Responding to the Transgender Revolution: Brave Men Needed

From the chapter “Responding to the Transgender Revolution” in my book (Dis)Ordered: Lies about Human Nature and the Truth That Sets Us Free (CPH 2023):

“A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.” Never in the history of the world have we more needed brave people to call things what they actually are. A social contagion has spread through the West, causing children to mutilate their bodies and receive hormone treatments with drastic consequences….

The transgender movement … involves the final overthrow of biological reality. It claims that you are not what your chromosomes or sexual organs say you are. You are whatever you feel you are….

When meaning is defined by feelings, childhood is extended indefinitely, and everything is sexualized, confusion over identity is inevitable. This problem is exacerbated by human existence being reduced to gender and sexuality by the sexual revolutionaries. Since this is a matter of will and not body, the transgender revolution is the final triumph of the Gnostic conception of reality, which subordinates the body to the soul and renders the material world something from which we must be liberated. Once one accepts the premise that a biological male can be a woman born into the wrong (i.e., male) body, then it follows that the body is a prison. A person’s true identity is entirely disconnected from creation….

Always with love, God calls Christians to call things what they really are. Men are men, women are women, and these are immutable truths. Jesus is the truth (John 14:6). If what He says is not true, then nothing is. The Nicene Creed confesses about Him, et homo factus est: “And He was made man.” The incarnation of the Son of God is for the healing of the human race. He heals every dysphoria, and His redemption is for every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

(Dis)Ordered is currently on sale at CPH. It is also available at Amazon.

On the Authority of Councils of the Church

Many, perhaps willfully, misunderstand and misrepresent the meaning of Sola Scriptura. It is not an abandonment of patristics or tradition. Rather, it means that all things are subject to God’s own Word. Martin Chemnitz applies this truth to the question of the authority of Church Councils:

The authority of councils is most salutary in the church, as Augustine rightly says, that is, if they judge according to the rule and norm of the sacred Scripture. And when they prove their decisions by means of sure and clear testimonies of Scripture, the church owes them obedience with the greatest reverence as to a heavenly voice. Then also this statement of Christ applies (Luke 10:16): “He who hears you hears Me, and he who rejects you rejects Me.” But when the mere name “council” is heard, it ought not at once turn us into rocks, treetrunks, and stocks, as though it were the head of Gorgo, so that we thoughtlessly embrace any and all decrees without examination, without inquiry and careful judgment. For the Scripture tells us that there are also councils of the wicked, Ps. 22:16; of vain persons, Ps. 26:4; of the ungodly, Ps. 1:1, whose assembly Jer. 15:17, on the basis of the psalm, calls an assembly of mockers, who have their name from their false interpretation. Such were the councils of the ungodly priests against Micah, Jeremiah, against Christ and the apostles. We have, however, the strict command of God, 1 John 4:1: “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

1 Thess. 5:21: “Test everything; hold fast what is good.”

Matt. 7:15: “Beware of false prophets,” etc.

Therefore it is right, and it must of necessity be done according to the commandment of God, that we examine the decrees of the councils according to the norm of sacred Scripture, as the saying of Jerome has it: “That is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit: which is set forth in the canonical books. If the councils pronounce anything against this, I consider it wicked.”

Examination of the Council of Trent, vol. 1, p31

"Apostolic Succession" and Forgetting Christ

When the successors to the apostles forget their dependence upon “Christ the cornerstone” and cease to represent Him and His truth, they are not the possessors of a supranatural power which enables them to frustrate all possibility of other men’s salvation and illumination; they are simply shutting themselves out of the Church of Christ.

Georgios I. Mantzaridis, The Deification of Man: St Gregory Palamas and the Orthodox Tradition, ed. Christos Yannaras and Costa Carras, trans. Liadain Sherrard, vol. Two, Contemporary Greek Theologians (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 58.

Opposing Wills Disturb the Peace of the Household

Opposing wills disturb the peace of the household. The solution to this is only found in the prayer, “Thy will be done.” Here it is not the will of the man or the woman that prevails, but the will of Him who made both.

Who Caused the Schism?

The catholics who presented the Augsburg Confession to Charles V were very troubled by the possibility of further schism in the church. What did the confessors at Augsburg ask? Allow the Gospel to be purely presented, and relax certain onerous traditions:

It is not our intention to take oversight away from the bishops. We ask only this one thing, that they allow the Gospel to be taught purely, and that they relax a few observances that they claim it is sinful to change. If they will not give anything up, it is for them to decide how they will give an account to God for causing schism by their stubbornness. (AC XXVIII.77-78)

We pray someday the schism can be healed.