Theology in the Raw - 641: #641 - Christ and the Eucharist, Falling Away and Salvation, and Challenging the Male and Female Binary

Episode Date: April 2, 2018

What is Christ's role in the Eucharist? Do Christians who fall away lose their salvation? Do intersex persons challenge the male and female binary?

Hello, friends, and welcome back to yet another episode of Theology in Raw. I have a bunch of really good, really tough, very interesting questions that I'm going to get to in a second. I first want to go through some upcoming speaking engagements. Again, you can go to pressandsprinkle.com, go to speaking schedule, and you can find a list of events that I'll be speaking at. I'll be in Indianapolis hanging out with the Free Methodists. I've grown very fond of my Free Methodist brothers and sisters out there and have gotten to know a lot of people in that wonderful denomination. I'm going to be in Indianapolis on Thursday, April 12th. Unfortunately, it's a closed event. So yeah, email me. Maybe we

could hang out or something in Indianapolis before or after my conversation with a bunch of free Methodist pastors. I will be at an open event in Dyer, Indiana, just up the road from Indianapolis up towards Chicago. I'll be preaching a bunch of services at Faith Reform Church in Dyer, Indiana, April 14th and April 15th. That's a Saturday night service, two Sunday morning services, and a Sunday evening Q&A.

I will be in Zeeland, Michigan on April 16th to 17th. This is an event for the Reformed Church of America. So, if you are part of the RCA and you live in or near or would like to visit Zeeland, Michigan, which is just outside of Holland, Michigan, kind of in between Holland and Grand Rapids, closer to Holland, though. Beautiful area of the state, by the way. That's going to be on April 16th and 17th. I'll be in Danville, California at the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Gathering. Danville is just outside of San Francisco, So you can Google it and figure out where it's at. That's going to be April 3rd through May 1st. I'll be in Danville. I'll be at

back in Grand Rapids for a one-day leaders forum through the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender. That's on May 3rd, a one-day leader's forum. You got to register for that puppy. And these have been selling out. So if you want to attend this event, I would register like now. Some people wait till last second. We had about 40 people that wanted to attend the one in Portland

and it sold out due to space. And so they weren't able to attend. So, and we've had other times in almost every case it's sold out and we've had to turn people away. So if you do want to come to the Leaders Forum in Grand Rapids on May 30, you got to sign up as soon as possible. Also May 10th here in my own backyard, Boise, Idaho, May 10th, one day Leaders Forum. We're going to be doing that at the Pursuit, the church there on the west, what is it, northwest side of town. So, if you're in Boise, you will want to check that out. And

same thing, go on their website, centerforfaith.com. And if you're going to attend that, you're going to want to register sooner than later for that event because it's going to fill up. So, a bunch of other stuff happening in the fall. And another event that's not listed on my website in the summertime is the Revoice Conference, July 26th to 28th in St. Louis, Missouri. I will be speaking at that with my good friend, Nate Collins, along with many other good friends of mine who are engaging the LGBTQ conversation like Wes Hill, Bill Henson, are engaging the LGBTQ conversation like Wes Hill, Bill Henson, Greg Coles, Eve Tushnet, and many other people are going to be there.

It's going to be a wonderful gathering. Go to revoice.com or revoiceus.com. I think it is. If you just Google Revoice Conference, you'll get it. And if you're anywhere in or near the St. Louis area and you have any sort of heart for or passion for or questions about the LGBTQ conversation and how you, if you're straight, especially, want to become an ally for LGBT people in the church from a historically Christian perspective on marriage and sexuality, then you will want to go to the Revoice Conference. It's going to be fantastic. Or if you're a Christian who is, again, submitting your sexuality to Jesus,

you believe in a traditional view of marriage, and you're trying to figure out how does this work out in my life? I get that question almost every day. It would be worth saving up and buying a plane ticket to fly to St. Louis to hang out with hundreds, literally hundreds of other people who are right where you are at in your situation, whether you are pursuing celibacy or maybe you're in an opposite sex marriage and yet you're gay and you're trying to figure out how to work through some very difficult

situations there, then you're going to want to attend a Revoice Conference. It's going to be absolutely fantastic. A bunch of other stuff in the fall, but who knows if I'm going to even be alive or still be a Christian by the fall, but who knows if I'm going to even be alive or still be a Christian by the fall, but I got a bunch of speaking engagements lined up. So go ahead and check out my website, presenceofspringgold.com to hear more about those events. I want to do one more quick thing too before we jump in, and that is talk about, or at least mention and encourage you to purchase the Grace Truth Study, the Grace Truth Learning Experience that my team and I put out through the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender. This is, we don't, we self-published it, meaning we hired a bunch of really awesome freelance editors who did an incredible job with the book.

We had a freelance graphic designer. We had, I mean, it's a real book. It's not like we just you know took a pdf and hit print but we did self-publish it um the the pros and there's pros and cons of that one of the one of the cons is we we don't have any like marketing team so a lot of people don't even know about this resource but i i get questions all the time about kind of just real real basic questions about the conversation about faith, sexuality, and gender.

And how can I talk about this with my family or my sons and daughters or my friends or my small group or my team of elders or whatever? And we designed this resource to be, I mean, a resource that small groups can work through, can read through, can discuss, can watch videos that are linked with it. So, again, it's called Grace Truth. The subtitle is rather long. Five conversations every thoughtful Christian should have about faith, sexuality, and gender. I would highly recommend that you check this out. We've priced it very well, that you check this out. We've priced it very well, I think. It also comes with a whole series of videos that we recorded. Spent a lot of time trying to produce a high quality resource that

Christians who aren't like experts in this area, you don't need a seminary degree or even a Bible college degree to go through this study. But if you want to have this conversation in the context of your church, a small group, an elder team, whatever, then please consider this resource. It's the reviews we've gotten back are just really, I mean, let me just say really encouraging the way in which this resource has been used to shape the lives of people. It is not on Amazon. It is not on christianbook.com. You need to go to our website, centerforfaith.com. And you can check out, if you go down to resources, you can view all of our grace, truth resources.

And again, there's reading material. There's questions you work through as a small group. There's videos you watch as a group. It's informative. It's provocative. It will provoke some people, I think. If you're kind of like mildly homophobic, you're going to be provoked. You're going to be challenged. If you're, you know, if you're leaning affirming, you're going to be provoked and challenged on what the Bible says about same-sex relationships. So, I would highly encourage you

to go check it out. Again, it's only available through our website, centerforfaith.com under resources. All right, let's dig into some of this stuff. We have a great set of questions here. And I have spent all afternoon working through some of these because some of these are really tough. What is Christ's role in the Eucharist? Do Christians who fall away lose

their salvation? And do intersex persons challenge the male and female sex binary? For Good or for Ill, I'm Prestonpper, the breaking of bread, if you will? So, for context, he says, I've been meeting with a Catholic Catholic friend and the topic of Christ's presence in communion comes up a lot. This has prompted me to look into the topic and learn more about how the church has explained the concept over the centuries. I realized that I've never been given a lot of thought. I've never given a lot of thought to it. But now I'm trying to work through my understanding of Christ's role in communion as I was wondering if you land anywhere in particular on the topic, whether this has come up in the house church model y'all are working through, working in, and whether you've had any resources to recommend. I, you know, I very much resonate with this question because I feel like it's very much my perspective.

I grew up too in an environment that didn't give a lot of thought to it. I think we may have took, eaten the cracker and drinking the juice under a real solemn ceremony, kind of like every quarter, maybe once a month. More recently, the churches I belong to have been every Sunday,

but it still feels kind of very individualistic. We kind of, as we feel led by the Lord, go up and dip the cracker in the juice and take it kind of on our own, or if you can gather with people. And I just, you know, in the context I've grown up in, it's the preaching of the word and the worship that is really the focus of the gathering. And I'm becoming, I'm aware of and have become aware of, you know, that in other church expressions, the Eucharist is more the centerpiece, more than the sermon and, or the worship. And I know some people immediately say, that's wrong. No, it's gotta be the preaching of the word. It's the center of everything. I'm like, well, I don't know. Let's at least be self-aware of our context

and realize that we have certain views, certain emphases because of the tradition we grew up in. And other traditions that put the emphasis somewhere else have good reasons for doing so. So, just to give, well, a quick overview, and you can honestly Google this. This is not hard to find. In fact, I was Googling around and kind of running into a lot of the same stuff with how people, you know, the different views on the Eucharist. So, you have the Roman Catholic view, which says that, well, it's often labeled transubstantiation. Some of you guys have heard that, transubstantiation, meaning that the blood, sorry, the bread and the wine literally changes into the actual body and blood of Christ. Okay. This is called like a real presence view that this is at the moment that the

priest, you know, does this thing. I'm not exactly sure what's going on. I haven't been at a Catholic mass in probably three decades. That the elements literally become Jesus's body. The Lutheran view is called consubstantiation, which says, you know, Luther was famous for saying that the Christ, you know, Christ's body and blood were present in and with and under the bread and the wine, but doesn't actually become the body. The bread and wine doesn't actually become the body of Christ.

So it's as close as you can get to transubstantiation, except without actually identifying the bread and the wine with the blood and body of Christ. The Reformed and Presbyterian traditions have something where it's, you know, they, again, they kind of step even further away from the Lutheran position saying that Christ isn't literally in the elements, but he's spiritually present. He's kind of there, but he's not there all the way.

I mean, from my vantage point, it feels very close to the Lutheran position. It's just kind of step, trying to step it one step away from the literalness of the transformation of the bread and wine. And then you have other views. And then this would be more of my Baptistic tradition, which is often referred to as like the memorial view, which the bread and wine is nothing more than kind of a symbolic representation of Jesus's body and blood. So, I don't know where I'm at on this. I wish I had a better, more worked out answer, but just, I don't love the memorial view. The view I grew up with. I feel like it's a little too weak given some scriptural statements about the bread and the wine. I'm going to read to you a passage that has just, it keeps kind of jarring my thinking with this whole discussion. It comes from John chapter 6,

verses 51 to 56. In the context of the feeding of the 5,000 or the feeding of the multitude, I should say, Jesus says this. He says, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. And the Jews disputed among them saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? I mean, kind of an odd statement, right? So Jesus said to them, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man, drink his blood, you have no life in you. I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man, drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day for my flesh is the true food. My blood is the true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. And I mean, virtually every commentator I know says that, you know, this is sort of either, you know, looking forward to the, the, the Eucharist or, you know, some other commentators may say it's, it's John kind of, you know, adding his own, um, authorial finesse to Jesus's original words to, to make it point back to the Eucharist. Either way, there is Eucharist allusions here, really strong ones that just seems to elevate the significance of the so-called Lord's Supper or communion or the Eucharist. So, you know, there's that passage of 1 Corinthians 11 where Paul says this is one of the kind of few things he's passed down to the churches in terms

of what they should observe. And I just, I'm exploring more meaningful and central ways in which the Eucharist can be integrated into our gathering. So, I don't know where I would stand on these five different views that are articulated. I wouldn't agree with the Catholic view. And then there's a whole Orthodox view that is similar to the Catholic view, but it views it as more of a mystery, I think, but it still has a very real presence in the elements. I don't know, the Lutheran view resonates with me from what I see in John 6 and other passages, the Reformed or Presbyterian view where Christ is not present literally. I definitely want to say he's not there literally, but he is actually in the element spiritually, whatever that means.

It sounds a little vague to me, but I like the heightened importance that it seems to achieve with that view. So, I also like the Orthodox, and we're going to get this in another question, but the Orthodox emphasis in mystery. We don't need to have it all rationally worked out. We don't need to dissect the elements and break it apart and determine what kind of, you know, if the chemical makeup is, you know, the body and blood of Jesus or whatever. Not that anybody's necessarily doing that, but I like the Orthodox emphasis on mystery saying this is super important. Christ is here. I don't know what that means. Let's just do it and make it a priority.

So, yeah, that's where I'm at. I would also say I do think that the Eucharist was designed to be part of a meal and meals have a special place in the biblical narrative in terms of our relationship with God. Meals play a significant role in how saints have communed with God. I'm thinking of the Passover meal. I'm thinking of, obviously, the Last Supper as it correlates with the Passover meal. I'm thinking of Jesus dining with tax collectors and sinners. And there's many other passages where meals convey this sense of deep, deep relationship. And so it seems clear to me really that obviously in Luke 22 and 1 Corinthians 11

that talks about the Lord's Supper, that it was part of a meal originally, and that that meal component is significant. And we haven't done that as a house church. We do take the Lord's supper every Sunday. It is a fairly significant piece of the gathering. I still think we could, um, go a step further and do the meal thing that just involves prep. It does involve some, a lot of practical preparation and time and energy. And, uh, and I, I would love to ultimately get there.

and I would love to ultimately get there. So yeah, I think Lord's Supper is best observed in the context of a small gathering, the context of a meal where there's deep authentic relationships happening because that's what meals symbolize in its original context, which is the context in which the Eucharist was originally given.

Okay, next question. Do Christians who fall away lose their salvation? The question expands on that by saying, how does the theology surrounding falling away, such as in Hebrews 3, 12, Luke 8, 13, 1 Timothy 4, 1. I'm surprised you didn't mention Hebrews 6, but it's not an exhaustive list of verses. But I mean, if you're listening to this podcast

and you've been a Christian for more than a week, you probably have a handful of other verses that you can throw in here. How does the theology of surrounding fallen away work out from your study of the text? How does it interact with the theology of salvation, grace, and so on? So just quickly, a bit of background. I grew up with an incredibly strong, you can never lose your salvation way of thinking doctrine. And I would still hold, well, I would still, I still believe that you can't lose your salvation. I want to be really specific about the language there, but I'm, I hold that a bit more loosely. I guess that's kind of my MO. I want to, I haven't studied this

as thoroughly as I possibly could. And if I haven't studied this as thoroughly as I possibly could. And if I haven't studied it as thoroughly as I possibly could, then I want to hold it a little bit loosely. Like, obviously, right? We all should. If you can't vigorously defend it from scripture and answer all the tough questions with every passage that could challenge your view, then the degree of the strength, the degree of how confident you are in the view should correlate with the degree to which you can defend it from scripture and answer any and every pushback because I'm not quite there. I'm going to hold it to a degree of openness that should correlate with my degree of confidence in the position based on my

study that I've done of the text on this doctrine. I need to wet my palate. So, that's where I'm at. I still think, the way I see it is, when I look at all the relevant passages, let's just say from the New Testament on this specific question of falling away, losing your salvation. To me, it seems that the weight of evidence, the clarity of texts and the sheer number of texts would fall on the side of you can't lose your salvation. Put differently, somebody who has been genuinely born again, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, somebody who has been genuinely born again, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, sealed by the Holy Spirit, redeemed by the blood of Christ, that cannot be undone. That's how I would word it. To me, the weight of the New Testament would support that view. But I'm very honest with the

fact that there are some passages and verses and themes like Hebrews 6, 1 to 4, or even 2 Peter 2, 1, which talks about false teachers who are not believers. And yet it says they deny the master who bought them. And the Greek word agorazo, last time I studied it, 20 years ago, agorazo, the purchase language being bought when referring to people always refers to salvation. So, 2 Peter 2.1 is a tough one. There are other verses and passages that could challenge the kind of, you know, can't lose your salvation view, but I would say the weight of scriptural evidence supports the view that you cannot lose your salvation if you have been genuinely born again. Now, I do think people fall away. They say, wait a minute. Well, that's the same thing, right? Well, when the Bible talks about falling away, which is really what this question is

talking about, and the verses that you cited, Hebrews 3.12, Luke 8.13, 1 Timothy 4.1, and others, the idea of falling away is referring to somebody who is part of the Christian community, is confessing Christ, who is, for every external evaluation, this person has been a Christian. That has been his religion, his community. And yet he, for whatever reason, decides to stop confessing Jesus. And he stops wanting to walk with his Christian community. He falls away from the faith. That obviously happens. It clearly happens. I've had many people in my life where I can say they were once naming Jesus, confessing Christ, trying to live for Christ.

They were part of the Christian community, and then they stopped all that. They stopped confessing Christ. They denied Jesus. They started not attending a Christian church or community or whatever. Now, people who are confessing Jesus, who are in a church, in a community, who are doing Christian things, that doesn't in and of itself mean they have been spiritually redeemed, that they have been saved, that they have been born again, that they actually have the spirit of God, like that, that they've been sealed by the spirit, Ephesians 1. Like,

just because you're a part of the Christian community and confessing Christ doesn't necessarily mean that you have had that sort of spiritual resurrection happen. So, necessarily mean that you have had that sort of spiritual resurrection happen. So, yes, you can fall away. That doesn't in and of itself mean you have lost your salvation. I like to view the category of falling away and the category of salvation as overlapping yet different circles. Not quite a bell curve. What is it? The Venn diagram?

Is that where there's like two circles and they overlap sometimes significantly. And that's where I want to put these two concepts of falling away and salvation. So most people who don't fall away, who confess Christ, whatever, are saved. Sorry, no. People who have belonged to the body of Christ, most of them are saved. Okay, so there's a lot of overlap in that, but not every single one. There are people who belong to the body of Christ who aren't necessarily saved. There are people who give seemingly pieces of evidence in their life that they are Christians, but they might not actually be Christians. So, falling away is a visible event where someone who used to confess Christ to be a part of the Christian community no longer is or does.

When this happens, and it clearly does happen, I don't think we can, nor does the Bible encourage us to make a definitive judgment call on whether they were truly saved in the first place. That's the focus of my response here. So, let me say it again. When people fall away, I don't think we can make a definitive judgment call on whether they were truly saved in the first place. They just fell away. A confessing Christian stopped confessing. Falling away does not, now, let me say this. Falling away does not mean you simply committed too many sins. Or you have, you know, significant changes in your doctrine. It is an outright denial of Jesus Christ.

Okay. And this is where some people get scared if they're going to lose their salvation. You know, like I, you know, if you fear that you might've lost your salvation last night because you've just been looking at way too much porn and you just can't stop, then, I mean, your fear shows you probably haven't. If you're scared of losing your salvation, that means by definition, you're not denying Jesus.

You're just scared that you're not following him as you should. But in the Bible, when people fall away, they deny Jesus. They say, I used to say, do this Christian thing. I no longer want to do that. I'm not struggling with sin. That's not really what falling away is. Falling away is I am now denying Jesus. I am living the way I want to live. I don't care. The fact that you're concerned about your salvation in Christ means that you probably still have it. Okay. So yeah, that's my view. A lot of good people would still say, no, you can't actually lose your salvation, not just fall away from confessing and belonging.

And this is where I definitely put this in the area of like a secondary theological doctrine that really good Christians, really smart Christians who are reading the same text and doing great exegetical work would come to different conclusions. Next question, what do we make of the dead coming to life after Jesus died? So, right after Jesus died, it says in Matthew 27, 52 to 53, the tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep, who had died, were raised and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. What are we to make of this?

Now, the question is, you don't really ask anything specific, just kind of what are we to make of it. But if I can read between the lines, the question is, did this literally happen or not? And what's the significance of it? And I am going, there's a lot of different views on this. I cracked open my, a few commentaries and the one that I really appreciate on Matthew that I, at least the one that I own is a commentary by a guy named RT France, not RD, but like R dot T dot France. He doesn't speak French.

He speaks English. He's a great British commentator, brilliant scholar, brilliant scholar, wrote a 1,200-ish, 1,100-page commentary on Matthew. This is what R.T. France says. He says that this resurrection of dead people has no parallel in other gospel accounts and leaves plenty of unanswered questions for the historically minded interpreter. Absolutely. That's why this question came in, right?

Matthew gives us no explanation of the delay between the opening of the tombs of the appearance of the dead people in Jerusalem two days later, nor of what happened to them afterward. I mean, we assume that they ended up dying again, but it doesn't say, the text doesn't say. We can only speculate on what a cinema camera might have recorded, like a video camera, like your iPhone. Like if you're back in time and recorded, he says, we can only speculate what's going on here. And on why the appearance of many dead worthies to, man, this is really badly worded. And on why the appearance of many dead worthies to many people left no other traces in historical sources.

That's such an odd way of saying that, Were these? Anyway, that's what he said. As with many of Jesus's scientifically unexplainable miracles, Matthew is not interested in satisfying our natural curiosity or answering empirical skepticism. He tells a story for its symbolic significance. Now, I think it's fairly clear to me the symbolic significance is that Jesus's resurrection is a guarantee of our resurrection. It is a down payment.

It is the first fruits of resurrection as a whole of all people. So, this is the symbolic power of this is Jesus' death achieved that. And there was a little glimpse of what's going to happen on a greater level in the end, right there in the first century, right there in Jerusalem. But that's the narrative point of this story being retold by Matthew. Did it really happen? I'm going to lean towards yes, I think it really happened. I think when Matthew's recording this, it doesn't seem to be parabolic. It's weird and odd, but any kind of miracle is weird and odd. And if we have faith in Jesus's resurrection, if we have faith in our own resurrection, then why not have faith in a resurrection of, you know, a bunch of believers in the first century? So, I don't see any reason why

this couldn't have happened. I think it's, you know, people say, well, wait a minute, there's no other historical documentation of this. We don't know what happened to them. It wouldn't have this been kind of made the news of the day. Wouldn't Josephus talk about this, whatever. Those are all unanswered questions. And that does contribute to the oddity of this story, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen. So I do think it happened. I think primarily though, primarily.

And I wouldn't say, you know, if you say it didn't happen, you're like denying inerrancy or whatever. Like I don't, you can probably make an argument on for genre reasons, um, that Matthew isn't intending this to be a literal event. Um, you could make that argument. I, I don't, I would need to be convinced of that. So I don't, I wouldn't like freak out if somebody says that, you know, and I don't think this literally happened. Um, but yeah, I think the seems unless I'm persuaded with better evidence, it seems like this really did happen. But again, I want to focus on the symbolic point of this being a down payment for future resurrection. The reference on that was RT France, uh, his God, his commentary on Matthew page 10 81, or he can just look up, you know, where he talks about that verse. Next question. Do, um, intersex persons challenge the male, female sex binary? Uh, this

is a really long question. Um, let me jump down. This person listened to a talk I gave up in Spokane a few weeks ago. He says, my training is in molecular biology. Okay, so this guy knows his stuff. I'm curious how you would interpret a biological phenomenon known as androgen insensitivity. Androgen is a hormone responsible in part for the development and maintenance of male sex characteristics. In androgen insensitivity, the body is not capable of utilizing this hormone. It affects between two and five individuals of every 100,000. So, it's an incredibly rare condition. I'm going to skip down here. Such individuals are genetically male having XY chromosomes. However, due to the absence of androgen, they develop phenotypically female traits, like external female traits, external genitalia that resembles a

female's. However, they lack internal female reproductive organs and therefore can't conceive a child. The disorder is also associated with diminished body hair, the development of breast tissue, testes may be partially or fully developed, but remain undescended. I have been studying intersex conditions quite a bit recently. So I would say, yes, that's a very accurate description of complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. There's also a thing called partial androgen insensitivity syndrome. There's also a thing called partial androgen insensitivity syndrome, which is actually way more rare than complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, but they have similar characteristics. Partial is, I believe, less significant than complete androgen insensitivity. He goes on to say, I bring this up because if I

understood you correctly or talk, you view biological sex as something directly and unambiguously determined by chromosomal makeup. Now, let me just jump in really quickly. And if I said that, then I made a mistake. I don't believe, I mean, let me just, let me just summarize what, I mean, every biologist that I've talked to or every doctor in the hospital would say is that biological sex is determined partially by chromosomal makeup, whether you have XX or XY chromosomes, but also by external and internal sex characteristics or sex anatomy, whether you have a uterus, whether you have, you know, a testes, a penis, whether you have, you know, ovaries and so on. Also determined by secondary sex characteristics, the development of breasts or, you know, the absence of breasts or

body hair or bone structure, and all these things that are largely shaped by your, uh, hormonal, uh, levels and makeup. So it's not just, uh, I would say it's not just your chromosomes that that is a huge part of it, but there are other ways in which biological sex is determined. Uh, he goes on to say, whatever the behavioral choices of an individual may be, their sex chromosomes determine their sex. This is how I understood your position. Okay, so I clarified that. But it seems to me that phenomena

such as androgen deficiency add significant confusion to biologically driven binary view of sex. I'm going to skip down here because this is a really long question. While androgen insensitivity affects just 0.005% of the population, it undermines our ability to cast biological sex in binary terms.

Uh, for me, he says, uh, I'm genuinely curious how you make sense of these sorts of things in your theology. For me, this has led into more empathy with trans people. And I think that's a good thing. Okay. So let me jump in, uh, and give several responses to this question. Number one, yes. Amen. Amen. And amen. More empathy. That is an amazing response. And I can do nothing other than applaud you for that. Understanding the complexity of biological sex. Understand that some people don't fit the

typical way in which people view male and female is a wonderful thing to do. I think Christianity is by nature a religion for the other, the marginalized, the one sheep who has gone astray rather than the 99 who are doing just fine. So, yes, your final response here is fantastic. Yes, your final response here is fantastic. Number two, I don't want to blur intersex persons with transgender persons. I saw this in your final statement and kind of throughout your question here, some parts that I skipped over. You seem to kind of go back and forth between talking about intersex and then talking about transgender persons.

This is very common. I see this all the time. People often use the intersex condition to speak to transgender questions. And while there is some commonalities, these are two different things we're talking about. So I don't want to say something about intersex and then say, therefore, trans persons are dot, dot, dot. Like, we need to talk about these as separate categories and conditions. Some intersex persons may identify as trans, but most trans people

aren't intersex. Many intersex persons don't identify as trans. So, there's minimal overlap here, but we need to keep these separate. I mean, the very terminology transgender means that somebody doesn't identify with their biological sex or whose gender identity conflicts with their biological sex, but this presupposes that they have a clearly identified biological sex with which their gender identity doesn't agree with. Biological male and somebody doesn't feel male or biological female and they don't feel female. So, yeah, again, there might be some overlap here. I think that significant cases, significant intersex conditions often do lead to transgender identities or non-binary identities or let's just say confusion over your gender or confusion over your biological sex. So, there may be some cases there. A lot of intersex persons, intersex

persons with Klinefelter syndrome or an additional X chromosome or other, there's like 15 or 16 different intersex conditions. A lot of people who would be classified as intersex never even find out that they're intersex because in some cases it's so mild, like, you know, you're infertile and you're a little shorter, you know, or your testicles are a little smaller or you have a really small penis or whatever, you know, there's certain things that like the, the, here's the thing to understand. The term intersex does not mean that the person is neither male nor female or that you can't determine whether they're male or female. There are many, most, I would say 99% of intersex conditions, the person is unambiguously male

or female based on their chromosomes, based on their external or even internal sexual anatomy. There's only a few conditions that make it difficult to determine like congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which affects one in 13,000 births, or a couple of referenced here in this question, complete androgen insensitivity syndrome affects one in 13,000 births. Partial androgen insensitivity syndrome affects one in 131,000 births. Ovo testes affects one in 80,000. Like these are the ones when you start getting it into the one in 13,000 or one in 80,000. Those are the ones where determining whether or not the person is male or female, it can be very

difficult. But most intersex conditions, there is little to no ambiguity in what sex the person is. This is the biggest mistake in this conversation is that people use the term intersex, which is a very general broad category. Then they describe somebody like you did, like, you know, XY chromosomes, but you know, female sex characteristics, and it's just, you know, lots of ambiguity going on. Those are incredibly rare cases within the very large umbrella of intersex. Intersex does not mean ambiguous sex characteristics. It just refers to some sort of atypical feature, usually due to a medically diagnosed condition that shows up in somebody's sexual anatomy, but it's not always or even usually. In 99% of the cases, it doesn't create ambiguity in determining whether the person is male or female. Okay, so yeah, those are my first two points. Thirdly, while androgen insensitivity affects

just 0.005% of the population, this is one of your, sorry, I'm repeating a phrase you said. You said, while AIS affects just 0.005% of the population, it undermines our ability to cast biological sex and binary tamers. So, I just don't agree with that. Humans are created male or female, and yet, in some rare cases, there are conditions that make it difficult to determine whether somebody is male or female. That is how I would put it. For instance, one in every 12,000 people are born with part of their brain on the outside of their skull. If you Google it, it's called some weird term that I can't even pronounce. Encephalitis, whatever, I don't know. That's about the same as those

who are born with androgen insensitivity, complete androgen insensitivity. This doesn't mean that this condition constitutes a sort of like different type of human. Like, you know, yeah, some humans have brains on the inside of their skull.

Some have brains on the outside. And that's, you know, those are just different types of persons. Like, I think we can say that this is a condition. I know people don't like the phrase birth defect. I'm trying to avoid that term, but it is an abnormality that should be treated. And it doesn't mean that we create a different classifications of humans that have brains on the outside of their heads. It means humans should have brains on the inside of their heads and through, you know, various medically diagnosed situations, call it the fall, call it not the way it's supposed to be, call it a birth defect, whatever term you want to use, that things, that there are abnormalities that happen in some births.

About 1 in 70,000 persons are born with their legs fused together. It's referred to as colloquially mermaid syndrome. This is around the same number of people born with ovo-testes, a combination of ovary and testicular tissue. And yet we still classify humans as bipedal. Like when we say humans have two legs, like, yes, that doesn't mean every single human ever born has two legs or there's some are born without a leg. Some are born in this case with legs fused together, but we can still classify humans as bipedal and recognize that there are conditions that interrupt this human birth. Humans as a class have two arms, though

some people were born without two arms. Humans as a class have two legs, though some are born without two legs or with their born's legs sewn together. Humans are born male or female, but in some extremely rare cases, through medically diagnosed conditions or disorders in sex development, it becomes difficult to determine which sex the person is. This does not mean we create a different category of biological sex for each individual condition. It does mean we recognize that in a fallen world, people are born with defects or abnormalities or atypical features that sometimes occur in our sexual anatomy or chromosomes. Or you can put it this way. I mean, if we were to say that the fall does sometimes touch or affect

our sexual anatomy, okay? If you believe that the fall can and does affect our sexual anatomy, then what does that look like? I mean, the fall affects our hearing. I was born deaf in my left ear. It affects our seeing. Some people were born blind. Our lips, our brains, everything about our biological makeup,

categorically speaking, is affected by the fall. So either our sexual anatomy is off limits. It's the only part of us that's unt affected by the fall. So, either our sexual anatomy is off limits, it's the only part of us that's untouched by the fall, or God creates humans as male or female, though because of the fall, it sometimes makes it difficult to determine based on certain abnormalities in the process of birth. Abnormalities that we can detect. I mean, as you said yourself, I mean, you know, the receptors don't allow the body to receive the androgens in the way that it normally or typically should. Like, it's not like we don't know what has caused or complete androgen insensitivity syndrome means that biological sex is no longer a binary.

Last question, my thoughts on Eastern Orthodoxy. I've listened to Theology on Raw for a long time and would just like to thank you for a great podcast. Thank you so much. Or I guess you're welcome. Uh, or I guess you're welcome. Uh, additionally, your webinar with the ECC was fantastic. Uh, would like to thank you for taking your time to do that. Finally, I know from following you on Twitter that you expressed some interest in Eastern Orthodoxy. I just want to say that I was listening to the Thinking Fellows podcast and Pastor Riley made the comment that the modern American evangelical

idea of progressive sanctification comes from the Eastern Orthodox view of salvation. I thought that was interesting because after reading much about the Orthodox view of salvation, which I might summarize as being saved and will be saved, I believe he's correct. Anyway, I thought it was interesting. We'd love to hear your thoughts sometime on the Eastern Orthodox religion and how it is similar or different from traditional Reformed theology. So, I have expressed some interest in knowing more about Eastern Orthodoxy because some of my friends who are Eastern or who have appreciation of Eastern Orthodoxy have often commented that some of my approach, my perspective, my tone, my beliefs resonate with Eastern Orthodoxy. So, that's kind of pricked my interest.

I just, you know, to be honest, I don't know much about Eastern Orthodoxy. I haven't taken the time to thoroughly study or read up on it. I just have enough on my plate and haven't gone around it. I will say that there's a couple books by Callistus Ware, Callistus Ware with a K. His first name's with a K, not his last name. Callistus with a K Ware. The Orthodox Way is one of them. I think he has another introduction to Eastern Orthodoxy. Those have been highly recommended to many people. So if you are interested, I would recommend those books.

Even though I haven't read them, they come highly recommended by many, many different people. Or you can just kind of Google around and see the differences. I mean, honestly, you Google around for five minutes, you'll get a better answer than I can give you on the differences between Orthodox theology and traditional reform theology.

The one area that I have really appreciated, and I mentioned it earlier, is that the Orthodox sort of demeanor or tone or way of doing theology seems to be much more okay with tensions and mysteries in the faith. Like they don't have this need to have everything so rationally ironed out. And I love that. If that's true, which it seems that seems to be pretty much what everybody tells me about Eastern Orthodoxy. I love that idea. Now, doctrinally, you know, there's going to be several, I think, disagreements that I am

Protestant for a reason. I mean, sola scriptura is a big one for me. And, you know, the role of Mary would, and I know the Orthodox view of Mary is slightly different than the Catholic view. And even the priesthood is viewed differently. And there are differences between Orthodox theology and expression between Orthodox and Roman Catholic theology, but there's a good deal of overlap as well. And there is a reason, again, why I'm Protestant. And so, I'm going to run into some, I think, theological tensions with Orthodoxy, but I'm going to hold that loosely because I haven't looked into it. You know, I don't want to put the cart before the horse and talk about my disagreements or whatever without having studied it. It just seems that the basic stuff I know about orthodoxy and the

basic stuff I know about Protestantism, I'm still going to lean towards Protestantism, but there are certain features of orthodoxy that do intrigue me like its view of mystery. And also, I think, I mean, orthodox theology has a much more generous view on the afterlife. In particular, its view of hell. You know, you have strands of universalism. You have, I believe, it allows for annihilation, and there are some expressions of eternal conscious torment, but it doesn't get hung up on that like Protestantism does. So there are some features in orthodoxy that are attractive to me, but you will have to wait until I study it out further to know where I land on that. So hope you enjoyed the show. Those are some really tough, tough questions.

I am out of breath. I'm thirsty. I'm ready to call it a weekend. I hope you enjoy your weekend. Well, you're listening to to call it a weekend. I hope you enjoy your weekend. Well, you're listening to this probably on a Monday, so I'm recording on a Friday. But thanks so much for listening to the show.

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