A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory

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[00:00:00] Rob: If they’re familiar with, uh, the whole avatar phenomenon and being able to, as it were, reinvent themselves online. And here comes trans theories saying, well, the reason you’re uncomfortable is ’cause you’re trans and you just need to, you just need a new avatar and this is the way to do it. Start taking testosterone or whatever.

It’s this perfect storm.

[00:00:28] Collin: If gender is constructed, it can be deconstructed. Think about it. If we built it and we can tear it down. And now you know why Some activists have been so determined to convince us that gender is something we assign rather than something we receive. If we assign it, then we can reassign it as we wish. We don’t receive our bodies, we can remake our bodies.

No doubt you’ve observed the rise of transgender theory in [00:01:00] Western culture. It’s the denial that the sext body reveals and determines the gender to self. That’s the helpful summary we find in the excellent new book. The Body, God Gives a Biblical Response to Transgender Theory written by Robert Smith.

Smith is an ordained Anglican minister and lecturer in theology, ethics and music ministry at Sydney Missionary and Bible College in Australia. He’s written two previous books on gender and identity. This new book by LXi now Baker gives you a little bit of everything. He breaks down the arguments of gender theorists.

He guides readers on a who’s who of philosophers, who built the intellectual foundations of the secular West, from Descartes to Rousseau Khan to Marx Stein Freud, Sarra, Deida Fako. There you go. The whole, the whole crew. And he concludes with biblical argumentation to show us nobody is born in the wrong body.

He writes, quote, God’s desire for [00:02:00] my gender is revealed by the design of my body. And I appreciate how Rob harmonizes the biblical story. From Genesis to Revelation quote, our present task is to work with the grain of creation toward the goal of new creation. Rob joins me now in gospel bound to talk transgender theory, how it spread, why it’s peaked, and where Evangelicals need to go next.

Rob, thank you for joining me on Gospel Bound.

[00:02:23] Rob: It’s great to be with you, Colin.

[00:02:26] Collin: You have devoted an enormous amount of time to researching and writing about transgender theory. Why?

[00:02:35] Rob: Well, it’s a good question to start with. I think because it was about 2014 when I was, uh, doing some work on human sexuality more broadly, that I became aware of the significance of the transgender, uh, challenge and the questions that, uh, the phenomenon was raising and, uh, the, well, just the emerging, um.

Uh, significance of, of the whole, the whole [00:03:00] movement. So I think, you know, I think Time Magazine in February, 2014 had this, uh, cover story called the Transgender Tipping Point. I remember reading that article very, uh, early in my, um, research. Uh, and so I became convinced fairly quickly that somebody needed to be working on this.

And as far as I could see, there weren’t many evangelicals who were, um, putting their sort of hand to the plow. Um, so I started gathering materials and making bibliographies and writing notes and thinking, now who do I, who do I give this to? Uh, who, who do I pass all this, uh, preliminary research onto? And, uh, after a while, I became, uh, well convinced that the Lord wanted me to keep going with it.

And, um, then simultaneously to that, um, within our wider family, we had these, some, these issues. Um. Uh, come to us in a very personal way. And, uh, so that brought the, uh, what you might say, the intellectual and the, [00:04:00] uh, the pastoral together.

[00:04:01] Collin: Yeah.

[00:04:02] Rob: Um, so this was no longer a theoretical exercise of just trying to wrestle with ideas, uh, be, but became very much a, um, uh, well just a, a personal pastoral exercise of how, how do we love people.

Um, so that’s been, um, part of my journey as well, bringing together the, well, the transgender theory with what some would call transgender experience and, uh, seeing how to, you know, how do we make sense of all that.

[00:04:30] Collin: Now, you, you mentioned already that Time magazine cover story, the transgender tipping point, you identify that as the end of 2013.

What was it that made that period of time, that transgender tipping point in western society?

[00:04:45] Rob: Yeah, look, I think a number of things. Um, I mean, again. The promotion of transgender celebrities as, as that cover itself revealed was part of it. Um, there was also changes in the, uh, the DSM five, [00:05:00] uh, the diagnostic and statistical Manual of Mental disorders.

And, um, so there were, there were even diagnostic shifts and intellectual shifts. Um, um, yeah, look, a range of social and intellectual factors came together. Uh, gay marriage was, uh, um, well, hadn’t quite come in yet in the US or the, uh, or Australia even. Um, but, um, many who, many of the gay activists I think were looking for the next, um, well you might say the LGBT activists were looking for the next, um, cause to promote and next as some sort civil rights, uh, victory to achieve.

So, you know, these things I think came together. Uh, and of course, well, social media, um, plays a huge part in this. Um, as these identities begin to spread through different, uh, platforms and, um, YouTube influencers and, [00:06:00] uh, other sources like that start to, uh, not only teach the ideas, but model, uh, model these changes.

[00:06:09] Collin: Rob, to whom would you compare the influence on our culture of Judith Butler? And I’m wondering also more influence from Butler than Michael Fako. How would you describe that?

[00:06:21] Rob: Well, I think, I mean, many people have not even heard of jus but let alone read a word of her work, right? Her work’s not easy to read,

[00:06:29] Collin: but they can probably recite many things that she taught.

[00:06:33] Rob: They can, um, even though her views have shifted and changed and evolved, and, um, so I do think her influence has been profound. She’s a, a classic example of, um, the, the meme that ideas have consequences because certainly the ideas that she was playing with back in the early nineties and, um, promoting through her various writings have trickled through, um, uh, academia [00:07:00] into, well into education, in and into schools, into children, into business, into government, into all kinds of institutions.

So the fundamental idea that sex is, as she puts it, radically independent of gender, um, that idea has, uh, been a very, very powerful one and destructive one. Um, so yeah, look, in some ways she, she fired a torpedo, uh, unlike anybody else. But again, she didn’t come outta nowhere. She was building on, um, the work of Second Wave feminists who were themselves building on the work of, uh, existentialists, even going back to Nietzche and others.

And so yeah, there are lots of antecedents for her work. And, and I’ve, in, at least in my research and, and writing, I, I’ve distinguished the kind of queer approach of a Judith Butler with the, what I’ve called. Trans theory [00:08:00] as opposed to queer theory. Um, uh, yeah, in that they do sort of part ways at certain key points, which I’m happy to go into if that’s, uh, if that’s somewhere you want to go.

[00:08:11] Collin: Well, let me first, before we come back to the difference between queer and trans theory, I do want to, where does, what does Fuko come in here? And, and it gives, ’cause again, as it felt like, as I’m going through the book, it seems that in one sense you mentioned the antecedent, so there’s always something underneath.

It doesn’t come outta nowhere, but in terms of two of the leading intellectual figures that, I mean, probably most of us don’t know how to pronounce, if you, if we saw Fuko written, we wouldn’t know. And yet somehow a lot of what we think about the world is from those two people.

[00:08:49] Rob: Yeah. Yeah. Well, f fuko again is often, uh, his name’s often associated with the postmodernism, although he himself didn’t like that term.

Um, but he is a great [00:09:00] disruptor. Um, he is challenging, um, traditional categories, traditional way of thinkings thinking. Um, uh, he, he is, I mean, he was quite brilliant, I think, uh, as well as quite perverse. Um, but, uh, yeah, anyone who’s read any folk KO’s books realize you’re dealing with a, a very, um, potent mind here.

Um, and certainly Butler is reading Fuko. There’s no question about that. As as, and she’s reading and she’s reading all of these, she’s very, very much across the, the philosophical tradition and particularly the postmoderns as we often clump them together. So we, we don’t realize how much we, we are living in KO’s world or Butler’s world.

Um. But that’s the fact of it. Um, now again, his contributions are interesting and, and varied. Um, and in one sense they don’t go straight. Uh, there’s no straight line from Fuco into trans theory. [00:10:00] Uh, but I think you can trace the line through Butler. Um, so yeah, there’s some general thoughts about that, but,

[00:10:08] Collin: well, so often we don’t understand our culture because we can’t experience what a certain, when an earlier generation did.

So we simply don’t know what’s different. We might hear something and we don’t know if it’s brand new or if people came up with it last week, or if it was something that has always been there before. Yeah, we’re just gonna cut off, um, especially in the way that these very intellectual trends have produced that outcome of cutting us off from received and inherited.

Wisdom and tradition. So I just think it’s important in, in a book like yours, um, to be able to, for people to identify, you know, what that thing that you just assumed to be the case actually came from this person with this lineage in this year, [00:11:00] and these other reasons why it doesn’t really make sense even on its own terms, or there are inherent contradictions within the very system.

So let’s jump there then, Rob, to the inherent contradictions between queer theory and trans theory, which I don’t imagine a lot of people would even know that those are different from each other.

[00:11:21] Rob: No, I think often they get, uh, sort of mushed together because of the L-G-B-T-Q, uh, and we, we assume that’s a happy family, which if of course it, it isn’t at all.

Uh, there’s now even an LGB Alliance that’s kind of ganged up against the T. So again, in, in traditional sort of Aristotelian. Um, thought you, your essence precedes your existence, so you have a given essence. Now, we as Christians would say yes from God, but of course, naturalists might say we have a given essence from, from evolution or something else.

But, um, we, either way we have a given essence and we, our business is to live [00:12:00] that out. And we, um, you know, we, uh, as it were, we flourish best when we live out our given essence. Now, the existentialists flip that around, you know, Satra, uh, famous motto that, that existence precedes essence, um, that we just simply, uh, to use high digger’s language are thrown into the world and exist.

And as we, well make our free decisions, we as it were, craft an essence. Now, queer theory comes along and says, well, actually you don’t even ever get to creating an essence. Uh, all you are is an identity without an essence.

[00:12:35] Collin: Yeah.

[00:12:36] Rob: Um, that’s, uh, David Halperin’s famous, um. Expression identity that sums up queer for him, identity without an essence.

Um, and so for Ju Butler, when she comes along and says, well, um, sex and gender are radically independent, uh, and that, uh, if you ask her, well, what determines your gender? Then if it’s not just sex, uh, you know, she would say, well, [00:13:00] you just, you perform a gender, uh, you’re an identity without an essence. So you just, you, you, you know, inherit some different types of performances, but you might want to, uh, riff on those and, and play around with those.

We, we, we, gender is performative in that sense. Um, now trans theory differs there, uh, and says, no, no, no, no, your, your gender is determined actually by your inner gender identity. Uh, that is, that is in fact your essence. So trans theory in that sense is essentialist. Yeah. Uh, as opposed to a queer theory, uh, and saying, no, you have an inner agenda essence, which only you know, uh, and it may or may not happen to align with your body.

Uh, and there’s no reason why it should align with your body, hence care or queer theory. Um, and if it doesn’t align your transgender, if it does align your cisgender, um, but if it doesn’t align and you wanna bring your [00:14:00] body into line with it, uh, then feel free, uh, do that, make the bodily changes you think are necessary.

And, um, and many would want people to, you know, the public purse to pay for that, uh, in some way. But then you have, uh, as I’ve. Um, uh, sort of disambiguated in the book, I suppose a, a development of what you might call traditional trans theory. I call it soft trans theory in the, in the book, but the traditional trans theory effectively says, okay, your body has a sex, but your gender identity is the real you.

Whereas the more radical form of trans theory says no, your gender identity actually defines you completely. It, it reclassifies your body. So if my gender identity is female, uh, then this body becomes a female body. Uh, I don’t have to do anything at all to it. I don’t have to even change my clothes, my hair, or my name, let alone have hormones or surgeries.

I am now a [00:15:00] woman in every sense, and I should be able to play on the female sports team. Or if I’m, if I commit a crime, um, I should go to a female prison. And, uh, so that’s the more that, that I’ve called that hard trans theory. Um, but I guess it’s the more radical. Um, version, but both of those have a kind of inner gender essence at the heart, which is not there in queer theory.

Um, so that’s one, one of the distinctions.

[00:15:30] Collin: I just like you were describing the different philosophical origins. I think it’s so important for people to understand the contradictions within that community because the projection of power is the unity. But the only thing that’s unified is a rejection of historic and biblical sexual norms.

There’s no unifying principle within, and in fact. I dunno, there no unifying principle within, they’re often directly contrary [00:16:00] to each other.

[00:16:01] Rob: Yeah.

[00:16:01] Collin: Um, and an open, open warfare, uh, against each other. So even, even that basic point is, I don’t think widely, widely known or when people see a pride flag and then they see the, then the trans parts are added in there.

They don’t really understand the significance of what’s, of what’s happened there or what’s changed or the ongoing battles for control over a movement. Its directions, its priorities, its funding, its strategies. And let, let’s then look back to how this has begun to unravel. During the time you spent research and writing.

Rob, it seems that we’ve passed peak transgender still widespread influence, no doubt. But that influences on the decline. Why did it decline?

[00:16:50] Rob: I mean, I, I think that’s right. I, time will tell. But it, to use the second World War analogy, it’s kinda like we are in between D-Day and, and V-Day or V-Day, [00:17:00] um,

[00:17:00] Collin: the beginning of the end

[00:17:02] Rob: perhaps.

Yes, that’s right. The end. Um, why did it decline? Well, uh, I think we’ve seen some of it in the public arena, um, because the whole thing is, uh, unworkable, um, practically speaking and, uh, and so yeah, so we’ve had public sort of, uh, pushback, uh, against, you know, men taking all the prizes in women’s sports or, um, you know, male sex offenders being put in women’s prison.

And surprise, surprise, re-offend you. Um, uh. It just doesn’t work socially. Even if somebody’s got a nimble enough mind to somehow justify it to themselves intellectually, it just doesn’t work on the ground. Uh, it doesn’t work medically. It, it, you know, it, it’s, it’s just it. So the thing is riddle with, um, not just intellectual con contradictions, but just unworkability.[00:18:00]

Um, so that’s partly I think why we’re seeing that. I mean, again, there’ve been some court cases and as I mentioned already, some of the, uh, uh, the least the Ls, LS and the Gs have been pushing back against the T because now they talk about the whole tea movement as a way of transing away the gay. Um, so as they see it, they certainly see child and adolescent gender transitioning as a form of conversion therapy.

Um. And so there’s a major war there between, uh, at least LG and t, um, on that front.

[00:18:35] Collin: Yeah. Do you, do you still commonly hear people argue that it would just really work if everybody who disagreed changed their minds or were even eliminated or removed from public discourse? Because part of what we talk about when we’re saying unworkability is that mental health, suicide, [00:19:00] all sorts of these really damaging outcomes in addition to the, the hormone therapies and the treatments themselves, um, and the damage that they cause.

But we’re seeing these are not producing the outcomes that were always promised. This’ll bring, this’ll bring happiness. This will bring fulfillment. This’ll bring wholeness to you. I don’t. I’ve not seen any indication that that’s actually happening. No surveys that have indicated that, in fact, it seems that the opposite is produced now.

When we used to see that argument, it was, well, that’s because society doesn’t accept this.

[00:19:36] Rob: Yeah, yeah.

[00:19:37] Collin: Is that, is that still trotted out and, and used against parents used, you know, by schools, by counselors and others to pressure parents into this affirmation process?

[00:19:47] Rob: Yes, occasionally, uh, uh, I mean, those, those, um, responses haven’t, haven’t completely died off as, as I, as far as I’m aware.

And likewise, the suicidality myth, um, that, [00:20:00] you know, if you don’t allow your child to transition, they, they’re, they’re going to take their own life. Uh, again, that is just not born out by the stats and the facts. In fact, uh, quite to the contrary, it seems that, uh, people’s mental health, uh, declines and their suicidality increases post-transition.

So I think there’s just more and more evidence coming out. That is, uh, just well sounding, sounding the, the alarm and, and exposing the lie of some of these things. And then you’ve of course had the big reports, uh, the CAS report in the uk and the, uh, health and human services report, uh, in the US and some of these systemic reviews that, that, uh, lie behind those, uh, that have really emboldened people in the medical world to really say what they’ve long thought, which is this is irresponsible, this is medical experiment.

This is actually a medical scandal. Um, so more and more, [00:21:00] uh, doctors and therapists and others, uh, are now willing to speak up and, uh, risk their livelihoods, um, uh, as they become more and more convinced that this is a, a great source of, of harm. So I, I was at a conference just, uh, in Australia just a couple of weekends ago where there were, where again, medical people and.

All kinds of, um, um, well, psychologists and psychotherapists and psychiatrists and, and some legal people and not Christian by and large. Um, I mean many of them probably were, but uh, the conference itself wasn’t explicitly Christian, but these were just concerned professionals coming together saying, we have to stop, at the very least, have to stop what’s happening to children and adolescents.

[00:21:47] Collin: Lemme just take a step back, Rob, into a, a bigger, a bigger question that I, one of those again that I don’t think many people understand the background [00:22:00] of, and that is, should we distinguish between sex and gender?

[00:22:04] Rob: That’s a, that’s a, a very good question that I still wrestle with. Um, um, now in the book, I argue that, um, it, it’s kind of a ship that sailed and so let’s see if we can make it work.

Um. There are people who are arguing, uh, who have argued the ship should never have sailed, uh, or that we ought to recall it to the port. So, um, so even the, uh, philosopher Alex by who’s not a Christian, so as I’m aware, but in his book, um, what’s it called now here, the Trouble with Gender. Um, yeah, he argues quite a strong case for just losing the language agenda, uh, altogether, and he has some good points.

However, um, there obviously is a difference between having a particular type of body and then how we conceive of that body and how we [00:23:00] present that body in the world. Now, as I say in the book, I, I think we could easily talk about, you know, biological sex, psychological sex, and social sex, um, that would kind of join everything together nicely that you, okay.

You have a. You have a biological sex, and then you think about that in certain ways, and then you present that in certain ways, uh, in the way you dress and the things you do in life and the way you even just, uh, the way you relate and hold yourself. Um, so yeah, if I had, uh, if I had control of the English language, which I clearly don’t, um, that would be probably my preferred option.

[00:23:38] Collin: Yeah.

[00:23:39] Rob: But given that, uh, through the fifties and sixties, uh, the language of gender, uh, well initially, um, um, came to sort of reply to the social expression of sex, uh, and social roles and that kind of thing, but then also to the psychological, um, conceptions of [00:24:00] sex. Um. We’ve ever since sort of been stuck with gender, but nobody’s ever quite sure what it means is, does it, is it just functioning as a synonym for sex?

Which sometimes, of course it is on, on government forms and things, um, but then sometimes it isn’t, um, uh, or is it referring more specifically to gender identity, the psychological, or is it referring to gender roles or expression, the social. Um, and so, yeah, it, it just creates a bit of a world of confusion and there are, you’ve kind of gotta in interrogate anything you read and almost anyone you speak to.

Just to clarify what, what, in what sense are you using the word gender? Um, you know, so it’s often people say, oh, my gender’s male. Well. Uh, well, strictly speaking in the current lingo, now your sex is male. Um, but of course your gender is also male because you’re sex is male, right? Um, but then you, then that begs the question, what, why do we need gender then if, if sex does the [00:25:00] job?

Um,

[00:25:01] Collin: yeah,

[00:25:02] Rob: but again, I, I think the reality is yes, there are different ways of, uh, presenting your sex. You know, so we don’t all dress the same way or wear our hair the same way or, uh, you know, there are different ways of being a man, different ways of being a woman that are, are not confusing, but they’re just not the same.

Um, and so I found myself saying over, over the, over recent months, um, uh, you know, sex is not a spectrum and. Gender is really the extension of sex. Gender is not a spectrum, uh, but masculinity’s a spectrum and femininity iss a spectrum. You know, there are literally billions, billions of different ways of being a male on this planet and likewise a female on this planet.

Um,

[00:25:48] Collin: yeah.

[00:25:49] Rob: And, uh, that in a sense that’s, that’s part of created diversity. It’s not, not a bug, but a feature.

[00:25:56] Collin: Yeah. Well, that’s, [00:26:00] if, if we, if we collapsed everything within sex and we got rid of the concept of gender, it would seem that we would run also, not just into a self presentation problem that you’re describing here, and individuality, but also a cultural anthropological problem, because it’s not just that we feel differently and we express our femininity and masculinity in some.

You know, shared, but also different ways, but also the expectations we have for men and women vary substantially from culture to culture and from subculture to subculture. So one of the overall challenges we face is to be able to affirm a biological essentialism. I mean, in a sense that you are male, you are female.

You can see this from the organs that you have that are given to you by God. And at the same time, there’s not only one way to be able to express that, but you can see [00:27:00] why people do not want to stick with gender. Because once you all of a sudden get into Butler and you get into gender theory and all these things, you realize, oh, it’s actually a way of separating us from biological.

It’s a way to explain that everything’s a construct. Just like I opened the podcast with, everything’s a construct. So you can see why the problem is there. But if we collapsed it back all into sex, into a biological essentialism without any expressive component, then I’m not, I don’t know how that would work practically.

And it actually could have some pretty negative effects as well, and negative effects that we’ve seen that we’ve had that familiarity with of telling everybody that there’s only one way to be able to be masculine or only one way to be feminine. And I think also for Christians, you run into a problem there because biblically, that’s, there are some clear differentiations, but there’s also so much substantial overlap [00:28:00] that you risk running into a, a really, a bifurcated discipleship.

[00:28:04] Rob: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:05] Collin: Am am I off track there?

[00:28:06] Rob: No, no, no. I think that’s exactly right. I think that’s exactly right. Uh, and one of the ironies is the whole trans, uh, movement trades on very, very rigid, narrow gender stereotypes, you know?

[00:28:18] Collin: Exactly.

[00:28:19] Rob: Uh, so whereas, you know, once upon time we, we called a, a girl who just, uh, loved rough and tumble and climbing trees and, and, uh, that sort of thing.

We just said, okay, she’s a bit of a tomboy. Whereas now, of course, uh, you know, the diagnosis would be, oh, no, no, no, no. She’s, she’s probably trans. Um, and likewise a little boy doesn’t turn every stick into a gun, but, um, actually likes dance and, and beauty and, you know, oh yes, he’s, uh, he’s, he’s trans. Um, so yeah, it’s a, that’s a tragedy.

And it also can, uh, play out in the church, of course, where now again, I think every culture, including church cultures inevitably, uh, develop, um. [00:29:00] Gender stereotypes or at least gender types. Uh, a friend of mine has made a helpful distinction between types and stereotypes, you know?

[00:29:08] Collin: Yeah.

[00:29:08] Rob: Um, he, he illustrates this by saying, yeah, where we go to a black tie wedding or something, we, okay, we go, right?

Everybody goes straight into full on stereotype mode, you know, men in tuxedos, women in cocktail dresses or whatever. Uh, but then when we come home, we revert to types rather than stereotypes, uh, in a much broader, looser way. Um, but where our types get too tight and start to become stereotype, that’s when we start to, um, send messages to people in our churches that, that there’s something wrong with them, uh, just because they’re not in the center of the, that spectrum we call masculinity.

They’re, they’re,

[00:29:48] Collin: yeah,

[00:29:48] Rob: they’re more towards the, the fringes. They’re not outside the bounds, but they’re just not right in smack in the middle and. Um, so all, if all we ever have is um, [00:30:00] um, I don’t know, um, barbecue meat nights for men and craft events, right? For women, if that’s all we ever have, it does send a message that if you are not a man is into meat, there’s something wrong with you or not a woman is into craft, there’s something wrong with you.

Um, and again, that’s where the, that’s where trans ideas come in, um, and say to people, well, yeah, what’s wrong with you is that you’re trans.

[00:30:24] Collin: I want to just, uh, pinpoint something. I meant to bring it up earlier, but it’s relevant here on the question of what you do with, with children. And when children are, well, I don’t seem to be like the other boys, or I don’t seem to be like the other girls.

And we’ve always handled that a certain way in the past and we’ve recognized, especially in puberty, a lot of those things change a. You know, personalities change, attitudes change, presentation changes, um, as the body changes. So we’ve seen that generally work out, um, there. But when I was talking to Ross [00:31:00] Doha to the New York Times, and I’ve mentioned this on this podcast before, but it’s always relevant.

I couldn’t understand why the cast report in the UK didn’t get the kind of traction in the United States that it did in the uk. And I can’t speak to Australia in the same way, so perhaps you can. Um, but he pointed out something that should have been obvious to me, which was in the UK the government’s paying for these treatments.

So they wanna know whether they’re valid. In the United States, it’s a free market, so you’re paying out of pocket. So if you can convince the parents that their child is gonna commit suicide or at least be extremely unhappy unless you pay for this surgery, well that’s a vast moneymaking enterprise. I don’t know how that’s played out in Australia.

Of course, the way Americans typically handle this is then if there’s a problem, detransition will go back and sue the doctors. And that’s how the system tends to correct itself here. And I don’t know how much that is happening. I’m sure some of that’s happening, uh, [00:32:00] now, but is the dynamic play out differently in Australia, closer to the UK perhaps?

[00:32:04] Rob: Um, well, a, a Australia tends to be a, a, a, a combination of the US and uk. That’s true.

[00:32:09] Collin: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:09] Rob: Um, they even refer to our parliamentary system as a Westminster system. Um, um, but uh, yeah, so we do, do, we, we have the great blessing in Australia of understanding both British and American humor, uh, and, uh, getting both cultures to, at least to a large extent, but yeah.

But yeah, we’re somewhere in between, I think. Um, but even in the uk, there’ve been court cases and, uh. Um, here, there are some court cases in different states, again, of different laws. The state of Queensland, while I speaking last weekend, has just declared, uh, very helpfully that a woman is an adult human female.

And, um, this is, uh, the Australia Sex Commissioner seems to have no idea what a woman is. And yeah, so we look, we are, we are still a little like the US in a place of, [00:33:00] uh, flux and confusion with different. States at different places.

[00:33:07] Collin: Yeah. Let’s, uh, go in a different direction here. Um, I teach cultural apologetics and when you’re trying to trace cultural change, you have a lot of different options of being able to explain the causes behind the cultural change.

None of them is necessarily wrong, but different people might put a different emphasis on some or the others. Rarely is it to the other exclusion of the other. I’m wondering, Rob, do you lean more toward philosophical or technological arguments to account for the widespread adoption and plausibility of transgender theory?

[00:33:42] Rob: That’s a very astute question because certainly none of us saw very. Little of this could be happening without the technological and medical and surgical developments that we’ve seen. Um, now clearly, if you think back to Deuteronomy 22, 5 and the prohibition against cross-dressing, [00:34:00] sure. There, um, the desire to cross dress, um, or to present as the other sex, um, is clearly ancient.

Uh, at least for some that’s not, no, that’s not new. And historically cases of, um, what, what you might call, you know, genuine gender dysphoria, um, certainly, uh, are there in the historical record. And, uh, there have been people in great pain and distress about. Their sex, uh, for any number of reasons. And that’s a whole thing we could get into too.

What, what, what is it that leads people, uh, to a place of what you might call sex rejection? Or, or, or, or, or, or, or where they’re ashamed of their sex. Want to wish they could be the other sex, or perhaps believe they are the other sexes. Anyway, lots of possible reasons that lead people to those places. Um, but it really was only, uh, well midway through last century that, uh, that serious surgical attempts started being made to, um, [00:35:00] transform cosmetically, at least transform the bodies of, um, men, particularly into, um, feminine form.

And that’s just gone on, uh, from here and the surgical techniques have developed and, um, well, you some might say improved, although again, there’s so much malpractice and so many disaster stories and so many unhappy, uh. Um, patients out there, you wonder how much they’ve really improved. But

[00:35:32] Collin: I, I’m

[00:35:32] Rob: even thinking, yeah, we wouldn’t be here.

We wouldn’t be here without the technological.

[00:35:35] Collin: Well, I, I’m just thinking Rob, even at a deeper level than the tech, than the surgical technology and the hormonal treatments is simply the gnostic tendencies of the internet itself. The avatar, um, the avatar dynamic of the internet, the way you can put on and take off identities at whim, um, that are disconnected, present [00:36:00] in ways that are disconnected from your biological reality.

[00:36:04] Rob: Yeah, yeah. The, the internet is a very dis embodying, um, phenomenon. And, uh, one of the advice that, uh, well, those who seek to advise parents who are trying to help their trans-identified teens, uh, to find their way out of the maze is, is get them off their devices, into their bodies, out into the world. You know, get them riding horses, climbing, climbing walls.

Get them playing a sport. Get them playing a musical instrument. Get them just walking, um, outta their rooms, off their screens. Um, because yeah, the effects of that on, well, on all minds, but certainly young developing minds, uh, are profound. And, um, so that is certainly part of the problem. And of course, this, well, the internet, um, in a sense just comes in alongside what Carl Truman has.

Uh, so helpfully pointed out for us all, just the whole, um. Um, the, [00:37:00] the modern self and the, um, you know, the expressive individualism that, that, uh, is, is just in the air we breathe and

[00:37:08] Collin: right.

[00:37:09] Rob: So yeah, it just plays into that. But the other factor I should mention, uh, because it does relate to one of the reasons people get drawn into this world is, uh, for people who are, um, neurodiverse or on the autism spectrum, um, not only they, they’re very much drawn to online life and, uh, but also find it hard to relate to their own, not not only their own social group, but their own body and find the changes of adolescences, particularly traumatic.

Um, you know, boys can find the development of growth of body hair very distressing for them. And, uh, girls likewise find, uh, the bodily changes of puberty distressing and, um. And as you say, once, if they’re familiar with, uh, the whole avatar phenomenon and being able to, as it were, [00:38:00] reinvent themselves online.

And here comes trans theories saying, well, the reason you’re uncomfortable is ’cause you’re trans and you just need to, you just need a new avatar and this is the way to do it. Start taking testosterone or whatever. Um, yeah, it’s this perfect storm.

[00:38:14] Collin: Yeah. And I, I think evangelicals in our view of technology is often limited and it’s limited to the explicit messages.

And so when we’re talking about devices, we are on the one hand saying yes, because a lot of the messages that they will receive there will be, um, against our biblical beliefs. But at the same time, it’s just the environment of, of becoming disconnected from reality, from disconnected from, from biology. So it’s not just what are you going to see or what are you going to hear, what are you gonna learn?

But those factors can be really significant as well. But it’s just the fact that you’re not present with your, with your physical self. Hmm. Um, let’s, let’s just do, I [00:39:00] mean, the, the book is, well, we’re talking about the Body. God gives a biblical response to transgender theory written by Rob Smith. Um, the book is so helpful because when people who are watching and listening to this, they pick up the book, they’re gonna see all this exploration of really significant philosophical argumentation that’s important.

But then they’re gonna pivot in the book toward a lot of biblical argumentation and, and, um, and then application in the end. So let’s just start this and, and keep it simple. Rob, what’s the most important, there are others, but what’s the most important biblical argument against transgender theory?

[00:39:38] Rob: Well, I I, I do think the entirety of biblical, um, sexual ethics, i, i is really built on the foundation of Genesis one and two.

Um, and. When I came to writing the book and before that, the PhD that lies behind it, um, I planned just to write a chapter on Genesis one or two. I ended up writing three chapters and could have written more, [00:40:00] um, because there’s so much there and, um, um, so much to appreciate and understand of what’s going on, what’s being revealed now.

I think what we learned from those two chapters together, not only are there only two sexes, um, male and female, that’s right there in Genesis 1 27. Uh, but of course the male, uh, of Genesis one is the man of Genesis two, uh, the female, Genesis one is the woman of Genesis two. Um, so you have binary sex and that then.

It just sets the agenda that if you’re born male, you become a man and, uh, become a husband, become a father if you marry and have children, so on. Uh, so those lines just follow straight through in scripture, but they’re all based on that fundamental foundation. But it does interest me that the first thing we are told about humanity, uh, well apart from the, sorry.

The very first thing is that we’ve made in [00:41:00] the image of God. Um, but then when we come to verse 27, to Genesis one, uh, male and female matey them, that now they are biological terms, they’re bodily terms, they’re reproductive terms, in fact, uh, so this is clearly very significant to what it is to be human.

You can’t be a non-sex human. Um, you are a male or a female human. There is no, there is no non-binary or, uh, a gender or any of these, uh, claimed, um, non-sex terms. Um. So that’s significant. And then in Genesis two, likewise, the Lord forms the body of the man even before he becomes a living being. Um, so he is a man because of the, the body that he has.

Um, and of course then the Lord builds the woman from the side of the man, uh, again, and, uh, uh, she’s is embodied differently. She is a, uh, in the Hebrew term, a a [00:42:00] connector, a like opposite. She’s like him in humanity, but opposite him in sex. Um, and all of that again relates to bodies. So the title I suppose, of my book, which didn’t, wasn’t my, uh, my doing it was L Lex and Marketing People.

The Body God Gives really is, um, it, it was a very clever, uh, choice of title because it answers the fundamental question, how do I know, how do I know if God has made me, um, to be a man or a woman? And the answer is the body. God gives.

[00:42:31] Collin: I think it’s a great title, Rob, because it gets it. It hints also at the essential biblical and philosophical problem underneath everything, which is the givenness of our bodies, the givenness of life, the givenness of things by a God who delights to give good, good things.

The reason I had such a, such an overwhelming [00:43:00] reaction to what you describe as that, that transgender turn in 2013 and 2014, is that it felt like we were arguing at the deepest level about the most essential elements of reality is anything given in this world, because if our bodies are not given, then what else is?

Is there anything at the bottom of anything, or is everything just. Whatever we decide to make of it. And that is existentially crushing.

[00:43:35] Rob: Hmm.

[00:43:35] Collin: Now it seem, it, it seemed like a kind of game, and maybe that’s some of the philosophical backstory that you give that, that, that, that gaming. But it’s one thing for a bunch of academics to talk about it and play with it in the 1990s is another thing for it to be enacted and not only enacted at a legal level in western’s culture, but also then enforced and [00:44:00] mandated on everyone that there is no givenness to anything in life.

Yeah. Not even your body, not even in your earliest moments on this earth. So to go back to see at the essence of everything is a God who gives nothing short of life. It’s a pretty good place to place to start.

[00:44:26] Rob: It’s a very good place to start. And, uh, yeah, and again, to to circle back to where we were earlier, you know, contrast with, you know, FKO, who wants to say we only see things a certain way because of our, uh, the, the cultural spectacles we’ve been right.

Given. And that, uh, then Judith Butler will say, yes, we, we think there are male and female bodies, but no, that, that’s just, we’re just imposing those categories on, uh, on the bodies that are out there. There are just bodies and we, we’ve imposed these categories. Uh, but then to have scripture come along and say, no, [00:45:00] no divine revelation.

There are, there is male and female, and only male and female. Uh, and, uh, and this is God’s gift and it’s good. I, I think that’s the other thing perhaps to stress, um, for. ’cause I, it’s, it, it’s the goodness of sex, the goodness of embodiment, the goodness of being a man, the goodness of being a woman that, uh, is under attack, uh, in many ways.

And, um, I guess if I had one message for, you know, teenagers, it’s to say, look, yes, yes. Adolescence is traumatic. Yes, puberty’s a, um, a challenge, but it, it’s actually good. It’s part of God’s design. It’s how you move from being a child to an adult and a, a girl to a woman, a boy, to a man. Um, it’s good. Your body’s good.

What’s happening to your body is good. It’s good to be male. It’s good to be female. It’s not, it’s not weak. It’s not toxic. It’s not, you know, so, um, to, yeah, to teach these things, to teach the [00:46:00] goodness of creation as well as of course the way the fall complicates everything.

[00:46:05] Collin: Um, I’m gonna ask you a question now, Rob, that you’re uniquely.

Gifted and trained to be able to answer, and I think you’ll know where I’m, I’m going with this. Do you see any tension between the Old Testament’s focus on marriage and family and the New Testament’s focus on our spiritual brotherhood? Of course, this is a question very relevant to the dimensions of your book on transgender theory, but it’s also relevant and the base of biblical theology.

How do you piece the Bible together? It’s, it’s,

[00:46:37] Rob: um, yeah, I, I don’t see tension, um, let alone conflict. Um, but I do see a difference in emphasis, uh, uh, and part of that has to do with the way, uh, in which the, well the call particular calling of the people of Israel, um, and the way in which, um, that nation was to [00:47:00] grow and, uh, uh, and therefore the calling to, um.

Be fruitful and multiply at particular relevance, of course to God’s own people. Uh, and as far as we can tell, certainly remaining unmarried, um, was yeah, very much an exception. Uh, even though of course being widowed, um, was, you know, sadly par of the course for many. Uh, so there is I think, a difference of emphasis perhaps from kind of this worldly fulfillment of, uh, promises.

Uh, the way in which the church grows, of course, is through disciple making and, um, which of course includes Christian parents having children and, and discipling their own children. But it’s of course much bigger than that too. But there clearly is an emphasis in the New Testament. Care of Jesus himself.

I suppose Sue, who is the quintessential, um, [00:48:00] in Matthew 19 language, language person who’s made himself a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven. Um, uh, but as Jesus says in that passage, this is, this is, uh, this is not for everybody. Um, but Paul likewise will see that, uh, that there are advantages in, in remaining un married.

And, but again, this is, this is not for everybody. Um, so I think there is again, that shift in emphasis, um, but not, not in any way at the expense of, in a way that devalues the family or marriage. It’s a very high, well, it’s impossible to read New Testament and come, come away with a, a low view of marriage and family.

But perhaps you can do, come away from the New Testament with a higher view of singleness than perhaps the Old Testament would’ve left you with. So that may be the way I’d put it. Not there’s no devaluing of the family, but there is, um, a valuing of [00:49:00] remaining unmarried for kingdom purposes for those to whom it is given.

[00:49:04] Collin: I like that. Well, I, I, I just think if we’re going to have a biblical response to transgender theory, which is what you’re offering in this book, then we need a whole bible hermeneutic that recognizes as I was trained by our good friend Don Carson, and, and thinking about the continuities and discontinuities of scriptures, that the things that change and the things that stay the same.

And so. We know that the Bible does not contradict itself because God does not contradict himself. And yet the ways he reveals himself and the priorities that he sets will do sometimes change, uh, throughout the scriptures. So that’s often when I’m finding in these debates, which will come down to questions about, about natural law, the best way is to be able to argue about these, these matters.

Um, I appreciated a biblical [00:50:00] theological approach that you brought to this book to be able to acknowledge that we can handle these questions on multiple angles. Um, not only the angles of the, the givenness of male and as we just covered in there, but also the reality of the spiritual family and the way that God knits together a very different kind of, of people, um, who are united in, in Christ, male and female, you know, uh, slave and free.

Uh, Jew and Greek and, and on and on and on in there. So we’re just gonna need all of those arguments together, um, to be able to, to be able to respond effectively, not only intellectually, uh, philosophically, but also just practically. So that’s where I want to wanna move next here. Um, and the next two questions are, are practical outworking of this.

And as you mentioned early in the interview, Rob part, your motivation. What are the experiences within your own, you know, broader family about this? But [00:51:00] just start with the Christian who is, um, him or herself experiencing gender dysphoria? Just not the whole thing. Just where do you start, where do you start with that person?

They’re listening, they’re watching, they’re confused, they’re hurting. Where do you start with them?

[00:51:16] Rob: Well, I, I, I, I personally would, would wanna start by listening to them and hearing their story. Um. Um, mark Ya House, who has written a number of things in this space who, um, well, who I, I disagree with on some things, but he has many helpful things to say.

He, uh, says often when he meets someone, he says something like, you are, I feel like I’m meeting you in chapter five of, of your story. Tell me about chapters one to four. Yeah. Um, and yeah, I think often that’s, uh, just as a, a relational courtesy as well as a pastoral, um, a bit of pastoral wisdom that I think we need to try and understand a pers the, the bigger picture for a person.

Now, again, for some people [00:52:00] their agendas for you is, goes way back to childhood. Uh, but for others it’s come on in adolescence. Um, and for some even it’s come on later in life, uh, and. Our job, I suppose, as pastors is not to, um, uh, be clinicians or, um, psychologists. Uh, you know, this, we had that sort of training, but still we want to understand the whole person and work out how to, um, how to bring the word of God to bear on their, their lives.

Um, so yeah, listening is where to start, for sure. Um, but perhaps one of the key questions you can ask in the right way at the right time is what, what, what do you think is making you unhappy about being a boy or being a man, or being a girl? Being a woman. Um, you know, essentially what, what is the problem?

And of course [00:53:00] the person may not know, um. But they, it may get them thinking, and that’s why I said there are many roads in here, and there are some obvious ones like, um, you know, sexual abuse or sexual trauma or sexual shaming, or even just bullying, um, particularly sex related bullying. Um, uh, for, again, for those who are, uh, gender nonconforming or again, uh, you know, neuro atypical or something, uh, uh, yeah, they’re often parts of the picture.

Um, again, they may have been exposed to some trans indoctrination and believe that all of their adolescent angst is because they’re in the wrong body and, and that therefore transitioning would solve everything. Um, um, yeah, so it, it, or they may have been looking at pornography. I mean, the, the, one of the things that, uh, Abigail Schreyer first alerted me to this in her book, um.

Um, [00:54:00] irreversible damage that pornography is scrambling the brains of kids. I mean, and their psychosexual development, uh, terribly in terrible ways. Absolute terrible ways. Uh, and not just girls. I mean, girls are horrified by what they’re seeing, but also boys are being made to feel completely, uh, inadequate and uncertain about, uh, yeah.

And so it, it’s, it’s a scourge. Um, and you know, the kids who’ve been exposed to that and many are now are getting exposed at eight and nine and, uh, yeah, well, they may, there may be all kinds of, uh, kind of deprogramming they need to, to, to, to unscramble their thinking. And

[00:54:42] Collin: not to mention, Joe Carter pointed this out in an article years ago at the Gospel Coalition.

He simply observed that the rise of LGBT identities corresponded to a widespread. Rise in pornographic [00:55:00] viewing and realizing that they were seeing sexual scenes depicted that are very different from what other people had predominantly been exposed to in the past, and especially in formative years.

That normalized all sorts of different abnormal and immoral, of course configurations there. Yeah. So

[00:55:20] Rob: yeah,

[00:55:20] Collin: all of that, like you said, scrambles the brain in, in ways that are, um, I mean, again, deeply, deeply destructive, but they’re important as part of the explanation of what’s happening overall. As have a couple, couple more questions here where we’ve, there’s more that we could talk about, and the book clearly covers a lot.

The book is, again, the Body. God Gives a Biblical Response to Transgender Theory written by Rob Smith. Um, this is, this is a hard and extremely sensitive question, Rob, but I think it wouldn’t be fair to. Not considerate in light of the reality of what we’re seeing. [00:56:00] Um, it’s been a spate of acts of deadly violence, often deliberately aimed at Christians by people who identify as transgender.

What do you make of that? If, if anything,

[00:56:13] Rob: when I first started working in this area, um, uh, my doctor, in fact, um, who’s just a very wise man, very, um, Christian man, uh, he, he, he said to me, and he’d been involved I think in, um, some early work with gays and lesbians. He said, you, you realize what you, you’re gonna be stepping on people’s identities here.

And, uh, and you, you will get, um, some fairly savage reactions, uh, at certain points. And, and of course I have, um, although perhaps not very many, thankfully, but, um. So yeah, when people feel that they’re under threat and their identity is under threat or [00:57:00] perhaps the identity of their loved ones, um, or even a so-called community that they, uh, feel they need to protect, uh, then yeah, they can come out very savagely.

And it, again, if there are other issues of instability and, and things going on, then that can prove, uh, violence and catastrophic. So, yeah, uh, uh, in one sense, uh, any, any of us are capable of that, uh, under the right circumstances, but we do, we obviously have seen in recent times, a, a, a, a number of, you might say trans related.

I mean, the, the, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, of course, was, um, uh, at least allegedly by, um, a, a man in a relationship with a trans. Woman or someone who is in the process of transitioning. Um, so again, you’ve got an ally there, I suppose you might say a trans [00:58:00] ally rather than a trans person. But, well, God willing, we want to see more of this.

But what we mustn’t conclude, of course, is that everyone who even is a trans ally or, or themselves trans identified as, uh, has got, you know, violent thoughts, but perhaps the deeper issue is that they may well be feeling greatly threatened, uh, even if that’s a, a, a false thought. And so we didn’t need to be sensitive to that, you know?

So, you know, people use this sort of wild language of, you know. Trans genocide and, and um, trans extermination and so on. Um, and you know, I’ve even had people that say those sorts of things to me. You want to just erase all trans people. Um, and yeah, and sometimes you just can’t reply at all. Need, shouldn’t reply.

Sometimes it’s a, a [00:59:00] pearl but force wine moment. But other times you need to say no, that’s, no, you’re misunderstanding me. Um, uh, I’m wanting to, uh, help those who are finding it hard to be men and women to, to, um, work out what that’s about and, and realize that there is actually a better way, which has got to do with embracing the body God gives, uh, which may be a difficult task, uh, under cir their circumstances and may be a lifelong journey for them.

But that is the way. As you quoted before from the book, going with the grain of creation, um, toward the goal of new creation, that, that, that’s the path of, of healing and integration and flourishing.

[00:59:45] Collin: You mentioned something about identity and identity being threatened and, and when I’ve seen Tim Keller and others assess what is the issue beneath the issue, beneath the issue, it is the, the [01:00:00] existential weight of forming our identity ourselves.

You alluded this earlier in expressive individualism with Carl Truman, and so the expressive part also is the need for others to affirm it, and then our human need to be able to bring together a community around that. So whatever we might be encountering in the manifestations, the presentations of this dynamic.

Underneath everything is a lost identity, um, or a search for identity and usually a search for identity apart from many reference to God. And I think that also makes a lot of sense of why so many adolescents are dealing with this because is that not the time of life when you’re most wrestling with a lot of those questions about identity, um, can be a very scary, very overwhelming time, uh, for people there.

And so, but it only makes the problem that much worse when we are cut off from [01:01:00] the given biology. Not to mention biblical answers, not to mention cultural, you know, the grain of culture through history. Uh, not to mention that the natural law revealed, um, in a Romans one kind of sense, uh, of, of the reality of Genesis one.

Um, and two. So there’s a lot going on, but underneath it is that basic problem of identity. Now. Last question I have here, Rob. It could ask many others, but we’re already, you’ve already been very generous with your time. Um, where, what work do we still need from evangelicals about transgender theory?

[01:01:42] Rob: That’s a very good question. At the end of my book, I suggest that X place to go is, is more, um, directly into the pastoral, um, domain, but what more work is there to do still in the Theo Theological and Exe [01:02:00] domain. Um, now there are still, you know, uh, debates about particular passages. Um, I’ve just been sent an a, an article about, uh, arguing that, um, uh, well, it, it, it sounds like a rather crazy argument to me, but it’s in a serious theological journey.

Uh, a journal arguing that, um, that we don’t know whether God will raise a male and female or or least. Um, we don’t necessarily, the argument I think of the paper is God might raise, uh, a man who feels he should be a woman as a woman. Um, and if God might do that, then perhaps it does make it, uh, permissible to, uh, transition that man to living as a woman in this world.

You know, that, that, that kind of argument,

[01:02:52] Collin: that’s strange.

[01:02:53] Rob: Um, now, so there’s just a need for ongoing responses to some of these curious and [01:03:00] challenging arguments. Um, so there’ll be, there’ll be further work needed along those lines. And so, so I’m torn here between the fact that I tried to dig into as many, uh, as many areas as I could in the book and wasn’t sort of immediately where I’d left big holes.

Um, but I also know that I’ve, you know, there’s always more work to do. Um, hence your questions are a good one. Um, but I do think it’s at the area of implementation application, uh, pastoral practice. That certainly that’s where I want to go next, and I’m working on a book already on that front. So, yeah, look, I I, I, there’s not the right response for a podcast, but I wanted to take your question on notice and, and ponder it.

[01:03:49] Collin: No, I that, I, I think you did answer it. You said We need more practical work on how to, how to work this out. I mean, there will be new challenges. There may [01:04:00] be nuanced dimensions of the debate and, and as it develops, um, just look at the last decade and how much has changed The rise and fall

[01:04:09] Rob: Yeah.

[01:04:10] Collin: Um, of this, yeah.

Of this, of this theory.

[01:04:13] Rob: Yeah.

[01:04:13] Collin: But it, it, when, when it rose it, there are foundations that had already been laid, that had happened decades ago, and as it falls, the underlying questions about identity formation in Western culture, those aren’t going away. So those are gonna be perennial challenges for us, and we’re gonna need to work on those.

[01:04:35] Rob: Yeah. And, and there is certainly work to be done on, on questions of identity and, um, my friend Brian Rosner has written a couple of books on that

[01:04:42] Collin: Yeah.

[01:04:42] Rob: Front already. And as have others, um, I, I, I’ve got a piece I’m writing on the ethics of gender transitioning. Um, or, or at least arguing that it’s not an ethical, um, path.

Uh. The other area that I’m aware of, actually, [01:05:00] now you see, now you’ve got me thinking. Um, uh, I’m, I, I’m glad that there’s kind of been an evangelical, um, recovery of natural law approaches, but I’m also slightly nervous, um, that we, uh, inadvertently come adopting a almost a, um, a Catholic methodology, uh, rather than seeing the need for scripture to reveal nature, uh, to us.

So we can’t go to nature directly and, or at least what we, we can, but we, we, we don’t know what we are reading, uh, without the use Calvin’s metaphor, putting on the, putting on the glasses of the spectacles of scripture. So we need scripture to illuminate nature and creation rather than thinking we can just read off creation.

Um, um, unaided. Um, yeah. Does that that [01:06:00] make sense?

[01:06:00] Collin: Yeah. Well that’s, that is a perennial question, and it’s one that I had asked you that I alluded to earlier in the question of simply how do you put the Old Testament and the New Testament together? Um, and a lot of that is not only valuable for the normative sense of how we teach our congregations, how we lead our congregations, but also in a situational sense, how do we argue for these issues?

Um, and of course, one of the things that we’ve seen in the, in the gay marriage debates and now the trans debates would be the way that Catholics have, have adopted a lot of natural law theories as a way, um, especially to integrate within a judicial framework, to argue that these are not explicitly revelatory matters that depend on a particular.

Particular set of scriptures, but in fact are known to all people. And that of course, makes it easier to make the judicial argument. It also makes it easier to make the apologetic argument.

[01:06:59] Rob: [01:07:00] Yes.

[01:07:00] Collin: But you still run into some basic challenges such as, well, I mean the explicit teachings of Jesus that call us to a certain kind of more radical discipleship than you might get from simply reading the grain of the culture and traditional societies.

You also are prone potentially to run into a, um, a kind of cultural essentialism as it comes to masculinity and femininity, that this is the way that we are always meant to be without a recognition of its cultural conditioning there. So at least that’s how I see some of the potential tensions emerging.

[01:07:41] Rob: Yeah, no, that’s a helpful comment and um. Yeah. Uh, certainly I think we wanna, you know, be very affirming of creation order and, and see the value of these arguments, right, and the persuasiveness of them. Just knowing that our epistemological certainty, uh, comes [01:08:00] via scriptural confirmation, um, rather than simply via our own empirical Right.

Kind of observation. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:08:07] Collin: Is that. Well in, uh, in more than, I mean in a good long interview, we’ve gotten a taste of what readers could hopefully get more of in the body. God gives a biblical response to transgender theory written by my guest, Rob Smith. Just really, really encouraging endorsements on this book and it lives up in and rewards the careful attention that the reader gives to it.

Rob, thanks for joining me on Gospel Bound.

[01:08:33] Rob: It’s been a great pleasure calling.

[01:08:41] Collin: Thanks for listening to this episode of Gospel Bound. For more interviews and to sign up for my newsletter, head over to tgc.org/gospel bound rate and review gospel bound on your favorite podcast platform so others can join the conversation. Until next time, remember, when we’re bound to the [01:09:00] gospel, we abound in hope.