About ten years ago I was teaching a confirmation class at church. One evening, the students burst into the classroom outraged by something they had learned that day --- that there are now 27/ 37/ 47 -- does it matter? -- different genders! Unfortunately, I started laughing at what I considered an absurdity. I say "unfortunately" because I should have asked in which class the students learned this information: biology? sociology? psychology? My students were actually relieved that I laughed; instinctively, they sensed that something was wrong with the information. I too knew something was not right, but I could not have articulated the error. It was the first I had heard of this new "science," and I was just as surprised as they were.
Whatever our instincts told us, however, it was hard to resist "science," the new "revelation from heaven" since the days of the Enlightenment. After all, what do we know if science tells us otherwise? In the years since that incident, we (our culture) have come to accept without question that there are as many genders as anyone cares to define -- after all, we define our own reality now. I am who I say I am; I am who I think I am. And given that scientifically, biologically, there is actually a small percentage of the population born with gender dsyphoria, it seems likely that maybe gender identity is not actually a "given" after all. How are we to make sense of what "science" is now telling us about who we are?
Plato, and in fact all of Greek culture, defined truth as correspondence to "what is," to reality, and furthermore, sought philosophy as the key to understanding that truth. Philosophy --the study of the nature of reality and how it is ordered -- was the key to unlocking the secrets of the cave, Plato's metaphor for what we experience as reality. We see shadows, not reality itself, and it is the task of the philosopher to seek wisdom, or the truth behind the shadows. Sadly, except in seminaries and Catholic colleges today, philosophy has gone out of fashion.
Perhaps a modern example will clarify: during the 2020 Women's March on Washington, some of the participants were asked, "How would you define 'woman'? One participant could not answer the question; another said that a woman was whatever she defined herself to be, and a third responded that anyone could be a woman. Plato might have responded that all of these respondents were looking at shadows on the back of the cave. I cannot laugh, however, for most of us are caught in the same incoherence today. To define any aspect of reality is to define what it is not: a bird is not a tree; a squirrel is not a cloud. But to define a woman as not a "male" today is to discount the identity of a trans woman. And to define a man as someone who can impregnate a woman but who himself cannot have babies fails to capture the reality of a trans man ( a biological woman who identifies as male).
I dare say that most of us today would love to have some clear answers about transgenderism and sexuality -- answers based on philosophy and real science. Why philosophy, when science would seem to have all the answers we need? In this, as in most cases, science can only tell us what is possible -- with transgender surgery, for example. It cannot tell why it should happen, or if it is a good idea. Science can tell us that nuclear warfare is possible; it cannot tell us why it should happen, or if it is desirable that it should occur. We have clear-cut the rain forests because we know how; only the earth itself, the peasants, and the animals seemed to care whether reality itself would be served by that possibility.
A recently-published book called Sexual Identity: the Harmony of Philosophy, Science, and Revelation, edited by John Desilva Finley, has helped to clarify the questions that plague our culture today. Science is not reality; reality is the harmony of science with philosophy and revelation that reveals ultimate goodness, beauty, and truth. From a review of the book:
We live in a culture that feeds two dangeous lies to our youth: first, that some people are born in the wrong body, and second, that there are more than two sexes. This is not science -- it is a false philosophy....When our youth today "learn" that they cannot trust the objective reality of their own physial bodies to tell them who they are, it strikes a major blow to their entire system of reality-testing and leads many of them down a medical pathway resulting in permanent, life-long sterility, emotional suffering, chronic illness, and physical harm.
Like myself that night, and like my students, facing new "information," we seldom take the time to make what we know explicit. Common sense and everyday experience, although irreplaceable, will not help to clear up confusion on this point. We need a deeper vision that can see the parts in relation to a whole -- the branches of human knowledge are strengthened as they form a living unity, or to put it more simply: truth is truth wherever it is found. Sexual Identity brings together a variety of disciplines to address the issues and implications around gender questions: biology, philosophy, psychology, soul-body unity, and revelation.
I strongly recommend this strikingly readable and enjoyable book to anyone like myself who needs all the help they can get in sorting through reality and truth in this foggy area of society today.
