Book Review: “The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory”

Robert S. Smith. The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2025. 

The rapid pace with which the transgender movement has risen to the mainstream of culture has shocked many Christians and conservatives. How did we move so quickly from the policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the mid-90s under Bill Clinton to Richard Levine (now going by the name, “Rachel Levine”) serving as the first transgender four-star Assistant Secretary of Health under Joe Biden? This is a major cultural shift in a relatively short time — just a single generation. Some of the shift can be attributed to the influence of social media and, through it, peer contagion, as documented in Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage. But the roots of transgender theory are much deeper than recent history, and the intellectuals undergirding it often make no more sense in their writings than the average transgender advocate on the street.

Robert S. Smith’s most recent book, The Body God Gives, helps readers to navigate this admittedly confusing movement from a biblical worldview. His stated aim is specifically to “evaluate the central ontological claim of transgender theory: that the sexed body does not determine the gendered self” (3). In evaluating this claim, Smith explains the philosophical foundations of transgender theory. He traces its connection to postmodernism, feminism, and queer theory, and demonstrates that the disjunction between the body and gender identity which is assumed as fact among transgender theorists and its modern advocates is a relatively novel idea, grounded in nothing substantial, and is more imaginary than real. Indeed, among some transgender theorists, language itself is imbued with a quasi-mystical power that can determine not only gender identity, but even sex. 

Judith Butler, for example, argues that gender is “constructed and constituted by language,” and is thus “performative” (139). Furthermore, the “gendered body” is likewise something that has “no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality” (139). Smith avers in response that for Butler, language “verges on the supernatural, effectively granting God-like, body-forming powers to human words” (139). In mystical and charismatic Christian circles, some teach that Christians can “speak things into existence.” Butler, and those adopting her theory, have essentially adopted a secularized version of this and applied it to sex and gender. What a person says they are — that they are.

Smith’s evaluation of transgender theory unfolds in three parts. Part I (chapters 1–3) describes the dramatic shift, or “transgender tipping point,” that has elevated transgender theory and practice into mainstream thinking in the West, followed by a summary of various evangelical responses to it, as well as Smith’s own method of evaluation. His method is decidedly evangelical, and specifically Reformed, relying on the doctrine of Sola Scriptura to ground his evaluation in divine revelation. He argues for the use of grammatico-historical exegesis, biblical and systematic theology, and will at times employ the contours of Covenant Theology (specifically, the covenants of redemption and grace) in his critiques. He draws on the writings of reformed writers like Calvin, Hodge, Vos, and more, and stands in firm agreement with the Nashville Statement (22). But this method does not prevent him from engaging transgender theory on its own philosophical ground, which is largely what Part II of the book is about.

Part II (chapters 4–6) provides a philosophical and historical analysis of the various feminist and queer theories that have given rise to the present transgender moment, noting especially how these theories distinguished sex from gender, and then used these distinctions to advance their arguments. Smith suggests that, although the distinction between sex and gender is relatively recent, originating primarily from feminist scholars in the mid-twentieth century, it need not be jettisoned outright because of its checkered past. One can recognize that sex is a biological fact while gender is a culturally expressed effect. But importantly, Smith argues, “for the distinction between sex and gender to remain meaningful and useful, it is necessary to anchor gender in sex” (155). Indeed, this very point cuts right at the heart of transgender theory which claims that the sexed body neither signifies nor determines the gendered self (157). This claim leads trans theorists into all manners of insuperable contradictions (e.g., the idea that there is a psychological essence to gender that has traits of the sexed body while that very essence can end up in the wrong body). Smith helpfully surveys the most significant scholars who have shaped and developed transgender theory and demonstrates by logical argument how their various claims collapse under scrutiny.

Finally, Part III (chapters 7–12) offers an evangelical response to transgender theory by expounding on the creation account of Genesis 1–3, highlighting what these early chapters of the Bible say about the body, human sexuality, and what it means to be made male and female. In conversation with trans-affirming scholars, Smith contends that the creation account firmly establishes a binary model of male and female sex, and that it leaves no room for a spectrum of genders. Moreover, the creation account envisions a “synthetic integration” between the body and soul that “necessarily excludes the possibility of an ontological mismatch between the (visible) body and the (invisible) soul,” thus excluding the possibility of a transgender identity (222). Smith further contends that the eschatological trajectory of Scripture, culminating as it does with the resurrection of the body, implies that a person’s biological sex is central to their personal identity (364). Since, therefore, the protological ground of sex is the same as its eschatological ground, the implication is that any form of gender incongruence should be recognized as a matter of epistemological misidentification, not ontological misalignment (366). Put differently, a person whose gender identity is not anchored in their biological sex should recognize this as a distortion of reality and should aim to bring their gender in line with their sex. 

As I stated above, much of the scholarship among queer and trans theorists is often muddled and confusing to read. Martha Nussbaum, for example, criticizes Judith Butler’s work on the grounds that her excessive verbosity and opacity “causes the reader to expend so much effort in deciphering her prose that little energy is left for assessing the truth of the claims” (133). Part of the confusion in the prose is likely due, at least in part, to the postmodern deconstruction of language and reality which is at the foundation of trans theory. Smith has done the hard work of making sense of the scholarship, fairly presenting it, and critiquing it on both philosophical and theological grounds. To understand the transgender moment we live in, culturally, and the ideas that have shaped it, and to respond with a biblical answer and a better vision for human sexuality, The Body God Gives is likely the best single-volume resource to have in your library.