Christian Anthropology - God’s Good Creation

May 28, 2026May 28, 2026

The “Christian Nationalism” Charge and the Return of an Old Heresy

[Audio script] "We have to draw the connection here, between what we are seeing in these crisis pregnancy centers, what we are seeing in other..um..Christian Nationalist policy imposition on ability for Trans individuals to receive health-care and gender-affirming care.  We see what is happening in our schools with the so-called Parents Bill of Rights and all of the ways in which LBGTBQ issues, like book-banning, and other issues across healthcare, across all the issues that deeply impact North Carolinians.  This agenda is front and center, and the majority party in this moment, is the one that is, are the architects of those impacts.  So we have to tell the truth about the ways in which all of the issues we are dealing with in the General Assembly, across Education, Health-Care and beyond are all tied to this central agenda of Christian Nationalism."

Recently, I watched the above press conference held by several female ministers and clergy leaders at North Carolina’s legislative building in Raleigh. During the event, one pastor argued that crisis pregnancy centers¹, restrictions on so-called “gender-affirming care,” parental rights legislation, curriculum transparency, and book policies are all connected expressions of a broader “Christian Nationalist agenda” affecting North Carolinians.

That’s what they say.

I disagree.

But about one thing they are certainly correct: these issues are connected.

Why the “Trans Issue” Matters

Some of my progressive Christian friends ask why I consider the transgender issue so important. Here is one example of why. And it has nothing to do with “Christian Nationalism,” as these clerics insist.

Feebly following Jesus’ lead, I increasingly reserve my sharpest criticism for religious leaders—especially ministers who appear to have bypassed the very first article of the Christian creed: belief in God the Creator. And, no doubt, several other articles as well, including the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Given what I know about the theological formation many ministers now receive in certain seminaries and divinity schools, it is an educated guess that some of these clergy do not actually believe the creeds they publicly recite every Sunday.

Just a hunch.

Yet they still claim to speak liberating “gospel truth” to power.

The False Gospel of Liberation from the Body

Now let me be clear: there is true freedom in Christ—from God our Creator. That is the freedom human beings were made for.

But part of the modern false-liberationist worldview—astonishingly embraced by some theologians, preachers, and denominations—is the idea that human beings can and should be liberated from their bodies, especially from the perceived “constraints” of bodily reality itself.

That is a lie.

In fact, it is a very old lie.

The Early Church Fathers regarded this way of thinking as a theological five-alarm fire. They fought vigorously to cast it into the Gehenna of theological discourse and history.

It was called Gnosticism. (You can read more about Gnosticism at this link.)

Unfortunately, despite their efforts, it always seems to be hangin’ ’round the house.

The New Gnosticism

Today’s Gnostics tell us that the body does not really matter—not ultimately, anyway.

They say it does not matter how sexual behavior is expressed, so long as it is called “love.”

They say that if a person possesses XY chromosomes, male reproductive anatomy, and produces the small gametes characteristic of the male sex—but internally identifies as female—then that person “really” is female in the truest sense.

And society, they insist, must affirm this inner identity above biological reality itself.

Not only affirm it, but increasingly enforce it—through language codes, institutional mandates, and legal pressures compelling others to participate in the fiction.

Bodies, after all, do not really matter, according to this new spiritualist vision.

Or, at least, not very much.

[Yoda voice: “Mary Baker Eddy disciples, they are.”]

And accordingly, they will support the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of minors in pursuit of these self-expressive and supposedly liberating ends.

All of this, mind you, is done in the name of compassion, liberation, and “gospel truth.”

Creation, Resurrection, and Reality

But as someone who believes in God the Creator—the One who raised the dead body of Jesus into new creation life—I fail to see the Ordo Amoris in any of this.

Ordo amoris is a Latin phrase meaning “the order of loves.” In Christian theology—especially in Augustine of Hippo and later thinkers—it refers to the proper ordering of our loves, desires, and affections according to God’s created design and moral reality.

The basic idea is this:

Sin is not merely loving bad things, but loving good things in the wrong order.

So, for example:

* Loving pleasure more than truth,
* Self more than God,
* Desire more than reality,
* Or autonomy more than creation itself,

would all represent a disordered ordo amoris.

By contrast, a rightly ordered life loves God our Creator first and then loves all other things—people, body, sex, family, nation, freedom, possessions—in their proper place and proportion.

I hope my brothers and sisters in Christ, especially our leaders, will come to the same conclusion.

Christians cannot surrender the goodness of creation without eventually surrendering Christianity itself.

The biblical faith is not a religion of escape from the body. It is a religion of incarnation, resurrection, and new creation.

Non-Christians may continue drifting into this technologically assisted Gnosticism. But the Church must not.

We must remain firmly rooted in God’s created order and design, come what may.

Because societies built upon lies about human nature eventually collapse.

And denominations built upon those same lies eventually die as well.

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Love God First, Then Your Neighbor

Companion Post

Why Puberty Blockers Are Bad Medicine: Form, Telos, and the Abuse of Consent

May 7, 2026May 7, 2026

On Bodies, Truth, and the Direction of the Church

I wanted to alert you guys to this article I came across from First Things—“The Word Became Flesh and Picked Up a Hammer.” It’s well worth your time, not just for what it says explicitly, but for what it reveals about a deeper issue in our culture… and, increasingly, in parts of the Church.

A new Catholic trade college in Steubenville seeks to restore the unity of intellectual and manual formation, challenging the modern divide between “head” and “hands.” Rooted in the Incarnation, it teaches that the body and its work are essential to human dignity and Christian life. Students study the liberal arts while gaining practical skills in trades like carpentry and plumbing, even helping build their own campus. The college meets real economic needs, brings hope to a struggling region, and forms graduates who serve others. It offers a compelling model of education where faith, work, and community are meaningfully integrated.

Here’s the link if you want to read the whole thing:
https://firstthings.com/the-word-became-flesh-and-picked-up-a-hammer/

One passage in particular really struck me, and I want to quote it in full because it gets at something profoundly Christian that we’ve been in danger of losing:

“The divorce between the head and the hands has been terrible for people. It is analogous to the divorce between body and soul. As Christians, we find this divorce out of place in a religion where bodies are essential to worship and where God Himself became flesh. In education, we often talk about the “liberal arts,” unconsciously segregating the “servile arts” to other people—the servants. This is a modern mistake (and dare I also say an ancient one). But the medieval Christian educational tradition talked rather about the “manual arts,” which paired harmoniously with the more speculative arts. After all, God wedded the head with the hands in one body.”

That line—“God wedded the head with the hands in one body”—is doing a lot of theological work.

At the center of Christianity is not an idea, or a feeling, or even a moral framework. It is the Incarnation. God took on a real, physical, human body. Not as a temporary costume, but as something essential to who He is in His saving work. That means the body is not incidental to our identity—it is integral to it.

And this is where some churches are going off the rails today.

When I see churches affirming transgender ideology—sometimes quite enthusiastically—I can’t help but feel that we’re witnessing a different version of that same “divorce” the article talks about. Only now it’s not just head vs. hands, but self vs. body. The inner sense of identity is elevated, while the physical body is treated as negotiable, malleable, even irrelevant.

But that’s not a Christian anthropology.

Historically, the Church has insisted on the unity of body and soul. Not because it’s convenient, but because it flows directly from the Incarnation and ultimately from creation itself: “male and female He created them.” The body is not an obstacle to the “real you.” It is you—part of the gift God has given.

To be clear, I’m not talking about a lack of compassion. There are real people experiencing real distress, and they deserve care, patience, and love. But compassion untethered from truth doesn’t actually help people. In fact, it can do real harm.

In that sense, some churches—perhaps with the best of intentions—are adopting a framework that is much closer to a kind of modern Gnosticism than to historic Christianity. The idea that the “true self” is something internal, and the body is just a shell that can be reshaped to match it… that’s not new. It’s just been repackaged in modern, therapeutic language.

And this ties into a broader concern I’ve had, which I’ve written about before: when the Church starts absorbing the assumptions of the surrounding culture rather than challenging them, it slowly loses its ability to speak truthfully about reality.

Companion Posts

The Promise of Disembodiment? A Big Lie!

When Bodies Don’t Matter: The Gnostic Temptation of Our Age

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I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

February 17, 2026February 17, 2026

Postscript: After the Traces: Questions and Pushback

Trinity found in a Book of Hours c. 1510

Audio – Traces of the Trinity: Postscript – Episode 10

***

Welcome back to the podcast. Today, we stand on the peak and look back. Peter Leithart, in his Postscript, knows what some readers are probably asking: Is this too much?

Too much to see the Trinity everywhere? Too much to claim that creation hums with perichoresis — mutual indwelling?

Leithart hears the pushback — and answers it head-on.

***

Some theologians worry. They say: “Wait a minute — you can’t compare the relations inside the Trinity to human relationships.” After all, God is God. We are creatures. Isn’t that gap too wide?

Others say: Sure, God is relational — but “perichoresis” should only describe the divine Persons, not families, friends, music, time.

Some call this “creeping perichoresis” — like theological kudzu, spreading where it doesn’t belong.

Leithart says: fair points. The Triune God is unlike us — but the Bible itself keeps drawing these connections.

God is Rock. Sun. Light. Father. Husband. Shepherd. Warrior. The language is earthy — unembarrassed. Scripture doesn’t panic about analogies. It expects us to think with them — carefully, yes, but boldly.

***

Jesus prayed, “Father, may they be one as we are one.” The church’s unity is not a copy of something else — it’s a participation in the divine dance. “I in them, Thou in Me.”¹ That’s not poetry — it’s the Gospel.

Paul echoes it too: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”² “In Him we live.” We are in Him — and He in us. The Spirit dwells in us — and we dwell in the Spirit.

It’s not fusion — it’s fellowship. Distinct yet intertwined. And it’s more than metaphor. It’s how salvation works.

Of course, the pattern must be handled with care. The Trinity’s inner life is not just a diagram for human society. But if creation is the handiwork of the Triune God — then why wouldn’t the shape of the Maker echo in the shape of what’s made?

***

Some scholars say: “But God’s ways are too high, too different.” True. To an extent. But the Bible never makes us choose between transcendence and analogy. Scripture is full of bold images: “Like a father,” “like a mother,” “like an eagle.” The world is crafted to say something true about its Creator.

The clue is baked into Genesis: humans made in the image of God. Image-bearers carry resemblance. Not identical — but truly reflective. Think of us as being angled mirrors, reflecting God into the world and through our worship, summing up the praises of creation back to God.

As Leithart puts it in the final paragraph of the book:

“Of course, the biblical analogies must be handled with care. Of course, we must not conclude that, because we grasp something of how human beings relate, we know exactly what sort of relation the Father has with the Son. But we should be no more anxious about these analogies than Scripture is, and we should certainly not be so anxious about the limits of human knowledge and speech that we are reduced to silence. We worship a God who is Word; he has spoken, and he expects us to speak his words after him. He expects us to learn how to use everything he has revealed and named to honor, praise, and tell of him, because that is the destiny for which everything was created.”

***

So, Leithart argues, the pattern of mutual indwelling doesn’t flatten Creator and creature. It celebrates the fact that creation is designed to mirror the triune love at its heart.

We don’t just “balance” opposites. We dwell in the swirl. We find the traces — and the traces find us.

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So here’s where he leaves us: the world is not a cold machine or a random accident. It’s a living song, a word woven of words, a dance of difference that holds together in the embrace of Father, Son, and Spirit.

Find the traces. Follow them home.

The Trinity leaves fingerprints on every inch of creation.

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I welcome any questions or comments. [Don’t worry, your personal info will not be given to anyone.] Thanks!