Book Review: The Body God Gives
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Theology used to be considered “queen of the sciences.” Universities recognized that God’s Word is the lens through which we rightly see the world and practice other disciplines. Today, theology has been dethroned in what are now secular universities.
Robert Smith’s task in The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory elevates theology (and, by extension, what he calls theo-anthropology and theo-ethics) back to its rightful place. Recognizing that we look at God’s works through His words, he critiques how sexuality and gender have been warped in history and culture and searches Scripture to see what God’s intentions are. Where many other books that assess gender ideology are short (e.g. Affirming God’s Image by Alan Branch), secular (e.g. Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier), historical (e.g. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman), or written in laymen’s language (e.g. God and the Transgender Debate by Ryan T. Anderson), Smith’s book is a carefully researched theological, historical, and philosophical examination of the issue.
Sexuality and Gender in History and Culture
Smith spends his entire book refuting and debunking the central claims of transgender theory: “that the sexed body does not determine the gendered self” (3), that “everyone has an inner gender identity… [t]hat determines whether you are a man or a woman (or neither); and human societies are obliged to recognize and legally protect gender identity, not biological sex” (16-17). Those are the truth claims of gender ideology.
Although he doesn’t quite use this language, Smith comes very close to accusing purveyors of gender ideology of idolatry. The “conviction that the attribution of qualities (like sex or gender) to human bodies has effect only through language… verges on the supernatural, effectively granting God-like, body-forming powers to human words” (139). Christians confess that only God can create ex nihilo, out of nothing, through his Word. Gender ideologues confess that human beings create everything out of nothing but their words.
Smith chronicles the rise of feminist, transgender, and queer theory. He describes the influence of one of the original second-wave feminists, Simone de Beauvoir, who “effectively cemented the conceptual distinction between sex and gender” (102). He references John Money, a professor of pediatrics and medical psychology at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, who coined terms like “gender role” and “gender identity.” UCLA psychiatry professor Robert Stoller further differentiated between gender, gender role, and gender identity. Judith Butler, the famed third-wave feminist and queer writer, argued that, rather than sex being the foundation of gender, it is actually the other way around. Because we are all embedded in relationships, languages, and cultures, Butler argues, there are no objective realities, only constructs. For Butler, all reality – including how we think of sex – is filtered through this lens.
In response, Smith argues that “the sexed body reveals and determines the gendered self, and as a consequence, should ground gender identity, guide gender roles, and govern gender expression” (14).
If you’re struggling to keep up, you’re not alone. It may be far simpler – and more accurate – just to abandon all these terms and insist on one: sex. If the gender ideologues depend on language so much to keep their ideology afloat, why not cut them off at the knees and deny that there is anything other than sex? That is what Billboard Chris says when he tours cities around the world, wearing billboards with simple slogans like “children cannot consent to puberty blockers.” He simply proclaims that there are only two sexes, zero genders, and infinite personalities.
Smith believes that it is advantageous to distinguish gender from sex, defining gender as “the culturally mediated set of conceptions, expectation, and roles with being either male or female” (152). While most of the physical manifestations of our sex are unalterable (e.g. our chromosomes or genitals), we have some agency over how we express our gender. Drawing a distinction between the two can soften what would otherwise be rigid gender stereotypes (e.g. only girls like pink). The distinction also recognizes that our interactions with other people shape how we practice our gender in a way that biological sex does not. Despite seeing advantages to differentiating between sex and gender, Smith is adamant that we must anchor our understanding of gender in sex. He writes, “Sex, then, is the foundation; gender is the construction that rests on (and can only rest on) that foundation” (167).
Sexuality and Gender in the Bible
After looking at what our contemporary culture says about sex and gender, Smith turns to the ultimate authority: the Bible. Smith confesses that “human knowledge is necessarily dependent on divine revelation” (43). He affirms what Reformed Christians confess in Article 2 of the Belgic Confession, that God reveals himself – and all truth – in two sources: “general revelation (i.e., God’s self-disclosure in his works) and special revelation (i.e., God’s self-disclosure in his words)” (45). Since we see the truth most clearly in God’s Word, and cannot interpret general revelation without it, His Word must be our primary guide.
Smith devotes several chapters to unpacking what the opening chapters of Genesis say on the topic “because of the foundational significance of these chapters for the Bible’s sexual anthropology” and “because of the way in which the other acts of the biblical drama build on and interact with these chapters” (174).
Smith starts by asking how being created male and female reflects the image of God (Gen. 1:27). His answer is that “sexual dimorphism is the mode of the divine image, rather than its meaning” (205). In other words, the fact that human beings are male and female are two different ways of expressing the same image of God.
Just because males and females both bear the image of God, however, doesn’t mean they are the same. The phrase “a helper fit for him” in Genesis 2:18, Smith explains, means more like “corresponding” to him, literally “like opposite him.” This correspondence between the sexes is obvious in how human reproductive systems are designed to fit and function together or how the different parenting styles of mother and father both uniquely provide something to their child. Although Smith doesn’t go into detail about how this differentiation works out in the actions of men and women, he does note that the man is “primarily turned toward ‘the world of things’ and the woman primarily turned toward ‘the world of persons’” (237).
Smith also emphasizes that “sexed embodiment is foundational to personal identity” (209) and that “to be human is to be embodied and to be embodied is to be sexed” (215). This emphasis is needed because gender ideology falls prey to a form of Gnosticism which suggests that two parts of the human person – the body and the soul – can be in tension or even conflict with one another and that it is possible for a male soul to inhabit a female body. Despite recognizing that someone can genuinely feel that way, Smith argues from Scripture that it is impossible. We are “integral personal-spiritual-physical wholes” (219) and cannot be at war with ourselves.
Thus, not only is our gender founded in our sex, but so too is our gender identity. This identity is not something chosen by man but received from God. “The central finding of this book” is that “God’s desire for my gender – that is, whether I should perceive and present myself as a man or a woman – is revealed by the design of my body” (275). “By this measure, medical transitioning is ethically indefensible (277).
Sexuality and the Marriage Relationship
Smith explores the meaning and mystery of marriage as well. After Genesis 1 and 2 describe the creation of male and female, the final verses of Genesis 2 describe the marriage of man and woman. While noting that “the Old Testament has no technical language for marriage or marrying” (247), the institution of marriage is obvious in the description that “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). This becoming “one flesh” is a descriptor of sexual intercourse, but as the apostle Paul notes that one can become one flesh with a prostitute (1 Corinthians 6:16), Smith notes that the only proper place for “one flesh” relationships is within marriage.
Thus, marriage is by definition heterosexual. “Marriage” between members of the same sex not only violates the creational pattern in Genesis 1 and 2 and the various commands against homosexuality across the Bible, but also the “eschatological marriage of Christ and the church” (264). Human marriage is ultimately a picture of the relationship between Christ and his church.
But, of course, mankind didn’t remain sinless in their created gender and sexuality. Smith compares the devil’s original temptation of Eve to the “transgender temptation”: “(1) doubt about the goodness or reality of one’s sexed body; (2) resentment regarding the fact or appearance of one’s body; (3) unbelief regarding the rightness of the God-given body or one’s ability to be reconciled to it; (4) desire for a different body or to be a different sex; and (5) disobedience in the form of cross-gender identification or cross-sex presentation” (292).
God’s curses on humanity at the Fall are also gender specific. Women would have pain in childbirth and wives would rebel against the authority of husbands (Genesis 3:16). And men, who Smith says are “primarily turned toward ‘the world of things’” (237), will have burdensome toil in their dominion over the ground.
Moving forward in the biblical story towards the redemption of human gender and sexuality, Smith discusses how biblical laws (such as Deuteronomy 22:5’s prohibition against cross dressing and 23:1’s exclusion of eunuchs from the assembly of God) aim to guard against gender confusion and mutilating the body, with obvious application today. Likewise, Paul’s denunciation of the “effeminate” in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and discussion of head coverings and hair styles in 1 Corinthians 11 also point to the fact that “Christians are to ‘do gender’ (particularly, but not only, in public worship) in a way that signals their grateful recognition of both God-given sex differences and the particularity of their own biologically determined sex” (346). Rather than working against creation, Smith repeats several times that “our present task is to work with the grain of creation” (321).
Finally, in the consummate life to come, Smith re-affirms our sexed identity. While marriage and arguably sexual intercourse will be absent from heaven (Matthew 22:30), Smith argues that we will retain our sexual and gender identity in the resurrection as these facets are core to human existence. “We may be confident not only that fallen gendered stereotypes will disappear but also that true gendered archetypes will remain” (365). This contrasts with some queer theologians who try to argue that we will be androgynous, sex-less beings in heaven.
Conclusion
The Body God Gives is important reading for any Christian who wants (or needs) to have a solid biblical and philosophical response to gender ideology. By surveying what our culture says about gender and sexuality and examining what the creation-fall-redemption-consummation narrative of Scripture says, Smith brings clarity to an issue that so many people today are confused about. “The sexed body reveals and determines the gendered self and, as a consequence, should ground gender identity, guide gendered roles, and govern gender expression” (14).
