Medical Malpractice

About 8 months ago, Andrew Rodriguez of Psychobible on YouTube authored an article published by the Christian Post. I’d like to draw readers’ attention to a set of statements he made: 

Compassion starts with affirming the truth of God’s design for us. Without that realization, we have no basis for identifying any disorder or sin, for sin is to miss the mark of God’s design and intention for us. 

On the face of it, he’s right.  However, when he explains himself, he commits medical malpractice after having earlier painted himself as a caring & compassionate counselor.  

First, he writes, 

And it doesn’t take the Bible to tell us that arms are meant for moving, eyes are for seeing, and genitals are for generating. And with the extremely rare exception of hermaphroditism, humanity has been reliably trusting the genitals to identify one’s gender for millennia.  Furthermore, we can learn from general revelation that sexual activity creates an emotional bond between two people. So, we can also deduce that sex has a unitive purpose. Of course! Who better to receive and nurture children than two people committed to give of their whole selves to each other and any offspring they receive?

Not according to Romans 1:18 - 21…

Romans 1:19–23 (ESV): For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 

Some people take 1:19 to mean that the Created Order provides us with a sufficient warrant for our ethics.  That’s an acontextual reading of the text.  

Paul continues, 

Romans 1:20 (ESV): For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Here, Paul explains the natural teleology (purpose) of the Created Order. The Created Order is God’s temple, & we are created in God’s image.  God’s proprietary image is the only proprietary image He will tolerate. We are the Creation’s curators, caregivers, & caretakers.  The purpose of the Creation is to testify to God’s existence, attributes, & authority - not to serve as a non-arbitrary epistemic warrant for our ethics. 

In the ancient world, after the Fall, people began suppressing the existence, attributes, & authority of God (vs 21), crafting idols for themselves that looked like people & animals.  In other words, they suppressed God’s image & authority & supplanted it with their own.

According to Mr. Rodriguez, 

But nature and Scripture make clear that God gave us a trustworthy arbiter — even in our fallen world — of our sexual identity: the body. And the body makes clear that there are only two genders, male and female, and only one sexual orientation, union with the opposite sex.

In other words, he believes that human anatomy & physiology serve the same purpose that Scripture does - that of a non-arbitrary epistemic warrant for our sexual ethics & theology &/or philosophy of sex & gender. 

That’s unbiblical.  The purpose of the Created Order is to testify to God’s existence, attributes, & authority.  Deploying the human body as the epistemic warrant for sexual ethics looks to the Created Order as if it’s been personified for use as the font of propositional revelation.  

A non-arbitrary epistemic warrant is necessary, principled, & reasoned. The human body, by definition, cannot serve as a non-arbitrary epistemic warrant for our sexual ethics, because sexual ethics are abstractions which require a living mind in order to exist. Neither the brain nor the body constitutes the mind.  Moreover, neither the minds nor the bodies of created beings are necessary in order for sexual ethics to exist. There was a time in which the Created Order did not exist.  Reasoning from human existence, attributes, & authority for sexual ethics treats ethical principles very like the way some atheists treat numbers - as if they are projections of the human mind which itself is convertible with the brain. 

By arguing that the human body serves as a necessary & sufficient or unnecessary yet sufficient epistemic warrant for sexual ethics, Mr. Rodriguez is reasoning the same way the people in Romans 1 reasoned.  In so doing, he commits two major logical & epistemic fallacies.  

First, he’s committed the Is-Ought fallacy. If what he wrote is true, then it is possible to deduce abstract moral principles from physical, created objects. That’s a dubious process at best according to the Bible. 

According to Zechariah 12:1, God creates our souls. According to John 6 & Romans 8, we can do no spiritual good accompanying our own personal salvation.  Ergo, if a moral “ought” is rightly deducible from a created “is,” then it follows that we have no moral obligation to obey the Gospel.  On that view, ability limits responsibility, which is at the heart of libertarian free will, which, as we observed in my previous article, is unbiblical & amounts to a surd phenomenon.  

Second, arguing sexual ethics from human anatomy amounts to vicious circularity.  God’s self-revelation of His existence, attributes, & authority in the Created Order isn’t designed for us to deduce sexual ethics by looking in the mirror. Rather, what we observe in nature is designed to move us to inquire of the LORD.  

Fortunately, God had provided us with His written Word, theopneustos Scripture, &, for those without access to Scripture, the law written as a scroll upon our hearts.

Romans 2:14–16 (ESV): For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. 

According to this text, the content of this law of conscience is congruent with God’s moral law. God has not left us at or to the mercy of natural processes with respect to the epistemic foundation & means of doing ethics in general & sexual ethics in particular. 

Simply put, human anatomy lacks the metaphysical machinery to do sexual ethics.  As epistemic warrants go, the Created Order as a whole & the human body in particular does not, indeed cannot, provide the necessary truth conditions to properly warrant faith (theology) & practice (ethics).  Only God’s mind & God’s ideas properly do that. 

By asserting that the human body serves as a sufficient warrant for sexual ethics, Mr. Rodriguez has argued himself into a vicious circle.  On his view (& that of Greg Koukl) & others, the human body contains an embedded teleological principle, & that principles amounts to heteronormativity. The premise & conclusion are, for all intents, & purposes convertible. 

Moreover, the  reasoned circle is vicious, not virtuous, insofar as sexual ethics are properly derived from God’s mind, God’s words, not created objects.  Only God’s mind is both necessary & sufficient to warrant sexual ethics, & when you start using the Created Order to underwrite Moral Principles, you’ve started using the Created Order in a manner Romans 1 describes in less than favorable terms.  We are to look to God via the Bible, contrary to Mr. Rodriguez, as our moral compass - not the Created Order. 

In my next article, I will examine his (and others’) views on human sexuality by explaining the other logical, epistemic, & exegetical errors in their understanding of the word “natural” in Romans 1:26 - 27.  Until then, God bless you all, & go & sin no more. 

Thank you; God bless you all, & “Go & sin no more.”