The gender of the God of The Bible is sometimes brought up in conversations for some reason or other. In today’s climate, the questioner may have underlying concerns related to feminism or gender identity. As a younger apologist, I had concerns about God being gendered at all. After all my philosophizing with the Kalam Cosmological and Modal Ontological Arguments, God shouldn’t be a male or a female. I wondered if perhaps this hinted at maybe The Bible being man made. After all, it isn’t like people to make gods like themselves. [1]My reasoning back then was the the gods of the nations were mere figments of the pagan imagination. Later on in my education, I came to the conclusion that the gods of the nations are real spiritual … Continue reading. Of course, given the abundance of evidence for God’s existence from such arguments as the Contingency, Kalam, Fine-Tuning, Moral, and Ontological Arguments, and given the evidence for the death and resurrection of Jesus (especially from a Maximal Data Approach, which I have a whole series on), I knew that Christianity was true, and The Bible was God given. I decided I would bracket my question on my Heavenly Father (not Mother or genderless parent) and maintain a faith that sought understanding.
The topics to follow will be; (1) That I do believe God in His divine nature is objectively genderless, and why that must metaphysically be so. I will explain the concept of “Divine Accommodation” and how that plays into why and otherwise genderless being chose to portray themself as gendered, and why He specifically chose male descriptors. (2) That at least in a couple of places, God Almighty chose to be portrayed as feminine. This discussion will primarily be in the book of Proverbs where God goes by the name “Woman Wisdom”. But The Lord does use some maternal metaphors of himself (even in the incarnation in which Jesus, as a human, is indubitably a man)! (3) The doctrine of the Image Of God, and what it means for both men and women to be God’s images. Especially together.
Divine Accommodation And The Patriarchy
Speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus said “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). To say that “God is Spirit” is to say that God is not a physical being. Although stupidly contested today, for the vast majority of human history, gender has been defined as being biologically rooted. I am a man because I have a penis and testicles, as well as XY Chromosomes. If I had a vagina, and XX chromosomes, I would be a woman. God, being a transcendent incorporeal being, doesn’t have either of those. God doesn’t have genitals or chromosomes. If He did, He’d be a biological creature, and wouldn’t be the transcendent Creator of all things (Genesis 1, John 1:1-3, Revelation 4:11). Nevertheless, in The Bible, God is called the adoptive Father of Christians (Matthew 6:25-34, John 1:12, Romans 8:15, Ephesians 3:14-15, Hebrews 12:3-11), and not our Heavenly Mother. God is Israel’s Husband (e.g Isaiah 54:5, the book of Hosea, Ezekiel 16), not Israel’s wife. God is the King of Kings (1 Timothy 6:15, Revelation 17:14, Revelation 19:16), not the Queen of Queens. And in the incarnation, the second person of The Trinity chose to be born as a human man, not a human woman (John 1:14, Philippians 2:5-8).
So why is God so consistently portrayed in male terms if, as I have already pointed out, He actually is neither male nor female? I think the answer is quite simple; God’s choosing to depict Himself as a “Himself” is an act of divine accommodation. Theopedia correctly defines Divine Accomodation as follows; “Divine accommodation means that God has accommodated various truths about himself and the world in such a way that they can be comprehended by the human mind. Accommodation is both a corollary of divine revelation (how God reveals himself) and hermeneutics (how we interpret the Bible).” [2]Theopedia, Interpretation Of The Bible, “Divine Accomodation” — https://www.theopedia.com/divine-accommodation. Long time readers of this blog will probably remember me talking about this in regards to the “Dome Cosmology” found in the pages of scripture. [3]See, for example, my articles “Objections To Concordism NOT Answered” and “Objections To Concordism STILL Not Answered: A Response To Alexander Young”. And although long time readers will no I am generally not a fan of him and the “ism” named after him, the idea of divine accommodation is usually associated with the theology of the Protestant Reformer John Calvin and he has some good things to say about this. For example, he wrote “Indeed, that they dared abuse certain testimonies of Scripture was due to base ignorance; just as the error itself sprang from execrable madness. The Anthropomorphites, also, who imagined a corporeal God from the fact that Scripture often ascribes to him a mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet, are easily refuted. For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to “lisp” in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.” [4]John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1.13.1. Biblical scholar Kenton Sparks wrote “Accommodation is God’s adoption in inscripturation of the human audience’s finite and fallen perspective. Its underlying conceptual assumption is that in many cases God does not correct our mistaken human viewpoints but merely assumes them in order to communicate with us.” [5]Kenton Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words, 230–31.
So whether it be in telling us how He creates and runs the world while assuming “Dome Cosmology” [6]See Ben Stanhope “The Solid Sky Dome Of Biblical Cosmology and The Ancient Near East”, June 19th 2018, — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Jz4tvlhZM or in various anthropomorphisms, God accommodates His true theological messages to our finite human understanding. Paleo-Hebrew just simply had no pronouns for genderless personal beings. Moreover, genderless personal beings were (and still are) foreign to our everyday experience. So rather refer to Himself as an “it”, God (2 Timothy 3:16) and the human authors of scripture (2 Peter 1:21) opted for one of the only two options available. God could be a “He” or a “She”, but an “it” would be irreverent and inaccurate. Persons aren’t “its”.
But that raises the next question; why male? Did God just randomly choose between the two because He had to pick one? Maybe, but I think it’s more likely that God chose to be personified as male because in the Ancient Near East, there was a general patriarchal attitude. In the Ancient Near East, there were goddesses among the gods, but they were never the top dog, so to speak. Many were consorts or lower ranking in the pagan divine councils, but none of them were on top. [7]For a brief survey of Ancient Near Eastern deities, see John. H. Walton, “Ancient Near Eastern Thought and The Old Testament”, Baker Academic, 2018. They were still worshipped (they were divine after all), but they were always lesser than their male god peers. In light of this, let’s imagine if Yahweh had revealed Himself to humanity as a female deity. He already had a hard enough time fighting for Israel’s loyalty over pagan gods, especially Baal. Can you imagine how much worse it would have been if the choice for Israel would have been exclusive loyalty to a female deity over the male Baal? God in His wisdom probably saw fit do otherwise.
And this would also be why, in the incarnation, Jesus was born as a boy. If you’ve listened to any Christian Apologist give a Minimal Facts Argument for the historicity of Jesus’ death and resurrection, one of the arguments we bring in for the historicity of Jesus’ empty tomb is that all four gospels report that it was discovered by women, and the gospel authors wouldn’t have made that up due to women generally being considered unreliable eyewitnesses, and we quote from sources like Josephus and the Talmud to demonstrate this point. [8]For example, in my articles “The Minimal Facts Case For Jesus’ Resurrection – PART 1” and “The Women At Jesus’ Empty Tomb Revisited“ So with that in mind, imagine Jessica Christ running around trying to preach about her Mother’s Kingdom to a bunch of Jewish men who would dismiss everything they say. You know, even more than they did (John 1:11).
God’s Feminine Side – Lady Wisdom
Although God is predominantly depicted as male in The Old Testament (and is actually and literally male in Jesus’ human nature), there are some exceptions. There is one occasion where Yahweh is represented by a female character, and there are maternal images God uses in the mouths of His prophets to demonstrate His love and care. Perhaps the most interesting example is in the book of Proverbs, which I’m currently doing a deep study on. In Proverbs 1:20-33, we are introduced to a literary character; a woman whose name is Wisdom. “Out in the open wisdom calls aloud,
she raises her voice in the public square; on top of the wall she cries out, at the city gate she makes her speech: ‘How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? Repent at my rebuke! Then I will pour out my thoughts to you, I will make known to you my teachings. But since you refuse to listen when I call and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand, since you disregard all my advice and do not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you; I will mock when calamity overtakes you—when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. ‘Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me, since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the LORD. Since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.'” (NIV)
This literary character has been dubbed by many scholars as Woman Wisdom or Lady Wisdom. And for the longest time, a mere literary character is all I took her to be. She is the personification of wisdom. She has a rival named Folly who will vie for the young man’s affections later on (see Proverbs 9:13-18). In his commentary on the book of Proverbs, Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman III writes “In the first place, Woman Wisdom represents God’s wisdom. While there are debates concerning the source of the inspiration of this personification (for instance, a foreign goddess like Maʿat or Isis), most people agree that in its present context the figure represents Yahweh’s wisdom. The key to the relationship between a divine figure and Woman Wisdom is the location of her house on the highest point of the city. In Israel, as throughout the ancient Near East, the only building allowed on the high place was the temple. On this basis, however, I would take the image further than most and suggest that Woman Wisdom represents not only Yahweh’s wisdom but Yahweh himself.” [9]Tremper Longman III, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Proverbs (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 58–59.
If you pay attention to what Woman Wisdom says in her exhortations to the passerby, doesn’t she even sound a lot like Yahweh? She talks just like Him! As Kathleen Nielson writes “The opening (v 22) addresses three categories of people along the path of foolishness: the ‘simple’ (the naïve or immature, as we saw in the prologue); the ‘scoffers’ (fools that stand out, ‘delighting’ in their scoffing); and ‘fools’ in general, who (as in v 7) ‘hate knowledge.’ Wisdom doesn’t start out by simply condemning them; she mixes condemnation with a yearning for their foolishness to end, repeating those words,’How long?’
Wisdom’s opening here reminds me of God’s words calling to Israel through his prophet Jeremiah:
‘O Jerusalem, wash your heart from evil,
that you may be saved.
How long shall your wicked thoughts
lodge within you?’ (Jeremiah 4:14, emphasis mine; see also Numbers 14:11, 27; Hosea 8:5)
Wisdom’s next words offer a promise that rings out even more strikingly: if these people will ‘turn’ to her when she rebukes them, then, she says: ‘I will pour out my spirit to you; / I will make my words known to you’ (Proverbs 1:23). Many point out the resonance between this verse and the similarly worded promise in Joel 2:28–9 (see also Isaiah 32:15). The New Testament picks up these promises—most notably in Acts 2:17, as the apostle Peter quotes the prophet Joel to explain the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.” [10]Kathleen Nielson, Proverbs for You, ed. Carl Laferton, God’s Word for You (The Good Book Company, 2020), 36–37.
Kathleen Nielson also writes “We’ve heard her address ‘the children of man.’ And now she is calling people with one qualification: that they love her. ‘I love those who love me,’ she says, ‘and those who seek me diligently find me’ (8:17). We should stop and meditate on this verse. It contains reverberations of God’s words to his people, for example in Deuteronomy 4:29: ‘You will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.’ In the Scriptures we hear the voice of God calling his people—ultimately his people from all the nations—and promising that when we answer his call and seek him, by his grace, he will be found by us (Jeremiah 29:13–14). More than that, he loves us. These benefits are personal.” [11]Kathleen Nielson, Proverbs for You, ed. Carl Laferton, God’s Word for You (The Good Book Company, 2020), 70.
It seems then that the author of Proverbs is intending two things; first, that Woman Wisdom is the attribute of wisdom personified as is traditionally thought. I am not disputing that this literary character is just that; a literary character depicting the attribute of wisdom. However, she is more than that; she is a literary figure depicting Yahweh Himself. But then, what about Woman Folly? As Tremper Longman III writes “She [Folly] too has a place on the highest point of the city (9:14). Does this mean she too represents a deity? By the logic of the preceding argument, the answer must be yes. However, by virtue of her description as ignorant, she is best understood as a metaphor for all the false gods and goddesses that provided such a tremendous illicit attraction to Israelites. In a word, she represents the idols, perhaps no one specific idol, but any false god that lured the hearts of the Israelites. Among the ones that we know pulled the hearts of the Israelites are Marduk, Asherah, Anat, Ishtar, and perhaps most notoriously Baal. Thus, in the same way that personification gives wisdom a theological dimension, so also folly is more than simply a mistaken way to act or speak. They represent diametrically opposed relationships with the divine and alternative worldviews.” [12]Tremper Longman III, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Proverbs (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 59.
And so, on at least this occasion, Yahweh the genderless Maximally Great Being who normally talks about Himself in male terms, breahed out a book where he is depicted as a woman. Proverbs 1:7 says that “The Fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” so this association of God with Woman Wisdom makes good sense. But it gets so much more interesting than that, for I have come to the conclusion that Proverbs 8 presents us with a Two Person GodHead! Those who have seen my video “The Angel Of The Lord and A Two Person Godhead In The Old Testament” will be aware of this theme that runs throughout the Old Testament. There is this figure called The Angel Of The Lord who the text identifies as Yahweh, but Yahweh is also in the scene and the disembodied Yahweh is also Yahweh, land yet the biblical authors make a distinction in their identities. [13]Aside from my video, the late Dr. Michael S. Heiser talks about this in his book “The Unseen Realm: Recovering The Supernatural Worldview Of The Bible”, and Douglas Van Dorn and Matt … Continue reading
Proverbs 8:22-31 says “The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be. When there were no watery depths, I was given birth, when there were no springs overflowing with water; before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was given birth, before he made the world or its fields or any of the dust of the earth. I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, when he gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was constantly at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.” (NIV)
Proverbs 8:1 identifies that the one speaking of being with The Lord during creation is Wisdom. Wisdom is doing the talking here. And yet in verse 22-31 she is distinct from The Lord, not The Lord himself as previously argued. She was with The Lord since the beginning, before the universe was created. And it is precisely by her that The Lord created the universe. She is the agent of creation. As Proverbs 3:19 says “By wisdom the LORD laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place;” (NIV) A person who is God Himself, and yet was “with” God as a distinct person during the creation of the universe. Now, where have I heard that before? Oh yeah!
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” – John 1:1-3 (NIV)
In Proverbs, we have a “Two Powers In Heaven” doctrine espoused. I am of the opinion that Proverbs 8 was at the forefront of the apostle John’s mind when he penned the prologue to his gospel, asserting readers from the beginning that Jesus, The Word, was “with God” and “Was God”, distinct from God the Father but sharing his divine essence. God The Son is the agent through whom God The Father created all things. “The Word” which is in our English Bibles is “Logos” which means “Word” or “Logic” or “Reason”. These are very closely related subjects. Now, a lot of Christians are understandably uncomfortable in tracing John’s “Logos Christology” to Proverbs 8. Why? Well, it’s because of how some translations render 8:22. The NIV says “The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old;” This makes it sound like Woman Wisdom (and the Logos by extension) were the first thing God created, and then Wisdom/Logos created all other things. In fact, Arian heretical sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses use Proverbs 8 as a proof text that Jesus isn’t God. And that consequently, their view that the Logos in John 1 is “a” God is justified. I previously interacted with The Watchtower on this passage in my blog post “Why You Should Believe In The Trinity: Responding To The WatchTower (Part 3)” However, my views on Proverbs 8 have evolved slightly since then. In that article, I basically dismissed the JWs by saying that Wisdom is merely a literary personification of wisdom and that we wouldn’t think anything Christological was going on if we weren’t reading the passage in light of John 1. In light of the evidence above that Wisdom is identified with Yahweh, I no longer agree with myself in that one paragraph.
Nevertheless, although I’ve come around to linking Proverbs 8 and John 1, I still don’t see this as a problem for a high Christology. Why? Well, let’s forget about Jesus for a second and just focus on The Old Testament and its doctrine of God. If Wisdom were literally a creation of God’s, what would that imply? That God was a mindless entity and somehow, through sheer luck, he created His attribute of wisdom which he needed to create everything else!? Was there ever a time when God was without His wisdom!? That seems to undermine the Omniscience of God! Even an Old Testament Jew would render his garments at such a suggestion. So, Christological debates aside, to suggest that the wisdom of God is a creation of God is theologically problematic. Even a Jehovah’s Witness should resist such a conclusion! In the course of my study on the book of Proverbs, I did a word study on the word translated “brought forth”. The Hebrew word is kanah. [14]See the Bible Hub page on Proverbs 8:22 for the Hebrew. –> https://biblehub.com/proverbs/8-22.htm I found out that in the vast majority of cases, it means to simply “possess” something, in the sense of owning something or of acquiring something (e.g Genesis 14:19, 14;22, 39:1, 49:19). On one occasion, it meant to “begat” as in Eve’s begetting of her first son Cain (Genesis 4:1). [15]See The Bible Hub page here for more examples –> https://biblehub.com/hebrew/strongs_7069.htm If Qanani is translated either as “possessed” or “begat”, then there is no longer a problem. In this case, I think the NIV presents a bad translation and prefer the ESV when it says “The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.” It would be to say that God simply possessed wisdom at the beginning of creation; both the attribute as well as the person the Woman represents (cf. John 1:1). And of course, God possessed His wisdom “at the beginning of his work”. There’s nothing theologically problematic about that. God was wise at the beginning of the world. Of course, He was!
On Proverbs 8:22 and the controversy of identifying Jesus with Woman Wisdom in Proverbs 8 the Pulpit Commentary on Bible Hub says the following;
“22. – The Lord possessed me. Great controversy has arisen about the word rendered ‘possessed.’ The verb used is קָנָה (kanah), which means properly ‘to erect, set upright,’ also ‘to found, form’ (Genesis 14:19, 22), then ‘to acquire’ (Proverbs 1:5; Proverbs 4:5, 7, etc.) or ‘to possess’ (Proverbs 15:32; Proverbs 19:8). The Vulgate, Aquila, Theodotion, Symmachus, Venetian, give ‘possessed;’ Septuagint, ἔκτισε, ‘made,’ and so Syriac. The Arians took the word in the sense of ‘created’ (which, though supported by the LXX., it seems never to have had), and deduced there from the Son’s inferiority to the Father – that he was made, not begotten from all eternity. Ben Sira more than once employs the verb κτίζω in speaking of Wisdom’s origin; e.g. Ecclus. 1:4, 9 Ecclus. 24:8. Opposing the heresy of the Arians, the Fathers generally adopted the rendering ἐκτήσατο, possedit, ‘possessed;’ and even those who received the translation ἔκτισε, explained it not of creating, but of appointing, thus: The Father set Wisdom over all created things, or made Wisdom to be the efficient cause of his creatures (Revelation 3:14). May we not say that the writer was guided to use a word which would express relation in a twofold sense? Wisdom is regarded either as the mind of God expressed in operation, or the Second Person of the Holy Trinity; and the verb thus signifies that God possesses in himself this essential Wisdom, and intimates likewise that Wisdom by eternal generation is a Divine Personality. St. John (John 1:1), before saying that the Word was God, affirms that “the Word was with God (ὁ Λόγος η΅ν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν).” [16]Pulpit Commentary from Bible Hub — https://biblehub.com/commentaries/pulpit/proverbs/8.htm
Now, I said it would be no more problematic if kanah were translated as “begat” as in Genesis 4:1. Why? Well, John 3:16 tells us that Jesus is God’s “only begotten” (monogenes) Son! The early church understood the “begetting” of the Son from The Father in the sense of eternal procession.
The eternal generation of the Son is defined as “an eternal personal act of the Father, wherein, by necessity of nature, not by choice of will, He generates the person (not the essence) of the Son, by communicating to Him the whole indivisible substance of the Godhead, without division, alienation, or change, so that the Son is the express image of His Father’s person, and eternally continues, not from the Father, but in the Father, and the Father in the Son.” [17]A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, p. 182.
As The Nicene Creed puts it “I believe…in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.”
So either way, a high Christology is not in danger. Of course, one might be tempted to think these dots would not be connected by The New Testament writers. Well, hopefully, I’ve already shown that at least John the apostle was when he penned the opening of his gospel. Although not calling Jesus “Wisdom”, he does essentially call him “Logic” or “Order” (“The Word” is how most English translations render it) and certainly that is a very close corollary to Wisdom. My pastor likes to say “Wisdom is knowledge applied”, and Tremper Longmann calls wisdom “Emotional Intelligence”. But are there any other connection points here? There are. For the sake of time, I’ll mention just a couple more.
In his book “The Fear Of The Lord Is Wisdom: A Theological Introduction To Wisdom In Israel”, Tremper Longman III points to a passage in the Gospel of Matthew, which depicts Jesus as claiming this relationship with Woman Wisdom. In response to the Jewish leaders who complained about his rather celebratory lifestyle, he reminded them that they were also critical of John the Baptist, who led an ascetic life:
“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.” – Matthew 11:18–19
Longman notes “‘But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.’ The Greek is clear; Jesus is not speaking about wisdom in the abstract or as a concept. He is connecting himself and his actions with those of Woman Wisdom.” [18]Tremper Longman III, The Fear of the Lord Is Wisdom: A Theological Introduction to Wisdom in Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017), 246.
Finally, in 1 Corinthians 1:24, the apostle Paul calls Jesus “the power of God and the Wisdom of God”. Indeed, in Colossians 1:15-20, Paul wrote “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” [19]Lest one think that here, “firstborn” means Jesus is a created being through whom everyone else is made, as Jehovah’s Witnesses like to argue, let me explain why that interpretation … Continue reading
God’s Feminine Side – Nurturing Breasts And Other Motherhood Metaphors
In Isaiah 49:15, Yahweh says to Israel through the Prophet Isaiah, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you” (ESV).
Rebecca McLaughin comments on this passage, saying “God’s love for us is no Hallmark sentiment. This image is not primarily a celebration of our newborn cuteness: ‘God could never reject such lovable little creatures as us!’ Rather, this verse reveals God’s hard-won, self-giving, dogged commitment to our good, a refusal to let us go—however frustrating we become, an insistence on seeing his image in us—and a painful provision for our most desperate need.'” [20]Rebecca McLaughlin, “How Breastfeeding Changed My View Of God”, The Gospel Coalition, May 24th 2018 — https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/breastfeeding-changed-view-god/ McLaughin goes on to point out that motherhood metaphors for God punctuate the Old Testament. “You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth” (Deuteronomy 32:18, ESV). “I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant” (Isaiah 42:14, ESV). “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you” (Isaiah 66:13, ESV). [21]ibid.
How This Relates To The Doctrine Of The Image Of God
In Genesis 1:26-27, we read “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (NIV)
In other articles, I have written on the image of God as it pertains to our understanding of subjects such as naturism and of Genesis 1 as a Temple Inauguration motif. [22]For example “Genesis 1: Functional Origins, Temple Inauguration, and Anti-Pagan Polemics”. But in this article, I’d like to ask how men and women both “image” God in their own unique genders? [23]To “image God” can be a verb, as Michael Heiser points out in “The Unseen Realm” on pages 42-43. After all, The Bible explicitly says thatboth men and women are made as God’s images. Well, as I’ve reflected on the doctrine of imago dei over the summer, I’ve come to some beautiful conclusions. Other than the gender neutral ways we reflect God (e.g creating art, building structures, thinking deeply), there are some ways our genders do image God, such that the image of God can be thought of to be not “a” specific man or “a” specific woman, though we are each, individually made in God’s image, but corporately as a binary gendered race, we fully represent Him.
In the last section, we noticed how God’s provision for Israel (and by principle-extension, us) is likened to a mother breastfeeding her child. Every time a woman breast feeds her child, she is reflecting God’s love and tender kindness toward us. This perverse world wants us to a view a woman’s breasts as a sexual turn on, but God’s word (and world!) presents us with the truth. Breasts are objects of maternal love. Before formula was invented, breast milk was the only way a human infant could receive his or her nourishment. And beautifully, God so designed the human form that not only can a mother feed her child out of her own physical being, but one of the breasts is directly over her heart. To feed at your mother’s breast is to be right at the heart of your mother. And if you’ve experienced the love of a mother, I would hope that would move you. Moreover, our mother’s are the ones who birthed us. In Deuteronomy 32:18, God said that He birthed Israel. Moreover, Jesus said that in order to enter the Kingdom of God, we must be “Born Again” (John 3:3) and that the agent of this rebirthing [24]I’m trying not to start belting out the Skillet song of that name. “Rebirthing now!” is The Holy Spirit (John 3:5-6). The Holy Spirit birthed us the second time, but who birthed us the first time? Our mothers. When you give birth to a child, you are reflecting God’s regenerating activity in the world of unregenerate sinners. Moreover, in the act of procreation, we are, in a sense, co-creators of God of humans. Not forgetting that it is specifically God who “knits us together in our mothers womb” (Psalm 139:13-14), when a man and a woman have sex that results in pregnancy, we are participants in creation of God’s greatest creation; His images. We images get to help make more images! Eve recognized this in Genesis 4. In that passage, we read “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.'” (Genesis 4:1, ESV). Women, there is a unique way in which you reflect your Creator. These are beautiful physical echoes of beautiful spiritual realities. As Pope John Paul II stated, “The body, in fact, and it alone is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world, the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God.” [25]20. Theology of The Body, Pope John Paul II, February 20, 1980. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) is immediately after the statement that men and women are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27).
Well, what about men? Are there ways we reflect our Creator in ways that women can’t? None that come to mind; and although there are ways women image in God uniquely, these are accommodated for in men through other routes. For example, while I could never feed my offspring directly from my own body, I could still provide for them in numerous ways. In the case of food, going to the grocery store and cooking after buying groceries with money I’ve worked all, or doing it the old fashioned way and go hunting. And there many things other than food men can provide for their children, but I bring these up because food, water, and clothing are the bare necessities and these are mentioned in Jesus’ Sermon On The Mount. In Matthew 6:23-33, Jesus said “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (NIV)
In parenthood, both the father and mother image God, and this is seen in the previous sections of this essay where God expresses Himself in both paternal and maternal terms. Recently, I told God “You are both the perfect Father and the perfect Mother.” Gender roles can be a controversial thing, but whatever your views, you should be able to see reflections of God. Even stereotypically, God is strong and a fighter like a Father, yet gentle and carassing as any mother. He provides through hard work (e.g Matthew 6) yet also feeds us directly from his power (e.g mana from Heaven). Things stereotypically assosiated with masculinity and feminity, at least the good things, God has or does.
Finally, how we image together. In Genesis 2:24 we read “For this reason a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh.” Some have said that this is an echo of the unity and diversity within the Godhead. For example, Pastor David Hatton wrote “The sexual, one-flesh relationship in marriage is meant to be a bodily ‘image’ of the loving mystery of unity within the Trinity, and as that Trinity of Love produces creation and life, so the ‘likeness’ of the Godhead in wedded sexual love is meant to procreate new human life.” [26]Hatton, David L.. “Who Said You Were Naked?”: Reflections on Body Acceptance (p. 245). David L. Hatton. Kindle Edition.
One might object at this point that these “imaging” actions are not things done exclusively by humans. After all, lions hunt to provide for their young. All female primates have nurturing breasts. And with the exception of earthworms and other a-sexual organisms like sponges, many animals become “one flesh” in a sexual union that leads to new life. This is true. However, it was also true that bread and wine have been around for a long time. 5,000 years ago, some pagan could have randomly decided to eat a piece of unleavened bread and drink a chalice of wine. Yet that does not remove the “holy” from holy communion, or its symbolizing of Yahweh freeing Israel from their bondage in Egypt (Matthew 26:26-28, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). As I have argued in prior articles, the image of God is a status we are given. Some mundane thing can be made to represent something most holy just because God said so (as the bread and wine represent the broken body and shed blood of Christ as our substitutionary atonement). That God designated this group of naked primates and said “This is a self-portrait of Me” makes what would be otherwise mundane animal activities suddenly spring to life with new spiritual significance. Sex is no longer a primal animal drive our lower hominid ancestors had, but an expression of erotic love, one flesh, yet two persons which results in a third. Breasts are no longer merely a primate anatomical feature, but become an echo of God’s love. [27]You Young Earth Creationists and anti-evolution Old Earthers will have to forgive me for letting my Theistic Evolutionist slip show so much in this section.
There is so much more that could be said here, but to prevent this article from being longer than it has to be, I will leave it at this.
A Word Of Caution
A word of caution must be given here, though. It has become fashionable for Progressive Christians to call God by feminine terms. “Mother God”, “Her”, “She”, etc. And it has become a weird cultural phenomenon where people think gender is something that is up to them. If I feel like a woman, I must be a woman, and you had better use my preferred pronouns or else you’re a bigot. Some Progressives have used the data I’ve presented here to argue for fluid gender. Indeed, I can recall seeing TikToks of people saying that God essentially chose His gender, so we can too. That is a big mistake. As I said in the section on divine accommodation, God is genderless and He accommodated our binary experience because this is just one of several ways that God is so unlike us. You might as well say that we can choose to express ourselves as three distinct persons because God does, or that we can speak things into existence because God does. And sadly, some heretics have. God has chosen primarily to express Himself in masculine terms. Therefore, we would be remiss to not address God as “Our Father”, “Lord”, “King” and to use their feminine counterparts instead. I consider myself fairly conservative, and I wish to remain biblical. Feminine depictions of God (e.g Proverbs 1, 8) are the exceptions, not the rule. Therefore we should follow likewise and address God by His “preferred pronouns” if we are to remain biblical. Not that I’ve ever been able to accuse a Progressive Christian about caring about biblically faithful theology, but I digress. And above all, let’s stop with this abject foolishness of thinking that a man can be a woman and not vice versa on the basis of what we feel. If our feelings do not align with physical reality (as in the case of those who suffer from gender dysphoria), then we need to “tell our feelings where they get off” as C.S Lewis once said in another context.
Conclusion
The Gender Of God turned out to be a more fascinating topic than I ever thought it was. God is genderless, and yet, in divine accommodation, has gendered Himself, primarily as male, though occasionally as female. The ultimate gendering of God was in the incarnation, when “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14, cf. Philippians 2:5-8). Jesus of Nazareth was a man in His human nature. Lady Wisdom became Lord Jesus. And when it comes to how we as men and women represent (lit. image) God to the rest of creation, we can be assured that the most masculine and the most feminine of us can do that fully well. Imaging, in the verbal sense, has only one hindrance; sin. Sin, not gender, is what diminishes our ability to reflect the Creator. That is why for us Christians, God is working on us, conforming us to the image of His son (Romans 8:29).
References
| ↑1 | My reasoning back then was the the gods of the nations were mere figments of the pagan imagination. Later on in my education, I came to the conclusion that the gods of the nations are real spiritual entities. They were originally members of Yahweh’s divine council and were set over the peoples of the world after the Tower Of Babel incident (see Genesis 10-11, Deuteronomy 32:8-9) but then rebelled against Him and drew the non-Israelite peoples into idol worship (see, e.g Deuteronomy 32:17 in the ESV, and 1 Corinthians 10:20). In Psalm 82, we read of God taking his stand in the divine council to pronounce divine judgment on these beings, whom God in the Psalm refers to as “gods” and “sons of the Most High” (Psalm 82:6-7). They are not equal to Yahweh in any of His “omni” attributes and they owe their very existence to Yahweh, but they are powerful supernatural beings nonetheless, not man made inventions as I was taught in church. If you want a detailed treatment of this, see my essay “Genesis 10-11: The Tower Of Babel, The Fall Of The gods, and The Divine Council Worldview” You can also see how I interact with Marcia Montenegro’s criticism of this view in my article “In Defense Of The Divine Council Worldview – A Response To Marcia Montenegro.” |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Theopedia, Interpretation Of The Bible, “Divine Accomodation” — https://www.theopedia.com/divine-accommodation. |
| ↑3 | See, for example, my articles “Objections To Concordism NOT Answered” and “Objections To Concordism STILL Not Answered: A Response To Alexander Young”. |
| ↑4 | John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1.13.1. |
| ↑5 | Kenton Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words, 230–31. |
| ↑6 | See Ben Stanhope “The Solid Sky Dome Of Biblical Cosmology and The Ancient Near East”, June 19th 2018, — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Jz4tvlhZM |
| ↑7 | For a brief survey of Ancient Near Eastern deities, see John. H. Walton, “Ancient Near Eastern Thought and The Old Testament”, Baker Academic, 2018 |
| ↑8 | For example, in my articles “The Minimal Facts Case For Jesus’ Resurrection – PART 1” and “The Women At Jesus’ Empty Tomb Revisited“ |
| ↑9 | Tremper Longman III, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Proverbs (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 58–59. |
| ↑10 | Kathleen Nielson, Proverbs for You, ed. Carl Laferton, God’s Word for You (The Good Book Company, 2020), 36–37. |
| ↑11 | Kathleen Nielson, Proverbs for You, ed. Carl Laferton, God’s Word for You (The Good Book Company, 2020), 70. |
| ↑12 | Tremper Longman III, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Proverbs (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 59. |
| ↑13 | Aside from my video, the late Dr. Michael S. Heiser talks about this in his book “The Unseen Realm: Recovering The Supernatural Worldview Of The Bible”, and Douglas Van Dorn and Matt Foreman talk about this in their book “The Angel Of The Lord: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Survey”. |
| ↑14 | See the Bible Hub page on Proverbs 8:22 for the Hebrew. –> https://biblehub.com/proverbs/8-22.htm |
| ↑15 | See The Bible Hub page here for more examples –> https://biblehub.com/hebrew/strongs_7069.htm |
| ↑16 | Pulpit Commentary from Bible Hub — https://biblehub.com/commentaries/pulpit/proverbs/8.htm |
| ↑17 | A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, p. 182. |
| ↑18 | Tremper Longman III, The Fear of the Lord Is Wisdom: A Theological Introduction to Wisdom in Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017), 246. |
| ↑19 | Lest one think that here, “firstborn” means Jesus is a created being through whom everyone else is made, as Jehovah’s Witnesses like to argue, let me explain why that interpretation doesn’t work. The problem I have with Colossians 1:15 as a proof text against the deity of Christ is that is (1) ignores the surrounding contexts which asserts the deity of Jesus in no uncertain terms and (2) Ignores the cultural context of the significance of the term “first born”. David is called “first born” In Psalm 89:27, yet he was neither the first king of Israel nor was he literally the first born in his family (he was actually the youngest! See 1 Samuel 17:4) Most commentators agree that first born doesn’t always literally mean the first to come into physical existence. It doesn’t in Psalm 89, and based on how Paul talks about Jesus in the surrounding verses of Colossians 1, I don’t think it means that there either. Rather, in both cases, it refers to the preeminence of the person spoken of (David and Jesus respectively). The firstborn was the one that inherited all the good stuff in Ancient Near Eastern culture. Even in the OT, we see that as Jacob basically has to steal the blessing of the firstborn (Esau) by trickery. As only begotten God (John 1:18), we would expect the eternal Son, the heir of all things (Hebrews 1:2) and the one seated on God’s throne (Mark 14:62, Acts 7:56) to be preeminent indeed. He’d be a very important figure to put it mildly!
Moreover, Paul says that Jesus not only created all things, but also sustains all things (verses 16-17). Scientists estimate that the universe is approximately 93 billion light years wide, and contains an estimated 100 billion trillion stars, some of which dwarf our Sun to embarrassingly small proportions. To sustain all of this in being, someone would have to not only be unimaginably powerful, but they would have to transcend the entire physical universe. It is extremely hard to believe that even God’s most powerful angel could be up to such a monstrous task. Such a being would have to be capital G God. Indeed, Nehemiah 9:6 says this is exactly the job of Jehovah God. “You alone are Jehovah; you made the heavens, yes, the heaven of the heavens and all their army, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. And you preserve all of them alive, and the army of the heavens are bowing down to you” (NWT) CF. Psalm 36:6 At what point does one stop sounding like a god (a powerful supernatural, yet still created thing) and start to look like God? Sustaining all of creation isn’t merely a godlike thing to do, it is a God-like thing to do! |
| ↑20 | Rebecca McLaughlin, “How Breastfeeding Changed My View Of God”, The Gospel Coalition, May 24th 2018 — https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/breastfeeding-changed-view-god/ |
| ↑21 | ibid. |
| ↑22 | For example “Genesis 1: Functional Origins, Temple Inauguration, and Anti-Pagan Polemics” |
| ↑23 | To “image God” can be a verb, as Michael Heiser points out in “The Unseen Realm” on pages 42-43 |
| ↑24 | I’m trying not to start belting out the Skillet song of that name. “Rebirthing now!” |
| ↑25 | 20. Theology of The Body, Pope John Paul II, February 20, 1980. |
| ↑26 | Hatton, David L.. “Who Said You Were Naked?”: Reflections on Body Acceptance (p. 245). David L. Hatton. Kindle Edition. |
| ↑27 | You Young Earth Creationists and anti-evolution Old Earthers will have to forgive me for letting my Theistic Evolutionist slip show so much in this section. |
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Hey Evan! I just wanted to ask you, know that you brin up the topic of gender, where do you side on the egalitarian and complementarian debate (both in church and home) and why? I’m trying to reach a conclusion and would love to hear your thoughts. God Bless!
I meant: now that you bring up*
I apologize for not responding to this sooner. I’m just going to be honest and say that I’d rather not reveal my position on this and I don’t even want to say anything that might make people think I incline one way or the other. I might come out on my position some day, but not now. I need to think about how to do it wisely.
That’s totally fine! It’s a very heated debate nowadays so I understand. Didn’t mean to put you on the spot. God Bless
In Proverbs, Wisdom is described as giving life (Proverbs 3:16)
and a “tree of life” (3:18).
She is pre-existant: “Yahweh possessed me at the beginning of His
way before His works. From everlasting I have been established,
from the beginning before there was ever an earth” (8:22-23)
She dwells with God and is the one He delights in (8:27-30).
Wisdom is involved in the creation of everything (8:30).
She is the cosmic giver of the transforming feast who sends her
servant-girls out to proclaim from the highest places, so that all
may hear, that there is space at the table (9:3-5).
Wisdom offers knowledge, understanding, insight, life and peace
(1:23, 2:6, 3:13,16-18, 8:5-10,33,35, 9:5-6), as she speaks,
calls, challenges, warns, invites, serves and nourishes.
Wisdom invites everyone to feast at her banquet that she has prepared
(Prov 9:1-5), offering bread and wine in abundance.
Wisdom is the one who sends prophets and apostles, some of whom
are killed and persecuted (Luke 11:49).
Where have we seen someone like this before?
In John 1, “the Word” was in the beginning, with God, and was
the one through whom all things were created, who gives life.
This “Word” became incarnate and lived among us (1:14).
The people came to Jesus to find wisdom and were astonished at
his teaching, because he taught with authority (Lk 4:32)
Jesus is the one who offers life (Jn 10:10)
Jesus offers a feast (Mt 22:2-10) and sends out his servants
to gather the guests to the feast.
Jesus provides bread in abundance (Mt 14:20 etc) and wine in abundance
(Jn 2:6) along with wise words of teaching.
Jesus has the words of eternal life (Jn 6:68)
Jesus is close to the Father’s heart (Jn 1:18), the Beloved that He
is pleased with (Mk 1:11, 9:7, Lk 3:22)
Jesus is the one who sends prophets and apostles, some of whom
are killed and persecuted (Mt 23:34)
When he was criticised for being a friend of tax-collectors and sinners,
Jesus directly identifies himself with Wisdom: “Wisdom is vindicated
by all her deeds/children” (Lk 7:34-35 and Mt 11:19)
Jesus is Wisdom incarnate.
But Jesus was a man!
How can Jesus, a man, also be the incarnation of divine Wisdom, a woman?
Well, anyone who is transgender, or who knows what it means
to be transgender, will understand that a person’s gender identity
can differ from their physical sexual characteristics and assigned
sex at birth.
In other words: Jesus was transgender.
This is an incredibly bad take. As I said in the article that you were commenting on, God, in his divine nature, does not have a gender. Gender is determined by a variety of biological such as genitalia, chromosomes, and even skeletal structure. Archaeologists and paleontologists can tell whether a person was a man or a woman by looking at their skeletal structure. But God The Trinity is transcendent to the entire physical cosmos. He doesn’t have any of these things. If he were, he would not be the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, uncreated, and necessary being who exist in all possible worlds.
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Jesus was a man because in the incarnation, he had a human nature. That human nature had these biological traits that determines whether one is a man or a woman. Now, as I said, God in the Old Testament revealed himself in primarily masculine terms because of cultural accommodation. There were no genderless pronouns in ancient Hebrew, and it would be irreverent to refer to God with the same terms when uses to refer to an inanimate object. So God did choose to reveal himself either there was a male deity or a female deity. He chose to reveal himself as a male deity because of the patriarchal society that was the ancient near east. If Yahweh revealed himself as Goddess Almighty, he would have had an even harder time keeping Israel in line than He did. Although ANE cultures had goddesses, they were never regarded as highly as their male counterparts. I can imagine Goddess Almighty trying to compete with the male Baal in such a culture.
.
But sometimes God did use more feminine metaphors to refer to himself. In the book of proverbs, there is an explicit literary reason. There are romantic undertones concerning woman wisdom and the implied reader. The implied reader is a male, probably one of the sons of Solomon. And he is depicting wisdom as desirable as a beautiful woman. As I argued Woman Wisdom very likely isn’t merely the personification of the attribute of wisdom, but a personification of God Himself. With Woman Folly representing any number of false gods. After all, a right relationship with the LORD is where true wisdom is founded (Proverbs 1:7). The metaphor wouldn’t work if Wisdom was portrayed as a man. Unless Solomon was writing for a daughter instead of his sons.
.
The idea that Jesus was a female who self identified as a male and transitioned is a laughable concept and is a complete butchering of the biblical text. It is clearly ideologically motivated rather than a search for sound theology and exegesis.
First, I need to clarify some terminology:
“Gender” is a property of the mind/spirit/heart (the non-physical
part of a person): although a materialist would say that gender
is a property of the brain, I don’t think either of us are materialists.
“Sex” is a property of the physical body: typically sex is assigned
at birth depending on the external appearance of genitalia.
Hence the saying “sex is what is between your legs, gender is
what is between your ears”.
Gender refers to our internal sense of who we are and how we see
and describe ourselves.
https://service-manual.nhs.uk/content/inclusive-content/sex-gender-and-sexuality
Someone whose gender aligns with their assigned sex is “cisgender”
(from the Latin prefix “cis-” meaning “on this side of”).
Someone whose gender differs from their assigned sex is “transgender”
(from the Latin prefix “trans-” meaning “across from” or “on
the other side of”).
Sex can be changed by gender confirmation surgery.
Gender is fixed at a very early stage and cannot be changed.
Attempts to force a change in gender (eg to match the sex assigned
at birth) can be very harmful and the UN has declared that it “amounts
to torture”. Transgender people do not “choose their gender”,
they discover what their gender was all along: even if they
don’t discover this until later in life.
“Medical and Mental Health Organization Position Statements”
https://web.archive.org/web/20240228102004/https://sueinut.com/medical-and-mental-health-organization-position-statements/
“Differentiating sex and gender”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10523819
https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/
God is spirit (Jn 4:24) and so does not have a physical
“sex”. When you say that God is “genderless” you are actually
referring to physical sex, not gender. Gender is a property of
the mind/soul/spirit, so God, as spirit, can have this property.
And in the Bible, God has gender and in fact our human genders,
in all their manifold diversity, are a reflection of God’s gender:
“In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”.
In the description of humankind’s creation in the image of God,
gender is explicitly mentioned as part of that image.
In the OT, God (“Elohim”) is gendered masculine plural, but the
Holy Spirit (“Ruach”) is feminine. In Hebrew, verbs “agree with”
the noun: a verb applied to a masculine noun has a masculine ending
while a verb applied to a feminine noun has a feminine ending.
A plural noun that includes both male and female (such as “Elohim”)
is gendered masculine.
Genesis 1:2, for example, is literally “the Spirit of God she-was-hovering
over the face of the waters”, and so on for about 75 different occurrences
(rather more than simply “occasionally”!). For example, Job 33:4 reads:
“The Spirit of God, she made me, and her powerful breath gives me life”
Jesus was assigned male at birth and did not physically transition
during his earthly life. We can all agree on that.
So, if Jesus is the incarnation of the Wisdom of God, then his
gender is female and does not match his sex. So, by definition,
Jesus is transgender.
Jesus identifies himself with Wisdom in Luke 11:49 and Mt 23:34,
as the one who sends the prophets, and in Mt 11:19 and Luke 7:35
where he is being criticised but responds “Wisdom is vindicated
by all her deeds/children”.
Paul also identifies Jesus with Wisdom: “Christ… the Wisdom (Sophia)
of God” (1 Cor 1:24)
Jesus did not transition in his earthly life, but one can still
be transgender without transitioning.
After the resurrection however…
In Rev 1:13 Jesus appears to John, “clothed in a long robe
and with a golden sash about his breasts” (Greek plural:
“mastois”). The word “mastois” only occurs in two other places:
Lk 11:27 “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts
(mastoi) that nursed you!” and Luke 23:29 “For the days are surely
coming when they will say, `Blessed are the barren, and the wombs
that never bore, and the breasts (mastoi) that never nursed.'”
The general word for “chest” is shown in Rev 15:6 where the seven
angels with the seven plagues appear “robed in pure bright linen,
with golden sashes across their chests” Here the word for “chests”
is “stethe”, which also appears in Lk 18:13 (the tax collector “was
beating his breast”), Lk 23:48, Jn 13:25 and Jn 21:20.
Of course, in another sense it is perfectly true to say that “the
body of the risen Christ has breasts”. *We* are the Body of Christ,
and many of us have breasts, so the Body of Christ has breasts!
But even if God is genderless (as you claim), then Jesus was male,
and not genderless, so once again, by definition, Jesus is transgender!
My reaction on discovering the gender of the Holy Spirit and the gender
of Jesus was the same as yours regarding the doctrine of Hell:
when I discovered what The Bible REALLY taught my response was:
“How in the world could I have missed this? It’s so obvious!”
Gender and Sex were always synonyms in the English language up until 5 minutes ago when western society decided to start kowtowing to people under a delusion. So I always have and will continue to treat them as synonyms. But I do think we definitely should make a distinction. There is what a person is and what a person mistakenly think he is. But instead of taking two familiar terms and redefining them, we should categorize these as biological reality and mental delusion. I am a man. I have a penis, testicles, XY chromosomes, and a skeletal structure. If I think I am a woman, which is an adult female, then I am deluded. A woman has a vagina, breasts, XX chromosomes, and a female skeletal structure. Just as much as if as a human being, I were to believe that I was a gorilla. It would not change the biological reality that I am not a gorilla.
.
Speaking of breasts, are you seriously trying to make those biblical references out to be breasts….in the sense of…female boobs?
Gender and sex were never exactly synonymous. For example, we have
always had “gendered nouns” in English, ever since Old English,
but we have never had “sexed nouns”!
I am not sure what you mean by “until 5 minutes ago”: the use
of the word gender to describe “our internal sense of who we are”,
as distinct from sex, dates from at least the 1940s, which is long
before I was born.
A Brief History of ‘Gender’:
https://debuk.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/a-brief-history-of-gender/
Quotes:
But in fact the OED’s earliest illustrative quotation for the relevant sense
(`the state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural
distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones’) comes from
an article published in 1945 in an academic psychology journal:
“in the grade school years, too, gender (which is the socialised
obverse of sex) is a fixed line of demarcation, the qualifying
terms being `feminine’ and `masculine’.”
The same journal is the source of the next quotation, dated 1950:
“it informs the reader upon `gender’ as well as `sex’,
upon masculine and feminine roles as well as upon male and female
and their reproductive functions.'”
As these examples illustrate, the meaning of `gender’ which depends
on an explicit or implicit contrast with biological sex was first
used by academics in social science disciplines like anthropology,
sociology and psychology.
C. S. Lewis clearly understood the distinction between sex
as a property of the body, and gender as a property
of the mind/soul/spirit, back in the 1940s.
In “Bareface: C.S. Lewis and the Identity Claims of Transgender People”,
Billie Hoard writes:
“As it turns out, Lewis not only recognized the sex-gender distinction,
he positively endorsed it. In his novel Perelandra [aka Voyage
to Venus, 1943] Lewis explores, among other things, the possible nature
of angels. In that context he concludes that angels have a gender
but not a sex, and he goes on to theorize about the relationship
between the two.
“When Ransom, the protagonist of Perelandra, encounters the angelic Archons
(referred to in the text as Oyarsa) of Mars and Venus, Lewis describes
those spirits (he is very clear that they do not have physical
bodies but that “when creatures of the hypersomatic kind choose
to `appear’ to us, they are not in fact affecting our retina at all,
but directly manipulating the relevant parts of our brain”) in a way
which reveals much of what Lewis understood about sex and gender.
It is well worth noting that Lewis published Perelandra in 1943,
well before the contemporary distinction between sex and gender
gained any popular currency.”
C.S.Lewis writes:
Both the bodies [of the Oyarsas] were naked, and both were free
from any sexual characteristics, either primary or secondary.
That, one would have expected. But whence came this curious difference
between them? He found that he could point to no single feature
wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore.
One could try–Ransom has tried a hundred times–to put it into words.
He has said that Malacandra [the archon of Mars] was like rhythm and
Perelandra [the archon of Venus] like melody. He has said that Malacandra
affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre.
He thinks that the first held in his hand something like a spear,
but the hands of the other were open, with the palms towards him.
But I don’t know that any of these attempts helped me much.
At all events what Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning
of gender. Everyone must sometimes have wondered why in nearly all
tongues certain inanimate objects are masculine and others feminine.
What is masculine about a mountain or feminine about certain trees?
Ransom has cured me of believing that this is a purely
morphological phenomenon, depending on the form of the word.
Still less is gender an imaginative extension of sex.
Our ancestors did not make mountains masculine because they projected
male characteristics into them. The real process is the reverse.
Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex.
Sex is, in fact, merely the adaptation to organic life
of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings.
Female sex is simply one of the things that have feminine gender;
there are many others, and Masculine and Feminine meet us on planes
of reality where male and female would be simply meaningless.
Masculine is not attenuated male, nor feminine attenuated female.
On the contrary, the male and female of organic creatures are
rather faint and blurred reflections of masculine and feminine.
Their reproductive functions, their differences in strength and size,
partly exhibit, but partly also confuse and misrepresent,
the real polarity… he of Malacandra was masculine (not male);
she of Perelandra was feminine (not female).
https://medium.com/@billhoard_34685/bareface-c-s-lewis-and-the-identity-claims-of-transgender-people-e53afad806a4
So the current sex/gender distinction has been around since the 1940’s,
but intersex, transgender and non-binary people have been around
for as long as there have been people!
Accounts of transgender people (including non-binary and third
gender people) have been identified going back to ancient times
in cultures worldwide as early as 1200 BCE Egypt:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history
Judaism has recognized nonbinary persons for millennia:
“The Seven Genders in the Talmud”
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-eight-genders-in-the-talmud/
“The Many Genders of Judaism”
https://www.associationforjewishstudies.org/podcasts/the-many-genders-of-judaism-transcript
Transgender people are not in the least “deluded” about their sex:
they are often far more aware of their sex than cis people
(When was the last time you had your hormone levels checked?)
The question is: when there is a disconnect between what you
know you are in your heart/mind/spirit (your gender) and your
physical appearance (your sex), which is to take precidence?
For C.S.Lewis it is clearly gender that takes precidence over sex:
“the male and female of organic creatures are rather faint and blurred
reflections of masculine and feminine. Their reproductive functions,
their differences in strength and size, partly exhibit, but partly
also confuse and misrepresent, the real polarity”
(I think that the comment “partly also confuse and misrepresent”
applies with special force to transgender people).
What, if anything, does the Bible say?
Well the Bible says that, for God, what you are in your heart
is more important than your physical appearance: “the LORD does
not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance,
but the LORD looks on the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7)
Should the body rule the soul or should the soul rule the body?
Transgender people who choose to medically transition are
submitting their body to their soul, just as Paul says he
does in 1 Cor 9:27 “I discipline my body and bring it under control”
Why would God create people with this disconnect between soul
and body?
“God made trans people for the same reason God made wheat but not bread,
and grapes but not wine: so that humanity might share in the act
of creation.”–Julian Jarboe.
In Matthew 19:12 Jesus praises those “who have made themselves
eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (this includes
those who have medically transitioned to conform their bodies
to their God-given gender identity).
Science agrees with prioritising what a person knows in their heart,
mind ans soul to be true over their external physical appearance.
Recent brain research has shown that “when it comes to brain
and gender, we all have an intersex gender (i.e., an array of masculine
and feminine traits) and an intersex brain (a mosaic of “male”
and “female” brain characteristics).”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23244600/
“More specifically, here I argue that human brains are composed
of an ever-changing heterogeneous mosaic of “male” and “female”
brain characteristics (rather than being all “male” or all “female”)
that cannot be aligned on a continuum between a “male brain”
and a “female brain.” I further suggest that sex differences in the
direction of change in the brain mosaic following specific environmental
events lead to sex differences in neuropsychiatric disorders.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21960961/
Other researchers have shown that trans women have largely feminine brain
structures, while trans men have largely masculine brain structures:
thus confirming their innate sense of who they really are.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25217469/
“Transgender people have neurological traits of the gender they
identify as, rather than that they are assigned at birth.
Neurobiology is a far more reliable measure of who a person
is than their genitals.” (“Neuro-biology of trans-sexuality”:
Prof. Robert Sapolsky)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QScpDGqwsQ
“what transsexualism used to be thought of is `people who think
that they’re a different gender than they actually are’.
What this study suggests is what transsexual is about is people who got
the wrong gendered body … This part of the brain agrees with them.”
“Brain structure and function in gender dysphoria”, Julie Bakker
“We found that hypothalamic responses of both adolescent girls
and boys diagnosed with GD were more similar to their experienced
gender than their birth sex, which supports the hypothesis of a
sex-atypical brain differentiation in these individuals.”
https://www.endocrine-abstracts.org/ea/0056/ea0056s30.3
A vast body of research confirms that a supportive environment
for social transition and timely access to gender reassignment,
for those who required it, is the best way to treat gender dysphoria,
while “conversion therapy” is actively harmful.
“Mental Health of Transgender Children Who Are Supported
in Their Identities”
“Socially transitioned transgender children who are supported
in their gender identity have developmentally normative levels
of depression and only minimal elevations in anxiety, suggesting that
psychopathology is not inevitable within this group.”
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/137/3/e20153223/81409/Mental-Health-of-Transgender-Children-Who-Are
“Association Between Recalled Exposure to Gender Identity
Conversion Efforts and Psychological Distress and
Suicide Attempts Among Transgender Adults”
In a cross-sectional study of 27,715 US transgender adults,
recalled exposure to gender identity conversion efforts was
significantly associated with increased odds of severe psychological
distress during the previous month and lifetime suicide attempts
compared with transgender adults who had discussed gender identity
with a professional but who were not exposed to conversion efforts.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2749479
Programs designed to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender
identity are linked to depression, PTSD and suicidality in a
Stanford Medicine-led study of more than 4,000 participants.
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/09/conversion-practices-lgbt.html
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(24)00251-7/abstract
More links to studies about gender transition in young people:
https://beacons.ai/f1nn5ter/2
Are transgender children “confused”?
“Gender Cognition in Transgender Children”
by Kristina R. Olson1, Aidan C. Key2, and Nicholas R. Eaton
Conclusion:
“In summary, our findings refute the assumption that transgender children
are simply confused by the questions at hand, delayed, pretending,
or being oppositional. Instead, transgender children show responses
that look largely indistinguishable from those of cisgender children,
who match transgender children’s gender expression on both more-
and less-controllable measures. Further, and addressing the broader
concern about transgender individuals’ mere existence raised at
the outset of this article, the data reported here should serve
as evidence that transgender children do indeed exist and that their
identity is a deeply held one.”
https://annas-archive.org/scidb?doi=10.1177/0956797614568156
The American Academy of Pediatrics outlines the stages of gender
identity development and by age 4 most children have a stable sense
of their gender identity: “The point is that all children tend
to develop a clearer view of themselves and their gender over time.
At any point, research suggests that children who assert a gender-diverse
identity know their gender as clearly and consistently as their
developmentally matched peers and benefit from the same level
of support, love, and social acceptance.”
https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/can-a-4-year-old-know-her-gender-identity-yes/
American Academy of Pediatrics web site:
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/gradeschool/Pages/Gender-Identity-and-Gender-Confusion-In-Children.aspx
What does the scholarly research say about the effect of gender
transition on transgender well-being?
https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/
Finally, it isn’t me that is saying Jesus had “female boobs”,
as you put it, it is the author of Revelation: so if you have
a problem with the idea, then you should take it up with him!
The image of Jesus as a mother who breastfeeds us has been present
throughout Christian history, starting with the author of 1 Peter
who writes: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk,
so that by it you may grow into salvation if indeed you have tasted
that the Lord is good.” (1 Peter 2:2-3).
Julian of Norwich (1343–c1416), in “Revelations of Divine Love”:
“The human mother suckles her child with her own milk, and with the utmost
tender kindness our beloved Mother, Jesus, feeds us with himself
through the blessed sacrament, which is my life’s precious food.”
(Chapter 60)
“The human mother puts her child tenderly to her breast, and our
tender Mother, Jesus, leads us intimately into his blessed breast,
through the sweet open wound in his side, and there gives us
a glimpse of the Godhead and the joy of heaven, with the inner
certainty of eternal bliss.” (Chapter 60)
St John of the Cross (1542–1591) says of Jesus:
“There He gave me His breasts,
There He taught me the science full of sweetness.
And there I gave to Him
Myself without reserve;
There I promised to be His bride.”
(The Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross, 27)
Brother Lawrence (1614–1691)
“My most typical approach is this simple attentiveness and general
loving awareness of God, from which I derive greater sweetness
and satisfaction than an infant receives from his mother’s breast.
Therefore, if I may dare use the expression, I would gladly call
this state the “breasts of God,” because of the indescribable
sweetness I taste and experience there” (Brother Lawrence, “Letter 2
to a spiritual director”)
I’m going to be real with you. People who buy into the concept of “gender fludity” are people I take less seriously than the Flat Earthers. I have better things to do than argue with someone who denies such self-evident reality.But for the sake of my readers who, being immature in their faith, might be led astray by your heretical comment, let me point out the flaws in a few of the things you’ve said;
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First, 1 Samuel 6:7 does not say “what you are in your heart is more important than your physical appearance.” All that is asserted by God is that He knows what goes on in the thought lives of individuals. He knows who a person is and what they’re thinking. In context, God is telling this to the prophet Samuel because David, the one Yahweh chose to be king, is far less impressive in appearance than His older brother. But God knows David’s heart. He knows David thoroughly and knows he will be a good, godly king in constrast to Saul. He also knows despite his appearance, David will be a mighty warrior. And 1 Corinthians 9:7, in context (Bible Gateway is free, mam, go read the whole chapter) suggests Paul is talking about godly discipline. Specifically, having self control. “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” (ESV). Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit. (Galatians 5:22-23). So I take Paul saying to submit our bodies to the will of The Holy Spirit rather than the desires of the flesh.
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I am unfamiliar with the writings of Julian of Norwich or Brother Lawrence, but I am highly skeptical that they are using this maternal imagery of God and/or Jesus in ways other than metaphorically. They would know full well that Jesus of Nazareth, who died on a cross and rose from the dead, was a human male, a man. The fact that I myself have used maternal imagery of God in personal conversations (particularly of The Holy Spirit), and yet I don’t believe God is literally gendered in any of his Trinitarian persons, and I am staunchly opposed to this ridiculous, insane asylum worthy philosophy known as “gender spectrum”, that at least opens up the door to these older Christians likewise speaking symbolically. And I know for a fact that C.S Lewis affirmed the traditional view of binary gender. But even if he didn’t, that would simply put him on a collosion course with God’s word which says “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth. and over all the creatures that move on the earth.’ God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” (NET). Scripture clearly affirms that there are only two genders. Moreover, it’s heavily implied that Yahweh didn’t ask Adam and Eve what they “identified as”. Adam was a man. Eve was a woman. Not because of how they felt inside or what they believed about themselves, but because of what they undeniably were as physical creatures.
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As for eunichs, a eunich is not a transgender person. A eunuch is a male who has been emasculated either by having his testicles damaged or removed and/or by having his penis removed. ((Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Eunuchs,” in Dictionary of Daily Life in Biblical & Post-Biblical Antiquity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2015), 2:285.)) In Matthew 19:12, Jesus says “For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.” (ESV). Some have been born with deformed genitals, others have been castrated (likely slaves being castrated by kings as is documented from ancient sources). There are some who do not and cannot sexually reproduce. In the first and second examples, Jesus uses examples of literal eunuchs, but most scholars believe Jesus in referring to “Those who have made themselves eunichs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” are referring to voluntary perpetual celibates. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 talks about the ministerial advantages of being unmarried, being able to devote one’s free time entirely to service of The Lord. And Jesus may have the same thought in mind here. And this verse occurs in the context of Jesus having a debate with Pharisees over whether he takes Rabbi Shammai’s or Rabbi Hillel’s interpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1, see Matthew 19:1-7. And Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24, and says that divorce on any grounds other than sexual immorality is an illegitimate cause. This leads to the disciples comment that “If that’s how it is, it’s better not to get married a all.” That leads to Jesus’ eunuch comment. So, the metaphorical interpretation of “eunichs for the sake of the kingdom” has a high antecedent probability. But in no case is this referring to transgender people. That is not what a eunuch is. And any serious scholarly source on this topic will tell you likewise. People who try to make biblical eunuchs out to be trans people are either profoundly ignorant or are intentionally trying to deceive the masses in service of their ideological goals.
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You asked “When there is a disconnect between what you know you are in your heart/mind/spirit (your gender) and your physical appearance (your sex), which is to take precedence?” The answer should be obvious to any rational person. If physical reality doesn’t match up with my beliefs, my beliefs are that which must change. Again, if I felt like I was a gorilla, and yet my physical makeup clearly tells you that I am a homo sapien, what takes precedence? I am a human. If I believe I am a Gorilla, then I am under a delusion. What would we think of people who tried to make a distinction between “Species” and “Kinds”, like you try to do with “gender” and “sex”, we would see this as nonsense.
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I mean, where do we draw the line? Race? Can I self-identify as a black man? How about a black woman? How about I tell you that I self-identify as a pink polka-dotted Apache Helicopter? Hey, so long as that’s how I truly feel, then people must be beholden to describe me as I see myself in my mind, right? And any refusal to do so is just bigotry, right? My pronouns are “ximmyxerkirooo” and “ximyxerkireee”.
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I would caution readers of this blog to be skeptical of what else you’ve had to say that I haven’t addressed (such as the Talmud talking about 7 genders). Since you’ve clearly butchered the biblical text at several points, a wise person should do their own research on the Talmud, on Julian of Norwich, Brother Lawrence, etc. I would not be surprised to find out that you’re misrepresenting them as badly as the biblical text. Since you seem to identify as a Christian, I call upon you to repent of this heresy and submit to what God has to say about gender and sexuality. Do not be like Satan who twists scripture out of context to support his ends (as he did with Psalm 91:11-12 in the account of Christ’s temptation in Matthew 4). Stop listening to him and start listening to Yahweh. God is not the author of confusion, but Satan is. He is the father of lies and when he lies, he is speaking his native language (John 8:44). I not only call on you to repent, but I advise anyone who reads this conversation to beware.
Sorry to jump in when this didn’t previously involve me, but I feel the compulsion to inform you that you are wrong. Quite frankly, you rest on the assumption that trans people claim they are something that they biologically aren’t, except no one is saying that but you. Trans women are male, trans men are female…that’s literally what makes them trans! Their claim to either be a man or woman has absolutely nothing to do with their biological or physical traits! Also, plenty of trans men have penises and testicles and plenty of trans women have vaginas and breasts. So forgive me, but before you make any judgements, I would recommend you…actually know what you’re talking about. Also, way to show intellectual dishonesty! You said that the concept of being transgender was invented “five minutes ago” (except, no it wasn’t, but whatever), then the person replies, politely (as far as I could tell) explains why you’re wrong, and provides sources! Meanwhile, you just say “Nah, I don’t care”. Also, you speak with a lot of anger. If you hate trans people this much, you might need to get your heart checked out. Lastly, you end by calling the person a heretic. Yeah, real mature! Forgive my tone, but I would recommend you stop listening to FOX News and try…listening to trans people with an open mind, and quite frankly, get out of your echochamber! Oh, and before you accuse me of being in a “woke echochamber”, I’ve heard both sides and used to be like you, but now I’ve made up my mind. One last thing, stop making fun of personal pronouns, because I suspect you have them too! How would you feel if someone went around saying “I found Evan’s coffee mug! Someone should return it to her!”? I can already hear it, “but my pronouns correspond to my biological sex!”. Okay cool, why do other peoples’ pronouns have to correspond to their biological sex? Also, many within the queer advocacy group feel negatively toward “neo-pronouns” (i.e. pronouns aside from he/him, she/her, and they/them), so the community isn’t as monolithic as you paint them out to be. Feel free to respond and ask me questions if you want, but if you truly don’t care and won’t change your mind, then please leave me be. Regardless, I just ask you consider what I’ve said, as I hear conservatives like you commit the same fallacies over and over again with an immense amount of ignorance and dogmatism that I feel the need to intervene.
I don’t hate trans people. I don’t hate anyone. But I do hate falsehoods. And I do hate how many times I have to tell smooth brain leftists like you that I don’t hate anyone. I’ve been banging that “I love the sinner, hate the sin” drum since 2009’and you idiots just can’t get it through your thick skulls. Homophobe, transphobe, this-a-phobe, that-a-phobe. Get some new material! That’s what I hate. And by the way, gender spectrum ideology actually hurts trans people. Rather than try to find a solution as to why their feelings don’t match reality, you encourage them to chop off their bits and mutilate their bodies, and you promise them that that will make them feel better. And at really young ages sometimes too! Do you know how many people regret transitioning after the fact? Google “Chloe Cole”. She is just one of many examples. And It breaks my heart to hear their stories. And people like you are to blame. But rather than actually doing something, you wag your forked tongues with your pink haired and blue haired friends and tell me that I’m an evil piece of crap for daring to suggest that if a man claims to be a woman, he’s wrong and we shouldn’t play along with his false belief. I am sick and tired of being persecuted by the alphabet army just for being faithful to God and to reality. If I were to hate anyone, it would be people like you bringing down all your unholy wrath upon me for standing by what scripture (and common sense) says about marriage, sex, gender, etc. I don’t hate you, but the way you and your kind act towards Christians sure does make it hard. You can take this bull somewhere else.
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I don’t exactly take morality lessons from a group of people who cheer and mock when a man gets shot in the neck.
I recently came across this post of yours:
https://cerebralfaith.net/the-two-faced-nature-of-young-ear/
In that post you called for:
“No name calling, no calling our faith into question, no saying
we undermine the gospel or deny the truth of God’s word,
or any other inflammatory remarks of that sort. You are to say
“I think your position is incorrect. Here are my reasons why:
X, Y, Z.” This is the standard of conduct we are called to as
followers of Christ.”
Do you still feel the same way? How is it working out for you?
“God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God
he created them, male and female he created them.”
A “merism” is a rhetorical device or figure of speech in which a
combination of two contrasting parts of the whole refer to the whole.
Genesis 1 consists of a whole sequence of merisms which encompass
all of creation in all its diverse and manifold variety.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth
And everything in between: the whole universe.
God said “Let there be light!”
And there was light.
And God saw that the light was good.
And God separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
So God made the light and the darkness and the evening and the morning
and the twilight and the dawn, the sunset and the sunrise and
all the infinite gradations of light and shade in between.
God said “Let the waters be gathered together and let the dry land appear
And it was so.
God called the dry land Earth, and the waters he called Seas.
And God saw that it was good.
So God made the sea and the dry land, the lakes and rivers and streams
and pools, the wetlands and the marshes, the beaches and the tide pools.
All those intermingled places of land and sea
The beaches and rock pools that are sometimes land and sometimes sea
The tops of the mountains that used to be under the ocean
The seabed that used to be dry land
And everything in between.
God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures,
and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.”
God blessed them, saying, `Be fruitful and multiply and fill
the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’
And it was so.
God said “Let the earth bring forth living creatures
of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals
of the earth of every kind.”
And God saw that it was good.
So God made the birds and the fish and the land animals, the flying
fish and the swimming penguins, the amphibians who live in the water
and on land, the whales and the dolphins, who used to be land
animals but now live in the sea.
God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to
our likeness.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image
of God he created them; male and female he created them.
So God made the male and female the intersex and the nonbinary,
the transgender, agender, bigender, gender fluid and everything
in between.
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.
The alternative to a merism is to interpret all these pairs
as strict binaries. This is to say that God did *not* create
tidal beaches, or twilight, or penguins, and that the Dutch
are transgressing God’s will by turning the sea into dry land!
This is clearly nonsense.
Is a gender binary to be found in God’s creation anyway?
This paper describes 5 sets of empirical findings, spanning multiple
disciplines, that fundamentally undermine the gender binary.
These sources of evidence include neuroscience findings that refute
sexual dimorphism of the human brain; behavioral neuroendocrinology
findings that challenge the notion of genetically fixed, nonoverlapping,
sexually dimorphic hormonal systems; psychological findings
that highlight the similarities between men and women;
psychological research on transgender and nonbinary individuals’
identities and experiences; and developmental research suggesting
that the tendency to view gender/sex as a meaningful, binary category
is culturally determined and malleable:
“The future of sex and gender in psychology: Five challenges
to the gender binary.”
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Famp0000307
“I take Paul saying to submit our bodies to the will of
The Holy Spirit rather than the desires of the flesh.”
This is what transgender people are doing! They submit their bodies
to the will of the Holy Spirit, as revealed through their gender identity
(and perhaps also by more direct revelation).
Remember that your gender identity is not a choice but a part
of who you are created to be. You don’t “choose” it, you discover it.
“For many transgender people, beginning hormones is a “sacred moment,”
a place where God’s grace meets the body in a transformative way.
A sacrament is an outward sign of inward grace and hormone therepy
often embodies this truth. It markes a turning point where someone
chooses life, integrety and alignment between soul and flesh.”
— TransPreacher “Sacrament of HRT”
https://transpreacher.substack.com/p/sacrament-of-hrt
Your analogy with Flat Earthers is a very interesting choice.
Flat Earthers, along with Young Earth Creationists, Global Warming deniers,
and vaccine deniers, have the overwhelming scientific consensus against them.
Many flat earthers, young earth creationists, global warming deniers
and vaccine deniers are fundamentalist Christians and they have
to ignore the overwhelming scientific evidence against their views
in order to maintain their stance.
You are familiar with this process as it relates to evolution:
https://cerebralfaith.net/how-i-evolved-into-evolutionary/
But if we apply your “flat earth” analogy to the transgender debate,
then *you* are the one on the science-denying side of the debate!
Every major medical and mental health organization supports affirming care
for trans and gender diverse people, including:
WPATH,
USPATH,
American College of Physicians,
American Nurses Association,
World Health Organization,
Endocrine Society,
Pediatric Endocrine Society,
American Psychiatric Association,
American Academy of Family Physicians,
American Academy of Pediatrics,
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists,
American Osteopath Association,
American Medical Association,
American Academy of Pediatrics,
American Psychological Association,
EPATH,
USPATH,
AsiaPATH,
CPATH,
AusPATH,
PATHA,
PATHI,
American Psychiatric Association,
American College Health Association,
American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry,
American Academy of Dermatology,
American Academy of Nursing,
American Medical Student Association,
American Nurses Association,
GLMA
American School Counselor Association
National Association of Social Workers
Links to statements from all of the above can be found on this page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240228102004/https://sueinut.com/medical-and-mental-health-organization-position-statements/
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/137/3/e20153223/81409/Mental-Health-of-Transgender-Children-Who-Are
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20461468/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8099405/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667193X23001187
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38436975/
https://old.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/154t1qq/my_master_list_of_trans_health_citations_2nd_draft/
Citations on transition as medically necessary, frequently life saving
medical care, and the only effective treatment for gender dysphoria,
as recognized by every major medical authority:
A joint statement from the UK Council for Psychotherapy,
British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy, British
Psychoanalytic Council, British Association for Behavioural and
Cognitive Psychotherapies, The British Psychological Society, College
of Sexual and Relationship Therapists, The Association of
LGBT Doctors and Dentists, The National Counselling Society,
NHS Scotland, Pink Therapy, Royal College of General Practitioners,
the Scottish Government and Stonewall.
https://www.thepinknews.com/2017/01/16/health-experts-condemn-attempts-to-cure-trans-people-in-wake-of-controversial-bbc-documentary/
There are a lot of studies showing that transition improves mental
health and quality of life while reducing dysphoria.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24344788
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/960745/
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-014-0453-5
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23553588_Long-term_Assessment_of_the_Physical_Mental_and_Sexual_Health_among_Transsexual_Women
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2809058
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/142/2/e20181436/37568/Olson-KR-Durwood-L-McLaughlin-KA-Mental-Health-of
http://www.jaacap.com/article/S0890-8567%2816%2931941-4/fulltext
https://thinkprogress.org/allowing-transgender-youth-to-transition-improves-their-mental-health-study-finds-dd6096523375/
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/134/4/696
A 2010 meta-analysis of 28 different studies, which found that
transition is extremely effective at reducing dysphoria and improving
quality of life:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2265.2009.03625.x/abstract
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2809058?widget=personalizedcontent&previousarticle=0
> Do you know how many people regret transitioning after the fact?
Yes, as a matter of fact, I do! There are an estimated 1.4 million
transgender adults in the U.S. The most common reason for detransitioning,
according to one survey of 28,000 transgender people, was pressure
from a parent, while only 0.4 percent of respondents said they
detransitioned after realizing transitioning wasn’t right for them.
People that transition, overwhelmingly stay that way and do not
regret their decision.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/media-s-detransition-narrative-fueling-misconceptions-trans-advocates-say-n1102686
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/doi/10.1542/peds.2021-056082/186992/Gender-Identity-5-Years-After-Social-Transition
Studies have found that between 5% and 14% of all women who receive
mastectomies to reduce the risk of developing breast cancer say
they regretted doing so. However, less than 1% of transgender men
who receive the same procedure report regret.
But nobody is proposing that we ban mastectomies for breast cancer patients,
due to the “high” rate of regret!
Knee replacement and hip replacements come in at 17% and 5% for
moderate/severe regret respectively. (58% and 33% for any level
of regret) Should these surgeries be banned?
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jos.2021.10.007
Of everyone who starts transition only 0.4% eventually realize
it’s not what they need. And nearly all of those who realize
transition isn’t right for them, do so soon after starting
transition when physical changes are minimal or nonexistant.
Many don’t regret exploring transition as an option, even if ultimately
it wasn’t right for them.
It is far, *far* more common for people to regret *not* transitioning,
or to regret delaying the start of treatment, than it is to start
that treatment and regret it later.
Only about 6% of trans people get reconstructive genital surgery,
and “regret” rates among surgical patients are consistently found
to be about 1%. This means that of all trans people “surgical regret”
affects only about 0.06%. And nearly all cases of persistent regret
among trans surgical patients aren’t because the patient got surgery
then realized they’re cis, they’re because the surgery went badly.
When people with persistent surgical regret pursue further surgery,
it isn’t to try and give them their original equipment back,
it’s to try and fix what went wrong in the first surgery.
Most cases of persistent surgical regret are people who are
very happy they transitioned, and continue to live as a gender
other than the one they were assigned at birth, but regret that
medical error or bad luck led to sub-optimal surgical results.
Many are even still glad they got surgery, and their lives were
greatly improved by it, but they regret that they didn’t get
the ideal results they were hoping for.
This is a risk in any reconstructive surgery, and a success rate
of about 99% is astonishingly good for any medical treatment–
far better than the success rates for many other common surgeries.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15842032
— regret rate of 0.6%
http://www.amsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/CareOfThePatientUndergoingSRS.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6212091/
— “Regret after gender-affirming surgery is an exceedingly rare event.”
https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf
https://theconversation.com/transgender-regret-research-challenges-narratives-about-gender-affirming-surgeries-220642
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2808129
“Of 139 participants who had top surgery in the US between 1990 and 2020,
median satisfaction score was 5 on a 5-point scale with higher scores
indicating higher satisfaction, and median Decision Regret Scale
score was 0.0 (IQR, 0.0-0.0) on a 100-point scale with lower scores
indicating lower levels of regret.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1122101
https://www.jsm.jsexmed.org/article/S1743-6095(18)30057-2/fulltext#sec3.3
https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262734734_An_Analysis_of_All_Applications_for_Sex_Reassignment_Surgery_in_Sweden_1960-2010_Prevalence_Incidence_and_Regrets
https://epath.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Boof-of-abstracts-EPATH2019.pdf
https://psychiatry.org/news-room/news-releases/study-finds-long-term-mental-health-benefits-of-ge
https://www.genderhq.org/trans-youth-regret-rates-long-term-mental-health
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/
https://www.gendergp.com/exploring-detransition-with-dr-jack-turban/
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0038026120934694
https://segm.org/unknown_gender_transition_regret_rate_adolescents
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/sex-reassignment-outcomes-and-predictors-of-treatment-for-adolescent-and-adult-transsexuals/D000472406C5F6E1BD4E6A37BC7550A4
https://adc.bmj.com/content/107/11/1018
https://doi.org/10.1210/clinem/dgac251
https://www.jsm.jsexmed.org/article/S1743-6095(18)30057-2/fulltext
Here is a statement from Dr. Frank C. Worrell, PhD, president of
the American Psychological Association
“Gender-affirming care promotes the health and well-being of transgender
youth and is provided by medical and mental health professionals,
based on well-established scientific research.”
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2022/02/report-parents-transgender-children
Here is a statement from Dr. Moira Szilagyi, MD, PhD, FAAP, and 2022
president of the American Academy of Pediatrics
“There is strong consensus among the most prominent medical organizations
worldwide that evidence-based, gender-affirming care for transgender
children and adolescents is medically necessary and appropriate.
It can even be lifesaving. The decision of whether and when to
start gender-affirming treatment, which does not necessarily lead
to hormone therapy or surgery, is personal and involves careful
consideration by each patient and their family.”
https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/aap-voices/why-we-stand-up-for-transgender-children-and-teens/
Here is an interview with Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, Distinguished Leadership
Professor of Anesthesiology, Surgery, Biomedical Informatics
& Health Policy at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine,
and president of the AMA
“We simply will not stand for the government coming in to interfere
with the doctor-patient relationship,” such as by passing these laws
that “outlaw what we know to be appropriate, evidence-based clinical
guidelines-based care,” he said.”
https://www.washingtonblade.com/2023/05/10/incoming-ama-president-we-simply-will-not-stand-for-anti-trans-healthcare-restrictions/
Here is a statement from Pediatric Endocrine Society president
Dr. Sharon Oberfield
“This policy goes against the medical evidence which has shown
that these treatments may be lifesaving by improving mental health
and decreasing the risk of suicide in transgender youth.”
https://pedsendo.org/public-policy/response-to-governor-greg-abbotts-directive-regarding-management-of-transgender-children-and-adolescents/
> Google “Chloe Cole”. She is just one of many examples.
I did so, and this is what I found:
https://transdatalibrary.org/person/chloe-cole/
https://www.transgendermap.com/issues/regret/chloe-cole/
Cole is a rare example of a transgender person who has expressed
regret over her transition. Transgender Map has assembled
a timeline based on interviews in which Cole shared her story.
She describes experiencing gender dysphoria beginning around
the age of 9 and coming out to her parents at 12 years old,
leading them to pursue treatment options. By 13, Cole began taking
hormone blockers and started a routine of testosterone injections.
Following sexual assault by a school bully at age 14, she began
wearing a chest binder, eventually culminating in a request for top
surgery with parental consent that was fulfilled one month before
her 16th birthday.
One year later Cole began to express doubts about her transition
and ultimately discontinued hormone therapy.
In a February 2023 interview, Cole expressed that she still struggles
with gender dysphoria. “I don’t necessarily think that it was
a misdiagnosis, I mean, I still struggle with distress relating
to my birth sex to this day, but I think the problem was the course
of treatment that they took,” she asserted.
On February 22, 2023, Cole’s lawyers brought a lawsuit against
Kaiser Permanente, the health care organization which provided
resources for Cole’s transition. The lawsuit argues Kaiser attempted
to railroad her into transitioning, although she was advised against
hormone treatment during initial consultations.
I also found this:
https://www.losangelesblade.com/2022/09/11/california-ex-trans-teen-is-national-right-wing-medias-darling/
“How a Few Stories of Regret Fuel the Push to Restrict Gender Transition Care”
As the Blade has reported, both Boston Children’s and
Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. have issued
statements denying what Cole and Raichik are claiming, and explaining
that the surgeries are only performed with consent and as part
of a long-term gender transition evaluation that includes
mental health professionals.
But in being politically active and denouncing gender-affirming care,
detransitioners and their supporters can cause deliberate harm to trans
and nonbinary youth, something that may be rooted in the suffering
they have experienced or are experiencing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/politics/transgender-care-detransitioners.html
Interviews with others who have detransitioned suggest these activists’
views do not represent the full range of circumstances that drive
people to detransition.
One, Darius Chirila, 26, said he had detransitioned not
because his identity changed but because of side effects
from hormones, uncertainty about taking them indefinitely,
and discomfort with being visibly transgender in the South.
He is considering transitioning again.
Matthew Donovan, 36, a sociology student at Columbia University,
said they detransitioned partly because of community rejection
and economic insecurity, and partly because they realized it was
possible to be nonbinary, which fit better.
And Carey Callahan, 41, who detransitioned about nine years ago
and opposes anti-transgender-rights policies, said the politicization
of detransitioning had made it harder to improve care.
She criticized conservative groups that view her life as “grist”
for their political goals.
“I feel pretty awful that this has been turned into taking more
health care away from people,” she said. “This has always been
an issue of incomplete health care.”
“If physical reality doesn’t match up with my beliefs, my beliefs
are that which must change.”
I absolutely agree with the above statement.
But I would also extend it to *all* of reality: “physical reality”
does not emcompass all of reality (we are neither of
us Materialists!) Otherwise, an atheist materialist could say “God
does not exist in physical reality (God is not a physical object)
therefore your belief in God is false”. But wouldn’t you respond:
God is a spiritual reality and *your* disbelief ought to change
to match that reality.
C.S.Lewis said: “Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality
than sex.” If your beliefs do not match up with this reality,
then your beliefs are that which must change.
Lewis’s belief that “gender is a reality” has been confirmed
over and over again by a vast body of scientific research.
Gender identity is not a choice, or even simply a belief, it is
a recognition of reality (even of *physical* reality according
to recent research about brain structures of transgender people)
but certainly of a spiritual reality.
It is also a “physical reality” that affirming gender care
is helpful, and denying such care is profoundly harmful:
see the multiple peer-reviewed scientific papers above, which are
only a small sample of the total research.
So the question is: are you willing to change your beliefs to match reality?
Yes, I do still feel that way. I think we should not use the H word when the issue is actually an in house issue that faithful Bible believing Christians can disagree on. But not everything is an in house issue. There are things that make or break the Christian faith – essentials. The existence of God, the virgin birth, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the ascension of Jesus to the right hand of The Father to reign as king, the deity of Christ, the doctrine of The Trinity, and others are essential to a Christian worldview. They are clearly spelled out in the Apostles and Nicene creeds.
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Gender Fluidity is honestly a new heresy, so it isn’t condemned in any of the creeds. But I consider it heresy because it fundamentally violates our gendered nature which connects to one’s view of marriage as established in Genesis 2:24. One man, one woman, for life. And as I told Anonymous, it is also a dangerous false teaching that is hurting many. Amir Odom has a great YouTube video on how this ideology is leading many confused children to make life altering decisions they later come to regret. “Why Some People Decide To Detransition”. — https://youtu.be/zWN4N8Gb5YI?si=UUbIqzwKVuKytF64
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Your argument from Genesis is laughable. Yes, there are merisms in the text. The first verse opens with one. But should this lead us to conclude that every pairing of A and B represents a broad spectrum in which A and B are the book ends of everything in between? For one thing, and this is something I meant to have mentioned before, while I am sure the trans people have been around for as long as there have been human beings, gender fluidity as an ideology that has been taken seriously is not something that has been a thing until “5 minutes ago.” if a man claimed to be a woman 4000 years ago, his claim would’ve been taken as seriously as a man who claimed that he was an elephant or a lion. They would’ve laughed him off as a lunatic. And I think that’s why we don’t have this issue discussed in the Bible. Unlike today, people rightly didn’t take claims of men claiming to be women and women, claiming to be a man seriously. Men would have sex with other men and women would have sex with women, that’s why the Bible talks about that. Because that’s something that people did back then. But if a man claimed to be a woman, the simplest thing to do would just be to say “Well, let’s look in your pants.” In its Ancient Near Eastern context, the antecedent probability that the author of Genesis 1 even had this craziness on his radar is astronomically improbable. But, moreover, if God created a whole bunch of people with a whole bunch of genders, then why are there only two people the garden of Eden repeating “male” (Adam) and “female” (Eve)? Where are all of the other people representing all of the other genders? Golly, it’s almost as if the author of Genesis thought there were only two!
//” Paul saying to submit our bodies to the will of The Holy Spirit rather than the desires of the flesh.”
This is what transgender people are doing! They submit their bodies to the will of the Holy Spirit, as revealed through their gender identity (and perhaps also by more direct revelation). Remember that your gender identity is not a choice but a part of who you are created to be. You don’t “choose” it, you discover it.”//
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Bull. The Holy Spirit never commands anyone in scripture to change their gender. You want to know how I discovered my gender identity? I looked down and I saw a penis. Because I’m a rational person. You know how I discovered my species identity? I learned what a freaking human being is. If your gender identity does not match physical reality, then you have miss identified your gender, you are living under a delusion, and you need to be sat straight just as much as if a person believes that his species identity is a freaking giraffe. Because, you know, species and kinds are different.
.
You wrote //”“If physical reality doesn’t match up with my beliefs, my beliefs
are that which must change.”
I absolutely agree with the above statement.
But I would also extend it to *all* of reality: ‘physical reality’ does not emcompass all of reality (we are neither of
us Materialists!) Otherwise, an atheist materialist could say ‘God does not exist in physical reality (God is not a physical object) therefore your belief in God is false’. But wouldn’t you respond: God is a spiritual reality and *your* disbelief ought to change to match that reality.”\\ — This isn’t even an apples to oranges comparison. This is an apples to suspension bridge comparison. I am not a materialist, and I do believe in substance dualism. That doesn’t justify believing delusions. If someone said “I know, physically, I’m a human being, but spiritually I feel like a giraffe, so I’m going to put precedence over this immaterial reality of my girrafe-hood over the physical reality of my humanity”, we would think those people were kooks! Since you think a biological man is right to call himself a woman, and others are bigots if they don’t play along, you do not absolutely agree with my statement “If physical reality doesn’t match up with my beliefs, my beliefs are that which must change.” Because in a possible world in which the physicality of my manhood did not match up with my belief “I am a woman”, you are saying the latter takes precedence. Dualism doesn’t justify this. In fact, things could get complicated depending on one’s view of how the soul is created. If one takes a creationist view of the soul (as opposed to something like traducianism), then one is essentially charging God with error. He knit you together in your mother’s womb, but OOPS! He put a female soul in a male body. OOPS! He put a male soul in a female body! OOPS! So much for divine infallibility.
.
Moreover, you need to stop spamming me with links. I counted 23 links in your most recent comment alone. This is against Rule 5 as the Comment Section Rules page states. https://cerebralfaith.net/comment-section-rules/ I wouldn’t even begin to have the time to read, never mind write a refutation of every single one of those articles you’ve spammed your comments with. I could just as easily spam my own comment with an endless amount of peer reviewed research papers to the contrary. It’s extremely easy to use Google to find sources who agree with what you already believe and then just piggy back on those sources to make your argument for you. This isn’t the same thing as citing a source to back up your claim, or linking to a resource that goes into more depth. I do that all the time not only in my articles, but in comments as well. But when we start shooting a gajillion URLs at each other in substitution for mounting arguments ourselves, this is where fruitful dialogue dies. So I’m only addressing what YOU have said. I’m ignoring any and all URLs going forward. And if you insist, that will result in a second, then a third strike. And then a ban.
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Finally, I just have to tell you that you’re wasting your time. While I’m open to changing my beliefs on the basis of good evidence, I can’t think of anything less plausible than Gender Spectrum ideology. I don’t even consider it worth my time to debate. If this wasn’t on my own personal website, and I could be held accountable by God for people being lead astray by your comments, I wouldn’t even have engaged to the extent I already have. Of all the positions I disagree with, there are VERY VERY few that I find so insane and irrational, that it doesn’t even warrant a second glance. The exhaustive list of such views is (1) Gender Spectrum, (2) The Flat Earth, and (3) Anti-Vaccines. That’s it. And the reason I lump you in with them is because the situation honestly worse than with them. I can’t debunk the flat Earth or the claims of anti-vaxxers by taking my pants off. I can’t show a Young Earth is false (which, btw, I find credible enough to debate on even though it’s extremely implausible) but I can’t refute YEC by just consulting my 5 senses and common sense. Gender Spectrum is honeslty on the lowest rung possible. I think my IQ would have to be immeasurably lower for me to even consider it a credible view that I disagree with. With every other view, theological or political, I can go “I think that’s wrong. I think it’s highly implausible, but I can how an intelligent person could come to that conclusion for the reasons typically given.” Young Earth Creationism and Atheism have a leg up on gEnDeR fLuIdItY. I want to reiterate that I don’t hate trans people. I don’t even hate cis people like you who push this woke ideology. But I would rather be arguing with an atheist over the reliability of the gospels or the problem of evil, or arguing with a YEC over how to intepret Genesis 1, or even the morality of homosexuality with a Progressive “Christian” (like yourself) or non-Christians. Even debating the nature of communion with a Catholic seems like more worth my time. From my perspective, all my life I’ve believed the sky is blue and you’re sitting here trying to convince me that it’s really red. Or even worse, that it changes colors on a daily basis based on how you feel. I don’t take it seriously. But I have the unfortunate feeling that as a Christian Apologist, having these types of discussions is going to become more common in the future.
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You are probably a sincere, yet gullible young woman (18-25?) who has been brain washed by her woke professors, or maybe just spent too much time on the wrong side of TikTok. Or a bit of both. I bare no ill will towards you, and I don’t think you’re purposefully maliciously trying to undermine God’s created order (Ephesians 6:10). But it is my prayer that God wakes you up. The enemy has you under a deep deception. The only reason I have humored you is for the sake of others who might be gullible enough to believe this crap. I don’t want God to hold me accountable on judgment day for letting your comments stand unchallenged and people being mislead as a result. It would have been all too easy for me to just not let your comments go through, but I don’t play the censorship game. Unless you’ve broken one of the 5 comment section rules 3 consecutive times, you can say pretty much anything you want and I’ll approve it no matter how strongly I may disagree with it.
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Since I am writing for the sake of others, I would encourage people to check out Michael Jones of Inspiring Philosophy (especially on TikTok, because it’s TikTok where he deals with the wildest of claims), Alisa Childers, Melissa Dougherty on YouTube. They deal with the BS of Progressive Christianity. Childers specializes in it. Amir Odom, a YouTuber, while not a Christian, does make videos debunking leftist claims, which does overlap with theology sometimes as is the case in gender identity. Ultimately, don’t be like Mary. Please take a course on hermeneutics and check everything the culture says against the word of God, applying those rules of hermenuetics. I say this because as Mary has demonstrated (shoot, as Satan demonstrated in Matthew 4), one can easily twist the scriptures to make it suit their own agendas. The Sword of The Spirit can easily be a weapon in the hands of the devil if we’re not careful. I have a whole series on hermenuetics on this blog called “Hermenuetics 101” if you’d like to check that out.
You have decided that acknowledging the reality of gender is
a heresy now? You need to update your “Theological Beliefs”
page to add this to “The Essentials”!
The Anglican Church welcomes transgender people with
“unconditional affirmation”: so they are all heretics.
The Methodist Conference “aims to help churches and individuals better
understand gender diversity, and to encourage churches to welcome,
recognise and affirm people who are transgender, intersex or
gender diverse” (Module 5.2 Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit).
So I suppose Methodists are all heretics too.
The United Reformed Church also supports transgender people,
so they are heretics.
Which denominations do you consider to be non-heretical?
Whatever happened to “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved”
and “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe
in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”?
(Notice that it is “what you believe in your heart” that counts,
not your external appearance or behaviour)
However, I seem to be having great difficulty explaining the difference
between sex and gender in a way that you can understand, because you
are still completely missing the point.
Let me try again.
“Sex” is a property of the physical body. There are different
definitions of sex which are useful for different purposes:
chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, hormonal sex, phenotypic sex etc. These
definitions can give different results, for example a woman with CAIS
will have XY chromosomes and so be a “chromosomal male”, while being
a gonadal and phenotypic female. A genetic chimera could have both XX
and XY chromosomes and so be, chromosomally, both male and female.
Their gonads, genitals and so on could be either male or female
or a combination of both, depending on which initial cells
had which chromosomes.
Scientifically, sex is a spectrum between male, intersex and female
with up to 1.7% of people being intersex in some form or another.
“Gender” is a property of the mind/soul/spirit. It refers to our
internal sense of who we are and how we see and describe ourselves.
Gender is fixed at a very early stage and cannot be changed.
Attempts to force a change in gender (eg to match the sex
assigned at birth) can be very harmful and the UN has declared
that it “amounts to torture”. Transgender people do *not* want
to “switch genders”: that is the point. It is the transphobes
who attempt to force the transgender person to change their gender
to the gender that the transphobe thinks that they “ought” to be:
the one which aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth.
But as C.S.Lewis said “Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental
reality than sex.”
A transgender woman knows that their sex is male, by definition.
No transgender woman claims that their sex is female!
If they did, then the would be claiming to be a cisgender woman,
not asserting that they are a transgender woman.
The very fact that they are transgender, and know they are transgender,
means that they know their *sex* was male and their *gender* is female.
Similarly a transgender man knows that their sex was female,
and their gender is male.
Sex can be changed: which means that many transgender women have
vaginas and breasts and female hormone levels, while many transgender
men have a penis, a flat chest, male hormone levels and beards.
But medical transition is not necessary: it should depend on
the individual’s informed choice.
God is spirit and does not have a physical body, so God does not have a sex.
But God is clearly revealed as gendered: Yahweh is masculine,
the Holy Spirit is feminine and so on. Human gender in all its diversity
is part of the image of God who includes all genders (Gen 1:27)
Jesus became incarnate as a human male, so his sex was male.
But now, *we* are the body of Christ, and individually members of it,
so the body of Christ today includes all sexes and all genders.
The sex/gender distinction is a reality, and a scientific consensus,
and no amount of your saying “its a delusion” will change the fact.
You say “I’m open to changing my beliefs on the basis of good evidence”,
but then deliberately refuse to engage with any of the evidence!
“I could just as easily spam my own comment with an endless amount of peer
reviewed research papers to the contrary” This is factually incorrect.
There is a very strong scientific consensus on the value of
affirming treatment. You would find it difficult to find *any*
peer reviewed scientific papers which give evidence that affirming
treatment is harmful.
Cornell conducted a systematic literature review of all peer-reviewed
articles published in English between 1991 and June 2017 that assess
the effect of gender transition on transgender well-being.
They identified 55 studies that consist of primary research on
this topic, of which 51 (93%) found that gender transition improves
the overall well-being of transgender people, while 4 (7%) report mixed
or null findings. They found *no* studies concluding that gender
transition causes overall harm.
Transition as medically necessary and the only effective
treatment for dysphoria is recognized by every major US and
world medical authority (citations available).
Transgender children who grow up in a non-affirming environment
have a higher than 50% chance of attempted suicide.
Trans people who are able to transition young and are spared abuse
and discrimination have mental health and suicide risks on par
with the general public (citations available).
These are verifiable, and verified, facts of reality.
No amount of saying “affirmation is harmful” will change the reality.
To take another example: you asked me “Do you know how many people
regret transitioning after the fact?” I expect you thought this was
a real “Gotcha!” question, because you have been told over and over
and over again that there are “many” people who regret transition.
The transphobes who keep on beating the drum about how many people regret
transition never give the actual (peer reviewed scientific) figures.
They also conflate detransition with surgical regret with wanting
their original bits back.
The (scientifically verified) fact is that the most common reason
for detransitioning is pressure from a parent, while only 0.4 percent
detransitioned after realizing transitioning wasn’t right for them.
And nearly all of those who realize transition isn’t right for them,
do so soon after starting transition when physical changes are minimal
or nonexistant. Many don’t regret exploring transition as an option,
even if ultimately it wasn’t right for them.
Only 6% of trans people get reconstructive genital surgery, and “regret”
rates among surgical patients are consistently found to be about
or less 1%. This means that of all trans people “surgical regret”
affects only about 0.06%. And nearly all cases of persistent regret
among trans surgical patients aren’t because the patient got surgery
then realized they’re cis, they’re because the surgery went badly.
When people with persistent surgical regret pursue further surgery,
it isn’t to try and give them their original equipment back,
it’s to try and fix what went wrong in the first surgery.
It is a scientific fact that *far* more people regret *not* transitioning,
or regret delaying the start of treatment, than start treatment
and regret it later.
So to use “transition regret” as a reason to ban treatment is to cause
serious harm to children. It is to deny literally life-saving
health care for purely dogmatic reasons.
“Because in a possible world in which the physicality of my manhood
did not match up with my belief “I am a woman”, you are saying
the latter takes precedence.”
Here is a little thought experiment for you to try:
Suppose you were involved in an accident and your body was destroyed,
but the medics managed to rescue your brain in time and they
transplanted it into a female body.
When you woke up, would you think “I am the man Evan Minton in a
female body”, would you want people to call you Even and to continue
to use male pronouns and treat you in the same way as before.
Or would you think “I am clearly, physically, a woman” and change
your name, pronouns, dress, behaviour and so on to match.
Perhaps you would find a nice man to marry and be a good wife to him.
You might even think “Wow! This is great!” and realise it was
what you always were inside, but had always avoided the question.
If it is the first, then you will have some small inkling into
what it is like to be a trans man forced to endure female puberty.
If it is the second or third, then maybe you need to look a little
deeper into your own gender identity: you don’t have to wait until
brain transplants are a reality!
Or perhaps the reason you have such difficulty with the concept of gender
is because your gender is “agender”. You, personally, simply do not have
“an internal sense of who you are and how you see and describe yourself”.
So when other people do have this internal sense, you think they
*must* be deluded.
It’s OK: agender is a perfectly valid gender identity:
Agender is a gender identity generally defined as one who lacks
a gender or has very little experience of a gender. It can be seen
either as a non-binary gender identity or as a statement of not
having a gender identity.
You just have to realise that not everyone is like you,
and actually engage with the scientific evidence despite
its clash with your personal experience.
Ancient Greeks only had experience of lands in which the sun rose and set
in each 24 hour period. Pytheas, a Greek geographer and astronomer,
claimed to have sailed to an island six days north of Scotland.
Eventually he came to a “congealed sea” and a place where the summer
sun never set. Most people did not believe his reports.
(“”The Northern Circumpolar World”, Bob MacQuarrie)
His report seemed “insane and irrational” to them because it disagreed
with their past experience. If we reject anything that disagrees
with what we have experienced so far, then science will cease
to make progress.
I would be very interested in the results of the thought experiment.
Yeah, the modern Methodist church isn’t exactly what I’d call theologically sound. John Wesley would be spinning in his grave.
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Let me just say one more thing before I stop commenting for good. I could probably take it a little more seriously if you folks were making the more modest claim that a man could believe that he is a woman, and in order to make himself feel better. He needs to biologically transition to the other sex through surgery. And once he does, so, he has a woman. I would still disagree that you can change your gender even through surgery. Again, our gender is so ingrained into our physicality that it’s even in our skeletons. If someone were to discover my skeleton 3000 years from now, the paleontologist would conclude that I am a man. Because men have different skeletal structures than women. But I digress. I remember as kid, a transgender person was not called by what gender they “identified” as unless and until they transitioned. Like Bruce Jenner or Cher’s daughter. This is a more reasonable stance to take as it still recognizes that gender is grounded in your biology. Granted, whether a man can essentially turn himself into a woman or vice versa is debatable, but I would take this older and weaker claim more seriously than the position that a man is a woman even if he still has all of the parts that only men have. Moreover, back in the day, there wasn’t this nonsense of “more than two genders.” Old school transgenderism was about switching between male and female. Again, debatable, but that’s a more reasonable position than modern day transgender philosophy. I miss the days when Leela on Futurama shouting “You’re going to embarrass us in front of all the other genders” was taken as a joke because everyone had this shared universal common sense knowledge that humans at least came in only one of two genders.
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If you leftists (And Progressive Christians) were still making these more modest and weaker claims like you were in the 90s in 2000s, I would disagree, but I would not say that you’re so irrational that you don’t deserve a seat at the intellectual table. But now you’ve made up about as many genders as there are Pokémon, and what we biologically are doesn’t determine whether we fit any of them. That’s why I keep going back to the rhetorical question “What if I self identified as a gorilla or a giraffe?” Why stop at just gender? Why not extend that to other areas where biology was traditionally considered to be the determining factor as to what you were? You haven’t seriously engaged with this. Part of it was rhetorical, but part of it has is sincere. Why stop at just gender? Why can’t someone “self identity” across ethnicities, across species, even?
.
The thought experiment you gave blends into this idea of my rejection of even old school transgender philosophy. If I were involved in such an accident and somebody transitioned me into a woman against my will, I would not think that I was a woman, unless I could be given scientific proof that the scientist were able to change absolutely everything that previously determined me as a man. Not just my genitals, not just my deep, male voice, but my skeletal structure, my chromosomes, so that there is absolutely no residual evidence remaining that I was ever at any time a man. Transgender surgery cannot do this. It can’t change you at the molecular and skeletal level. It’s basically just being a transvestite with some radical extra steps.
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“You said perhaps the reason you have such difficulty with the concept of gender
is because your gender is ‘agender’ You, personally, simply do not have ‘an internal sense of who you are and how you see and describe yourself'” umm…no. I am not a-gender. I am a male. I didn’t determine this, I discovered this. Boys (males) have penises, girls (females) have vaginas. I have the former. Therefore, I am a male. If some mad scientists transitioned me without my consent, I’d be a hybrid since, as I said, you can’t full alter your gender through surgery. Maybe some day if science becomes advanced enough. Heck, if science becomes advanced enough, people might be able to morph into cats. Who knows? But for right now, it’s impossible.
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And as for children, when they are adults, they can do with their bodies whatever they want. If by the age of 18, they are still are experiencing gender dysphoria, and truly believe that transitioning is the only way to make themselves feel better, then I think that they are wrong, but they are also adults who are free to make their own decisions, right or wrong. But we rightly recognize that children are too young to consent to certain things, like drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes or having sex. There seems to be a disconnect here. We can tell minors that they can’t do certain things with their genitals, but they have the right to decide whether or not they want to chop their genitals off as early as 5 years old. And I agree that kids should not be having sex or smoking cigarettes until they are 18. Don’t think that I am disputing the age of consent here. But that is exactly my point. Children are not mature enough to make big decisions like that. And sometimes children are just confused. Amir Odom, the center right conservative commentator I mentioned, in his video reacting to transgender people who regretted transitioning, he mentioned his own personal story of thinking as a child that he must’ve been a girl because he was attracted to guys. The fact is that he’s gay. But his reasoning in his child mind was, as he said it in his own words “I am attracted to guys. I must be a girl because girls like guys.” Actually, he is a – what you would call “CIS” – gay man. But imagine if Amir had woke leftists parents. Today, he would probably be among those people who regret transitioning. Can we at least agree to not mutilate the bodies of children? Can we at least agree that people should wait until they’re 18 before they make such a life-changing decision? Because sometimes these feelings go away, and sometimes they don’t. Wouldn’t it seem wise to wait and see? I mean, gay people and tom boys exist. A child might not be transgender, but just an effiminate boy or a rough and tumble girl. Yet your kind fill their heads with all sorts of ideas that just because they don’t fit into some gender stereotypes they must belong to the other gender. They believe you, and mad scientists – I I mean “doctors” – then transition them to that gender. They later come to regret it because they didn’t actually have gender dysphoria. Now, some of these kids do. But again, shouldn’t we wait and see so that we can bring the number of these transition regrets from whatever percentage it might be to 0%? Or as close to 0% as we can possibly get? I honestly feel like I’m living in a topsy turvy world talking to you people.
The Genesis 1 creation story is structured as a series of merisms
celebrating the immense diversity and variety of God’s creation.
Wherever we look in God’s creation , as described here, we see diversity,
blurred boundaries, gray areas, and a lack of rigid binaries.
There are no fixed boundaries between light and dark, land and sea,
fish and birds, or, for that matter, male and female. Physical sex
is a spectrum, including a wide variety of intersex types.
Diversity is a feature of every part of God’s creation,
and gender and sex are no different from any other part
in this respect.
Transphobes have to rip Gen 1:27 out of context and interpret it
in a way that clashes with the rest of the poem before they can claim
that sex is a binary. But they have to use *this* verse in this way,
because there aren’t any other verses they can use!
Gender diversity can be seen throughout history in countries
around the world, including the Hijra people of South Asia,
the Yoruba in Nigeria, the two-spirited Lhamana people,
the Travesti in South Americs, the Femminiello in Italy, kocek in the
Ottoman Empire, Ashtime in Mali, Whakawahine and Wakatane Maori, Mahu
in Hawaii, the bissu and Waria in Indonesia, Muxe in Mexico,
the sekrata in Madagascar, Bakla in the Philippines, the Navajo Dine,
transmasculine and transfeminine people in pre-colonised Brazil
and so on. Gender diversity has been around forever!
This is the “physical reality” that our ideas need to conform to.
But in many of these places, colonisers saw this diversity
as a challenge to the strict gender hierarcy in their society:
where men are superior and rule over inferior women, and white men
rule over other “inferior” races. So they made great efforts
to stamp out gender non-conforming groups.
Is Genesis 2:24 prescriptive (what *every* marriage should
consist of) or *descriptive* (a typical marriage is like this)?
Genesis 1:28 commands “be fruitful and multiply” and many people
oppose gay marriage because a gay couple cannot have children.
But is having children an essential part of marriage?
What about heterosexual couples who can’t have children–
can they still marry? Or if you do marry and then discover
you can’t have children, do you have to get divorced?
In the Mishnah, one saying insisted that if a couple had no children
after ten years, the the husband was obliged to divorce his wife!
Philo argued that marrying someone you knew to be infertile made
you an enemy of God.
It used to be quite common (and it may be becoming more common)
that a married couple would live with one of the couple’s parents
for a while while they saved up enough to get a place of their own.
It would be absurd to say “I’m sorry son, I know you’re newly
married and you’ve nowhere to go, but you’ll have to leave.
That’s what it says in Genesis!”.
This is why it makes more sense to see Genesis as being descriptive
rather than prescriptive.
In Genesis 2:18 God declares “It is not good for the human
to be alone”: a suitable companion was needed to be a partner.
How then can the church stand in the way of people now who have found
a suitable companion or partner, no matter the gender?
Nobody is doing gender confirmation surgery on children as young
as five: this is a lie that has been debunked over and over
again but still keeps being propagated by transphobes.
Incidentally: I see that there are several areas where you have
been taught false information, some of which you have worked through
or are currently working through: the “traditional” view of hell,
evolution and the age of the earth, the role of women in leadership,
the benefits of affirming care for transgender people,
the history of sex and gender diversity and so on.
I would be more careful about where you get your information from
if this is the kind of stuff they are feeding you!
Celeste Irwin writes: “Information Control, a core tactic of high
control groups identified by Steven Hassan, is nearly total
when it comes to LGBTQ+ people, such that an evangelical church,
or indeed the broader sphere of white American evangelicalism,
will never be threatened by their presence. The only exposure
many sitting in those pews have to transgender people, or even
gay people, are the blatant misinformation coming from their pastor
or other influencers.
“I want to pause here and beg the non-affirming among you to consider
whether you are absolutely sure that this time is different.
That *this time* exclusion and demonization are truly needed.
And you must understand as you say it that all of the white supremacists,
patriarchists, and antisemites before you have said exactly those words:
“This time, we’re right.”
https://www.celestefinally.com/p/spiritual-abuse-of-queer-people
The same groups that protest about consensual gender-affirming
surgery have no objections to non-consensual surgery, that is not
medically necessary, when it is inflicted on intersex babies.
Since the mid-twentieth century, many U.S. physicians have
considered intersex status in infants a “psychosocial emergency”
and performed “normalizing” or “reconstructive” genital surgery without
considering non-surgical alternatives (letting the child discover
their gender and sex identity for themselves). When deciding whether
to assign the intersex infant “male” or “female,” the factors typically
considered are potential for fertility and sexual penetration.
These surgeries still continue in the U.S. today despite being
medically unnecessary (that is, chiefly cosmetic) and potentially
injurious to the patient’s sexual pleasure.
The non-consensual surgeries inflicted on intersex babies,
in order to enforce a rigid gender binary is a Procrustean
theory which (literally) chops and slices bodies, without their
consent, to fit the gender binary theory.
In July 2017, Human Rights Watch and interACT published a report
on medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex children, “I Want
to Be Like Nature Made Me”, based on interviews with intersex persons,
families and physicians.
Upon his inauguration on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump issued an
executive order which directed the US federal government to replace
all uses of gender, including passports, with a new legal category
of biological sex from the time of conception, and to only recognize
two biological sexes based on size of gametes produced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
On the other hand, affirming and consesual treatment is liberating
and freeing and brings forth “good fruit” (Mt 7:18, Lk 6:43).
“Amir Odom, mentioned his own personal story of thinking as a child
that he must’ve been a girl because he was attracted to guys.
The fact is that he’s gay.”
The way to avoid this situation is to provide clear and age-appropriate
teaching about gender identity, gender expression, gender attraction
and anatomical sex to all children from an early age so that they
can discover for themselves whether they are gay and/or trans
or non-binary and so on. But the current US administration wants
to ban this teaching!
“I would not think that I was a woman, unless I could be given
scientific proof that the scientist were able to change absolutely
everything that previously determined me as a man.”
In the thought experiment, absolutely everything (apart from your brain)
has changed: your entire body has been replaced by an cicgender
female body. Your chromosomes everywhere (outside your brain)
are XX, your skeletal structure is female you have functioning ovaries
a womb, a vagina, fully formed breasts and hormones that naturally
stay within the normal female levels.
Would you now happily think of yourself as a woman?
Find a nice man to marry and have children with, and so on?
Does the fact that you still have your “male brain” (if there
is such a thing) make any difference?
The purpose of the thought experiment is to help you answer the question:
Do you in fact have “an internal sense of who you are and how you
see and describe yourself” or not?