Review: The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory By Robert S. Smith

by on July 17, 2025 | 3 Comments

Recently, I have been removing a large stump from my back yard. The task has required more than one tool at different phases of the process. At times, I need a chainsaw to get deep cuts on certain sections. Other times, I need a shovel to expose lower sections of the roots. I also have needed an axe to strike at those roots and parts that are buried in the dirt or particular chunks that just need a little more blunt force to dislodge. Although each facet of the job requires one specific tool, the task holistically demands a host of tools and approaches to accomplish it.

The same is true for the church’s response to the rise of transgenderism. We have needed crisp, accessible statements that reaffirm Scripture’s basic position about sexuality and sexual identity.1 We also profit from wider ranging cultural analysis that helps us understand what prevailing presuppositions enable such a movement to gain traction in so many people’s minds.2 Space remains for treatments that are more in-depth and respond to the academic discussions that have allowed transgenderism to gain acceptance in elite circles.3 Robert Smith’s The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory comes as a tool fitting into this third category.

“Defining” would be quite an ascription. Nevertheless, Smith has likely earned it in this book. It is a tour de force in addressing an issue of tremendous magnitude with rigor, conviction, and pastoral care. Rarely do these features hold together so well and so seamlessly as in Smith’s excellent book.

Smith’s argument is that biological sex grounds gender identity. In this claim, he maintains a distinction between sex and gender but keeps them firmly related according to creational and biblical arguments. He contends that gender ought to be our expression of our biological sex. Thus, any supposed conflict between our gender identity and our biological sex misinterprets how they are supposed to relate and even how sex is the foundation that must give rise to our gender experience. Any decoupling of these facets of our being ignores any credible explanation of what they are or how they might function in relation to one another.

One strength in this project is its engagement with the major sources of transgender theory. I know of no other evangelical work that interacts so thoroughly with the various voices and versions of transgender theory. Although some of this discussion necessarily veers in an academic direction, overall the summary and critiques are very accessible.

This approach is needed because it recognizes that transgenderism does have intellectual sources that enabled its cultural accession. Books with heavy philosophical pedigree have underpinned the transgender movement. If we are to engage the problem in a truly informed way, we need some sense of what ideas have upheld the changes on the ground.

Smith has a great achievement here. He has not only surveyed the vast literature—thus demonstrating that his response is not a superficial reaction. He has also exposed the errors in its logic. He shows how the authors themselves often concede that an agenda rather than cogency and truth drove their work. Furthermore, he highlights how the arguments are still otherwise ridden with mistakes that make the position unsustainable.

The net effect is to show that transgenderism is a practice in continual search of a valid supporting theory. The quest itself makes plain that this emperor has no clothes. The ongoing reworking of the ideas that aim to make the position tenable repeatedly fall afoul of truths about the world and invert the relationship of objective reality and subjective experience.

Notwithstanding this tremendous work in place, Smith could have made even more of his achievement. Even before he arrives to his biblical arguments, he has laid the foundation to dismantle the intellectual apparatus for transgenderism. He suggests as much in small ways as he progresses. Still, the one area where I thought he could have strengthened his case was by tying together explicitly what he shows implicitly. Namely, he could have stated clearly that the attempts to provide theoretical foundations for transgenderism hardly have a leg to stand on. He demonstrates that attempts at any theoretical outline to support transgender ideology almost always involve a concession about natural givens and then a recourse to hard voluntarism for upholding the rest of the argument. Further, they conflict with God’s natural revelation in addition to his special revelation. These points are all there to be garnered. If drawn together explicitly, Smith could have swung this punch with more force and still landed a clear and deciding blow.

One of the standout features in this discussion is Smith’s awareness of the origins for “gender” terminology in general. In one sense, as soon as we appropriate the mainstream use of “gender” language as roughly synonymous with biological sex, we have conceded too much ground already. Gender categories grow from grammar and philology. Philosophers applied them to discussions about biological sex precisely to undermine the relationship between sex and gender. It is a good thing to announce whether our unborn children are boys or girls. If we do so under the guise of a so-called “gender reveal party,” we are already operating outside the structure of Christian anthropology. We must keep a tighter hold on how much we let widespread use of terms determine how we participate (explicitly or implicitly) in the discourse.

As Smith turns to biblical exposition, he reckons deeply with how traditional exegetes have understood Genesis 1–3 as well as how gender theorists have re-interpreted this passage. Most of the exegetical chapters focus on rightly handling specific aspects of the Genesis 1–3 narrative. In each case, Smith deals with objections to the traditional understanding. He again shows those attempts to be agenda-driven and logically unsustainable.

Smith does work within a Reformed framework. This theological infrastructure is not always on the forefront. It does shine through at various moments though. He explicitly invokes the covenant of grace to explain the contours of redemptive history. He also builds on the basic outline of creation-fall-redemption. Readers of this space will have very little recalibrating to do in order to make great use of this volume.

Not every book is a must read. Even some of the most helpful books are not necessary reading. Smith has written what seems to me to be the must read, necessary first stop to address transgenderism in a serious way. Other books may help and supplement this one. Smith’s work is a true triumph in rigorous intellectual engagement with the foundations of a relevant problem combined with satisfying and informed biblical interpretation.

Notes

  1. E.g., Andrew T. Walker, God and the Transgender Debate: What Does the Bible Actually Say about Gender Identity, 2nd ed. (Charlotte, NC: The Good Book Company, 2022).
  2. E.g., Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020); Carl R. Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022).
  3. E.g., Michele M. Schumacher, Metaphysics and Gender: The Normative Art of Nature and Its Human Imitations (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2023); Theresa Farnan, Susan Selner-Wright, and Robert L. Fastiggi (eds.), Gender Ideology and Pastoral Practice: A Handbook for Catholic Clergy, Counselors, and Ministerial Leaders (St. Louis, MO: En Route Books, 2024).

©Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

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

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3 comments

  1. A Critique of Smith’s book.

    A respectful concern about what grounds the argument

    Robert Smith’s The Body God Gives is one of the most careful and helpful evangelical responses to transgender theory available. He rightly shows that the debate is not just about ethics or feelings, but about what it means to be human. His biblical work is strong, his pastoral tone is generous, and his conclusions are largely convincing.

    That said, the very strength of Smith’s conclusions raises a further question:

    What, at the deepest level, makes those conclusions true?

    Smith repeatedly affirms that sex is created by God, meaningful, and not something we can simply redefine. But much of the time, sex functions in his argument as a given biological fact with theological importance, rather than as something that belongs to the very structure of personal existence itself.

    This matters because transgender theory does not merely deny biological facts. It denies that givenness—of any kind—should have authority over personal identity at all. To answer that challenge fully, it is not enough to say that sex is given; we need to explain why givenness itself matters for personhood.

    Sex as fact, rather than sex as constitutive

    At times, Smith’s argument can sound like this:

    “The body determines identity, therefore gender must follow sex.”

    While that conclusion may be correct, it risks framing the issue as a competition between parts of the self—body versus mind—rather than questioning the deeper assumption that identity is something we construct from internal or external traits.

    What is missing is a fuller account of why sex belongs to who a person is, not just to what a person has. Without that, appeals to creation can sound like firm rules rather than disclosures about reality itself.

    Equality and difference held together, but not fully explained

    Smith is careful to affirm the equal dignity of men and women and to avoid any suggestion of domination or hierarchy. However, because he does not spell out a deeper account of how difference and equality belong together, this balance is often maintained by assertion rather than explanation.

    As a result, critics can still claim that appeals to creation simply repackage power structures in theological language—even if that is not Smith’s intent.

    Personhood described clearly, but somewhat statically

    Smith rightly rejects the idea of a “true self” hidden behind the body. Yet personhood in his account can still feel static: a person is described as having a body, having a sex, having an identity.

    What is less developed is the idea that a person is formed through relations—that identity is something received and lived out over time, not simply possessed.

    This matters because transgender theory thrives on static identity models (“this part of me defines the real me”). A more relational account of personhood would dissolve that debate rather than merely choosing sides.

    Why this matters

    Smith’s conclusions are sound. But because the ontological foundations remain mostly implicit, the argument can appear vulnerable to the charge that it relies on authority (“Scripture says so”) rather than explaining why Scripture describes reality as it does.

    The need here is not for different conclusions, but for a clearer account of what kind of beings humans are, such that sex cannot be overridden without distorting personhood itself.

    Conclusion

    The Body God Gives clears the ground admirably. It shows that transgender theory rests on a flawed understanding of the human person. What remains is the task of making more explicit the deeper ontology that Scripture assumes—an account of personhood that explains why sexed embodiment is not optional, not oppressive, and not arbitrary.

    That is where further conversation may be especially fruitful.

  2. Maybe a typo to fix?

    “It is a good thing to announce whether our unborn children are [s.b. OR] boys are girls.”

    Great article, except now I have another book to buy. Gee, thanks Dr. Perkins.

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