Male and Female Created He Them

Sleepy. That's how the man of dust was starting to feel. Sleepy. It had been a long and lonely day's work, and disappointingly little to show for it. High and low for most his life, he'd been scouring the animal kingdom to find a helper. He couldn't handle this mission by himself. He needed someone, needed something, that was enough like him to rise to the challenge, enough like him to share a history and a future, enough like him to... to... Well, it had been a frustrating day. Thing after thing had paraded past him through the foliage, but none of the fauna met his needs. None of them were what he was. He knelt next to a serene pond, a pool in the garden, and looked in. Reflection. Staring back was a picture. Eyes, lips, hands. That's closer – that was like him. If only he had a twin! But on second thought, that might get dull in a different way. Duplicating everything all over again. Something didn't feel right about the thought. That just wouldn't work, another self like that – no, he needed a helper who was like him, and he needed a helper who was his opposite. He gave up. There came a rustling in the branches, a cooling breeze in the day. The sunlight seemed to get faster, stronger. It was peaceful, it was soothing. The Maker was near, and the sleepy man of dust felt reassured as he drifted off...

Slowly he began to come to himself. His eyelids had felt like stones at the bottom of a river, slowly floating to the surface. Groggy. Something felt... not as it had before. His eyes weren't all the way open as he started feeling around beneath his arm. There was a hollowness near his heart. His eyes fluttered, adjusted to the light. He lifted his head – and shouted in awed surprise. He was not alone. But it was not the Maker there, in the cool of the day. It was another. It was his reflection, brought to life – but not his reflection. Like him, but the opposite. His opposite, but the same. He recognized his kind. This one stared back with two eyes, smiled with lips like his, beckoned with five fingers like his – but no, not just like his, not as the reflection had been his. This was a new way to be what he was. It was an opposite way. A body like his, but very unlike his. His mind strained to grasp how it could be both.

Suddenly he understood the hollowness within, and he delighted in it. This body before him, this other self, had been built up out of his very own flesh, out of his own bone, transformed and differentiated and rearranged and glorified to be his equal. Like him, the perfect image and likeness of God. They both bore it, but not the same – no, in two different and complementary ways. And it was together that they would display the inner richness of God, together that the Maker's creativity would find its image, when this way and that way united for fruitful multiplication. Such were they designed to do – to fit together, to be at each other's side, to fuse and attach.

No sooner had the booming breath escaped his lungs in astonishment than the Maker approached, the Almighty, listening in delight to the dust-man's reaction. He and this other one turned to face him together, their fingers intertwined. Together saw they the light, together felt the rush of wind, together breathed in the aroma of the garden, together heard the voice of the Lord bless them and join them and call them by one name. Their hearts beat in time. Their eyes locked again, and each could see reflected in the other's eyes not only him- or herself, but the light of the Almighty shining bright. The human male, sculpted of dust and mud by the Divine Potter. This shapely female counterpart, built and constructed by the Master Architect and Crafter. They needed no words to say it. They were one flesh, they were a continuous unity, one made to receive the other. Together, they could act as a single organism, a single body, fruitfully united for multiplication and increase; and the committed union of the whole of their lives would extend that oneness beyond an event, beyond one act, into a saga of beauty. They heard their Maker call it marriage. There would sexuality belong. And Adam's sex as man, and Eve's sex as woman, made it all astonishingly and strikingly possible.¹ Everything was obvious, plain as the leaves on the tree of life, clear as the crystalline streams. God's handiwork had declared itself and himself evidently since the very hour of creation (cf. Romans 1:20). And it was all very, very good.

But, with the passage of time, stole the shadow upon their souls. A bite of proudly seized fruit, passed from one body to the other; and with that, this flesh was poisoned in both its places by shame and confusion. Their body, their mind, infected. Like demons exorcised from a holy temple, like tender flowers ripped up from their roots, they tumbled to a world of withering east of Eden, where they roamed far from home. Thrown back into the calloused hands of an impoverished nature, they did increase, they did multiply. But not everything continued as clear as it once was. In Eden, there were no chromosomal abnormalities, no developmental anomalies, no psychiatric illnesses. But east of Eden, all these things slowly crept in. Down through the generations from this Adam and this Eve, some would indeed – in the Lord's words – be “eunuchs who from their mother's womb were born that way” – those physically or psychologically incapable of joining into one flesh with a helper like and opposite them (Matthew 19:12a). East of Eden, some would be born with birth defects that caused their maleness or femaleness to seem less than obvious at first. East of Eden, others would be born with a feeling of disconnection between the sex of they saw in reflection and the sense of self they carried inside – men ill at ease as men, women ill at ease as women. Also east of Eden, some would be born and raised, desiring impossible unions with helpers only alike, not opposite – sons of Adam yearning for sons of Adam, daughters of Eve for daughters of Eve. All creation was groaning in agony to be set free from the chains of corruption, laboring under perplexity and pain (Romans 8:21-23).

East of Eden, God was suddenly not so obvious. The fruit had opened their eyes, alright – opened them too wide, too wide to retain the focus that had once been theirs (cf. Genesis 3:7). The world seemed a jumble of mismatched pieces, a cacophony of voices crying out for their devotion. Obsessing in the mud and dust whence they came, nations of Adam's sons, of Eve's daughters, couldn't keep their bearings fixed on the light handed down to them. “Although they knew God” by inference from what he'd made, “they didn't honor him as God or give thanks to him,” didn't recognize him for what he'd done, didn't appreciate, didn't acknowledge his authority as the Author. So “they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:21). And as the light faded from their minds, occluded by the clutter and the fog, obvious truths seemed no longer true or even good any more. Boasting they knew better than the God of nature, determined to bend the skies above and earth beneath to their will, heeding the many voices calling them this way and that (cf. Romans 1:22), they fell madly in love with all the unsuitable things brought before Adam that sleepy day, the creepy-crawlies, the four-foots, the winged things, even their own decaying reflections (Romans 1:23). So God mournfully let them chase these lesser loves, generation by generation reconfiguring their hearts after passions (Romans 1:24-26), offending as much against their own bodies as against their Creator (1 Corinthians 6:18).

Ages rolled on, and one day, some of Adam's sons, some of Eve's daughters, stood beneath a mountain, where they heard the sweet-courting Voice that once blessed their first parents. The mountain burned between Egypt behind them and Canaan before them. But both were lands of confusion, where these foundational truths of the creation were muddled, where the people gave themselves up to impurity, shame, passion, abusing God's gift of difference and union. When Israel lived in Egypt, they labored under the eyes of many pharaohs who routinely set the example of marrying their own sisters and siring children by them.² Some pharaohs of ages past had even been rumored to sneak out at night for sexual contact with some of their military officers – men with men.

Leaving that world, Israel was marching to inherit the land of Canaan, whose various nations worshipped devious gods of whom they celebrated revolting tales. To hear the Canaanites tell it, their high god El was not only a hopeless drunk but a senile sex fiend; while his son, the rain-giving god Ba'al, lusted after his very own daughters and then mated, in more than one myth, with cows and heifers in the field.³ And if that's what these nations worshipped, their lives could hardly lag behind. Nor did they.⁴

And so to this fragile people caught between, God from the mountain thundered forth first a simple word: “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14). But how to know what that is, without the truths it rests on? And so God unpacked that word in many words for his yet-blind people, who often were led astray from their Maker's designs for sex and sexuality. God elaborated so as to retrain them away from the recklessness of their perplexed eyes, their darkened minds, their uncircumcised hearts, all of which lusted after the chaos all around.

Thus God spelled out laws to govern their appreciation and use of his gifts of sex and sexuality. “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt where you lived,” the Lord said, “and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan to which I'm bringing you” (Leviticus 18:3), “for by all these things the nations I'm driving out before you have become unclean” (Leviticus 18:24), “but you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations” (Leviticus 18:26). For as God would one day make clear in the Bible's closing chapters, those who surrender their gifts of sex and sexuality into what the Law abominates will be unable, for just so long, to enter into the New and Everlasting Jerusalem (Revelation 21:27; cf. 21:8).

So, with Canaan up ahead, God reminded his people that, just as Adam quickly discovered, no animal could be a suitable mate, even for a moment: “You shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion” (Leviticus 18:23). They were to be like Adam, not like Ba'al. Sex begins with being human, and at the very outermost limit, a minimum requirement for sexuality is that it be shared only among humans.

Then, God reminded his people that, as Adam opened his eyes to find, humans come in two kinds. Some are male. Others are female. And none of the trouble that's entered east of Eden – abnormalities and anomalies, disorders and diseases, desires and disorientations – none of that trouble can eradicate these two fixed ways of being human. Each is a distinctive gift from the Creator, which cannot be exchanged or erased, only abused and harmed. They are good gifts, and neither is better than the other. This God reminded them when he said that “a woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 22:5). That is to say, a human gifted with being a man is called to receive that gift with gratitude, to accept it and acknowledge it, and to live accordingly – to put himself forth into the world as a man. And a human gifted with being a woman is to do the same with her gift. She isn't to assert herself as a man, because she isn't and can't be. He isn't to assert himself as a woman, because he isn't and can't be. No change of clothes can make it so. Neither can chemicals bought at a price or even surgical prowess manufacture this gift of God, but only simulate it. God knew that some would try, so he warned his people, “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 23:1). For some were eunuchs not by birth but by self-determination, “eunuchs who were made eunuchs by human beings” (Matthew 19:12b). Whatever burdens any Israelite bore, such practices were to have no place among God's holy nation of old.⁵

Having thus summoned his people to each receive their sex as man or woman as a gift, he called them first to never use that gift to unite sexually to those who were already one flesh with them. They were not to imitate any longer the incestuous Egyptians. God had higher standards. Marriage was no longer to be an affair of a single family. “None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness,” God insisted (Leviticus 18:6). A man wasn't to have sexual contact or marriage with his mother or stepmother (18:7-8), his sister or half-sister (18:9), his granddaughter (18:10), his step-sister (18:11), his aunt on either side (18:12-14), his daughter-in-law or sister-in-law (18:15-16), his stepdaughter (18:17) – none of that. For these Israelites brought up in Egypt, this was a hard word to hear. Some standing beneath the mountain had their supposed marriages unravel before their eyes. It was a hard word for Moses, for by this even his parents' marriage was undone – his mother was also his father's aunt (Exodus 6:20). But, however painful, all these things were exposed as sexual confusion, the impurities of abused sexuality.

Furthermore, God commanded them to use sexuality only with those who are opposite, complementary. For good reason do humans come in more than one type: both are needed for true sexual union to occur, without which there can be no reproductive fruitfulness. Two humans both gifted with maleness can't unite that way – it isn't possible, so no marriage can arise from it. Two humans both gifted with femaleness can't unite that way – not possible, and no marriage can arise from it.⁶ And the gift of sexuality was only meant for true, full, organic unions that are true marriages. All else is sacrilege. And as Paul would later describe, that's exactly what the pagan world got: “Their females exchanged the natural use for that which is contrary to nature, and the males likewise gave up the natural use of females and were inflamed with passion for one another, men committing indecency with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (Romans 1:26-27). For that reason, God thundered from the mountain through Moses, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman: it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22). In other words, it simply isn't what sexuality is for.⁷

Every body, mind, and life that “does not submit to God's Law” is “hostile to God,” we're told (Romans 8:7). But all these different rules of the Law are really just boundary-markers around a few simple truths, lit up to stand out to our hazy vision: Sex, being a man or being a woman, is a gift from God, each being one of the two unique ways to be human. To be a man is just to be the same kind of human as Adam. To be a woman is just to be the same kind of human as Eve. Sexuality is a gift for uniting the two kinds of human as a single new flesh, a union structurally designed for the prospect of procreation, with pleasure and partnership and parable coming with it. All other applications of sexuality are abuses of, or even rejections of, the gift itself. And well-ordered sexuality takes its cues from Eden, and nowhere else. To be a man the right way, or a woman the right way, and then to live that out sexually the right way, is to imitate the life of Eden. And that is exactly what God wanted Israel to see – and to teach the nations, as his national priesthood in the world (cf. Exodus 19:5-6).

The nations still need to be taught. For today, as much as in Egypt or Canaan, modern-day America and plenty other nations have been sliding back into a shadowy confusion when it comes to living out healthy sex and sexuality as God gave it. Asked what a man is or a woman is, many of our neighbors and leaders will skirt the question, having renounced the answer. What America has come to believe, effectively, is that male and female are two of many genders one could have; that each is a complex reality emerging from many factors, the most important of which are thought or felt, not observed by mirror or microscope; that a man can choose to become a woman or to reveal himself as having inwardly always been a woman, or vice versa; that sexuality is ours to employ in any way we choose, inside or outside marriage, so long as everyone involved is on board; and that justice is only done when every person is free to express themself sexually as they please, and no relationship structure infused with romantic love can be excluded from the definition of marriage, which is ours to write and rewrite until all are satisfied. So now America believes. What America increasingly disbelieves is that “in the image of God he created him: male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27), that only a man and a woman can cleave to one another and become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). A modern American may be less certain to believe that than any Egyptian or Canaanite ever was.⁸

Faced with the new America, we can't shelter ourselves in a bubble, pretending that most people still secretly agree with us about the things they've learned to forget. The era when most Americans at least made a show of nodding when the church taught and spoke is over. Nor will it be helpful for us to just be angry and dismissive all the time – although we are grieved when today's revolt against reality victimizes real bodies and real souls. Instead, we're called to give a truthful answer. God has not left himself without witness (Acts 14:17). To be a human being is to be fundamentally embodied: you're not a soul stuck in the wrong spot; your body is you. Each of us still has our sex, as either a man or a woman, as a gift from God's hand, however distorted or misunderstood sin makes it. The capacity for sexual union is still God's very good gift, too. These gifts can't be exchanged or erased, and must not be abused. Your body once had and still has a meaning and a purpose; and misdirected sexuality, out-of-place sexuality, isn't it (1 Corinthians 6:13).

We have the task, in today's world, of insisting on these forgotten truths. These truths were the consistent awareness of God's ancient people Israel and their heirs.⁹ The same truths have also been the consistent witness of the New Israel, the Church, from the very beginning and through the ages.¹⁰ But these aren't easy or popular truths to speak today. They're getting harder by the year, and more necessary by the year. About 42% of Americans now personally know someone who identifies as transgender (that is, other than as the sex God gave them).¹¹ The vast majority of Americans personally know someone who identifies as homosexual. You'll find them in your community, and maybe in your family – and if you haven't, your grandchildren definitely have and will. When I was in college, one of my closer friends for a while was a woman who was mainly attracted to other women. When I was in seminary, one of my best friends there was a man who, by God's grace, refused to surrender to his same-sex temptations. I have a male cousin who's mainly attracted to other men, and a half-sister raising a child with a woman whom American law regards as her spouse. I have a sister-in-law who takes hormone treatments to assist her in her effort to live as if she were a man. People have – and care deeply for – friends and family in those shoes. It's not for no reason that so many Christians in our country try to affirm those friends and family in what they think and desire. Whole church bodies have been led to do likewise, in spite of the Apostle Paul's warning that those who “give approval to those who practice” these things are in the same mortal or eternal danger as those who do them (Romans 1:32). And that isn't kind or compassionate.

We have to speak the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help us God – but only, ever, and always in love (Ephesians 4:15). Because this isn't about abstract issues. It's about real people, real individuals made in God's image, broken and disordered east of Eden, confused and barraged and sometimes led astray by the loud voices of social encouragement and inner wrestling and the craving for self-pride. And that describes all of us. Each of us has been inflamed by desire, urged on by the flesh. Each of us has found fierce warfare within, as we aim for the good but do the evil we didn't want to do (Romans 7:19, 22). But all of us are called by the Lord to discipline ourselves – including our sexual thoughts, attitudes, actions, and sense of self – for his sake, expressing them joyfully only as he decrees good. And in this, none of us have room to boast over another.

For those whose burdens take certain forms (such as gender dysphoria or same-sex attraction), this call can seem especially challenging. Some burdens are laid upon some by chemical influences encountered in the womb, or by psychiatric conditions, or by the pressures and temptations of a culture that knows just which levers to pull to unleash social contagion. But such burdens, non-culpable effects of the Fall, aren't chosen. It's little wonder it's so prevalent to surrender instead of struggle to tame this area of life beneath the will of God.

And too often, we who claim to be truthful, we who claim to love, have made these burdens all the heavier on those around us. We've piled on added cultural expectations of what's masculine and what's feminine, and so have substituted our man-made traditions for the less burdensome commands of God (Mark 7:8). We've cast stones like the maddest Pharisee out to justify ourselves by trampling the 'sinner' into the dust at our feet, too afraid to admit our own fellowship of weakness and need with him or her. We've excluded as forever unclean those whom God is ready to cleanse and claim. And we've neglected the awesome hope brought into the open as the Lord dignifies the state of life that surrenders the gift of sexuality on his altar, and instead we choose to make marriage the one-size-fits-all idol, as though life without it were incomplete. Lord, help us repent!

But Jesus Christ was born into the world – born as a man, born of a woman, born under the Law (Galatians 4:4) – to call us all to take our burdens and temptations, of whatever form they come, and to nail them to his cross. And then he bids us lift that cross and carry it in his footsteps, laying claim to him by denying ourselves (Mark 8:34). Oh, it's deeply self-denying to crucify your own thoughts about your God-given sex. It's deeply self-denying to crucify your deep-seated passions, your sole desired outlets for romantic or erotic intimacy.¹² But to sacrifice visions and passions and intimacies for Jesus is to be heir to his promise of hundredfold reward (Mark 10:29-31). Some will sacrifice these things so as to, in effect, “make eunuchs of themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12c) – that is, anticipating life like angels, wedded now to God and no other, offering their sexuality to him in celibacy. Others come to Christ, having been born not by choice but yearning to be born again, maybe having undergone treatment to efface God's gift in them, crying out in pained longing – and where once the Law bore a word of exclusion, the Prophet relays God's word of welcome in Christ: “Let not the eunuch say, 'I am a dry tree,' for thus says the LORD: 'To the eunuchs who... choose things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters..., an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. … These I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. … Their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar'” (Isaiah 56:3-7).

And such things aren't only theoretical. Paul mentions that the early church had members who were formerly sexually immoral, formerly adulterers, formerly involved in same-sex sexual encounters (1 Corinthians 6:9). But Paul says they've now surrendered that life to Jesus: “Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Jesus Christ, perfect Image of God, died on his cross to reprint his image on them and make them shine with it. And that made them every bit as worthy of being part of God's temple as you are or I am (1 Peter 2:5), even if life were to be a struggle against temptations and doubts each and every day.

But along the way, Christians (then and now) could hope for the Holy Spirit to be the new focus of their minds, rather than dwelling on their own impulses or perceptions (Romans 8:5). They could now be “transformed by the renewal of [their] minds,” learning to “discern what is the will of God” (Romans 12:2). Where the old self had been “corrupt through deceitful desires,” a mind- and heart-renewal by the Holy Spirit would more and more clothe them with a new identity, with “the new human,” which was “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22-24). And that's true for all of us.

Best of all, Jesus Christ rose from the grave to give us new hope – hope of a glorified body, brain, heart, and soul no longer at odds among themselves, no longer burdened or fallen, no longer vulnerable to temptations and lusts and confusions. We all now “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for... the redemption of our bodies” in the resurrection that's to come, “for in this hope we were saved” (Romans 8:23-24). In the resurrection, each one who follows Jesus now will then perfectly shine with the image of God, unmistakable and fabulous. In the resurrection, each one who has the gift of being a man, and each one who has the gift of being a woman, will know what his or her gift means, and will see new and glorious ways to live it out, better than this passing age can ever know, for “what we will be has not yet appeared” (1 John 3:2). In the resurrection, every body and every mind will be unchained into the harmony of freedom (Romans 8:21). And in the resurrection, in the new creation, in the kingdom of God, we will have a life that “nothing unclean will ever enter” (Revelation 21:27).

Now that's good news! Until that blessed hope comes, let us all love and speak the truth in love – for God is the Truth, and God is Love, and God finds no gap between them. Let us openly cherish and thank God for his good gifts, for “every good gift and every perfect gift” – including male and female, including sex and sexuality, and including the guidelines to exercise them in healthy and joyful ways – “is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). And let us carry the cross, groaning all the way, waiting in hopeful patience and with the Holy Spirit's help (Romans 8:25-26) for the day when everything about us, including sex and sexuality, will be as Christ is creating it to be. Amen.

1  I'm indebted here to the discussion in Alexander R. Pruss, One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 132, 164-165; and Patrick Lee and Robert P. George, Conjugal Union: What Marriage Is and Why It Matters (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 44-45.

2  For instance, Pharaoh Ahmose I married his sister Ahmose-Nefertari; their son, Pharaoh Amenhotep I, married his sister Ahmose-Meritamon; a later pharaoh, Thutmose II, married his half-sister Hatshepsut; much later, Pharaoh Akhenaten married his sister, and their son, Pharaoh Tutankhamun ('King Tut'), married his half-sister Ankhesenamun, with whom he had stillborn daughters. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22: A New Translation with Commentary, Anchor Bible 3A (Doubleday, 2000), 1518-1519, observes that “consanguinous marriages (father-daughter, brother-sister, aunt-nephew, uncle-niece, and others) prevailed in Egypt in every period, in nonroyal as well as royal cases.”

3  For El's portrayal, see CAT 1.4 IV 38-39 and CAT 1.23 33-51, translated in Simon B. Parker, ed., Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, Writings from the Ancient World 9 (Society of Biblical Literature, 1997), 128, 210-212. For Ba'al and his daughters, see CAT 1.3 I 22-27 (translated in Ugaritic Narrative Poetry 106 and discussed in Mark S. Smith and Wayne T. Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, vol. 2: Introduction with Text, Translation, and Commentary of KTU/CAT 1.3—1.4 [Brill, 2009], 117). For Ba'al and bestiality, see CAT 1.5 V 17-22 (translated in Ugaritic Narrative Poetry 148), plus the more obscure text CAT 1.10 II 26-29 and III 1-3 (translated in Ugaritic Narrative Poetry 184).

4  Adrianus van Selms, Marriage and Family Life in Ugaritic Literature (Luzac & Company, Ltd., 1954), 80-82.

5  For Christian resources about transgenderism, see Mark A. Yarhouse, Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture (InterVarsity Press, 2015); Andrew T. Walker, God and the Transgender Debate: What Does the Bible Actually Say About Gender Identity? (The Good Book Company, 2017); Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (Encounter Books, 2018); J. Alan Branch, Affirming God's Image: Addressing the Transgender Question with Science and Scripture (Lexham Press, 2019); and Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say (David C. Cook, 2021).

6  See explanation in Patrick Lee and Robert P. George, Conjugal Union: What Marriage Is and Why It Matters (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 49-50.

7  For a detailed biblical study of the ethics of homosexuality, see Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Abingdon Press, 2001). For other Christian resources, see, e.g., Dennis P. Hollinger, The Meaning of Sex: Christian Ethics and the Moral Life (Baker Academic, 2009), chapter 7; Alexander R. Pruss, One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), chapter 9; Michael L. Brown, Can You Be Gay and Christian? Responding with Love and Truth to Questions about Homosexuality (FrontLine, 2014); Preston Sprinkle, People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just an Issue (Zondervan, 2015); J. Alan Branch, Born This Way? Homosexuality, Science, and the Scriptures, 2^nd ed. (Lexham Press, 2018 [2016]); Christopher Yuan, Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God's Great Story (Multnomah, 2018).

8  For the intellectual history that led to these changes, see now Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway Books, 2020). For the impact on our society and culture, see Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (Encounter Books, 2018).

9  For Israel's witness, in addition to the Old Testament, the second-century BC Letter of Aristeas 152 criticizes Gentile men for “defiling themselves in their relationships” and taking pride in “procuring the males.” An Egyptian Jew in the 150s BC begged Greek men to “avoid... indiscriminate intercourse with males” (Sibylline Oracles 3.764), which arises from “compulsion to impiety” (Sibylline Oracles 3.184). Around the same time, a Syrian Jew urged people to examine the creation, “discern the Lord who made all things, so that you do not become like Sodom, which departed from the order of nature” (Testament of Naphtali 3.4). At the turn of the era, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria had harsh words for those who tried to erase their sex and become “hybrids of man and woman,” or who sought to be “completely changed into women and gone on to mutilate their genital organs” (On the Special Laws 3.40-41). A Phrygian Jew, writing around the same time as Jesus' ministry, simply directed people, “Do not practice homosexuality” (Sibylline Oracles 2.73). An unknown first-century Jewish writer ('Pseudo-Phocylides') urged people not to “rouse homosexual passion” and to “not transgress with unlawful sex the limits set by nature, for even animals are not pleased by intercourse of male with male; and let women not imitate the sexual role of men” (Sentences 3, 190-192). Late in the first century, another Jewish writer said that those who love God do not nurture “disgraceful desire for... hateful and repulsive abuse of a male” (Sibylline Oracles 4.33-34). A decade later, the Jewish historian Josephus commented that “the only sexual intercourse recognized by the Law is the natural intercourse with a woman,” and that God's Law “abhorred male intercourse with males” (Against Apion 2.199), calling it “bizarre and unnatural pleasures” (Against Apion 2.275). Eventually, the rabbis of the early third century would reaffirm the sinfulness of any man “who engages in intercourse with a male” (m. Sanhedrin 7.4).

10  For the Church's witness, in addition to the New Testament, a Christian writer in the early second century – just a hundred years after Jesus rose from the dead – warned against seeking to be “male at one time and female at another,” or to sexually corrupt boys (Barnabas 10.6-7). The second-century Christian philosopher Aristides was horrified that pagan Greeks “follow base practices in intercourse with males,” and was proud that, instead, Christian men “keep themselves from every unlawful union and from all uncleanness” (Apology 15, 17). The second-century Christian philosopher Athenagoras of Athens stressed that “in the beginning, God formed one man and one woman,” so Christians live accordingly even though pagans “work their frightful deeds with men” and “dishonor even the beauty created by God” (Legatio 33.6; 34.2). The second-century Christian bishop Theophilus of Antioch complained when pagan philosophers promoted “unlawful intercourse” such as “homosexual acts” (Ad Autolycum 3.6). By the end of the second century, the Alexandrian Christian teacher Clement saw that the order of nature “obviously disapproves of such practices,” as human anatomy bears witness (Paedagogus 2.10.87). A few decades later, a Roman Christian named Novatian wrote scathingly about the impurity that “searches out and procures for itself even from the bodies of men not simply a new pleasure but, from men, through men, extraordinary and revolting monstrosities against nature itself” (In Praise of Purity 3.5). A century after that, the early-fourth-century Christian writer Lactantius reflected that “when God thought up the idea of two sexes, he arranged for each to seek the other and to rejoice in the conjunction,” but later Satan “even fitted male to male and contrived outrageous coitus contrary to nature and God's institution,” so that now some people aim to “supplement the sex God gave them with treacherous and lecherous same-sex profanities” (Divine Institutes 6.23.2, 8, 10). In the fourth century, the influential bishop Basil of Caesarea recorded the ruling that, in matters of church discipline, cases of same-sex sexual sin would be treated just the same as adultery – no more, no less (Letter 217.62). From there, the Church's voice remains every bit as unanimous.

11  Rachel Minkin and Anna Brown, “Rising Shares of U.S. Adults Know Someone Who is Transgender or Goes by Gender-Neutral Pronouns,” Pew Research Center, 27 July 2021: <https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/27/rising-shares-of-u-s-adults-know-someone-who-is-transgender-or-goes-by-gender-neutral-pronouns/>.

12  For assorted perspectives on the Christian experience with same-sex attraction, see Christopher Yuan and Angela Yuan, Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son's Journey to God, a Broken Mother's Search for Hope (WaterBrook Press, 2011); Eve Tushnet, Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith (Ave Maria Press, 2014); Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ (Crown & Covenant, 2015); Wesley Hill, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality, rev. ed. (Zondervan, 2016 [2010]); Jackie Hill Perry, Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been (B&H Books, 2018); Ron Belgau, “Same-Sex Attraction and the Calling of God,” in Jerry L. Watts, et al., eds., Venus and Virtue: Celebrating Sex and Seeking Sanctification (Cascade Books, 2018), 195-210; and Becket Cook, A Change of Affection: A Gay Man's Incredible Story of Redemption (Thomas Nelson, 2019).