Paul Louis Metzger

ummary: Draws upon the theological and ethical framework of personalism to uphold the dignity of persons, with applications to a variety of medical issues related to human life and extending from immigration and drone warfare to space exploration.

I was always taught that we should love people and use things but never love things and use people. Sadly, in a world shaped on materialist terms, the value of people increasingly is grounded upon their usefulness, their utility, rather than inherent in their persons. In fact, what qualifies as a person is increasingly up for grabs. The author of this work believes that how we answer these questions is shaping, and will shape the kind of culture, the kind of world in which we live.

Paul Louis Metzger, as he introduces this book, informs us that for him, this is not merely theoretical but existential. His adult son suffered a catastrophic brain injury in 2021 and lives utterly dependent on caregivers in a minimally conscious state. He has noted the difference in his son’s response when he is treated as a person rather than a patient, when he is called by name. He is convinced that his son’s personhood was not diminished in any way by his injuries or current capabilities. Metzger’s views are grounded not merely in parental sentiment but in the philosophical and theological framework of personalism, that advocates for the dignity of human personhood against all reductionistic efforts to treat humans as mere “biological and sexual drives, market forces, consumer appetites, or cogs in a machine (p. 5)”

There are a variety of theological and philosophical framings of personalism, not all of which work from a theist framework. Metzger does, founding his personalism in a triune God, both personal and relational. Yet the work engages widely with a number of thinkers from Christian, other religious, and philosophical stances, offering a “thick” account of personalism in which convictions of the value of human beings may be shared by those who do not necessarily agree with Metzger’s Christian premises. He frames a personalist ethic in terms of the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love, describing an ethic of:

Triune faith and entangled ethics: by “entangled” he recognizes that personalist ethics are pursued through a variety of lenses, trinitarian and otherwise focusing on the good ideal (deontological ethics), the good result (consequentialist ethics), and the good person (virtue ethics). He advocates and models gracious interaction with representatives of each of these.

Triune hope and eschatological ethics: this engages the question of the “end” or “telos” for which we exist, considering Jesus, Buddha, and Aristotle and interacting with Charles Darwin and Christian Smith.

Triune love and embodied ethics: The triune God who is love and exists in eternal loving relations between Father, Son, and Spirit, created the world in love. How, then, ought we as embodied creatures in the image of God, but fallen, live out that love. Here, Metzger’s discussion interacts with Tillich, Luther, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, and Patricia Churchland, who researches the effects of oxytocin in human bonding.

As is evident, in each of these, Metzger engages both the vertical dimensions of a personalist vision rooted in the triune God and the horizontal dimension of other ethical systems.

The second and third part of the book then applies this framework to a number of ethical questions where a personalist ethic that treats persons as more than things confronts a culture that robs one of personhood. Part Two addresses questions from the beginning to the end of life. Metzger begins with the idea of a pro-life ethic for all based on more than abilities, speaking not only to abortion but to disabilities of various forms. He considers the quest for genetic perfection, arguing not for a genetically engineered but relationally engendered community embracing the genetic givenness and giftedness of each person. He addresses the meaning of our sexuality, considering that we are made for more than sexual pleasure, and wrestling with the challenges to monogamy. The next chapter builds on this in discussing patriarchy and a personalist ethic that is more than a battle of the sexes, drawing on both religious and scientific sources addressing these questions. Finally, in this section, he addresses issues at the end of life, including physician assisted suicide, now legal in several states as well as other countries. He looks honestly at what different religious and philosophical traditions say about suicide and the meaning of suffering. He raises the challenge of the good life as one of learning how to die. He upholds the ethic of the hospice movement of neither hastening death nor prolonging life but offering compassionate care until one dies.

The third part then turns to broader societal and global issues. He opens with race, and the depersonalizing character of racism that makes certain peoples less than human, based on superficial bodily differences and holds up the ideal of the “beloved community.” His discussion of immigration challenges the commoditization of immigrants based on their economic value. He considers drone warfare, weighing whether their use can satisfy just war criteria, particularly with regard to killing non-combatants, and the ease of resorting to drones as alternatives to peaceful means of resolving conflicts. He does not rule out their use, but questions the justifications often pressed home in their use. Metzger then turns to our care of the creation, arguing for a personalist ethic that goes beyond domination to dominion that stewards, that is rooted in mutuality with all the people who share our planet as well as other creatures. The final chapter in this section considers space exploration and the assumptions of a godlike humanity asserting its rights over other planets and carry our international divisions into space.

Metzger concludes with the importance of recovering “missing people” in the various spheres of life we touch. He mentions the wide range of dialogue partners engaged throughout. While writing from a Christian perspective, the wide range of people with whom Metzger interacts with makes this both a longer work but also one that provides a broad basis for collaborating on the value of persons in different spheres, even though we might disagree in other matters or come from different assumptions. One area that I would like to have seen addressed is agism, and particularly in the marginalizing and exploitation of older members of society. As one who has entered this cohort, I’ve become increasingly aware of ways the elderly are marginalized and all the ways we are treated as objects of scams. I also think it might have been interesting to consider the disregard of personhood in religious organizations.

But these are minor considerations in a work that offers a basis for Christians to join with many others to uphold the value of persons and provides substantive discussions of what that looks like in a variety of important public discussions. Personalism bears on healthcare, social relations, our uses of technology in peace and war, our care for our world and other worlds. Wherever we engage with other persons, a personalist framework, whether religiously grounded or not, challenges us to act in ways upholding the dignity of others even as we respect that dignity in ourselves. There are no “cogs,” no lesser people, but only those of great dignity.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.… (meer)