Gender and the Image of God: Sign and Thing Signified
As a church, we must think deeply about the question of gender and form a sound and biblical anthropology in response. It is not just a question for pastors and counselors and cultural theorists; this question will touch every life and likely already has. And we must be prepared to think through it biblically.
One of the greatest moral, philosophical, and theological questions of our generation is, “What is the relationship between a person’s biological sex and their gender?” Formerly, the two were interchangeable, but over the past century, feminists in particular have worked hard to distinguish them and separate them as much as possible. As a church, we must think deeply about this question and form a sound and biblical anthropology in response. It is not just a question for pastors and counselors and cultural theorists; this question will touch every life and likely already has. And we must be prepared to think through it biblically.
Gender Lately
Let’s start by briefly noting a key shift that has happened in the last few decades of progressive gender ideology.
More traditional second-wave feminists (circa 1960s-80s) would have considered gender to be the cultural norms of masculinity and femininity that a society imposes on individual people despite their individual personalities. Hence, the expression “gender is a social construct.” In this sense, gender was considered oppressive because it acted tyrannically in forcing individual people into a mold. For example, “women are homemakers” limited the freedom of women in the workplace and in society.
A human being is a sign pointing to his or her Creator. We have all been made after his image and in his likeness, and we image God not just with the physical existence of our bodies but in what we do with them
Over the last decade, progressive gender ideology has shifted dramatically. Whereas gender was previously considered a set of social norms “imposed” from the outside, now it is a psychological experience one has internally, sometimes in contrast to one’s biological sex. That is why we can say things like, “I am a man trapped in a woman's body.” Physically, I am a male, but psychologically—or even spiritually (psyche means “soul” in Greek)—my gender inside may be different from my biological sex outside. Gender has gone from a social construct to a subjective experience.
Many conservatives rightly object to both of these formulations, but often, their responses simply emphasize the biological at the expense of the social: “A woman is a person with a uterus! You are your biology!” The irony is that they often pair these complaints with podcasts and articles on masculinity, teaching young men how to be a man. This implies that masculinity is indeed a social construct, something you can be taught by others and learn. Their teaching shows that gender actually is bigger than just biology. I believe the confusion here is a huge missed opportunity to let our theology inform this gender crisis.
Gender Theologically
How as Christians should we think about the relationship between sex and gender?
As odd as it might sound, John Calvin’s understanding of the sacraments is a helpful starting place. As articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, there is a relationship in the sacraments between the physical objects (water or bread and wine) and a spiritual reality (regeneration and the grace of the gospel):
There is in every sacrament a spiritual relation or sacramental union, between the sign and the thing signified; whence it comes to pass that the names and the effects of the one are attributed to the other. (WCF 27.2)
Westminster says there is a spiritual relation between the sign (the physical object) and the spiritual reality. Though the human body is not a sacrament, there is something of this spiritual relation in all of God’s creation—above all, this is true about human beings. We are mysterious, spiritual, and bodily enactments of God’s image. The modern world has viewed nature more like a machine than an enchanted cosmos charged with spiritual reality. This spiritual worldview is the key to helping us unlock the mystery of sex and gender.
The Body Is a Sign Pointing to Our Creator
So what does this have to do with sex and gender?
First, the body is a sign. A sign is something that points to something else. For example, a sign on a building that reads “Hospital” tells you what happens in that specific building. The word “Football” is a sign that points to a game where men tackle each other and try to score touchdowns.
It is only in God through Christ that sex and gender are reconciled
A human being is a sign pointing to his or her Creator. We have all been made after his image and in his likeness, and we image God not just with the physical existence of our bodies but in what we do with them. We’ve been told by our Creator what to do with these bodies: be fruitful and multiply and take dominion over the earth (Gen. 1:26-28).
It is possible for a human body to lie about God (that is, not point to him accurately) because of what it does. Glorifying God in our bodies means that we are meant to reflect to the world the glory of God’s character. When we fail in this calling, we sin and “fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). So, a Christian understanding of gender should be the collection of behaviors assigned by the Scriptures to men and women so that their bodies rightly point to (signify) their Creator.
Second, a living human body is meant to reflect the image and character of God. Human beings are meant to be like angled mirrors that reflect to us what God is like. So, there is a spiritual purpose embedded in the embodied existence of a human being.
The theology of spiritual relation says that while there is a distinction between the sign and the thing signified (the bread is not physically the body of Christ), the sign and the thing signified should not be separated. When we eat the bread and drink the wine, we are really receiving Christ. He is spiritually present in the sign.
Interestingly, the sacrament consists not just of the physicality of bread and wine but also of the actions done with the bread and wine—broken and poured out, respectively. Similarly, human gender cannot be reduced to either the physical body of a man or woman or to the behaviors commanded to men and women. Feminism tries to define gender apart from the body (impossible), but many conservatives try to define gender apart from behavior (also impossible). It is the union of physicality in action that becomes a sign of God and his character.
Furthermore, the sign (embodied action) should be shaped by the authoritative Word of God. This is true in the human body just as in the sacrament. The sacrament would have no meaning if it didn't have an accompanying word to explain it. That word is the gospel, as revealed in Scripture and preached before the meal. Similarly, the human body would have no meaning if there was not an accompanying word to explain it. That word is the eternal Word of God, Jesus Christ—the true man in whose image we are made.
The relationship between the human body as a sign and the thing it is signifying is exactly the dilemma of our modern moment. One of the hallmarks of postmodernism is to try and separate the sign and the thing signified. The way postmodern people change the meanings of words (like gender or racism or violence) shows that they think there is a very loose and malleable relationship between signs and the things they signify.
Therefore, Christians should not be afraid to say that gender is more than biology; it is a collection of behaviors that are always socially learned and that correspond to a sexed body. Gender is the union of male and masculine, female and feminine. We need the Scriptures to tell us that. And a body is not fulfilling its purpose unless it is signifying God’s character the way God has said.
In that sense, aspects of gender are “socially constructed”—but to say gender is merely a social construct, assuming the behavior and biology do not need to be in harmony, does great harm to human beings. Don’t we want little girls in the church looking to their mothers and other godly women in their community and saying, “Someday I hope to be like them”? Yes. But also, they should know that their bodies were made by God to correspond to this calling.
Often, a girl will need to deviate from false understandings of femininity that her mother and her church have embraced. But she should not look inwardly to find an alternate gender to what her community has modeled for her. She must look to the Word of the One whose image she bears. Her gender must be shaped (“formed” is the regular language of the Scriptures) to reflect the character of Christ. And this happens in relationship to God and others (hence, it is social).
When human beings don’t have biology and behavior that match in a unified gender, it is like serving communion without preaching the gospel. Word and sacrament must agree. The bread and wine become empty signs.
Distinct but Not Separate
The primary insistence of the spiritual relation is that while sign and thing signified are distinct, they must not be separated. In the case of the human person, this would mean that body and gender must not be divorced. If anything, they need to be reconciled. The body was made by God, and the commands of masculinity and femininity were spoken by him. God is good and wise, and so his creation and commands will always find happy agreement. Therefore, it is only in God through Christ that sex and gender are reconciled. It is on this point that Christian theology is most hostile toward the current trans movement.
Feminists as early as the mid-twentieth century were already saying that the physical body of human beings (primarily women) exercises a kind of tyranny that must be overthrown. Carl Trueman, in his excellent philosophical history of the sexual revolution, explains the views of Simone De Beauvoir, author of the influential The Second Sex:
As to the tone, de Beauvoir’s rhetoric reinforces the idea that biology is ultimately regarded as a form of tyranny, a potentially alienating form of external authority. Rather than seeing reproduction as the fulfillment—or at least a fulfillment—of what it means to be a woman, de Beauvoir sees it instead as a potential obstacle to the identity of any individual woman. The body is something to be overcome; its authority is to be rejected; biology is to be transcended by the use of technology; who or what woman really is is not her chromosomes or her physiology; rather, it is something that she becomes, either as an act of free choice or because society coerces her into conformity with its expectations. (Trueman, p. 259)
Now, it may be argued that the trans movement actually does want to reconcile body and soul in the case of gender dysphoria—but it is the body that needs to conform to the inner life (through hormones and surgery), not the other way around. Why do progressives so adamantly insist that it is the body that must change, not the inner life?
Again, it is on this question that Christianity and progressivism so greatly diverge. Christians say the inner life is lost: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9). But the body was made good by God, so much so that the sinless Son of God was able to assume a human body. Christians will always favor that in the case of gender dysphoria.
Trueman is helpful in explaining this point. He says that since the time of Rousseau in the eighteenth century, modern man has become increasingly psychologized. This is why we look to therapists as our primary healers and to authenticity as our highest virtue. The modern world is the era of Psychological Man expressing himself authentically and being affirmed empathetically. (All these themes are in Rousseau.) Therefore, our ethical decisions are no longer aimed at honoring the commands and wisdom of God but at relieving the anxieties of the fragile human psyche.
The inner life of the individual has become the sovereign god who dictates the ordering of society—and in more and more sectors of our world, we see people in fear bowing to this oppressive god. One of the primary ways people have shown their submission to this god is in the carefully dictated use of words.
The Names of One Attributed to the Other
The Westminster Confession insists on not separating sign and thing signified, or you might say, the physical and the spiritual. Applying the concept to sex and gender, we can say that man, male, and masculine should not be separated; nor should woman, female, and femininity. Sign and thing signified must be held together.
In fact, the Confession goes further to even say that the physical and spiritual are so deeply connected that “whence it comes to pass that the names and the effects of the one are attributed to the other.” The Confession is referring to verses like 1 Peter 3:21, which says, “Baptism . . . now saves you.” Of course, it is the blood of Christ that saves us, but the blood of Christ is applied to us through baptism. The biblical authors don’t quibble about interchanging the language of sign and spiritual reality.
In the case of sex and gender, this means we should not be quibbling about our language either. The demands around language and gender are becoming increasingly complex, and woven into these demands is a godless hatred of the human body as created by God. By splitting hairs around approved language, the secular world inches forward in its grip on human culture.
We are certainly at the point where Christians must internalize what is being asked of us to use people’s preferred pronouns. This devilishly small request has hidden in it an enormous compromise. Even if someone asks me my pronouns and I say, “He/him,” you might think I am saying something that is true—what is wrong with that? This question is like someone asking me, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” You can’t answer this without agreeing with the premise. The issue is the underlying assumption that it is legitimate (or healthy) for a human being to reject their body in favor of an alternate gender identity. The assumption is that the body and gender can be divorced. Challenging this assumption is the great intellectual and cultural demand for Christians in our day. And we must fortify ourselves with courage to speak in a way that recognizes the physical and spiritual union within God’s created order.
Salvation Means Reconciling Body and Soul
As our culture descends further down the road of sexual confusion, the results will be devastating in countless people’s lives. We should expect that many will turn to Christ and the Church to find healing. What does healing mean? We must insist that it means a reconciliation of body and soul.
The progressive attempt to divorce gender identity from biological sex (that is, to divorce the soul from the body) is only building a culture of death. Death is the great violence of tearing the soul from the body. While the world will teach people to hate their bodies, Christians will teach people to be reconciled to their bodies. The role of the body (or the flesh) is prominent in much of the teaching of the Apostle Paul:
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:20)
. . . always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (2 Cor. 4:10-11)
Christians must develop a rich theology of body and soul, physical and spiritual, if we are going to be prepared to care for the ravaged souls the Lord will surely bring us. As the Spirit works in our bodies, as heaven is joined to earth, as the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, as the regeneration works in the waters of baptism, and as Christ is truly received in the bread, so sex and gender must be reconciled to the image of God in Christ.
