Male & Female He Created Them: A Deeper Look At Genesis

The relationship between the Book of Genesis and the phenomena of intersexed and transsexed people. 

“So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.” – Genesis 1:27

“Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them “Humankind” when they were created.” – Genesis 5:2

From the beginning of Divine Revelation, at the very birth of humankind, God separates humanity into male and female. This fact is central to all Christian anthropology. It is taken as charting the biological and metaphysical reality of humankind. There are few scripture verses more central to the Catholic worldview. The mystery – nay, the romance – of Man and Woman, Adam and Eve, is at the center of all things. In the New Testament, Christ is the New Adam and the Virgin Mary is the New Eve. This is central to the earliest Christian understanding of Christ as Savior.

How then do we interpret transgenderism? If God made humanity male and female, doesn’t that invalidate the transgender condition?

My belief is it does not.

As a Catholic I believe Holy Scripture must be read in light of reason. According to both Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, Scripture must be interpreted in a way that makes sense in the context of the rest of Scripture as well as with our knowledge of the natural world. For example, interpreting Joshua 10 to mean that the Sun revolves around the Earth is not a good interpretation since our knowledge of the world tells us that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

As a Christian, I believe God made humanity “male and female.” Whatever they are as realities, male and female are the two straightforward categories that God creates at the center of the divine drama. This is an undeniable fact as long as we take Scripture seriously. However, this reality might not be as straightforward as it seems, and it might not exclude other realities from existing.

Learning From the Natural World

Since we must interpret Scripture in a way that doesn’t contradict facts of the known world, we must look to what science has discovered about sex and gender to understand how to interpret these passages.

As I detail here, sex and gender are biologically and psychologically complex realities. The following phenomena should be taken into account when interpreting Genesis 1-5:

1. Genetic intersexed: There exist people with genetically ambiguous sexes. Alongside the common xx and xy genotypes, there are also x0, xxy, and xx/xy mixed.
2. Bodily intersexed: There exist people with physically ambiguous sexes. Alongside the common male penis and female vagina morphologies, there are males (xy) who develop physically as females, females (xx) who develop masculinely, and persons of both genetic makeup who develop as both male and female or a combination of the two.
3. Intersex prevalence: Both the above are what are called “intersexed conditions.” Intersexed people were originally thought to be extremely rare, but recent science and surveys have shed new light on the subject.
   • Genetically intersexed people are 1/1000
   • Bodily intersexed people are 1/100
   • Those receiving corrective surgery are 1-2/1000
     These statistics show that intersexed conditions are almost commonplace compared to what was once believed.
4. Mentally Intersexed: Part of the sex differentiation process is the masculinization of the brain in males. If the brain is not sufficiently masculinized, the person’s brain-sex will be female. Sometimes xx brains become masculinized and their brain-sex becomes male. Right now the best hypothesis for the cause of transsexualism is that it comes from an insufficient masculinization of a male brain or an over-masculinization of a female brain. If this is true, then transgenderism is a third type of intersexed condition: “mentally intersexed.”
5. Hormonal Disorders: Even if all things go well in utero, many hormonal disorders exist in which a person does not produce the hormones expected given his/her biological sex, during childhood or adolescence. Thus, the chemical reality most associated with masculinity and femininity – sex hormones – is not always reliable.
6. Gender Identity: Gender identity seems to be hard-wired. Males who have been raised as girls retain a male gender identity even though they are socialized as females, as demonstrated by the sad case of David Reimer. Even intersexed people whose physical sex is more or less up for grabs almost always have a strong internal gender identity – man or woman. Even if a person’s male/female reality cannot be determined by their body, their minds usually hold the answer.

These facts all demonstrate the complexity of sex and gender by showing the various ways in which development can be atypical from a straightforward male or female makeup.

Exegetical Concerns

In addition to these scientific facts, the following scriptural concerns should be considered:

1. God transcends gender: There is a relationship between mankind being made in God’s image and mankind being made male and female. Both male and female together comprise the image of God. A person who is somewhere between male and female must also be in the image of God, but in a special way, containing in himself/herself not only spiritually but physically reflections of both God’s masculinity and femininity.
2. The phrasing: Scripture says God made humankind male and female, not male or female. There is an important difference between those two conjunctions. AND does not logically exclude other alternatives as OR does.
3. The literary form: Genesis is not a scientific text. It is a story – the story of our Creation. In the context of the rest of Scripture, it is the beginning chapter in the love story between God and humanity. Male and female represent the great romantic reality (the yin and yang) of the universe, but not necessarily the full diversity of humankind. They are the rule, but they do not speak for the exceptions.
4. Scriptural wholeness: Since Scripture must be read as a whole, Genesis must be read in the context of the following verses:
   • “For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.” – Matt 19:12
     
   • “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” – Galatians 3:28
   • “For thus says the Lord:
     To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me
     and hold fast my covenant,
     I will give, in my house and within my walls,
     a monument and a name
     better than sons and daughters;
     I will give them an everlasting name
     that shall not be cut off.” – Isaiah 56:4-5
5. The historical limitations: The story of creation in Genesis contains names of the major categories known to the Jews: earth and water, plants and animals, birds, fishes and beasts of the earth, etc. It doesn’t include things that were unknown to the Hebrews like bacteria. That doesn’t mean bacteria doesn’t exist or isn’t created by God.

Conclusion:

What does all this mean? It simply means that Genesis does not exclude the existence of complicated sex-gender identities and realities. It is possible that transgender people are legitimate in their “variance” from the male-female dichotomy.

Maybe the realities of man and woman as revealed in Genesis are more spiritual than physical. Ideally a person’s body perfectly reflects their inner spiritual reality, but maybe the priority of “male” and “female” goes to the person’s spiritual reality. After all, the soul has priority over the body (Matt 10:28).

Maybe transsexed and intersexed conditions are a result of the Fall. As already stated, ideally a person’s physical and spiritual realities will perfectly conform to each other. However, we know that because of the Fall humanity is physically frail. The spiritual reality of a Baptized person is glorious beyond imagining, but their physical reality is the same as everyone else’s. So maybe transsexed and intersexed people have bodies that are misplaced by the effects of sin. (Rom 8:18-25; 1 John 3:2)

On the other hand, maybe transsexed and interssexed people are made special by God in order to reflect a certain facet of His being. Maybe such people reflect the complexity of the Divine (Job 11;7; Isaiah 55:8), rather than the unity (John 17:22) expressed in straightforwardly male or female persons.

The celebration of the centrality of male-female to God’s plan is an affirmation of male and female, not a de-affirmation of gender variance. The celebration of one thing does not mean the exclusion of another – this is a very Catholic idea. The Catholic reality is always and/also, not either/or.

Also, even gender variant people participate in the male-female mystery, albeit in a different manner. They aren’t outside the male-female mystery; they’re inside it in a unique way.

Lastly – and perhaps most importantly – the realities of male and female are not necessarily clear. It may be that a person who superficially seems to be a participant in the mystery of maleness is actually intended by God to be a participant in the mystery of femaleness. Even if all people are either male or female, what determines that distinction might not be mere body shape.

All this is merely food for thought. Suffice to say that there is no clear Scriptural reason – as far as I can tell – for invalidating the transgendered condition.