A few years ago, I would have loudly applauded U.S. Senator Josh Hawley repeatedly pummeling Doctor Nisha Verma with the question, “Can a man get pregnant?” Despite my respect for his views on life, marriage, and the U.S. Constitution. I think he missed an opportunity to ask a fundamental question that Christians aren’t asking: Why does biology matter and in what way?
There was a moment in Hawley’s cross-examination of the Doctor when she tried to provide an answer. He either did not hear or did not appreciate. She was saying “I think you are conflating male with...” when he interrupted by repeating his question.
As a former legislator, I get Hawley’s frustration. When you know a witness is obfuscating, it is easy to get angry. But she was trying to provide an answer, and it never hurts when someone is trying to explain themselves that we listen. “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath” (James 1:19, KJV), something I personally know is not easy.
I believe she was going to say that his question conflates what a male is with what a man is. Christians can’t believe anyone would think there is a distinction between the two. But the point of listening to the “philosophers on Mars Hill” is to learn why they think the way they do, and then respond wisely.
I believe the doctor, along with Justice Katanji Brown-Jackson, believes that biology is objective, and contained in the word “male.” I believe they think the word “man” pertains to human meaning that goes beyond biology. But all meaning is now subjective. That’s what happens when a society and its law embrace Nihilism.
In this case, I wish Senator Hawley had listened to or picked up on the doctor’s lead-in to learn why she thinks there is a distinction. As I’ve written elsewhere, no one asks “Why” questions much anymore. We want to know “what” and “how,” but not why.
Put another way, had Senator Hawley asked if a male could get pregnant, as an objective biological word, she would have said, “No.” But he asked if a man could get pregnant, and that word is, to her and many others, a word of meaning or value that is, by definition, now subjective.
Had she been straightforward with him when he first asked if a “man” could get pregnant, the situation could have been very different. For one, it would not have escalated into tiresome and increasingly irritated repetitions of the Senator’s question. But, even then, if Senator Hawley had patiently listened, he could have responded this way:
Doctor, I think you said I was conflating the word “male” with “man.” So, can you tell me why, after centuries of saying that male and man are not distinct subjects for definition, that is no longer true? And if they are distinct, how does your training in biological science have anything to say about meaning? How do you get meaning out of what you says is just stuff and can have no meaning in itself. I'd really like for America to hear that.
I think it would have been fun to see the doctor answer that question!
This will seem strange to Christian ears, but honestly, without the revelation of “God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6), without the belief that in the revelation of “the Father and of Christ” are “hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3-4), I could not tell you why we should not give a meaning of our choice to the mere biology we observe, measure, and now can manipulate.
Why, apart from revelation, is this distinction important apart from reproduction? Why, apart from revelation, does the distinction point to something more objective and enduring than reproduction?
Complementarity is the answer often given by conservatives and even Christians. I used to give it. But I now think it is a slippery slope. For example, what about complementarity demands that society think of a marital relationship that attracts government benefits as only a man and woman.
I think today’s intellectuals see this weakness. They know, along with folks like Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, and C.S Lewis, that Christians have joined them in giving up on metaphysics. That means we have given up any meaning to stuff beyond the matter and physics of it. But for Christians, that meaning is spiritual and, thus, revealed knowledge. And the intellectuals in our education system are teaching this metaphysical nihilism to our nation’s young people.
My concern is that Christians, by their line of questioning -- Hawley himself insisting that science answer the question--seem to have tacitly agreed that human meaning should be reduced to mere biology. That’s not good when it comes to the gospel, and on this subject, I think a bit of knowledge of about the history of philosophy would help us out as to why.
Aristotle differed from Plato by saying that the nature of things is not in some transcendent form as proposed by Plato. Rather, he said the nature of a thing -- what makes it what it is distinct from the nature of other things -- is in the thing itself. But Aristotle never said there is no essential nature to a thing beyond its physical properties.
Christians should understand this. There is a form of humanity, and its meaning is in the mind of God. That is similar to Plato’s assertion. But God expressed that meaning by creating a distinction between male and female. That is similar to Aristotle.
In other words, Christians have an answer to this long philosophical dispute about form and meaning, about the nature and natural things. The revelation of God in Jesus Christ effectively says both are true.
Male and man have a unified meaning in the mind of God that is embodied in the male’s biology. The same holds true for female and woman. Biology and meaning are not divided, as the doctor and the justice think. Male and man have a unity of meaning that is distinct from the unity of meaning in female and woman.
In other words, biology is important, even fundamental to who we are, but it is not all of what being human, male and female, means. The image of God demands that Christians not reduce human meaning to mere biology. I think many Christians may be doing that by the way they are approaching this issue.
An opportunity awaits us to present what Christ reveals, if we will listen long enough to the voices crying for meaning beyond biology to take advantage of it.
