SMBC Blog

7 March 2025

The Body God Gives

Rob Smith

Like a fledgling bird leaving the nest, unaware of the delights and dangers that lie ahead, on Wednesday 19 February 2025, my new book, The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory, was finally released into the wild.

The book is a reworking of my doctoral thesis, awarded in 2022: “Identity and Embodiment: An Evangelical Evaluation of Transgender Theory.” The book is longer than the thesis, however, for the publisher allowed me to include three extra chapters that provide a philosophical history of the changes that have taken place in sex and gender conceptions over the last seventy-five years. To compensate for this sizable addition, other chapters have been trimmed and many footnotes deleted. The result, I trust, is a more comprehensive and more readable book. However, it still weighs in at 372 pages of argument. So don’t expect to read it in a night.

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"Now this begs a few questions: What is sex? What is gender? And what is gender identity?"

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What is the book about? As I clarify at the beginning of the first chapter, this is “not a book about the lived experience of those with gender incongruence (and the dysphoria it typically generates), or the pastoral care they typically require.” Rather, it’s a book that engages with an idea and does so “from an evangelical perspective – that is, one that regards the Bible as the written word of the Triune God” (p. 4). What is this idea? It is the central claim of transgender theory: that the sexed body does not determine the gendered self. Or to put it in a more positive form: what determines your gender (and for some your sex also) is not your body but your gender identity.

Now this begs a few questions: What is sex? What is gender? And what is gender identity? To begin with the first, sex is a biological term that refers to an organism’s reproductive structure and potential reproductive role. Like most other mammals, human beings are designed to produce either small gametes (sperm) or large gametes (eggs). If the former, they are male; if the latter, they are female. While things can sometimes go wrong in a person’s sex development and result in what is commonly called an “intersex condition,” sex is necessarily binary as there is no third gamete, no third type of gonad, and no third form of genitalia.

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"For most people, their psychological sex aligns with their biological sex. But this is not the case for all, which is why some people claim a transgender identity."

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What about gender? Once upon a time, gender was (and sometimes still is) nothing more than a synonym for sex. However, since the 1950s, it has become increasingly common to see gender as something distinct from sex, referring specifically to the socio-cultural dimensions of sex; that is, to how we “do” or “express” being male and female in a particular time and place. This makes some sense, for what counts as (say) male and female dress has changed over the centuries and can be different in different countries. This is usually what people mean when they speak of gender as “socially constructed.” And to an extent they are right to do so.

What then is gender identity? This term refers to what might otherwise be called a person’s “psychological sex”; that is, their inner sense of being male or female, or (perhaps) both or neither. For most people, their psychological sex aligns with their biological sex. But this is not the case for all, which is why some people claim a transgender identity – usually meaning that they experience some degree of mismatch between the sex they believe they are (or should be) and the sex of their body. Previously, this condition was known as “Gender Identity Disorder.” Now, at least for those who accept trans theory, it is no longer regarded as a disorder. Why? For the sexed body does not determine the gendered self – not for any of us!

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"Here, then, is where my book comes in, for its main aim is to provide a biblical assessment of this claim. My conclusion is that the claim is false."

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Here, then, is where my book comes in, for its main aim is to provide a biblical assessment of this claim. My conclusion is that the claim is false: the sexed body does, in fact, determine the gen­dered self, and, as a consequence, it should ground gender identity, guide gender roles, and govern gender expression. Thus, the book’s title – The Body God Gives seeks to capture this finding by answering the key question: How do I know if I’m a boy or a girl, a man or a woman? Answer: not my subjective sense of gender but the objective reality of my sex – that is, the body God gives.

How does Scripture lead us to this conclusion? As tempting as it is to respond by saying, “Read the book and you’ll find out,” let me briefly summarise the case with the help of four (big) words that end in “ion”: creation, constitution, redemption, and resurrection.

Creation: One of the first things we learn about humanity in the opening chapter of the Bible is that God created us, his image bearers, as a sexually dimorphic species: “in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). Sex, then, is not a spectrum; it is binary. Then, in Genesis 2, we are introduced to two parallel terms – man and woman – which are not so much gender terms, as some have supposed, but human-specific sex terms. In other words, and as Jesus confirms, man maps on to male and woman maps on to female (Matt 19:4-5). From this it follows that an adult male can only ever be a man and never a woman, just as an adult female can only ever be a woman and never a man. This is the fixed order of creation, an order which is unchanged by the fall. But like all else that God has made, it is an order which is “very good” (Gen 1:31). To follow it is to flourish.

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"we are as much ensouled bodies as we are embodied souls. This rules out any possibility that one’s true self is separate from one’s body or might somehow have found itself in 'the wrong body.'"

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Constitution: Not only do Genesis 1 and 2 teach us about (what I term in the book) the sex-and-gender binary and the sex-and-gender connection, they also introduce us to the nature of human constitution – i.e., how God has made us. While there is an obvious uniqueness to the forming of the first man from the dust of the ground and the building of the first woman from part of the side of the man, the lesson we learn, in both cases, concerns the importance of bodies. Indeed, the man is called “the man” even before he receives “the breath of life” and becomes a “living being” (2:7). Likewise, it is from part of the man’s body that the body of the woman is made (2:22). None of this is to deny what Scripture also makes plain, that human beings have an inner and outer aspect, but it is to affirm that we are as much ensouled bodies as we are embodied souls. This rules out any possibility that one’s true self is separate from one’s body or might somehow have found itself in “the wrong body.”

Redemption: Given the catastrophic impacts of the fall, it shouldn’t really surprise us that some people, for any number of different reasons, are confused about their gender or struggle to be reconciled to their sex. But it’s important to understand that God’s redemptive purposes not only involve our cleansing and forgiveness but also our renewal and transformation. This is why Jesus calls us not only to come to him for rest but also to take his yoke upon us and to learn from him (Matt 11:28-30). For where we have worked against the grain of our createdness, he now wants to teach us how to work with it. Where we have engaged in disintegration (e.g., by separating sex and gender) he wants to teach us reintegration. To this end, Scripture issues a number of warnings and prohibitions – e.g., against cross-dressing (Deut 22:5), male effeminacy (1 Cor 6:9), gender blurring (1 Cor 11) – all designed to show us the way not to go, the way of disorder and disobedience. In this sense, all the commands of Scripture, both positive and negative, are aimed at redeeming creation order in line with human constitution.

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"What all this tells us is that the sex of the body we have been given us in this world not only determines our gender here and now but will also determine whether we are a man or a woman in the world to come."

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Resurrection: Scripture gives us every indication that when Jesus returns and raises the dead, he will not merely restore us according to the creational pattern but will transform our bodies from corruptible bodies of dust to incorruptible bodies suited for eternal life in God’s kingdom (1 Cor 15:42-50). So, there will be change – praise God! But not a change into androgynous, asexual, or monosexual beings; rather, a change from being mortal and perishable men and women into immortal and imperishable men and women (1 Cor 15:53). Jesus indicates this in Matthew 22, for in making the point that there won’t be marriage in the world to come, he also affirms that we will still be men and women: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are they given in marriage” (v. 30). As the emphasised words highlight, Jesus is talking about two different groups – men and women. In other words, we will remain males and females in the world to come, just as “the man Christ Jesus” in his resurrected glory is still a Jewish male and will remain so forever.

What all this tells us is that the sex of the body we have been given us in this world not only determines our gender here and now but will also determine whether we are a man or a woman in the world to come. Of course, this should not be a cause for concern. For on that day, all the distress, dysphoria and disappointment of this life will be banished forever. But the answer to the question ­– How do I know if I am a man or a woman? – will remain unchanged: the body God gives.