Christocentric Understanding of Creation

This is Holy Week for Christians. The most important week in the Christian calendar, the climax of the Christian year, when we celebrate the central historical events of our faith, the bodily death and bodily resurrection of our Lord & Reconciler, Jesus of Nazareth.

Diptych with Scenes of the Annunciation, Nativity, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, Silver gilt with translucent and opaque enamels, German
Bodily Death & Resurrection
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Resurrection, Claude Mellan (French, Abbeville 1598–1688 Paris), Engraving
The Resurrection – by Claude Mellan
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Second Person of the Trinity did not become flesh and dwell among us, and die for us, and rise bodily from the grave so that we could escape our bodies. The body-hatred promoted by today’s Gender Ideologues is an example of how not to honor our deepest Christian Truths. Those Truths are the Doctrines of Creation, Incarnation, Jesus’s Bodily Death, Bodily Resurrection, Bodily Ascension, Bodily Return and then culminating with the Bodily Resurrection of Believers. All of which actualizes the remarriage of Heaven and Earth.

The New Testament scriptures refer to this “remarriage” as New Creation. For the Creator’s design now is to bring about the reconciliation of the invisible with the visible. Cosmically and Personally. First and foremost reconciliation between God and God’s creation, and then between the bi-natured creation itself, heaven & earth, soul & body.

In other words, we are destined by God’s design for Creational Wholeness. A fully Integrated, unbroken creational communion. A communion that does not obliterate the differences of God’s creation, but unites the two in Holy Matrimony. As it was in the Beginning.

And at the center of that marriage will be the dwelling place of our Creator God. In scriptural language this is known as the Temple. The human signpost of this communal intent is Husband & Wife. And the life they create together.

The individual signpost is a fruitful mind & body integration.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons

Second Century Church Father, Bishop Irenaeus, (AD 130 – 198) is the outspoken champion of the ‘realism’ of Christian Theology. Much of his life’s work was to combat the empty spiritualism of the first great Christian heresy called Gnosticism. At root Gnosticism’s core principle was the devaluation of the material world.

In contrast to the Gnostics’ empty spiritualism and proud contempt for the body, Irenaeus stubbornly refused to let man cut himself off from the life of this world and escape into a pseudo heavenly half-existence.

If there is to be real redemption, this earth and no other, this body and no other, must have the capacity to take God’s grace into itself. And thereby become the Temple of God.



This is what Classic Christians like myself believe and confess every week when we recite our Creeds, carefully read our Scriptures, and celebrate the Eucharist.

So let us not be World-less Christians Celebrating Holy Week. Let us embrace our God given materiality and by extension, embrace the beauty of the earth around us. I’ve said a few times on this blog and several times to my brothers and sisters at church, God gave us bodies because we were meant to have them. Humans are not angel apprentices awaiting some future “exaltation” to the invisible realm. Angels are God’s created heavenly family, humans are God’s created earthly family. Embodied existence is our human destiny. After bodily death an interim existence within the loving embrace of God awaits us. Call it a heavenly existence if you like. But then there will be life after life after death. Classic Christians believe in a two-stage afterlife process, the interim loving embrace at death, and then the reconciliation of the invisible soul with the visible when our bodies will be restored incorruptible at the return of Christ and the consummation of all things.

The Resurrection – Bolswert, 16th Century
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

Let us not exclude the reality of God from the world God created, either the visible or invisible world. Let us not deny salvation to God’s handiwork.

God’s blessings to you this Holy Week. And the weeks to come….

Resurrection of the Dead – German 15th Century
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art
Sun Rising – Zion National Park – March 22, 2022
blueridgemountain_man

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Defining Woman

Did you ever think we would get to the place in our culture where we thought it necessary to ask political and judicial leaders to define the word Woman?

It’s happening in the US. And in Great Britain. In the US the questions are being asked mostly by conservatives. In Great Britain, long time Labour supporters (self declared socialists) are asking the same question of their political leaders.

Here are two videos documenting the facts.

First Video


The Judge can’t answer the question for two reasons. The first reason she gives: ”I’m not a biologist.” The second reason is because she says this issue might come up before her in a supreme court case. As it might.

I give her a pass on the second reason. Unfortunately, this will likely come up before the Supreme Court at some point. That’s how irrational public policy has become in the 21st century.

But, her first reason (she had to know this question was going to be asked) indicated that she truly did not know the answer. Why?

Because she is not a biologist.

This is an example of what I call credentialism. Ya gotta be an expert before you can speak about anything. But surely if any question would seem to be within the general knowledge of ordinary Dick and Jane’s out there, the uncredentialed hoi polloi, as it were, surely the question about what is a ”man” or ”woman” would be one of them. Wouldn’t it?

I mean, does it take a lot of expertise, or scientific trial and error to figure this one out?

Regular, unprofessional, dare I say, common, folk have apparently known the difference between a man and a woman for some time now. The species continues to reproduce, does it not? Even among the most “unenlightened” among us. That would seem to be a good indicator of some knowledge of the difference between male and female among the uncredentialed. Yet, a woman who would seek to be one of the most powerful women on the planet can’t answer that question.

If two men have a sexual relationship. Or two women. This has never produced children. It can’t. Surely the uneducated have noticed. And acted accordingly. I mean, if they intend to have children and allow the species to continue. This would seem to be a basic human instinct.

Woman = adult human female.

Unfortunately, this basic human understanding evades British leaders as well.

Yvette Cooper refused three times to offer a definition of what a woman is, saying she was not going to go down a 'rabbit hole'
Yvette Cooper, Labour Party Shadow Home Secretary refused three times to offer a definition of what a woman is, saying she was not going to go down a ‘rabbit hole’
Anneliese Dodds, Labour's equalities spokesman, said the meaning of the word depended on 'context'
Annelised Dodds, Labour’s equalities spokesman, said the meaning of the word depended on ‘context’

Second Video

We really have gone down a Lewis Carroll rabbit hole. Western Politicians are pedaling fantastical nonsense.

The inestimable J.K. Rowling weighs in

Questions:

  • Can I answer the question: ”Is it raining?” If I am not a meteorologist?
  • Can I answer the question: ”Is it a dog?” If I am not a veterinarian?
  • Can I answer the question: ”Is it a female dog?” If I don’t identify as a female veterinarian?
  • If you can’t define ”woman” how will you be able to protect ”women’s rights?”

If anyone needs a Primer on the question of what is a Man or Woman, please read my “What is Sex” post.

Essentially, we tell the difference based on reproductive capacities.


Again, this is not about loving confused people. But you are not loving someone if you affirm their false perception of who they are. Simply attaching ”marginalized” to a person or group is not enough to decide the matter, and shutdown debate. There is much more at stake here than someone’s feelings.


Matt Walsh is known for stumping transgender activists by asking them to define what a woman is. The author appeared on an episode of “Dr. Phil” in January and asked LGBT activists Ethan and Addison just that, tripping up the activist:

“What is a woman? Can you tell me what a woman is?” Walsh queried.

“No, I can’t,” Ethan admitted, “because it’s not for me to say. Womanhood looks different for everybody.”

Speaking to Addison, Walsh stated, “You stood up here and said, ‘Trans women are women.’ What is a woman?”

“Womanhood is … something that I cannot define,” Addison said.

“But you used the word,” Walsh pushed back. “So what did you mean when you said, ‘Trans women are women’?”

“I do not define what a woman is because I do not identity as a woman,” Addison responded. “Womanhood is something that is an umbrella term.”

“That describes what?” Walsh interjected.

“People who identify as a woman,” Addison said.

Walsh, again, pressed, “Identify as what?”

“A woman,” Addison said. “What is that?” Walsh pressed.

“To each their own,” Addison said, adding that “each person” is “going to have a different relationship with their own gender identity and define it differently. So, trans women are women.”

“You won’t even tell me what the word means though, so that’s the problem,” Walsh responded.


Speaking philosophically, you’ve just witnessed radical individualism on display. According to these advocates, individuals are entirely self-defining and autonomous. Their perceived ”reality” is purely subjective, with no unimaginative boundaries. Any genetic contribution made by someone’s male and female parents doesn’t matter. Neither does God’s contribution.

The radical individualist says: ”I can be whatever I want to be!”

No, actually, you cannot.

If you think you are a bird and can fly. You cannot.

If you imagine you are a penis-having, testicle-carrying, person-with-prostate, woman. You are not.

Come down off the ledge you’ve been encouraged to leap from. Plenty of people want to help you.

Speaking theologically, and as a Christian I must, there are two components to God’s created reality. Call them the invisible world and the visible world. Or to shrink it down to a more personal level, Mind/Soul & Body. The goal of any Therapist, Christian or otherwise, is reintegration of Mind & Body. Not a fictitious, perhaps technology assisted, separation of the two.

Please see my post “Collaborating with Madness” for more details.

That post quoted Paul McHugh, former Chair of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital:

I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment. The children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes. Their parents usually lived with guilt over their decisions—second-guessing themselves and somewhat ashamed of the fabrication, both surgical and social, they had imposed on their sons. As for the adults who came to us claiming to have discovered their “true” sexual identity and to have heard about sex-change operations, we psychiatrists have been distracted from studying the causes and natures of their mental misdirections by preparing them for surgery and for a life in the other sex. We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it.

To see how far this kind of madness can go, read my post Species Fluidity? Transpups?


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As a Classic Christian I encourage everyone to “Embrace, Don’t Affirm.”

Individuals with a Gender Identity Disorder (Gender-Dysphoria) need Truth-filled Love. Please read this post for more details.

Martina Navratilova Says Governing Sport’s Bodies Are Wrong

Martina Navratilova, one of the greatest female athletes of all time, and one of the first openly gay athletes, says Lia Thomas shouldn’t swim against women. This is not about civil rights. But about fairness. And the fundamental difference between male and female bodies.

When it comes to sport, Navratilova says, biology should determine competitive categories. At the end of the interview you’ll be interested in her comments about her friend and one time competitor and coach, Transsexual Renee Richards.

Highly recommended interview!