don’t have generalizable data on how widespread (or not) the practice [of unordained women serving as deaconesses] is in the PCA. How many churches have deaconesses? How many deaconesses are there in the PCA? The purpose of this project is not to pick a fight, but to shed light, in the hopes that it will lead to more productive debate at PCA General Assembly.

Overture 26 from Northwest Georgia presbytery proposes a change to chapter 7 of the Book of Church Order that would disallow unordained people from being “referred to as, or given the titles connected to, the ecclesial offices of pastor, elder, or deacon.” RE Brad Isbell wrote that the overture effectively addresses “a big ecclesial deal” and helps the PCA “get ahead of things for once,” since there seems to be some lack of clarity (or at least consistency) on the issue. More recently, Isbell provided some examples of the practice in the PCA. On the other side of the debate, TE Tim LeCroy warned of the coming fight with the “far right of our denomination”: “Watch out! Do you have unordained women serving as deaconesses?” But we really don’t have generalizable data on how widespread (or not) the practice is in the PCA.
How many churches have deaconesses? How many deaconesses are there in the PCA? The purpose of this project is not to pick a fight, but to shed light, in the hopes that it will lead to more productive debate at PCA General Assembly.
Method
We drew a random sample of presbyteries in the PCA, stratifying by US Census region. We stratified by region so that at least two presbyteries were chosen from each region to ensure geographic representation. We sampled more presbyteries in the South region, a region densely populated with PCA churches and presbyteries. Random sampling is important because it allows for generalizable inference. Randomization is important because, since each presbytery had an equally likely chance of being chosen, it allows us to say that our findings are generalizable within a certain margin of error. This method is similar to what pollsters using during election season to claim that a candidate is polling at some level, plus or minus some margin of error.
We also drew a random sample of presbyteries from two sister denominations in the North America Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC): the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) and the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA). Since these denominations are smaller, we did not do a stratified randomization. In total, we sampled 14 presbyteries from the PCA, 4 presbyteries from the OPC, and 2 presbyteries from the RPCNA (see Table 1). These sister denominations are good comparisons for this analysis for a few reasons: (1) the PCA has fraternal relations with both of them; (2) they share doctrinal standards (Westminster); (3) the PCA and OPC do not allow for deaconesses as an ordained office, while the RPCNA does.

Table 1. Presbyteries sampled for analysis

US Census Region
Presbyteries
Denomination

South
James River
PCA

South
Central Florida
PCA

South
Tidewater
PCA

South
South Florida
PCA

South
Central Carolina
PCA

South
Georgia Foothills
PCA

South
Metro Atlanta
PCA

West
Canada West
PCA

West
Pacific
PCA

West
Pacific Northwest
PCA

Northeast
Westminster
PCA

Northeast
Ascension
PCA

Midwest
Ohio Valley
PCA

Midwest
Great Lakes
PCA

Northeast
New York and New England
OPC

West
Southern California
OPC

Northeast
New Jersey
OPC

Midwest
Ohio
OPC

Midwest
Midwest
RPCNA

Northeast/South
Alleghenies
RPCNA

Together, these 20 presbyteries have 465 congregations. We excluded 36 churches from our analysis if no functioning website could be found or if the website was predominantly in a language other than English. We retained over 90% of all churches sampled in each of the three denominations.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics of church websites

PCA
OPC
RPCNA

Presbyteries sampled
14
4
2

Congregations in sample
319
101
45

Congregations excluded
25
10
1

Total churches in analysis
294
91
44

% churches in analysis
92.2%
90.1%
97.8%

Website information

% TE only
17.0%
20.9%
20.5%

% TE/RE only
21.1%
46.2%
40.9%

% TE and Staff only
16.3%
1.1%
0.0%

% Deaconesses
4.1%
0.0%
13.6%

% No deacons, no deaconesses
50.0%
51.6%
59.1%

The purpose was to capture what is clearly portrayed on each church’s website, rather than to conduct a deep investigation into each church’s website. As such, we typically spent no more than 30 seconds per website to count the number of Teaching Elders (TEs), Ruling Elders (REs), deacons, and deaconesses, typically summarized on a “Leadership” or “Officers and Staff” page.
To be counted as a deaconess, a website had to explicitly identify the woman as a deaconess. Ours is therefore a very conservative estimate because if there were ever any reason not to count a woman as a deaconess, we did not count her. Deaconess with parenthetical note? Nope. Mercy team? Nope. Women to pastors? Nope.
Limitations
Before we proceed to share what we found, the reader should keep in mind that this kind of research is subject to several limitations.
Because the practice of having ordained deaconesses is de jure not allowed in the PCA and the practice of having unordained deaconesses is contested (see this year’s Overture 26, for example), PCA churches may be pressured not to report deaconesses, even if the practice is de facto in place. Indeed, many of the websites we found mentioned “deaconesses” or “women on the diaconate” without listing the number or names. These churches were coded as having zero deaconesses for the purpose of our analysis. As such, we suspect that our findings are a lower bound estimate, underreporting the practice in the PCA.

Our method does not allow us to account for churches that forgo ordination of deacons and commission “mercy ministry teams” in lieu of a diaconate (e.g., Evergreen Church). or in addition to a diaconate (e.g., Christ Presbyterian in Santa Barbara, CA). These were not counted in our data. Others list deaconesses with a clarifying note that these are not considered ordained officers (e.g., University Reformed Church).
Different readers will come to different conclusions about our assessment of titles and practices, so we expect there will be competing views about the inferences that can be drawn from the data. Nonetheless, we believe it will be helpful to both sides of the debate to have some data on the issue.
Findings

PCA churches have nearly as many publicly listed deaconesses on average as the RPCNA, a denomination that allows for women to hold the office, but the practice is less widespread in the PCA.

In our website searches, we found that PCA churches have 0.19 deaconesses listed on their websites on average while RPCNA churches have 0.27 deaconesses listed on their websites on average. However, only one in twenty-five PCA churches listed deaconesses and six presbyteries did not have any deaconesses (Ascension, Canada West, Georgia Foothills, Ohio Valley, Tidewater, and Westminster), while the practice was almost three times as common in the RPCNA. The PCA churches listing deaconesses had 4.3 deaconesses on average and RPCNA churches doing the same had 2.0 deaconesses on average. The 101 OPC churches in total listed zero deaconesses on their websites.

2. PCA churches are more likely to give the impression of being “staff led” and OPC and RPCNA churches are more likely to give the impression of being “officer led.”
This is not to say that PCA churches are not in practice “officer led,” but as far as what is reported on their websites, they are more likely to give the impression of being “staff led.” A smaller proportion of PCA churches list only a TE on their websites (17%) than either OPC churches (21%) or RPCNA churches (21%). Similarly, a smaller proportion of PCA churches list only elders (ruling or teaching) on their websites (21%) than either OPC churches (46%) or RPCNA churches (41%). In contrast, PCA churches are more likely to list only TEs and staff (16%) than either OPC churches (one church) or RPCNA churches (zero churches).

3. The practice of having deaconesses appears to be common in some presbyteries, less prevalent in others.
On average, most churches in our analytic sample list between one and two TEs, two and four REs, and two and four deacons. There are, of course, some exceptions to that rule. Churches in Central Carolina and Tidewater had over five ruling elders on average and, in the latter presbytery, over six deacons on average. Much of this variation is explained by church size and membership.
There is more variation when it comes to having deaconesses. It should come as no surprise that not all presbyteries are the same with respect to this practice. Six presbyteries in our sample did not have a single deaconess listed on their churches’ websites (Ascension, Canada West, Georgia Foothills, Ohio Valley, Tidewater, and Westminster). Metro Atlanta had the most, with 0.79, followed by Central Florida (0.34), Pacific Northwest (0.28), and Great Lakes (0.19).
Matthew Lee is a ruling elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Fayetteville, AR, where Liam Carr serves as a deacon.
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