Every Body Has Authority

By Kamal Weerakoon 

The biological basis of binary sex should not be contentious. Our bodies demonstrate certain consistent patterns. Science carefully examines and exhaustively documents those patterns. And those patterns demonstrate that there are only two sexes. 

But this begs the question of what authority our embodied biology has over our understanding of our self, and following on from that, what authority our biological constitution has to guide our way of life. Biology may indeed be binary. But - so what? What right does binary biology have to 'identify' me – to authoritatively tell me something about my self and how I should present and relate to others? 

Christianity’s doctrine of creation gives Christians good reasons to recognise the authority of embodied biology. God’s creation of humanity as male and female (Gen 1:26-28) is consistent with the binary nature of other animals (Gen 6:19-20) and is an aspect of the goodness – the overall integrated wholesomeness – of God’s original design. 

The ordered nature of divine creation in general gives Christians a basis to both expect and respect the results of science, where those results do not depend on the scientist’s religious beliefs. Basically, to be a good scientist, you don’t have to properly worship God. All you have to do is pay careful attention to whatever it is you're studying as you seek to discover its internal operations - how it ‘works.’ In the case of living beings, this involves understanding their ‘biology’ or ‘life-logic,’ the operations of their bios, their life.  

But contemporary trans ideology ‘sanctifies,’ as it were, a person’s internal beliefs and preferences. It asserts that a person’s internal sense of themselves is always right. To question it is to attack that person – as if you were coming at them with a weapon and intending to do them harm. Hence the slogan ‘biology is bigotry.’ Trans ideology trains people to hate what gives them life. 

Trans ideology then tries to use technology to contradict the normal, healthy operations of the body, and to enable a person to impose their internal preferences upon their physical body. As more and more people – detransitioners, and others who experience various forms of gender change regret – are discovering, this is a losing battle. The body tends to reassert itself. 

This has consequences far beyond Christianity and ‘religion’ more broadly defined. As many people have discovered, it stifles free speech and scientific inquiry. Over at First Things, Carl Trueman recently commented on how the famous atheist Richard Dawkins has resigned from the Freedom from Religion Foundation in protest against its acceptance of transgender ideology. 

Dawkins and other atheists base their belief in binary gender on their love of scientific rationality. But, as Trueman points out, they don't go deep enough. Who – what personal, intelligent, acting, thinking being – bestows meaning upon our physical constitution? Who is the final logos of our bios? Is it ourselves? Or someone else? 

Biblical Christianity has the best of all answers to this question. Our God created us all as either male or female. There’s still plenty of variety within that binary. Different men and different women look, act, speak, and relate in a variety of ways. But each of us does so as either a man or a woman. 

Jesus Christ, God’s word made flesh (John 1:14), gave his body to death and resurrection “for us and for our salvation” (Nicene Creed). He is our life-logic, the logos of our bios. We trust him with our eternal life. Therefore, we should trust him with our life in this world. And that means that when he affirms, as he does in Matthew 19:4-6 and Mark 10:6-9, that God created two and only two sexes, we trust him. The sex of our body is not an accident. It is a gift from our creator and redeemer God, which tells us something real and good about our self. 

Patricia Weerakoon, Rob Smith and I discuss all this in more detail in The Gender Revolution, its associated study guide, and the study guide’s leader’s notes. For now, I conclude with this. Every body has authority – authority to inform us about who and what we really are. Science rightly recognises that authority. But that authority does not finally come from science or scientists. It comes from our creator God, who created us as either male or female, and bids us live as man or woman for him.