In which our regular writers toss around
subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The Nashville Statement is a significant evangelical document. It’s an attempt by big names such as
John Piper, R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, Russell Moore, James Dobson and
others to formulate a written response to Western culture’s post-Christian “massive
revision of what it means to be a human being”, especially as that revision
relates to sexuality and marriage.
Significant though it may be, in our next few installments we’ll be discussing why, here
at ComingUntrue, we’re Not Going to Nashville.
Tom: You pointed out last time around, IC, that
Articles 5 through 7 of the Nashville Statement are related, so I thought
we’d consider them together.
Article 5: Biological Sex and Self-Conception
ARTICLE 5
WE AFFIRM that the differences between male and female reproductive structures are integral to God’s design for self-conception as male or female.
WE DENY that physical anomalies or psychological conditions nullify the God-appointed link between biological sex and self-conception as male or female.
So basically distinguishing between
“gender” and “sex” are out of court for Christians. I agree, actually, but I
wish they had pointed to some specifics.
Article 6: Physical Disorders and Fruitful Living
ARTICLE 6
WE AFFIRM that those born with a physical disorder of sex development are created in the image of God and have dignity and worth equal to all other image-bearers. They are acknowledged by our Lord Jesus in his words about “eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb.” With all others they are welcome as faithful followers of Jesus Christ and should embrace their biological sex insofar as it may be known.
WE DENY that ambiguities related to a person’s biological sex render one incapable of living a fruitful life in joyful obedience to Christ.
And here’s the last of this triad:
Article 7: Self-Conception Should Follow Biology and Theology
ARTICLE 7
WE AFFIRM that self-conception as male or female should be defined by God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption as revealed in Scripture.
WE DENY that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.
Immanuel Can: I actually think this Article 5 was designed to cover two things.
Psychological and Physiological
Firstly, they speak of “psychological conditions”, the liberal objection that says
that people cannot decide to whom they will be attracted, and thus that
genitalia cannot be indicators of rightful sexual preference — here they
are warming up for Article 7. Secondly, what they call “physiological anomalies”,
meaning the protestation that there are extraordinary circumstances, like those
in which, through birth defect or trauma, people’s sexual organs are
undeveloped, mangled through sex-reassignment surgery, or destroyed by some
accident — and in this they are rolling into Article 6.
Tom: Right. Now, this
is a relatively new thing, and we shouldn’t miss it. I didn’t initially grasp
it because it’s so bizarre. But the contention of progressives today is that
gender and sex are different things. In their view you can be born physically
male (your “sex”) but think of yourself as female, or male, or gender-fluid, or
a baby unicorn, or whatever (your “gender”).
Do
you want to explain where that comes from? In the English language, “gender” and “sex” were once essentially synonymous. Or we used “gender” to label French nouns …
Biological Sex and Genesis
Immanuel Can: I can’t say who
started it or when. But I can see why. The normal solution to questions of
sex-attraction is that males are attracted to females, and females to males.
(There are other constraints as well, of course, such as age and relationship,
but those are basic norms, biologically and historically). By denying these
norms, the sexual-deviant set are attempting to say that we can no longer use
biological sex to tell us about normalcy or sin, about right and wrong sexual
development and activity. Instead, we are left in a vacuum, wherein simply
being attracted to someone or something is treated as normalizing
in itself.
Tom: Now, Genesis plainly states that
“Male and female he created them,” and that this condition of things was literally “blessed”. The Lord Jesus
reinforces this in Matthew. But that’s not simply a statement about different reproductive
structures, is it? God was not merely enthusing about externals when he blesses
his creations and calls them “Man”. It is the entirety of maleness and
femaleness that God is blessing, and that includes the psychological and
emotional and spiritual components, not just the physical.
You Complete Me …
IC: Absolutely. And
something else was built into that: namely, that men and women should not be
self-sufficient and intrinsically complete. Instead, that they should become
who they ought to be by learning to give up their instinctive biases and
predispositions as a sex, and to take on the obligation of learning to live in
an understanding way with counterpart human beings compatible — but not
too compatible — with them. That is one divine discipline that we are
all refusing today.
One
of the follies of our age is to imagine that men are made complete by being
nothing but themselves and pleasing nothing but themselves … or worse, by
catering to each other; and that women are complete without men, whether for
meaning, or caring, or procreation or any other function of the feminine that
is stressed by learning to live with a man. As Gloria Steinem famously put it,
“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
Tom: Agreed. Male and female are complementary parts of the divine design, and our failure to recognize the necessity for both perspectives speaks poorly of us as a culture.
What Happens to the Exceptions?
But
it now becomes necessary to consider the exceptions, because there ARE
exceptions. Taking into account all the various possibilities — ambiguous
genitalia, hermaphroditism, etc. — we’re talking about 1 in 100 live births. But only one or two of these in 1,000 actually receive reassignment surgery;
the reason being that rarely are doctors dealing with two sets of
fully-developed genitalia. Further, even with a search engine, finding a single
documented example of a hermaphrodite with two fully-functioning sets of genitalia
is next to impossible. Some speculate they don’t exist. The maleness or
femaleness of most babies with ambiguities or extras is sufficiently obvious
that no real sexual confusion would usually exist — that is, until our
society elected to actively promote it.
Thus
physical anomalies seriously impact somewhere between one tenth of
one percent and one fifth of one percent of the population.
That’s not a big number, but it’s not nothing. Do you think the Nashville
Statement treats these folk biblically and respectfully, IC? They have been
genuinely “born this way”, no argument.
IC: Well, I think
genetics help us out there. Literally every cell in a woman’s body is female by
chromosome pairs. And literally every cell in a man’s body is likewise
male … with the notable exception of a few of his sperm. So we can always
tell what a person really is biologically — and that’s why the
opposition has shifted ground and started to claim that gender and sex aren’t
the same: genetics are against them.
Tom: Awkward.
IC: But I have
nothing but sympathy for those born with a physiological abnormality. The
biggest kindness we can do to them is to identify their basic genetic structure
for them, so that they have a solid starting point for discovering their
identity. To deny their basic genetic nature and thus confuse them about their
“real” gender would be one of the unkindest things a person could do
to them.
Psychological Abnormalities
Tom: Absolutely. Now,
the Statement also deals with psychological conditions. You and I would agree
with them, I think, that true, God-given identity follows biology regardless of what a person’s
head is telling him at the moment. As to the scriptural teaching on that; it
seems self-evidently part of the male-or-female set of options designed in by
God at the beginning. Deuteronomy also teaches that women should dress like
women and men like men; anything else is abominable. And Paul teaches that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God, and he
includes among these those who are malakos, meaning “soft” or “effeminate”. The same
term was used by the Greeks to describe submissive homosexuals.
So
however human beings may think of themselves when they’re not thinking right,
it’s evident we’re not to act on whatever mistaken “identity” we may have
conceived for ourselves. That means for the Christian the word “gender” can go
back to being used to describe pronouns again. But it helps to know how
progressives are distorting the language.
IC: Yes, it’s just propaganda. Next?
Dignity and Worth Redux
Tom: I notice in
Article 6 that they felt compelled to work that “dignity
and worth equal to all other image-bearers” business in again, which
merits the same comment on the word “equal” that we noted last week: it’s just
not there in the word of God. It’s pure conjecture.
Did
you have any comment on Article 7’s “creation and redemption”
language? I think we’ve exhausted the first two.
IC: Honestly, I didn’t
understand what they were going for there. It could be the Amillennial “Redemption
of Culture” doctrine they have in mind. It could be the Christ-and-the-Church
idiom insufficiently explained. I really cannot tell.
Tom: It’s the same
problem we keep encountering with this Statement. If its purpose is to educate
liberal Christians, it can hardly accomplish it without reference to scripture
itself.
Let’s
take this up again next time.
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